I don’t have many friends, but the ones I do have are profoundly spiritual.  They all embody traits I would love to offer everyone, especially our beloved Jewish students, who are undergoing hardships and persecution due to no fault of their own.  No one deserves what this world is putting them through.  Everyone deserves love, especially this beautiful community of people.

Here is my first spiritual friend: I had this beautiful, intelligent, athletic, and spiritual friend from junior high and elementary school whose mom would sit me down with a hot cocoa and ask my views on life while instructing me gently about God.  I longed so badly for those moments with her, and when she’d ask my views, my hands would shake so badly out of fear of saying something wrong that my hot cocoa would spill on the floor.  That happened so often that they stopped seating me in the rocking chair.

I’d often recall my friend’s mom’s phone number.  Even after years had passed, the number would pop into my head, and I’d phone my friend’s mom, sometimes sending her a gift for her spiritual guidance, such as the rose bush she planted, which still blooms each summer.  She profoundly altered the course of my life in spectacular ways I can’t express in words.

Recently, I had the privilege of reuniting with her and treating her to dinners, and we often talk on LinkedIn.  She has such fantastic energy.  She is incredibly nurturing and patient, overflowing with gentle yet classy love for every soul.  In the way she views humanity, she is on the level of sainthood.

Her friendship offered love and guidance that meaningfully transformed my life.  She’s the teacher who shows us unconditional love and encouragement, giving us the strength to pursue our dreams.  She’s the person who nurtures us with light when the room is otherwise dark and fearful.  In our most authentic expressions of ourselves, we are all that friend.

And then there is my beautiful friend who had four near-death experiences.  Whenever I spoke with her on the phone, I would have this strange connection with Christ that I never experienced before.  I get such a strong feeling of Christ being beside me that it’s shocking and instills in me a sense of what enlightenment must feel like.  But I’ve only had that supernatural experience twice after talking with her, which lasted about an hour after speaking with her.

She sees spiritual signs, too, such as when I sent her an image of Christ that she owns a copy of in her home.  When I wanted to include a picture of a deer in my documentary that featured her dad, she later revealed that his passing was heralded by a deer’s sighting, allowing her to predict the day of her dad’s passing accurately.  We both have Cree ancestors, and her spiritual guide, who she says is not of this world, is Cree, and I believe she thinks we are both “his.”  And she believes all the spiritually bizarre things that happened to me, such as me once hearing heavy metal music at concert level volumes, shaking the whole house around 1 a.m. when, in reality, there was no music playing.

My friend had even more bizarre post-near-death experiences she documented in her book, such as demons crawling up her home walls, causing her to phone the police several times, or being visited by Christ in physical form.  The spiritual world hasn’t made its mark in academia, mainly because it’s not considered scientific, according to the scientific materialist paradigm.  I think this is a significant shortcoming of knowledge at present.

This friend is on a mission.  She gives me a profound sense of life’s purpose, unconditional love’s meaning, and the possibilities of existence beyond the physical.  As we are all essentially unconditional love, which defines everything spiritual, we are all this friend, too, in our most authentic expressions.

Then, there is my childhood friend with whom I share spiritual insights.  She is a true empath.  She always smiles and is a loved leader who is no stranger to unconditional love.  Her ancestors seemed to have spiritual healing abilities, which strikes me as accurate, as this friend radiates joy and love toward everyone she meets, which is healing.  Our highest selves are pure joy, especially once we control our minds to maintain happiness.  So, we, too, are essentially this friend who embodies pure joy.

And lastly, I have a friend who stood by me when I had no friends.  She wrote a poem describing how I climbed a mountain but was beaten so severely by others that I could barely put my flag on the mountaintop.  Her poem scared me so much that I regrettably threw it out.  She also made me gifts, so I now send her gifts in return for her past kindness, like a hot milk foamer, matcha tea, and books.  She is a wonderful mother and brilliant with crafts.

We are essentially like this friend, too, who sees the value in every living soul, never undermining anyone for their disability, culture, color, or status.  No one is unworthy of love, dignity, and respect.  In a near-death experience video I watched today, a soul went to heaven, and God loved this soul with unbelievable love.  God told this soul that He felt the same magnitude of love for every soul, with no exceptions.  We are all true friends, enamored with unconditional love for one another when expressing our higher selves.

And those are my spiritual friends.  There are others whom I love dearly but don’t communicate with directly.  You are one of them.