Love opens many doors. Love is unafraid to knock and does not wither when the knock goes unanswered or even if the door opens to hostilities. Love is always there to offer a warm embrace, a friendly hug. Like a flower that perfumes the very hand that may crush it. The discovery of love is the discovery of life.
May we always be of an open heart. May our love fearlessly embrace all hurt and all praise and continue to exist without reason or cause. May our love spread its light far and wide into dark corners of hearts that bleed with fear, into crevices of lives that agonize in loneliness, and into the warm hands of another that may seek nothing at all.
19 August 2008
22 July 2007
Acceptance of Intimacy
Intimacy is a function of acceptance. Recently my friend's, who lives in the US, grandfather, who lived in India, passed away. She is very sad since she did not have a chance to be with him in his final moments or to be part of the last services. She is sad because she was very close to her grandfather and now misses him even more knowing that even if she were to go back to India, she will not find him there anymore.
What makes a relationship so special that we long to be with the companion in the absence of their company? To understand the answer to this question we need to understand what sometimes makes it difficult to be together.
Think back of a time when you were in a difficult relationship - be it for a few minutes or for several years. A difficult relationship is such because of disagreement between the related. Not to say that agreement is the sole basis of a relationship, but failing to resolve disagreements or lack of inclination to acknowledge and accept differences and disagreements sure does lead to the death of a relationship's liveliness, even if the partners may choose to continue to be together. Being together is not the same as experiencing togetherness. There often hides great loneliness in a crowd.
The time when we feel most alive in a relationship is when we can be who we are - a 'who we are' that changes from time to time - now happy, now sad, now generous, now demanding, now benevolent, now revengeful. And yet, we are the sum total of all these paradoxical and seemingly opposite states of being. Rarely are we able to find - or be - such a person. Relationships are a struggle in dominance, assertion of freedom, desire for control, and an endless effort to chisel away other's 'undesirable' traits.
A being, compelled to conform to a forced image, is reduced to an object. A being, unlike an object, has the need to be free to express, evolve, and to be howsoever his or her life chooses to flow. That is the state in which the being is most comfortable - when it is free to be. To be whosoever and howsoever without the fear of rejection or the fear of being judged. It is only in the security of such a relationship that a being flowers.
Partners seek predictability as a means to security. However, nature of life is to be neither predictable nor to be secure. Nature of being is to be free and to flow in the direction of that expression.
The need to be free then seeks a relationship that allows that to happen. A relationship that accepts the person not for who they are but for what they could become, not for what can be made out of them, but the choice to be ever present, lovingly, to whatever they may choose to make of themselves. Only in total acceptance can there exist the comfort of togetherness, in which lies the absence of fear - the ripe and the only soil which can give birth to the delicate flower of intimacy.
What makes a relationship so special that we long to be with the companion in the absence of their company? To understand the answer to this question we need to understand what sometimes makes it difficult to be together.
Think back of a time when you were in a difficult relationship - be it for a few minutes or for several years. A difficult relationship is such because of disagreement between the related. Not to say that agreement is the sole basis of a relationship, but failing to resolve disagreements or lack of inclination to acknowledge and accept differences and disagreements sure does lead to the death of a relationship's liveliness, even if the partners may choose to continue to be together. Being together is not the same as experiencing togetherness. There often hides great loneliness in a crowd.
The time when we feel most alive in a relationship is when we can be who we are - a 'who we are' that changes from time to time - now happy, now sad, now generous, now demanding, now benevolent, now revengeful. And yet, we are the sum total of all these paradoxical and seemingly opposite states of being. Rarely are we able to find - or be - such a person. Relationships are a struggle in dominance, assertion of freedom, desire for control, and an endless effort to chisel away other's 'undesirable' traits.
A being, compelled to conform to a forced image, is reduced to an object. A being, unlike an object, has the need to be free to express, evolve, and to be howsoever his or her life chooses to flow. That is the state in which the being is most comfortable - when it is free to be. To be whosoever and howsoever without the fear of rejection or the fear of being judged. It is only in the security of such a relationship that a being flowers.
Partners seek predictability as a means to security. However, nature of life is to be neither predictable nor to be secure. Nature of being is to be free and to flow in the direction of that expression.
The need to be free then seeks a relationship that allows that to happen. A relationship that accepts the person not for who they are but for what they could become, not for what can be made out of them, but the choice to be ever present, lovingly, to whatever they may choose to make of themselves. Only in total acceptance can there exist the comfort of togetherness, in which lies the absence of fear - the ripe and the only soil which can give birth to the delicate flower of intimacy.
06 July 2007
Eternal and timeless
Restlessness. Anxiety? Which word to use to describe this constant inner nagging that goes on like a ceaselessly ticking clock hand.
I will like to slow down time so i can watch the clock hands move - tick - tick - tick - tick away and I ticking away with them.
Time moves too fast. Or so it seems. When there is ample of it, it goes a waste; when there is scarcity of it, it is useless. Then how does one deal with time without letting it get ahead of oneself so that one does not feel left behind?
If I stop time will the clock stop ticking? For that the clock will require the knowledge of time. But clock has no knowledge or connection to time other than what the society has given it. That is why stopping the clock does not freeze time. But here is lies the clue to freedom from time - time is time to me because I think of it as time. If I live in eternity, there is no time ... no matter how fast the clock ticks or how much it slows down.
Eternal - forever - always - ... - that which will always be - timeless - what is that? That which always is is just this - this momnt right here, right now. This moment - fragile, dying, being reborn every moment, every instant, verily insistent of its existence. Ignored but persistent. Transparent but solid. Foundation for all hope that is future, which is not. Bearer of all past that is memories, which is not. This moment. This timeless, precious, little, ignored, tiny fragile piece of endless existence. This moment is eternal. Being in this moment is eternity.
I will like to slow down time so i can watch the clock hands move - tick - tick - tick - tick away and I ticking away with them.
Time moves too fast. Or so it seems. When there is ample of it, it goes a waste; when there is scarcity of it, it is useless. Then how does one deal with time without letting it get ahead of oneself so that one does not feel left behind?
If I stop time will the clock stop ticking? For that the clock will require the knowledge of time. But clock has no knowledge or connection to time other than what the society has given it. That is why stopping the clock does not freeze time. But here is lies the clue to freedom from time - time is time to me because I think of it as time. If I live in eternity, there is no time ... no matter how fast the clock ticks or how much it slows down.
Eternal - forever - always - ... - that which will always be - timeless - what is that? That which always is is just this - this momnt right here, right now. This moment - fragile, dying, being reborn every moment, every instant, verily insistent of its existence. Ignored but persistent. Transparent but solid. Foundation for all hope that is future, which is not. Bearer of all past that is memories, which is not. This moment. This timeless, precious, little, ignored, tiny fragile piece of endless existence. This moment is eternal. Being in this moment is eternity.
26 January 2006
Life as a problem
Thanks to a personal situational dilemma, I spent a considerable amount of time thinking on what it is about relationships that makes them difficult or easy, how do two people relate to each other and why, and how does one know the right answers?
After much thinking, contemplation, and excessive turmoil I realized several things all at once. For one - the popular adage - "life is not a problem to be solved" rang more true than ever before. Then, I realized that the problem of life cannot be solved. Life is not and cannot be devoid of problem. This is irrespective of whether someone is alone or in a relationship.
In a relationship, it becomes easier to externalize the cause of problems and hence feel improsoned ("If it were not for this other person I could have..."). But the fact remains that whether it be a person or a thing, we continue to be bound and in trouble in our lives. If it were not for that person we would probably be limited by our attachment to our surroundings, friends, environment, or ambitions.
So eventually what one needs to emphasize in one's life are not the solutions to life's problems but instead the approach that one takes towards solving them. Just the very realization and acknowledgement of the fact that life is complex and riddled with problems and that it is it's nature to be so makes it easier to handle/face/accept/deal with adversity.
So in understanding my approach to dealing with problems I realized that like solving any other problem I first need to lay down some ground rules. For me these turn out to be having good healthy relationships, strong personal values, and a family that sticks together through thick and thin. Once that was understood, it dawned that I was asking the wrong question all along. Given what cannot be given up, one comes up with new ways of thinking and mindset of holding on to that which one does not want to let go.
It has helped me for now. I do realize that adversity deepens the doubt and I have some rough times ahead of me. But I am hoping and praying that the evolution of my understanding will keep pace with my growing confusions and doubts.
After much thinking, contemplation, and excessive turmoil I realized several things all at once. For one - the popular adage - "life is not a problem to be solved" rang more true than ever before. Then, I realized that the problem of life cannot be solved. Life is not and cannot be devoid of problem. This is irrespective of whether someone is alone or in a relationship.
In a relationship, it becomes easier to externalize the cause of problems and hence feel improsoned ("If it were not for this other person I could have..."). But the fact remains that whether it be a person or a thing, we continue to be bound and in trouble in our lives. If it were not for that person we would probably be limited by our attachment to our surroundings, friends, environment, or ambitions.
So eventually what one needs to emphasize in one's life are not the solutions to life's problems but instead the approach that one takes towards solving them. Just the very realization and acknowledgement of the fact that life is complex and riddled with problems and that it is it's nature to be so makes it easier to handle/face/accept/deal with adversity.
So in understanding my approach to dealing with problems I realized that like solving any other problem I first need to lay down some ground rules. For me these turn out to be having good healthy relationships, strong personal values, and a family that sticks together through thick and thin. Once that was understood, it dawned that I was asking the wrong question all along. Given what cannot be given up, one comes up with new ways of thinking and mindset of holding on to that which one does not want to let go.
It has helped me for now. I do realize that adversity deepens the doubt and I have some rough times ahead of me. But I am hoping and praying that the evolution of my understanding will keep pace with my growing confusions and doubts.
17 October 2005
Communication and Relationships
Relationships are a lot of hard work. Hopefully the willingness to communicate will always exceed the inability to do so. First it is hard to objectively know what one is going thorugh, how and why one is getting affected, then there is this burden of decision as to whether or not to share this discovery and to what extent, and then the final onus of how best to communicate without implicating the listener of an assumed wrong doing/intent. After all, the prime purpose of communication in a relationship is to eliminate alienation and increase proximity. However, it is still a delicate balance since the effort to explain or understand is not entirely free of the risk of being misunderstood.
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