Transcend Your Fear of Intimacy by Diving Deeper into Unknown
by J S Sekhon
There is a fear about the girl I am with. I am afraid to lose her…and that won't allow me to have a deep relationship. Maybe I'm afraid to be alone, something like that.
No, don't be afraid, move deeper. It will happen because the more you become centered, the more relaxed you become, the more possibility there is to enter into a relationship deeply.
In fact it is you who goes into a relationship. If you are not there, tense, crippled, worried and fragmented, who is going to go deep? Because of our fragmentedness, we are really afraid of getting deeper into a relationship, into deep layers, because then our reality will be revealed. Then you will have to open your heart, and your heart is just fragments.
There is not one man inside you - you are a crowd. If you really love a woman and you open your heart, she will think you are a public, not a person - that is the fear. "That's why people go on having casual affairs. They don't want to go deep; just hit-and-run, just touching the surface and escaping before anything becomes a commitment.
Then you can only have sex, and that too, impoverished. It is just superficial. Only boundaries meet, but that is not love at all…maybe a body release, a catharsis, but not more than that. The fear is that now you want to go deeper; it is not that the girl may be lost. You are afraid and hesitant.
We can have our masks easily if the relationship is not very close, very intimate - the social faces function well. Then when you smile there is no need really for you to smile, just the mask smiles.
If you really want to go deep then there are dangers. You will have to go naked - and naked means with all the problems inside known to the other. When you cannot have an image, your reality will be open and vulnerable, and that creates fear.
But we go on deceiving ourselves and saying we are not afraid of that, we are afraid that the girl may leave. That is not the fear. In fact deep down you may be wanting the girl to leave you so there is no trouble about going deeper into a relationship.
Go deeper. Nobody is hindering the path. If you are there, then you can always find someone to love. If you are not there somebody else may be there but that will only be physical presence, and of no use, because you remain alone.
Go and watch couples, people married for years: they live a lonely life, and they live alone. They have never been together, and they have learned all sorts of tricks about how to avoid each other, how to escape the other.
The husband says, "I love you," and kisses the wife and everything, but these are just to keep away, not to go deep.
Don't be afraid…just take the jump!
Love is the goal, life is the journey.
Love is wild; its whole beauty is in its wildness. It comes like a breeze with great fragrance, fills your heart, and suddenly where there was a desert there is a garden full of flowers.
When two lovers are really open to each other, when they are not afraid of each other and not hiding anything from each other, that is intimacy. When they can say each and everything without any fear that the other will be offended or hurt.…
If the lover thinks the other will be offended, then the intimacy is not yet deep enough. Then it is a kind of arrangement, which can be broken by anything. But when two lovers start feeling that there is nothing to hide and everything can be said, and the trust has come to such a depth where even if you don't say it the other is going to know, then they start becoming one.
Millions of people have lived on the earth, and we don't know even their names. Accept that simple fact - you are here for only a few days and then you will be gone. These few days are not to be wasted in hypocrisy, in fear. These days have to be rejoiced.
Once you are incapable of loving yourself, you will never be able to love anybody. That is an absolute truth, there are no exceptions to it. You can love others only if you are able to love yourself.
Remember, being never happens comfortably, otherwise it would have happened to all. Remember, being cannot happen conveniently, otherwise everybody would have being without any problem. Being happens only when you take risks, when you move in danger.
The river passes by the side of a tree, saying hello, nourishing the tree, giving water to the tree … and it moves on, dances on. It does not cling to the tree.
And the tree does not say, "Where are you going? We are married! And before you can leave me you will need a divorce - at least a separation! Where are you going? And if you were going to leave me, why did you dance so beautifully around me? Why did you nourish me in the first place?"
Life is not a problem to be solved, it is a mystery to be lived. God has never created a poor man. It does not happen - it cannot happen because God creates you out of his richness. How can God create a poor man? You are his overflowing; you are part of existence. How can you be poor? You are rich, infinitely rich - as rich as nature itself.
Without you this universe will lose some poetry, some beauty: A song will be missed, a note will be missed, there will be a gap - nobody has told you that. God has created you because he loved you. He loved you so much that he could not resist the temptation to create you.
Relax and destroy the split that society has created in you. Say only that which you mean. Act according to your own spontaneity, never bothering about consequences. It is a small life, and it should not be spoiled in thinking about consequences here and hereafter.
Freedom to dream has not yet been taken away by governments. Life is a pilgrimage, and unless love is attained, it remains a pilgrimage, never reaching anywhere. The only thing in your hands is your life - make it as rich as possible.
I cannot conceive that the man who dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a machine. He also had a heart, just like you. He also had his wife and children, his old mother and father. He was as much a human being as you are - with a difference. He was trained to follow orders without questioning, and when the order was given, he simply followed it.
Just as trees need roots in the earth, man is also a tree and needs roots in existence or else he will live a very unintelligent life.
Let the goal of the whole be your goal. Don't seek any private goal. Just be a part, and an infinite beauty and grace happens.
When two lovers are really open to each other, when they are not afraid of each other and not hiding anything from each other, that is intimacy. When they can say each and everything without any fear that the other will be offended or hurt.…
If the lover thinks the other will be offended, then the intimacy is not yet deep enough. Then it is a kind of arrangement, which can be broken by anything. But when two lovers start feeling that there is nothing to hide and everything can be said, and the trust has come to such a depth where even if you don't say it the other is going to know, then they start becoming one.
In the modern world intimacy is disappearing. Even lovers are not intimate. (..) People are afraid of deep intimacy. People's love affairs are just hit-and-run affairs. They don't go deep into each other's being because (..) the fear is there - the other's pool of being will reflect you.
Loyalty (..) is a psychological way of enslavement. (..) it destroys intelligence. (..) The army works in such a way as to create loyalty; it starts with small things. One wonders why every soldier for years has to do parades and follow stupid orders - left turn, right turn, go backward, go forward - for hours, for no purpose at all.
But there is a hidden purpose in it. His intelligence is being destroyed. (..) So when the order comes, "Left turn," the mind does not ask why. (..) the soldier is not supposed to doubt, to inquire; he simply has to follow.
This is his basic conditioning for loyalty. (..) they function like machines, not like men.Pe ople are bound to remain anxious if there is a "should" in life. If there is an ideal that has to be fulfilled, how can you be at ease? How can you be at home?
It is impossible to live anything totally because the mind is hankering for the future. And that future never comes - it cannot come. By the very nature of your desire it is impossible. When it comes you will start imagining other things, you will start desiring other things. You can always imagine a better state of affairs. And you can always remain in anxiety, tense, worried - that's how humanity has been living for centuries.
A person who has been suppressing anger - his jaw becomes blocked. (..) anger has two outlets for release: one is the teeth, another is the fingers. All animals when they are angry will bite you with the teeth or they will start tearing you with the hands. (..) angry people will always eat more because the teeth need some exercise.
Angry people will smoke more. Angry people will talk more - they can become obsessive talkers because somehow the jaw needs exercise so that the energy is released a little bit.
If you suppress hunger in the body, it goes into the mind. The problem has not been thrown out, it has been pushed in. Suppress anything and it goes to the roots. (..) we will not teach children not to be angry. We will teach them to be angry but totally angry - and not to carry it.
Anger in itself is not bad. To carry it, to accumulate it, is dangerous. The wounds cannot heal unless they are open. Once something unconscious is brought to the conscious mind, it evaporates. You come in contact with so many people, and everybody is feeding his idea into your mind. And nobody knows you - not even you yourself know.
Before a child becomes aware of what is real, he has been taught to suppress it. If you want to have a very secure relationship, then you will have to love a dead man. One has to understand the logic of the mind. If you don't understand, you will be a victim of it. You want to be loved, but you have not thought about it: Are you capable of receiving love?
And this is to be done during your whole life. Don't fight with anything, and don't try to escape from anything. Let things take their own course. You simply close your eyes and move inside to the center where no sun's ray has ever penetrated. There is no shadow - and really, that is the meaning of the myth that gods have no shadows. Not that there are gods somewhere who have no shadows, but the god that is within you has no shadow because no outside penetrates there. It cannot penetrate; it is always in the shade. Chuang Tzu calls that shade Tao, your innermost nature - utterly innermost, absolutely innermost."
