What is friendship?

What is friendship? Friendship is perhaps the highest human relationship that can exist on Earth. It is the desire to serve one's fellow human and that human's desire to serve you. Service is not duty: it is loving kindness. It involves no obligation. It involves no “shoulds.” It involves no “have tos.” It comes from love, the love of one human for another, to put their good first. It has no price tag, true friendship. It is freely given and gratefully received as the great gift of time. 

It comes from understanding. When you feel annoyance, irritation, hurt, conflict you must spiritually stop and reflect and pray to understand that person, for when you understand, tolerance begins. Tolerance is a fruit of the spirit. Now, once tolerance, real tolerance, not false tolerance, exists in the human, then love grows. It is the door to love. Now, some personalities are easily understood, intuitively. Others require more work. Theoretically every personality has the capacity to love every other, but in actuality that remains not so or potential far into your ascendent career. But we may begin consciously practicing friendship right now.

Do not underestimate this word. It is what kept the Apostles together; not faith, not teachings, not association with the Creator Son in human form, it was simple and glorious friendship! Friendship, the cement of loyalty, being sure of love, the bind which cannot be broken. Friendship can exist not only amongst your species, but you may also be friends with your angels, with myself and the other teachers, and with God. Think of God as a friendship and do not neglect your service to Him.

Many may say we are respectful toward others because they contain a piece of The Father. That is true, but it has not deep roots in the human heart. You do not yet believe you contain this piece in yourself; how then could you believe it in another - truly believe it and act on it? Thus, we must approach spiritual living from a different standpoint the standpoint of tolerance, friendship, love. Every partnership throughout your ascension career will be based upon these qualities.

Indeed, when you reach Mansonia, your companions will be - of course - your guardian seraphim, but when you are not with them, your closest companions will be the transition seraphim, who are visiting or unassigned seraphim of friendship. They will teach you much. They want to be your friends. This word is overused by you, and thus undervalued.

You will read Rodan and practice being a better friend with one person. You may choose to share this amongst yourselves or keep it private. That is up to each of you. But this will be your assignment. We shall practice, and I know - my brothers and sisters - next week you will come with even more radiant hearts and souls and smiles to this meeting. 

Friendship is the basis for your entire ascension career, the outreach to serve one's fellows, the understanding followers, the honoring of their Divinity and evolving souls, and the eventual love that will grow. Partnership with other ascendant beings and all other universe beings is the essential nature of service. To know ones fellows, to rise above personality conflict, to love those who are still different, eventually, is intense spiritual growth. We start simply because a quart cannot exceed a pint and you are little pints right now.

Now, there are four people who should be regarded as friends. They are:

1. The helper, is our friend in four ways:
   • they protect you when unforeseen dangers strike,
   • they protect your property when you are away or unable to do so yourself,
   • they will show their strength when you are in fear,
   • and when you have work to be done, they supply twice as much help as you require.
     
     
2. Those who never change in good times or bad, are our friend in four ways:
   
   •  they tell you their secrets,
   • they do not reveal your secrets,
   • they will never leave you in times of trouble,
   • and most importantly, they will lay down their life for those they love.
     John 15:12 This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you.
     John 15:13 Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
     
     
3. Those who only give good advice, they are our friends in four ways:
   •  they keep you from doing wrong,
   • they assist you when you do what is right,
   • they freely teach what you do not know,
   • and most importantly, they show you the way to heaven.
     
     
4. And those who are compassionate, they are our friend in four ways:
   
   • they do not find enjoyment through your misery,
   • they find happiness in your good times,
   • they will restrain any who speak poorly of you,
   • and will rejoice when others speak well of you.

Tomas: In the sweep of time and space there is sometimes no particular reason to come together in association except for the merits of relationship, the amicability of a friendly visit.

The quality of an informal get-together is an event even so. It is an opportunity for you to review your wealth of accomplishments and associations. When your friend comes to visit, your day is elevated from a 
day of solitude into a sharing situation that helps you realize the interweaving of personalities throughout the lives of those who find value in fellowship. 

"The road to a friend's house is never long," it is said. All it requires is a decision to make the effort to step out of isolation into companionship. We are coming into the season where your lives will be enriched by associations with fellows offering opportunity now to enhance your well-being by engaging in exchanges of philosophy and creativity, such that you are able to augment the quality of your life and the lives of others by the texture of two where there was one.  

The quality of relationship is a means to another dimension. You are in a position to put into practice the belief that if there are two or more of you gathered together in His name, He is there in your midst, and so you have an opportunity to enhance a simple Saturday visit by inviting a reflection of the Spirit of Truth to join with you. Enhancing your fellowship by the presence of the Master, you grant yourselves liberation  from the fetters of time and the monotony of mortal existence, thus your chance visit by a friend passing by is a rightful celebration, an event, an alteration in time and space.

I was reflecting on the impression of how so many find their lives a dark backdrop upon which occasional events evince a bright light on their otherwise grey existence, but how it seems that as you incorporate your divine nature in your appreciation of who you are, you are more able to discern your life as an experience of enlightenment and increasing luminosity with occasional shadow valleys of experiential musings. Let's add some color to this palette by inviting in a friend, by opening the door of your mind, heart, soul and psyche to the interconnectedness that comes when you reach out to others and they reach out to you.  

It has been said that `He who would have friends must show himself friendly.' Oh, I could have a whole lesson on how that may be perceived, but you who have been born of the spirit have certainly perceived the light of truth in the friendly nature of one who has goodwill toward all men, one who has agendas but which do not require full time devotion, ones who stop by on a Saturday afternoon to conjoin in the interests of others without guile.  

Friendliness is a skill, an art. After having been exposed to the darkness, there may be some reluctance to open yourself to the light of friendship. It may require from you an effort. It may require from you a certain commitment to step out of the sanctity of solitude into the adventurous arena of association.  

All this to say how much I enjoy the pleasure of your company! I look forward to our visits. I have been exposed to circumstances which are far more backward, wherein tribal members regard an outsider with distrust, and although I have no worries that we'll be burned at the stake, I am aware of occasions when the visitor receives "the evil eye" even in advance of their arrival.  

This is the beginning of a new era. Only the beginning, but we have definitely stepped over the threshold. We begin anew in some very fundamental areas. It's necessary, — in order for us to build, create, design, develop, foster, further new levels of relationship, interaction, business and community, — to extend our hand in friendship. In this way our limited solitary existence is expanded to include the spouse, the family, the clan, the tribe, the nation, the globe, the galaxy.

When you reach a point of stepping out into an area of investigation and you encounter those who are closed or suspicious, doubtful, distrusting, think of them in terms of those who have not yet seen the light. They have not come out from their long solitude into the clearing — where the light of the Son shines — but such a startling example can you set, those of you who have nothing to fear by opening your hearts and minds to impressions of others as they enter into your frame of reference as a gift, a bestowal, a breath of 
fresh air, a creative stimuli that elevates a common everyday day in the life to a personal spiritual experience because it has been enhanced by a simple visit from a common friend.  

It does take time to develop meaningful associations, the kind that amount to kindred spirits in will, but these relationships are developed out of mere associations, by and through your extending yourself in friendship into the arena of life without judgment, without pressure, without prejudice but with a childlike attitude of a party-goer, invited to celebrate a birthday with a neighboring child and friends.  

Elyon: The golden rule is so relating yourself to another that they gain the greatest possible good, that
your relationship with another becomes the opportunity for the realization of the reality of God for that other individual, not in a theoretical acknowledgment of God's factuality, but rather in the intimate dynamism, that energy flow of the presence of God through one of His children to another of His children.

Friendship is a factor in relationship, however, there need not be relationship in order for friendship to be long-standing. Many of you know this from friends of years' past, those whom you still hold dear yet you have no daily interchange that fosters relationship. Therefore friendship is a state; relationship is a process. In order to further friendship, that is, to uplift its state, you must develop the skills or at least the sensitivity towards those skills that foster interrelated friendship, that being relationship.

The Father has undertaken an immense plan, and that is the bestowal of as many personalities as are resident in potential in His being that can be manifest individually apart from Him, and then to draw these very personalities back into unity with His being, not a return to the state of oneness, but to ascend to
that Supreme level of relationship, interconnected unity of diverse personalities. This is a transcendent oneness, a togetherness. This being His desire, you are faced daily with this dynamic of relationship.

No one does well in isolation, and you will find in your life little opportunity to be isolated, for all that makes up your daily activities requires some form of exchange with another individual. It is inescapable. Of course I might add this does increase the importance of stillness, time alone. However, it is aloneness with the Father, again, another interpersonal moment.

It is often taught that friendliness is good manners, and manners are confused with friendship. Friendliness is not friendship. Friendship grows from understanding and love. Friendliness is actions that maintain interchange person to person. One can be friendly and have no friends. One can have many friends and fail at being friendly. One is an internal state of being and the other is merely a code of behavior. Relationships, it has been said, are an end in themselves, and what is that end but friendship? There can be no superficiality of relationship. The very word itself demands interrelated, interdependent connectivity. It is not had through formality of behavior, and it survives improper behavior, for love will penetrate all mistakes and reach to the core of the being to whom the relationship is invested. The keys, the tools, for relationships are found in the citing of that which is the fruit of the spirit: forgiveness and tolerance, mercy and patience, kindness, deep and sincere interest in another being, and curiosity about the makeup of another personality.

We are all at times baffled by our own personality makeup. It is difficult to discern how well you tick, perhaps more difficult than it is to discover how another operates, for every layer you uncover in yourself reveals a deeper layer. It is unending, for the penetration of the understanding of self leads to the discovery of the great Personality of Paradise. That task is endless. You are limited in the understanding of another, and therefore your attempt to understand reaches an end, for it is impossible to take the inner journey of another individual. In order to benefit from the uniqueness of another bestowal of God in the form of another creature of free will you must enter into relationship. It is not had through a probing, searching, of another. It is had through enticing the bequeathment of the inner state of that individual to you. That is done best through your own willingness to lay before another your being, your wishes, your ideals, longings, and goals.

You know that the Master gained understanding of others through questions. That was the enticement for the other to share. He did not run down a checklist to make sure they filled in the proper blanks before he sought their friendship. He sought their friendship without knowing them, and in their revealing of themselves they became his friend and he became theirs.

You know of the phrase of taking the mote out of your own eye before you take the speck out of another. I refer to this line to illustrate my comments of how much more deep and unfathomable your own personality makeup is to you, or perhaps more correctly, how much more access to the depths of personality you have of yourself than you do another. By sharing the depths of yourself that you have discovered you allow another to receive the benefits of that interpersonal relationship and give the opportunity for another to be so related to that they come to a deeper understanding of themselves. The deeper your connection with the Father's presence the better friendship, relationship, and ministry you will
have with another, the more you will be able to relate yourself to another as God would relate to them. What is God's primary goal but the revelation of His being to His children? He does not demand that you reveal yourself to Him. He seeks to reveal Himself to you. In your discovery of that revelation you are inspired to reveal yourself to Him and to others.

I would once again to return to the line of the mote and the sliver. Rather than look at it in terms of one's faults and another's faults, to look at it as the potential of discovery by placing your mote, that beam in yourself, before another to witness. If we define that beam, that mote in this case, to be the depths of your personality potential and actuals, another may discover that they do have but a speck, but a sliver, of discovered potential within themselves. That little speck can enlarge into their own beam of self awareness,
of Father consciousness, and of universe citizenship.