“My aloneness offers concrete security. If I am OK in me then no one can take that away. So I must learn to enjoy my aloneness as I am this afternoon. I will be a friend firstly to myself. I am my best friend. Why? Because in myself I can find enjoyment and peace in living. I know that when others let me down that I can lie in bed at night and feel OK about living and OK about me. That security is once again confirmed. After a few weeks I have found it again. Five months with my ex-partner could not destroy it.”
Though friendship has many contexts, unless I am a friend to myself, I cannot be a friend to another. It is impossible for me to be at odds in my own persona and still have the capacity to love another. My dissonance will always shatter any harmony I try to create with another.
Friendship requires equanimity: a calmness and serenity that only comes from deep personal value of one’s self. It is not an egotistical feeling. In fact, it is the opposite: it is the feeling that one has achieved such a state of mind they must share the experience and joy with another. It comes from knowing one’s place in the universe, accepting one’s self and qualities, and knowing I am worthy of the divine love to which I am called.
Only through my spiritual awakening can I achieve this peace. Only by chunking out all the baggage of my past, the illness of my selfishness, and the egocentric desire to control all things can I be able to live in each moment without regard to anything but achieving a state of goodness, compassionate love, and a desire to help others.
It is in the security of my actualized self that I can be at ease in aloneness. I can rest assured in the sanctity of my own spiritual concept, knowing it is by Divine grace that I exist at all, and in that state of Grace, if I am seeking the good of all things, then I can be at peace.
My aloneness is no longer a judgment of me, my past. my future, or anything except that I am a product of the Holy Universe, a child of a divine king, neither above or below anything, but a part of something beautiful I cannot yet fully understand.
To be a friend of myself is to be a friend of God and all others who share our spirit and love. Who participate in the divine creation and work for its common realization.