Friend

A true friend is someone who does not help you to avoid your loneliness but who helps you to deal with it. A real friend is someone who actually makes it easier for you to be alone. A true friend does not help you avoid feeling your aloneness, but helps you to feel and accept your aloneness. In fact, a friend is someone you can be really alone with more easily, in a sense, than in an intimate relationship. (Diamond Heart Book 2, pg 179)

Leaving someone alone means not trying to manipulate them, not trying to control them, not trying to make them one way or another, not trying to make them respond in one way or another. When a friend leaves you alone, that friend is with you as an emptiness, in a sense, as an acceptance. (Diamond Heart Book 2, pg 180)

So a friend is there, is present, to help you understand, to expose what is there in yourself and thus to understand what the situation is, why you are behaving in certain ways and why the situation is as it is. When you understand it, naturally you will know what is the best thing to do. A friend does not give his own opinion and experience, and impose it on you. A friend helps you find your own solution. (Diamond Heart Book 2, pg 181)

Whenever there is a touching of truth in you, the friend is happy. If you're hurting, a friend is compassionate, kind. If you happen to be angry because you're hurting, a friend is even more compassionate. The friend has no opinion about you. The friend has no prejudice about you. The friend sees you just the way you are. So the friend is completely objective, with no emotional bias of any sort. A friend is someone who can see you exactly the way you are at the moment and who is spacious enough and generous enough to allow you to be just that. That's why people like friendship: the friend is somebody with whom you can be yourself. (Diamond Heart Book 2, pg 182)