7 Reasons Why The Most Spiritually Enlightened Women Often Have Fewer Friends
People who don't understand will judge these women, but they are totally unbothered.
Necip Duman | Pexels Some women are highly social, enjoying nothing more than a great party or “friends who lunch” like Truman Capote’s Swans of Fifth Avenue. Others prefer peace and quiet and would rather stay home, no matter what exotic entertainment an invitation promises. Neither of these are wrong, but there is a common pattern where women tend to have less friends as they become more spiritually enlightened.
So why do meditation, consciousness-raising workshops, and even tiny steps towards enlightenment encourage us to be more solitary? When we understand that humans possess neuroplasticity, we can see what has created this dramatic shift in our preferences. The more we use our visionary brain, the more we desire peace, joy, nature, and privacy so that we can experience true enlightened bliss, free from worries.
7 reasons why the most spiritually enlightened women have fewer friends:
1. Our energy changes
The more our energy improves and the less we are plagued by mental noise, including any pervasive moods of anger, fear, and sadness, the less time and energy we wish to spend socializing.
Our relationship with divine energy and meditation becomes more joyous and nurturing, and with this pivot, practicing meditation and contemplation becomes more important to us. This is also because our willingness to gossip and its cruel inner edge disappears.
2. We're on a self-guided path to inner peace
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The more we study and contemplate, the more we can become our best selves, and the less time and energy we want to expend with others who aren’t focused on peace and divine energy. Even in ashrams and spiritual centers, the energy and noise of others can be counterproductive to spiritual bliss.
At the beginning of our search for peace, we need to play “Follow the Leader” to learn about the path to peace, but further on the path, we no longer need to play “Simon Says” and prefer our own self-guided path to inner peace. For me, the pursuit of bliss yielded greater and faster results in a quiet, private place, rather than in a group.
3. We become more choosey about friends
The availability of evolved, peaceful people is limited in most environments unless we are living in a spiritual community, yet even there, they are rare. I spent countless weeks in ashrams in India and America, for decades, and enlightened souls could be counted on my fingers, and often on a single thumb.
Meeting my soon-to-become best friend when we were matched as roommates at an ashram was thrilling because we were as alike as sisters and both of us needed a peaceful, loving, and like-minded friend.
4. We opt for a spiritual lifestyle instead of a traditional one
Failing to meet people who already share our divine preoccupation is the primary reason that many long-term meditators are satisfied with a few very close friends. It isn’t that we chose that path; rather, by choosing meditation and God, we enjoy contemplation with a greater inner life than the outer one.
In India, it is said that your first twenty years are for education, the second twenty are for marriage and children, and the rest are for God. However, many Indian saints had been married with families, and it is a uniquely Western habit to devote one’s life to career and God until one can finally devote oneself to meditation and divine focus.
5. Deeper connections and communication are key for us
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The need to dive deeply into communication with honesty and openness, and to share our values, keeps most long-term meditators within a limited circle of friends. Even if we could find hundreds of candidates, there’s a special connection among those who have experienced merging with God that is still a rarity for most people, though it doesn’t need to be.
The ability to find the right friends who share our interests once we have crossed over into a spiritual lifestyle is the primary reason that we are satisfied to have a few very close friends. But it is the need to go deeper in friendship and communication with honesty and openness, sharing our vision of the divine possibilities that exist for humans, that stops most of us from seeking numerous friends.
6. It can be hard to find people who relate
When you experience a divine connection and then it happens again, your life is forever transformed. After gazing at a photograph of a famous Indian Guru, I entered an altered state in which I saw the sap flowing inside a tree, time slowed to a different pace, and I entered a state of “causeless joy”, often described by Indian holy men. Where could I find numerous friends who understood?
7. Full-blown enlightenment is rare
In the Himalayas, a few rare Hindu saints enter the mountain caves in the fall and, covering their bodies with ash to ward off the freezing temperatures, they slow their respiration, heartbeat, and other bodily functions, remaining in altered states until spring. This is not what I have done, of course.
For those of us in the West, enlightenment is about dipping one’s toe gently into the next dimension, and if we practice enough, we may have the good fortune I had to see behind the curtain of this world into the next.
If you want more peace, this is the route to take. If you want to experience the fourth dimension, which is gaining great popularity as a destination, this is still the route you must seek. The clarity of following others on their route instead of hacking your way through the jungle of distractions is a great plan to support you in generating speedier results when you first begin on the spiritual path.
The first step is always the same for each of us: learning how to quiet your mind by disconnecting from the auto-generated words and stories that live there until you have ignored them so they wither away and leave you with silence and peace. This is your goal, and it is the jumping-off point to a life few dream of, a life of bliss and causeless joy, irrespective of your environment.
Yet the greatest gift is this: once you have learned to generate inner peace, then you can learn to focus on what you desire, and with more new skills, you can enjoy an entirely new life. So if you have a friend who declines your invitations, you may enjoy learning what she prefers to do, and if it's her route to peace, you may ask her to tell you more.
Susan Allan is a certified mediator and coach, and the founder of the Marriage Forum Inc., and creator of The 6 Part Conversation and The 7 Stages of Marriage and Divorce training to help people understand their own needs and their partners.
