The "anam cara" experience

Wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world: inside the Celtic mind and the 'anam cara' experience

Last summer, I had no idea what the universe would have in store for me as I agreed to take a cross-country road trip with my friend Kayla. In that past year, I had already made the trek across the states atleast six times, and as a slave to my own familiarity, I imagined the journey to be just one of many I would embark on. Little did I know how spiritually important this expedition would be on my life. It was here that we uncovered the "anam cara experience". 

What is an "anam cara"? It is in essence, the Celtic understanding of friendship. 

Anam: gaelic word for "friend"

Cara: gaelic word for "soul"

Anam cara: "soul friend"

1. The "anam cara" experience is not bound by physical limitations or distance.

"Because they have broken through the barriers of persona and egoism on the soul level, the unity of their souls is not easily severed. Even across distance, two friends can stay attuned to each other and continue to sense the flow of each other's lives"

-Anam Cara: A book of Celtic Wisdom, John O'Donohue

2. The "anam cara" experience is an authentic and honest friendship.

"With the anam cara, you could share your inner most self, your mind and your heart. You are understood as you are without mask or pretention. The superficial and functional lies of social acquaintance fall away, you can be who you really are. You feel free to release yourself into the trust and shelter of the other person's soul. It is precisely in awakening and exploring this rich inner landscape that the anam cara experience illuminates the mystery and kindness of the divine. The anam cara is God's gift. Friendship is the nature of God" 

-Anam Cara: A book of Celtic Wisdom, John O'Donohue

3. The "anam cara" experience permits us to enter the ancient circle of belonging. 

"You were joined in an ancient and eternal way with the friend of your soul. The Celtic imagination articulates the inner friendship that embraces nature, divinity, underworld, and human world as one. The dualism that separates the visible from the invisible, time from eternity, the human from the divine, was totally alien to them. For our sore and tormented separation, the possibility of this imaginative and unifying friendship is the Celtic gift"

-Anam Cara: A book of Celtic Wisdom, John O'Donohue

We may encounter several "anam caras" in this life. It could be a person you have known for a long time, and even though several years go by without physically meeting, it is like no time has gone by. Finding a true "anam cara" is the basis for most successful and joyful marriages. Justin is without a doubt, one of my "anam caras" or "soul friends". And we can all pinpoint those friendships that just don't dive that deep. Sometimes they are superficial or conditional. That person we enjoy spending time with but may not feel comfortable showing our whole, intimate selves with. And that is okay, those friendships and acquaintances have important roles in our lives. What is important, is that when a "soul friend" does comes along, that we recognize and cultivate it as a special gift from God. 

For those who connect with the spirit of Jesus, for many, he is the ultimate, "anam cara".

The Celtic mind and its understanding of landscape:

"Wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world

the heart has its seasons, its homelands and thoughts of its own

wake now discover that you are the song that the morning brings

the heart has its beaches, its evenings and songs of its own"

-The Grateful dead

I think they may have been onto an imporant aspect of the Celtic mind. There is a relationship between the outer lanscape of the world and the inner landscape of our hearts. 

John O'Donohue says this so much better than I can, so I am quoting his book:

"The world is never simply there outside us. Our intentionality constructs it. All our inner life and intimacy of soul longs to find an outer mirror. It longs for a form in which it can be seen, felt and touched." 

"All is one. Instead of, "I think therefore I am", "I am because everything else is. I am in everything and everything is in me. This magnificent hymn to presence outlines the depth and unity of the anam cara experience." 

"The silence of landscape conceals vast presence. Place is not simply location. A place is profound individuality. Its surface texture of grass and stone is blessed by rain, wind, and light. The shape of a landscape is an ancient and silent form of consciousness. Mountains are huge contemplatives. Rivers and streams offer voice; they are the tears of the earth's joy and dispair. The earth is full of soul."

So in essence, the soul of a place, the soul of the earth, and our souls are all connected. 

We have an inner landscape within us. 

Here is my account of our trip and how we embraced the rich world of landscape.

Embarking:

The redwood trees were calling us. We were "goin to California with an aching in our hearts" and "knockin' on that golden door". It was a hectic evening, full of delays, and brewing with anticipation. We drove all night, cruising past Lake Michigan, through all the old factory towns and billowing smokestacks. Up through Wisconsin we rose, approaching daybreak in the lush lands of Minnesota. 

Minnesota: Joyfulness

If water is an aspect of our being, it clearly represents emotion. Where there is water, there is life! And lots of it. Minnesota is the "land of 10,000 lakes" and its calm pools of blue water infused a joy and child-like excitement. We watched the sun rise over rolling, saturated green hills. The landscape represented the pure renewal and the freshness that can be seen in the face of a newborn child. We pulled over and danced in bright meadows of summer wildflowers and golden tall grasses. Our trip was born.

North Dakota: Remembering

North Dakota in the summer time defied all of my preexisting conditions of place. I had imagined it to be flat, vast and endless, and strewn with corn fields. Upper North Dakota really looks more like Ireland, or the Scottish Highlands. It has rock formations infused into giant rolling green hills. 

                                                                      North Dakota

"No two stone shapes in this lanscape are the same. Each stone has a different face. Here, it feels as if a wild, surrealistc God laid down the whole landscape. These stones, ever patient, ever still, continue to praise the silence of time"

-Anam Cara: A book of Celtic Wisdom, John O'Donohue

I'll never forget when Justin and I visited Yosemite National park and we both felt as if we could see the faces of the native elders in the faces of the rocks. They appeared to be looking down at us, with expressions of both sadness and pride. 

   Yosemite National Park

"Landscape has a secret and silent memory, a narrative of presence where nothing is ever lost or forgotten"

-Anam Cara: A book of Celtic Wisdom, John O'Donohue

The Celtic people believed that the residual energy of a landscape connects us with our ancestors. I have never felt this more strongly when driving through North Dakota. As we passed the burial mounds of the Lakota people, a feeling of uncontrollable emotion struck every chord of my being. The hair on the back of my neck stood up. I felt like I had been there before. Never in my life had I felt so close to the generations who had came before me. Sorrow, despair, pride, love, mourning......all of these feelings flowed through me. I was a conduit for the ancient energy. The spirit of the Lakota people still lives in the landscape. A spirit I felt intensely connected to.  

 

Faces of the Lakota

"Often the joy you feel does not belong to your individual biography but to the clay in which you were formed. At other times, you will find sorrow moving through you, like dark mist over a landscape. It is wise to let the weather of this feeling pass; it is on its way elsewhere. We so easily forget that our clay has a memory that preceded our minds, a life of its own before it took present form. regardless of how modern we seem, we still remain ancient, sisters and brothers of one clay"

-Anam Cara: A book of Celtic Wisdom, John O'Donohue

Montana: Crossing the "great divide"

"I took my love and I took it down

I climbed a mountain and I turned around

And I saw my reflection in the snow covered hills..."

-Fleetwood Mac, and of course the Smashing Pumpkins

Approaching the Rocky Mountains

Bowman Lakes

Mountains serve as a huge symbol of perserverance in the human consciousness. They represent faith, strength, and courage. They are strong, steadfast and sturdy. 

Here at Glacier National Park, we were reaching our personal "continental divide". Both of us had emotions pulling us to the east and to the west, just like the rivers. After crossing the Rocky Mountains, we would officially be on the "other side". You could say this was the "peak" of our journey.

We spent two nights here, testing our endurance by climbing a giant glacier mountain next to Bowman Lake. I will never forget when after our 10 hour strenuous hike, Kayla jumped in the freezing cold glacier lake! Somehow we managed to get Kayla's little Malibu up a steep, rocky road to a rustic campground far away from the touristy hullaballoo we both despised. We ate the chili I had prepared days before over a fire, sipped on dank local Montana beers and sang songs. One of the songs I played was appropriately this one: 

"It's gone away in yesterday

and I find myself on the mountainside

where the rivers change direction

across the great divide"

-Kate Wolf ("across the great divide")

Washington: Transformation

Oysters:

1. Our first night, we snuck onto a seaside beach and spent the night by the ocean. It was here we wandered the shoreline collecting oyster shells. We named them "angel wings".  

2. Later on, in a fishing village, we learned how to shuck oysters. Anyone who has done this for the first time, knows it is not easy. A kind store owner lent us her oyster knife and with some frustrated practice, we learned how to pry open the tough shell, to reach the decadent prize inside.

3.And finally, when frolicking through the redwood rainforest, we found a tree knoll that looked JUST like an oyster shell. 

Whenever syncroncities like this one come up, I know there is a divine plan to the pattern. I instinctively looked up the symbolic meaning of the oyster. It's meaning is transformation. The oyster literally transforms sand into a pearl. What a perfect physical metaphor for our inner experience.   

Olympic national park 

“Each recognized the other as the one in whom their heart could be at home” 

-Anam Cara: A book of Celtic Wisdom, John O'Donohue

This could not have been truer as our souls met on the spirit level with a depth and propensity we had never experience before. 

We made our “hobbit home” in the magical redwood forest. Our souls were dancing together, hopping from tree stump to tree stump, frolicking through the forest. The trees are so bewildering, you never know which way is up or down. We created ridiculous, delightful characters for ourselves, howling at the moon and walking barefoot through the spontaneous landscape of surprise and wonder. The swirling, disorienting magic of the redwoods represented our quest for transformation on the inside. 

We approached the most beautiful sight to behold, a redwood bridge crossing a spewing, raging, waterfall. We were blossoming, BURSTING with unbridled, wild emotion. 

As we sang the lyrics to “I’ll fly away”, a hawk soared underneath a rainbow into the swollen abyss of the waterfall. That moment felt like a thousand moments. Suddenly, we were infused with the most beautiful gift of the universe, PRESENCE. It is hard to put into words what happened here, but our spirits were waiting for this moment for lifetimes. 

The waterfall is the nature of fluid and powerful transformation. We had returned home, to our most natural, intimate selves. The “anam cara” experience.

"An act of ancient recognition brings you together. It is as if a million years before the silence of nature broke. Without even knowing it, your secret memory mourned the loss of each other. While your clay selves wandered for thousands of years through the universe, your longing for each other never faded. There is an awakening between you, a sense of ancient knowing. You enter. You come home to each other at last. As Euripides said, 'two friends, one soul'. 

-Anam Cara: A book of Celtic Wisdom, John O'Donohue

Oregon: Vast desolation 

Every heart has a neglected part, the arid desert of the soul. 

“Beauty likes to find a neglected or abandoned place, for it knows that it is there it will meet the kind of light that repeats its shape, dignity and nature” –Ezra Pound

Why is it that run-down logger towns, pungent with methamphetamines in Oregon have a strange, unexplainable beauty? Or why do the rugged coastlines of vast “nothingness” hold such power to the eye? Because loneliness and pain have a shape and beauty. They are a rich component of the human condition. It is here, that we discover what needs water, what needs sustenance. It is here, that we transform our shadows into strengths. Our darkness into light. 

"Below the surface of our conscious awareness, a vast, unknown rootage determines our actions. We find ourselves so often returning to the same empty places that diminish and impoverish our essence. When the unconscious becomes illuminated, its darker forces no longer hold us prisoner. This work of freedom is slow and unpredictable; yet each individual is the custodian and subject of their own transfiguration" 

-Anam Cara: A book of Celtic Wisdom, John O'Donohue

It is the wide, open oceans that represent the deep solitude of the human consciousness. It truly is endless and bottomless. 

California: Returning home again

Although I found myself on the other side of the country, I felt back to the beginning again in the wild lands of northern California. The trip had come full circle for me and I felt as if I were returning home. Returning home to my other "anam cara", my lover and partner Justin. That evening we were greeted with an epic homecoming feast in which our friends had worked hard to prepare for us. A gaggle of warmth, conversation and organic eel river micro-brews filled the trailer I would come to spend so much time in. 

Kayla and I discovered the "anam cara" on a deep esoteric level. We saw ourselves in the rivers, mountains, deserts and waterfalls, and in turn, felt the rhythms of the earth alive within us. This lively, creative exchange changed our perspective forever on our journey to California.