Experiencing a world where everything is alive with a childhood anam cara.
For children, their world is unified and alive. The idea of Cartesian Dualism, prevalent in child education, has yet been imposed on them by their teachers and carers. Everything in that world exists in both spiritual and physical form: no distinction is made for, and applied by, them between the physical world, that is objective but is not alive and can be investigated and characterised by "scientific" methods, and the experiential world in which thought and feelings are locoed ("cogito, ergo sum ": I think therefore I am) where spirituality may be appreciated but ever proven. In childhood relationships with your anam cara, you are both an integral part of this unified, alive world, free to explore together its wonderful characteristics.
Adults observing children often call this expression of creativity and imagination by children "playfulness" and expect children to "grow out of it. But this "growing out of it" results in loss of spiritual connectivity and generates ontological insecurity as the growing child tries to make sense of his or her positioning in the physical world he or she must now inhabit.
Relationships with anam caras in your "adulthood" can be greatly enhanced if this childhood playfulness, where everything becomes alive again, can be reclaimed. One way of doing this is to return to the location where you can remember playing together with a childhood anam cara. You will then be able to reactivate your experiences of being alive and playful in a unified world in that place, with the consequence that they enter. Into and form a part of your current experience. Also, if you choose to believe in anam cara spirituality, you will be able to reconnect with your childhood Anam Cara again throughout eternity.
Patrick Humphreys (age 10) and anam cara Nancy Baron playfully challenging the waves at Bantham, Devon, UK (1955)
Patrick Humphreys (age 65) returning to Bantham, Devon, UK to re-imaginine challenging the waves with anam cara Nancy Baron
