How Spiritual Friendships Look Different from Other Friendships after Awakening

Stop expecting anything from others and see what comes on its own

Learn what it means to be lonely and not escape from it; look at it, live with it, see what is implied, so that psychologically you depend on nobody. Then only will you know what it means to love.

—Jiddu Krishnamurti

After spiritual awakening, life can feel like a vast desert for a period of time, which differs for each individual. Then, when we have finally dropped all expectations from others, spiritual friendships may appear and deliver rains at the moment when we may have thought life had no more to offer.

Spiritual friendships are crucial after spiritual awakening. It is like rain in the desert. Moreover, they serve as truthful and loving way-pointers along the pathless journey.

A spiritual friend serves as a mirror for ourselves after our reactivity has been exposed or softened through awakening. At this point, we are totally open to constructive criticism and even learn to appreciate it. Why? Because we come to know that wise observations about our rougher edges, when delivered with Love by a trusted friend, gives us feedback that we can choose to use in our personal work. Spiritual friends do this for each other by shining a light on our flaws, sometimes with a directness that we may not be used to. It’s all appreciated and reciprocated in true spiritual friendships. We do this for one another.

My first spiritual friendship happened to me in my 40s, and I found myself exploring my own conditioning through our talks. There was no fear in sharing our doubts with each other, and we opened up like I had never experienced before in other friendships over my lifetime so far. My spiritual friend reminds me to be a lioness instead of following the herd. We do this for each other, actually. We also, I notice, have the capacity to laugh at ourselves and our so-called worldly problems, which is so cherished and useful to me. It eliminates any sense of separateness.

And, there is a lot of space in a spiritual friendship, I have found. I do not feel any need to constantly text or call. There is no insecurity. We just know what our connection is, and we don’t need reassurance. The spaciousness is a treasure that we both value greatly.

As I don’t want to avoid sharing all the facets of spiritual friendship, so I will add that, based on my personal experience, it’s worth keeping in mind that not every person in our lives serves as a spiritual friend, and those who aren’t will probably appear to have escalated in how they show certain behaviors like a lack of depth or an obsession with money. And that’s okay. Let it be. Then the judging thoughts just aren’t there anymore.

Which is useful because when the judging thoughts are gone, peace has room to settle in. Leaving people, places, and things be what they are sorts us. Allowing all things to be what they are is helpful to us when we are on the pathless path of spirituality. Why? We can see things in a less obscured way. We can meet reality where it is, right now. When we help ourselves and take care of ourselves, people around us benefit.

Of course, allowing people to be as they are does not mean tolerating poor treatment. In fact, we may find we suddenly have the courage to give far less energy to draining interactions after spiritual awakening, especially when we have a spiritual friend with whom we can be truthful. We find ourselves preferring the company of those with whom we can share. This honest sharing serves, as I described earlier, similar to a mirror. These connections offer us more objectivity and no pushiness, no agenda, and no manipulation. If those things do pop up from time to time due to conditioning, the other may even gently point us towards that conditioning in ourselves. Then we can examine what is happening and choose what to do (drop it).

I recently got to be in the Himalayas, and saw an elder man walking step-by-step up the village mountain road. His clothes were nothing fancy, but simply practical and comfortable. He was clad in cotton pants and a kurta button-up shirt with a vest. His plain shoes were not mountaineering boots as we see in the West but they appeared to work completely fine for walking up the mountain carrying a load, despite their simplicity. He carried a huge load strapped to his back. Slowly, he trekked up the steep incline, with the load distributed equally on his forehead, his shoulders, and his entire back. He did not appear to be in any pain. The steps he took were taken one at a time, and it was clear to anyone who saw him that he knew exactly where he was going.

My spiritual friend and I were on the trip together, fortunately, because we had a few days to spare away from work and the city. When we lost our way in the mountain hill stations, the people would point the way to us with patience. Once, a man even said to us (as translated from Hindi by my dear friend), “Follow me; I’m going that way, too.” And that worked beautifully. The villager deftly navigated, and we benefited from his pointers and his lived experience.

On the pathless path of spiritual awakening, spiritual friends provide pointers and share experiences. We are not gurus, not teachers, and not experts. We say to not believe anything we share but to test what resonates for oneself… and discard the rest.

I like to think of spiritual friends as amazing way-pointers along the journey.