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Word Gems
exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity
Aristotle's Perfected Friendship
and the Purpose of Life
return to main-page of the "Jesus" article
- Editor's note: The subject of "salvation" has been badly mangled and distorted under the reign of Big Religion. Consider the following as beginning antidote.
Aristotle taught that we don't really understand a subject unless we come to see its purpose. He spoke of teleia philia, the perfected or completed friendship-love.
- Teleia is a Greek word denoting "goal" or "end-purpose," thereby denoting "perfected," with philia as "friendship-love."
And what is the highest expression of friendship-love?
In our world we commonly see romantic relationships founded upon sensuality, utility, psychological perk, or the satisfaction of mammalian instinct. This kind of love lasts as long as benefits are forthcoming, which, as the Beatles sang, "have a nasty habit of disappearing overnight."
The world has rarely seen romantic love expressed as teleia philia. So rare that Aristotle asserted it's for a tiny minority only; a virtue, the possession of which, he said, fits one for rulership. He called this tiny minority the kaloi kagathoi - sometimes translated as refined "gentlemen" or "chivlaric knights."
- Editor's note: "Gentlemen" because Aristotle thought of women as inferior to himself.
Teleia philia as perfected friendship-love, in my other writings, I sometimes refer to as "the tremendous gift." If you, in your entire lifetime, even once, were to receive this gift of total acceptance, of being cherished, it will touch you so deeply that, forever, your life with be transformed.
The perfected friendship-love seeks not its own but ever desires, as primary objective, to promote the good of the beloved. This kind of love has no hint of private gain, no secret machiavellian agenda, but only the furtherance of that which is good for the beloved. The true friend-lover will see the beloved in terms of potential and future glory. The soul's latent riches, sleeping within, are perceived beforehand, before mature manifestation, but which, for the lover, in prescient mind-view, already exist as present reality.
What if one had such a friend or lover? - one who sought the highest and best, even if it meant suffering; maybe, for many years until the beloved sees what the perfected friend already views in potentia!
If one were to be thus loved, so unreservedly and with such abandon, would not the heart, in such a case, be overtaken with desire and joy, not just to companion with the perfected-friend, offering such high esteem, but to consecrate oneself to become, to manifest in the external world, all that the true friend sees as latent within the deeper person? We might not necessarily agree to improve ourselves, just to please ourselves - but we will engage in rigorously-demanding self-improvement, if only to please a beloved who, during our time of blindness, had faith in us.
I have stated that no one can save you but you, yourself - but, in a sense, this is not true. When it is your time to receive the "tremendous gift," one of cosmic import and destiny, then, yes - it will save you. And you will come to know the great joy, not just of experiencing life, but of being loved for your own sake - just because you are you; of being loved by another, that special other, who, in truth, is no other; that sacred one who sees that which has never been seen - all of the glory and wonder that is you, waiting to be drawn to the surface of personhood, but, until you perceived the presence of the perfected-friend, you had no breath or cause to bring forth.
Yes... this is the perfection... this is the salvation... this is the philosophy of soul-evolution subscribed to by the brotherhood and sisterhood of the Spirit Guides known as "The Troubadours."
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