The challenging friend operates in closer proximity than the enemy friend. They are the person who gets under our skin in a most laser-like way, occurring as a perpetual nuisance. While presenting themselves as aloof, they seemingly live to provoke by targeting specifically what irritates us. They live in a primary position of againstness and will stonewall, withdraw, and block attempts at connection. At the same time, they refuse to leave. Near or far, they find a way to communicate they are rejecting us. They play on the human desire for balance. Most people try to balance the feeling of another's rejection with the feeling of their own generosity, thus offering more than their share.
Most people will go to any length to prove themselves in the face of another's judgment. However, the challenging friend is only satisfied when they have us in their grip.
In OM, this is the equivalent to someone stroking with fairly heavy pressure and pressing down—rubbing rather than stroking. A person with untrained attention will often meet the challenger by "giving in." A whole variety of mental activity arises when this occurs—a helpless feeling where we simply have to take it, a powerlessness to awaken agency, and an attempt to conform or make ourselves "like it." Further erosion of attention will result in an inner critic complaining about why we cannot make ourselves like it, or convincing us that our compliance or collapse is surrender. Then we begin to block and harden—a locking down of our nervous system.
Our mental activity occurs as defiance or a mimic of power that says, "You will not affect me or reach me." We will likely make an attempt to reject the challenge issued by this friend, or "adjust" their provoking behavior. More often than not, we will swing back and forth between these behaviors when interacting with the challenging friend—an acquiescence followed by blocking or rejecting.
The Erotic response is to always move toward freedom, toward getting out of a grip. To this end, the benefit of the challenging friend is to see precisely where we are grippable, where we can be provoked or "gotten," where, in essence, we are already gripped. We come to realize this is the only place where we can be caught. What constricts us is our hope and expectation being used as substitutes for the true power of desire. Where we have hope for something to be other than what it is, we give in. Where we have an expectation that isn't met, we block and reject. Both of these are simply unpowered responses to life. We end up with the tumescent version of dynamic stillness—stuck rather than still.
It is thus an incredibly narrow portal for resonant response; slowness, stillness, and a conservation of expression are required to meet it. We discover that to respond in this way, all extra activity must be released, internally and externally. With this release, hope and expectations get released as well. We are seeking a dynamism that is alive beneath the pressure, but we cannot go around the pressure and we cannot give up under it. It is essential to know there is always dynamism and there is always desire.
When we shift our attention from the grip to even the slightest expression of desire, we begin to grow enough power to release the grip. Even in the face of another's provocation, deliberate rejection, or betrayal, we can simply shift our attention to our desire for openness. Provocation, rejection, and betrayal are the result of hope and expectation, so once hope and expectation are released, we can slip through the challenger's hand—they have nothing to hold on to.
To shift our attention from the grip and begin to focus on desire, we firmly plant ourselves in the fundamental desires of the Erotic mind: openness, intimacy, optionality. We feel our actual sense of power over the forceful feeling of the grip. It becomes clear that the grip is weak by comparison, provided we unfalteringly keep our attention on our fundamental desires.
The realized version of this friendship is that we activate desire with such force that it activates in the other person—we give them a power surge. With this kind of person in particular, it cannot be pleasure-based desire as that is only beneficial for someone who already has dynamic desire. Pleasure-based desires in one who grips only feeds the grip.
With the challenging friend, we must focus on the deepest desire we can access and wake it up with focused attention so it can activate and begin to surge through their system enough to open their grip. We may want to collapse and appease their tumescent and scarcity mind by meeting their demands rather than maintaining a steady and unwavering attention on their deeper desire—for purpose, realization, and genius—as a means to just get them off our back. This will backfire. The tumescent mind will be temporarily appeased, but once fed, it will come back with that much more virulence.
We may also want to simply be rid of them and so we try to withdraw from the grip. This, too, will backfire and make the grip tighter. Close or far, we will feel them if our senses are awake, and they will continue their provocation, only now in the form of the enemy friend. This brings us to one of the great laws of Eros: it is always to our benefit to ensure Eros is awakened in everyone. Not for their benefit, although it does benefit them, but for our own. It is a pragmatic rather than aspirational law.
In our relationship with the challenging friend, we want to awaken desire. On a practical level, regardless of their actions, we inquire into their desire and do everything in our power to have them have what feeds these desires of their deeper selves. We do what we can to make available whatever space, resources, or conditions they need, whether they are close or far from us. Our ego doesn't love that we are helping someone who has been difficult. But remember, it serves us in a way nothing else could, because it gets us free.
If we carry out this procedure well, both parties are free of the grip. We may or may not choose to be active friends with this person, but we are both free of the ties that bind. If we move our connection with them to an inactive state, it will go benign and they will simply disappear from our consciousness, and begin to focus their attention on the desire alive in them. If we remain in an active state, we will meet in co-arising desire and the power they used against us will now be used to further mutual desire.