Listen to episode 54 of the Inspirational Living podcast: Spiritual Growth & The Limits of Friendship. Adapted from the book Friendship by Hugh Black.
Spiritual Podcast Excerpt: Human love can ask too much, and it asks too much when it would break down the individual will and conscience. We cannot renounce our rights as living souls without losing our souls. No person can pay the debt of life for us. No individual can take the burden of life from us. To no person can we hand over the reins unreservedly. It would be cowardice, and cowardice is sin.
The first axiom of the spiritual life is the sacredness of our individuality. We must respect each other's personality. Even when we have rights over other people, these rights are strictly limited, and carry with them a corresponding duty to respect their rights also.
The one intolerable despotism in the world is the attempt to put a yoke on the souls of others, and there are some forms of intimacy which approach that despotism. To transgress the moral bounds set to friendship is to make the highest forms of friendship impossible; for these are only reached when free individuals meet in the unity of the spirit.....