Intimacy

We contemplated intimacy yesterday in our group sessions. It was definitely a surprise when the discourse started forming itself. It was so clear at the end that it is always and only intimacy with the Self that is the accomplishment or realization. Realization meaning to be real, real with what is and allowing it to arise as it is without suppression of the experience, in each moment.

I believe most of us are very busy suppressing the isness of our experience day in and day out. We make everything into something that makes sense or in some way continually reconstructs our egoic identity. Every experience seems to be needing to fit into our idea, our thinking, of who we are and how we should be in that moment of time, with the audience that is present, and or the identity I have arrived at.

Relationship is thought to be between two people or beings; but in fact it is two stories colliding in time and space with fixed expectations of how the other can benefit the me in the middle. ' Do you love me?', 'Will you take care of me?', 'Will you not see what I am hiding so I can go on in my delirium of self absorption?'. etc. I have found that to be the case in my sphere of experience. If I were to see the game I am playing, then the spell would be broken and it would become readily available to the realization that relationship with another is a myth.

Somehow though the myth is what we all seem to seek as the answer to our longing and our sense of incompleteness. Then the underside of this is the absolute avoidance of intimacy with myself. Some even  uncover the self hatred that exists in the undertow of the communication. ' I hate myself, I do destructive things to my physical form and my thoughts are cruel toward me, critizing me; but I want you to love me!'or what about 'I hate my life will you fix me?' or ' I can't be alone I need to be distracted with this relationship and hang on you and try to manipulate you to being what I say I want and need.' and then there is the real hidden agenda of ' I want you to serve me and adore me and be here when I want you and not be here when I am busy with something else.' All of this in the name of I LOVE YOU.

I know this all seems quite awful when I put it into words. People often want to have a 'relationship' with me and I just don't go there any more. I have seen through the myth, I guess. I do love people; but getting caught in those webs is such an entanglement I can no longer afford. I have a full time job being in relationship with this body/mind construct that I call myself. Every moment is so different when I am fully present, intimate with it. Each moment seems to be a choice and a turning point. That's quite fulfilling. It seems, each moment holds so many possibilities. Like the moment just before I opened the computer to write. It was like standing before a blank canvas. What to put on that page? Then there was a scan through consciousness to see where there was a residue of something, I don't know what, to begin to write about. So there was a trace of a conversation I want to have about this thing of intimacy. The writing is a kind of unwinding of beliefs, undoing of limitations that haven't been completely dissolved. In other words a spiritual practice!

I definitely have meetings with people that I feel a lot of attraction. Some meetings are quite exciting and stimulating to my interests; but I need to remember they are like faucets of possibilities which quench momentary fleeting interests. The people are facets of experiences within moments and not fixed entities to serve my interest. The moment that seemed so exciting and sweet was just that, a moment filled with all the appearances and sensations that arose together. The people were appearances that are always changing also. I cannot and must not fix them into a mold to serve my agendas for a future good time. I want to allow them to change and be all that they are also, and dance with them however they are, the next time we meet. Always the real substance is the Truth which lies beyond the sphere of other and separation.

So back to the basic Truth as I come to at the end of this contemplation. Intimacy is only and always with myself, as I am, in each moment as it arises with all it's appearances and experiences. I must not grasp at or construct, a fixed identity, out of these spontaneous experiences; but allow them to arise and dissolve beyond the realm of role and reason. Intimacy has no agenda, no rules, no fixed outcomes. Intimacy is allowing, with compassion, all that occurs, moment by moment, without moving away or towards the appearances to make them anything that serves the ego. It is total freedom from expectation and yet deeply satisfying to the one that abides in it. Some mystics call this being with the Beloved! Some say it is intimacy with God. I say it is the only thing that has meaning and when I am in this intimacy I am in love with every one and everything that is arising. I am then the Lover of what Is.