Friends

 We tend to be who we hang out with.  We tend to be like our companions. If I hang out in a bar drinking with people I call friends, we are the same in that we are all bar drinker companions.  Think of your social life, your church, your club associations.  Did you not participate because you felt them to be like you or you wished to be like them?  But I have found exceptions in great wisdom figures, spiritually evolved people, who call “friends” those who are quite different from them.  Jesus of Nazareth would be one example.  He called “friends” people who were liars, cowards, betrayers, prostitutes and tax-collector extortionists.  He saw something in them they did not see in themselves.  He had love and compassion, which gave him patience and acceptance.  I have seen it in people recovering from addiction who help one another though they are otherwise very different.  A common suffering bonded them.  So if I want to expand my spiritual life, I need to hang out with people not like me and for the right reasons, non-selfish ones.