Common steps and sub-activities
Friendship and companionship
In the section on overload you will find that loneliness and isolation can result in people having glimpses of the spiritual world via overload. The glimpse given can occasionally help a person when they are down. But people who are overloaded with loneliness, or who feel isolated and vulnerable are often ill as a result and emotionally exhausted.
We are a tribal and community based animal, dependent on others for our survival, and lack of input from human beings or other creatures is perceived by the Will as a real Threat. It may provoke Overwhelming fear and terror because there is no one to help us when things go wrong. Old people alone in their houses, for example, and desperately lonely feel all these things, fear and unhappiness plus a host of other negative Emotions.
The opposite is the use of friendship and companionship to suppress the Threat of isolation and the fear of being alone. Thus by caring for each other – forming small communities via the Internet or within your neighbourhood, or via a group with shared interests or even via work, you take away a Threat and a very significant Threat.
Background
Friendship and community is mentioned in the I Ching in both the gua BI and the gua TONG REN.
Jesus mentioned it often and, of course, formed his own little community via his disciples, Mother and Mary Magdalene.
All martial arts communities are formed around this – for example Qigong - and Shinto was also based on this.
The Buddha both taught it and practised it.
Method
To have friends, be one.
Keep in touch with those you care about. Show affection and love via your words and actions. Give them a hug. Go round to see them. No need for dinner parties, just visit and talk and show you like them.
Be trustworthy and support them. Take their side if need be, don’t let them down.
If you find yourself alone ask yourself the questions:
- Do I talk about other people and gossip about them? – if yes you cannot be trusted.
- Do I have any real interests outside work? – if no then you have no basis for a friendship.
- Have I ever helped a friend or person who was in need? – if no then you have been a friend to no one.
- Can I be trusted with a secret? - if no then you cannot be trusted with friendship.
- Have I ever hurt someone who thought of me as a friend? – if yes you were not their friend.
- Have I ever sided with a person who was hurting the person I called a friend? – if yes then you were no friend.
Observations
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- Appalachian Spring: Variations on a Shaker Melody - Aaron Copland
- Auden, W H - Refugee Blues
- Blacking, Professor John – How musical is man? - Venda music, unity and division
- Brahms - Trio in A minor op.114
- Cale, J J - Crazy Mama
- Chuang Tzu - from The Flight of Lin Hui
- Crosse, Andrew – Poems – Friendship
- Dry the River - Shaker Hymns
- Ficino, Marsilio – Selected Letters - From a letter to Andrea Cambini.
- Ficino, Marsilio – Selected Letters - From a letter to Giovanni Cavalcanti
- Ficino, Marsilio – Selected Letters - From a letter to Girolamo Amazzi
- Freddie Mercury and Queen - Friends will be friends
- Gardening as a therapeutic intervention in mental health
- Haig, Matt - Reasons to stay alive - 02 The blessings of friendship-love and love-love
- Haig, Matt - Reasons to stay alive - 04 How to be there for someone with depression or anxiety
- Haig, Matt - Reasons to stay alive - 11 Love
- Hesiod - Works and Days - Giving, Taking and Thrift
- Holderlin, Johann - For Zimmer
- Holst, Gustav - A Dirge for two Veterans
- How group singing facilitates recovery from the symptoms of postnatal depression: a comparative qualitative study
- Is Postpartum Depression a Disease of Modern Civilization?
- Leigh Hunt - Abou Ben Adhem
- Li Po - An Emperor's love
- Li Po - Memories with the Dusk Return
- Li Po - On the banks of the Jo-Yeh
- Li Po - The Guild of Good Fellowship
- Li Po - Thoughts in a tranquil night
- Li Po - To the City of Nan-king
- Li Po - Under the Moon
- Lizst - Trois études de concert - 03 Un Sospiro
- Logan, Andrew - The British Guide to Showing Off
- Louis Jacolliot - The Bible in India - 04 The Story of Krishna: Preaching the law/disciples/Ardjuna and Sarawasta
- Louis Jacolliot - The Bible in India - The Thoughts and maxims of Krishna
- Lowry, L S - Industrial scenes and 'The Pond'
- Lowry, L S - Wales
- Menuhin, Yehudi - Asana - Shavasana
- Menuhin, Yehudi - with Stephane Grappelli - For All Season side 1
- Menuhin, Yehudi - with Stephane Grappelli - Jalousie
- Menuhin, Yehudi - with Stéphane Grappelli - Tea For Two (1978)
- Mesopotamian - Means of achieving spiritual experience 05 Removing threats and Justice
- Moitessier, Bernard – The Long Way - Good Hope
- Monk, Thelonius - And the Sonny Rollins quartet
- Monk, Thelonius - Ruby my dear
- Muir, John - the one well-defined marvel of my life of the kind called supernatural
- Nizami – Makhzanol Asrar (The Treasury of Mysteries) – from The Third Discourse 01 On the changing world
- Out of the Blue: Creating a Postpartum Depression Support Group
- Ovid - Metamorphoses - Birth of Bacchus
- Ovid - Metamorphoses - Cupid and Daphne
- Ovid - Metamorphoses - Glaucus and Scylla
- Ovid - Metamorphoses - Old Aeson restor'd to Youth
- Ovid - Metamorphoses - The Creation of the World
- Ovid - Metamorphoses - The Giant's War 2
- Ovid - Metamorphoses - The Giant's War 9
- Ovid - Metamorphoses - The Song of the Muses
- Ovid - Metamorphoses - The Story of Coronis and Birth of Aesculapius
- Ovid - Metamorphoses - The Story of Daedalus and Icarus
- Ovid - Metamorphoses - The Story of Erisichthon
- Ovid - Metamorphoses - The Story of Narcissus
- Ovid - Metamorphoses - The Story of Phaeton 1
- Ovid - Metamorphoses - The Story of Phaeton 3
- Ovid - Metamorphoses - The Transformation of Daphne into a Laurel
- Ovid - Metamorphoses - The Transformation of Ino and Melicerta to Sea-Gods 2
- Ovid - Metamorphoses - Vulcan and Venus
- Parrish, Maxfield - Sing a Song o' Sixpence
- Pico Iyer on Leonard Cohen's Years as a Buddhist Monk
- Porter, Cole - After you who?
- Porter, Cole - Anything goes
- Porter, Cole - Ev’ry time we say goodbye
- Porter, Cole - From this moment on
- Porter, Cole - I love you Samantha
- Porter, Cole - Let’s Misbehave
- Porter, Cole - So in love
- Porter, Cole - True Love
- Ravel - Jeux d'Eaux
- Ravel - Miroirs III
- Ravel - Piano concerto in G - II Adagio assai
- Ravel - Piano Trio
- Romance of the Rose – Lady Fortune
- Rumi - Rubaiyat - With friends you grow wings
- Schubert - Am See
- Schubert - Der Liedler
- Schubert - Die Winterreise D 911 - Complete work
- Schubert - Fräulein am See - Ellens Gesang III 'Ave Maria'
- Schubert - Impromptu in G flat major D899 No.3
- Schubert - Moment Musicaux No. 3 in F Minor
- Schubert - Piano Trio (D.898) - Andante
- Schubert - Symphony no. 9 in C Major D944
- Schulz, Charles - On love and chocolate
- Shaker Music & Dance - Hancock Shaker Village
- Shaker song - Morning dance - Catching the sun Spyro Gyra
- Shaker Suite - The Girl Choir of South Florida
- Shakers - I Never Did Believe - Martha Bassett
- Shakers - Lay Me Low -A song for the Innocent
- Shakers - Love Is Little
- Sikhism - Janamsakhi - Nanak's hymn
- Songs of Flying Dragons – Though he was busy with war, he loved the way of the scholar
- Spender, Stephen - A Childhood
- Tarot - 07 Minor Arcana - 03s Love, Kindness and compassion [Intuition]
- The Kama sutra – 03 Festivals
- The Kama sutra – 04 Social Gatherings
- The lived body – experiences from adults with cerebral palsy - 01
- The River of Love: Music of the Shakers
- The Sri Chinmoy Self-Transcendence 24-hour race: 'It is a battle with your mind'
- Three Shaker Songs (The Hastings College Choir)
- Time for Me: the arts as therapy in postnatal depression
- Tirrukural, the - Book 1 Gratitude
- Tirrukural, the - Book 1 Slander
- Tirrukural, the - Book 2 from Friendship
- Tu Fu - To my retired friend Wei
- United Society of Shakers - Come Life, Shaker Life
- van Ruysbroeck, Jan - Commentary on Matthew 9:15
- van Ruysbroeck, Jan - Taught in a dream by their guardian angels
- van Ruysbroeck, Jan - The Adornment of the Spiritual marriage - For the Father incessantly begets his Son
- van Ruysbroeck, Jan - The Adornment of the Spiritual marriage - God may touch a man from without and from within
- van Ruysbroeck, Jan - The Adornment of the Spiritual marriage - The sun, moon and the four elements
- van Ruysbroeck, Jan - The Adornment of the Spiritual marriage - Whosoever would know God would go mad
- van Ruysbroeck, Jan - The Three Worlds
- van Ruysbroeck, Jan - To be wounded by love is the sweetest feeling
- Wenders, Wim - Don't come knocking
- Wenders, Wim - Pina
- Wenders, Wim - Salt of the Earth
- Wenders, Wim - Tokyo-ga