What Does Friend Mean in the Bible Read through 2 lenses

When a mind begins to live by love without hedging or defense, the parts of itself still ruled by fear are certain it has gone mad, for to the ego sanity means guarding the separate self and any release of that guard looks like ruin. Those closest are often the most alarmed, because a mind at peace threatens the whole arrangement they have taken for reality.

The reach to lay hold is fear trying to pull love back into its old prison, calling wholeness a sickness. What seems beside itself is in truth the only part that has come to its right mind.

• Friends: the familiar thoughts of the ego that mistake peace for madness and try to restrain it
• Laying hold: fear's attempt to reclaim a mind that has begun to remember it is free

Laying down the life is the surrender of the lower self, the giving up of the outer personal existence so a higher love may live in its place. The life set down is the small self-bound nature, and the friends are the awakened faculties within a person that share the one inner circle. The greatest love inside is this willingness of the lower nature to lie down and yield rather than defend itself.

The highest movement of love within a person is the setting aside of the self-protecting self on behalf of the awakened parts that belong to the same inner household. Nothing rises higher than that laying down, because it is the flesh consenting to give way to the spirit it serves.

• Life: the lower personal self, the outer self-bound existence that is set down
• Friends: the awakened faculties within a person, the inner circle that shares one higher life