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Can old friendships survive this mind-shift?
The ‘person’ I appear to be, is a story in the mind of a sentient creature, and that creature cannot help but assemble its version of ‘me’ according to its conditioning.
Its conditioning determines acceptance or rejection as a ‘friend’ and is the brain’s device for determining those things – including people – that will comfort it, agree with it, support its survival. In short, what we commonly call friendship is a fantasy. If my friendship is determined by such needs it’s not a genuine relationship at all.
Wild wideawakeness shines an uncompromising light on such dissembling. Some friendships fall away naturally, some survive because at root they are story-free, or because the stories are recognized for what they are.
When the fantasy aspect of friendship has melted away along with all other fantasies, the stage is swept clean and there is room for true relating to occur. One-in-One.
It makes no difference whether the friend understands this savage wisdom or not. For in Truth there is no other who could be called a friend.
~
echoes from emptiness 
a) “true relating… One-in-One” (cf. senses 1 and 3 – see below)
(relative (adjective): 1) referring to something else, 2) not absolute or independent, 3) related or connected to, 4) true, or real to a particular degree (comparative use)
From the stand-point of Advaita, or non-duality, the ego is a false self-identification with a body-mind, and not a relative entity, a ‘relative reality’ (limited, temporal, etc. – senses 2 and 4 above); it is false, as a phantom is so; an illusion, where ‘illusion’ is contrasted with ‘reality’.
b) … Thus relative, or related to the One (the One and Only), not to ‘another’.
You are brilliant dear AM. I wish I could offer you a stipend as Scholar-in-Residence!
Will a big cyber-hug suffice?
~ ml