3  Friendship TC  "3  Friendship" \l 1

True friendship is to find Divinity in the friend. And as you find Divinity in the friend, you will find a subtle transformation taking place in the friend as well. You will find him being uplifted, and he will not know why. He will only respond by loving you more, and he will not know why he is loving you more. Meanwhile you are creating that love in his heart for you, because you have started loving him. And that is true friendship.

You can only know a person in totality if you know your own totality.

Giving does not only mean a present, or something mundane or monetary. It is giving of oneself: it is giving of one’s entirety.

That you are me and I am thee—that is true friendship. That mergence between two people is the same as the mergence of man with God, for this is not of the body or the mind, but of the true spirit which is within. For the heaven within you is the same heaven within me.

In giving service to a friend, a sacrifice is needed. What do you really sacrifice? You sacrifice the feelings that you have in yourself and put them at his feet. In other words, you are sacrificing your personality. All that composes you, you are sacrificing at the friend’s feet; and this could be love and anger and every thing that is connected to you, every kind of emotion, positive or negative. You are sacrificing that at your friend’s feet.

When we become destructively critical, hatred wells up in our hearts instead of love. That is why in a true friendship, we say, I accept you for what you are, not for what I think you should be.

The cup runneth over . . . why let it go down the drain? And if you are thirsty enough, have the whole cup; why only that which runs over? Have the whole cup, I know I can replenish it—there’s plenty more where that comes from. The eternal spring, undying, is forever producing that life force, the water that gives life, the prana that gives life, the breath that gives life. That is friendship.

You share your plate of food with me and this evening I’ll be hungry again. You share the fifty dollars you have and by the end of the week I’ll be broke again. But if you share your heart with me, that remains eternal; for the human heart is infinity itself. It goes beyond feeling, beyond all emotion. That is the true heart.

The truest deeds done in friendship are never known, or never even thought about, and never whispered even to oneself. Your left hand does not know what your right hand is doing. Because if you seek recognition, or if you ponder over what you have done for a friend, then you have done nothing at all.

Real friendship lies in giving, and not giving because he or she is a friend, but giving for the sake of giving. When this quality of giving develops in a person, it enhances the friendship without effort.

Real friendship, like love, should have not need. Where there is no need, there is total acceptance of a friend.

Man knows that he cannot exist without friendship, and yet he abuses friendship, because in the friendship, self is involved instead of selflessness.

It is so easy to love a friend; anyone can do that. But love an enemy: Then you’re a man. In the words of Shakespeare in Julius Caesar, “ . . . the elements were so mix’t in him that Nature might stand up and say to all the world, ‘This was a man!’” That was Jesus.

True friendship extended to another is a way of leading one to true friendship of God. What better friend do you want?