Growth True growth often looks unusual. One of the most unexpected parts of growth is the normal fading away of some friends and emerging of new friends. New friends naturally mark your progression into wholeness and are a key sign of true growth. However, I see most people struggle with this. Often people take it personally when you are not longer a close friend. It really bothers some people. The ego then becomes involved and internalizes it as an attack. Naturally an attack sensed, creates an attack outward. It is just the way of humans and often unconscious. The further we evolve, we must recognize this and not engage the game. When this happens, old friends often create angry situations. This is really just an extension of unresolved fear, shame, rejection or other feelings they have. Anger is just a surface emotion. Unfortunately it is empowering to people in a dysfunctional way. What to do? Just do not engage the game. Walk away with love. Send them love and compassion. Know that they are just in the game of humans. Also be prepared to grab your own tail! As we evolve constantly, often times we put ourselves into these same anger/blame games. When anger is directed at us, it often elicits the same response. Hopefully though we can all recognize this and move into the proper state of mind - simply cultivating joy. Allow the joy to come. Set intentions of what you are looking for in new friends. Things like shared spiritual beliefs, life philosophy, interest, happiness, joy, self actualization and compassionate are always great traits. I see a lot of clients get stressed about keeping old friends around and practically forcing themselves to keep them in their lives, often because of being attacked or fear of losing other friends or other reasons. It causes many people great emotional stress. Just remember that change is the only universal constant and friends are often reflect that too. Likewise, some people, who think they are growing spiritually, often get into the game by creating an illusion of superiority. It is never about being better or worse then anyone. It is only about common affinity and joy. Do other friends make you more joyful? There is no need just to purge old friends just because you grow. You may find that old friends from high school or long times ago rekindle. However, some people feel they just have to purge everyone. This is not true either. In fact, you may find that some older friends become even more joyous to have in your life and that some friends you currently have even go to a deeper level of sharing. This also is the path of the human to engage in this thinking. A great example is when I quit drinking so much, many of my friends seemed to slip away because we lost the common bond. This makes sense. However, I found that my dynamic with some of them changed into a new relationship not based just on partying together. I admit that I thought on some level that I must purge everyone because I was becoming more spiritual. This is really just the martyr mentality that most humans notice as they grow. Spend time this summer embracing some new friendships that nourish you. Take a risk on spending time with some friends you might not have in the past. You never know what surprises are around the corner.
Posted on: Tue, 22 Jul 2014 13:48:50 +0000
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