I came across this interesting term ‘anam cara’ through a 1997 book about Celtic spirituality by John O’Donohue, titled Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom. The term refers to the Celtic concept of the “soul friend” in religion and spirituality with anam meaning “soul” and cara meaning “friend”. In the Celtic tradition, “soul friends” are considered an essential and integral part of spiritual development.
O’Donohue says in his book: “In everyone’s life, there is a great need for an anam cara, a soul friend. In this love, you are understood as you are without mask or pretension. The superficial and functional lies and half-truths of social acquaintance fall away, you can be as you really are. Love allows understanding to dawn, and understanding is precious. Where you are understood, you are at home.
“The anam cara experience opens a friendship that is not wounded or limited by separation or distance. Such friendship can remain alive even when the friends live far away from each other. Because they have broken through the barriers of persona and egoism to the soul level, the unity of their souls is not easily severed. When the soul is awakened, physical space is transfigured. Even across distance, two friends can stay attuned to each other and continue to sense the flow of each other’s lives. With your anam cara you awaken the eternal.”
The anam cara experience opens a friendship that is not wounded or limited by separation or distance
In some literatures, it is even said that “anyone without a soul friend is like a body without a head”. Life is gentler and easier with the adoption of an anam cara for support. This soul friend could be clerical or lay, male or female. It is a compassionate presence. It can be in the form of a spiritual guide too.
The kind of friendship one finds in an anam cara, O’Donohue argues, is a very special form of love – not the kind that leads us to pit the platonic against the romantic, but something much larger and more transcendent.
However, being an anam cara requires a purposeful presence where we show up with absolute integrity of intention. That interior intentionality is what sets the true anam cara apart from the acquaintance or the casual friend − a distinction all the more important today, in a culture where we throw the word “friend” around all too hastily, designating little more than perfunctory affiliation. This faculty of showing up must be an active presence rather than a mere abstraction − the person who declares herself a friend but shirks when the other’s soul most needs seeing to is not an anam cara.
“Love allows understanding to dawn and understanding is precious. Where you are understood, you are at home. Understanding nourishes belonging. When you really feel understood, you feel free to release yourself into the trust and shelter of the other person’s soul.” …. “Your noble friend will not accept pretension but will gently and very firmly confront you with your own blindness. Such friendship is creative and critical; it is willing to negotiate awkward and uneven territories of contradiction and woundedness.” (John O’Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom).
If one realises how vital to our whole spirit – and being, character, mind and health − friendship actually is, we will take time for it. Often, we have to be in trouble before we remember what’s essential.
Aristotle laid out the philosophical foundation of friendship as the art of holding up a mirror to each other’s souls. Anam Cara is an understanding of love and friendship and is certainly one life hack worth adopting towards the nurturing of a sane and healthy life.