Intimacy
is an energy that can be very transformative, if you are courageous.
It can open you to the whole of Life.
It is a high frequency
energy that operates in unconditional and allowing
awareness. Feeling a connection with something or someone
else is always a component of intimacy. Another component
is your intent of being all that you can be, and looking
at the other person with the awareness that the other person can
be all they can be too.
In intimacy, there is not the constraint of "You have to be
this way so that I can be happy." That kind of attitude
breaks intimacy right away, because it involves projecting your
needs onto the other person, which destroys the synergy of intimacy.
To develop the energy
of intimacy, you need to be open and receptive to it, allowing for
its possibility. The fewer constraints and expectations you
have, the greater the field, the space, for intimacy. But
if you come to that space with conditions or expectations, you diminish
or even destroy the possibility for intimacy.
Human interaction works best when there is total trust and openness,
always allowing that
the highest good can take place regardless of what the circumstances
are around that. The problem is you may start to have that
kind of opening, but then "I need" or "I want"
comes into play, and either of those is conditional.
The moment conditions start, intimacy is lessened, and if the conditions
continue, intimacy can simply disappear. Intimacy happens
when there is a genuine openness to Life.
So in a way intimacy is fragile, but in another way it is very powerful,
because when you come to the space of total openness you have transcended
fear and expectation. To be totally open and receptive to
the flow of Life is a high frequency, a high intimacy with Life.
That requires a tremendous amount of trust and fearlessness, with
no opinion, no projection, no attitude. It is a purity, an
allowing for the best to occur. It is not something you can
make happen; it is something that has to be allowed. If the
ingredients for it are present, it will happen.
Intimacy involves a deep knowledge of the other person, having an
awareness of where the other person is coming from, their likes
and dislikes, what they are experiencing. You don't "use"
that knowledge on the other person; you are just aware of it.
In intimacy, there is a constant exchange of energy. It can
be non-verbal; it can be just presence.
In intimacy, there is a flowing awareness. When you become
open, you begin to see everything, and you have a willingness
to see everything. This involves seeing things about
yourself and about other people, but not moving into judgment
about what you see. It entails a willingness to simply be
with what you see, recognizing, "Yes, this is here, this is
how it looks in the moment," without assessment or guilt.
Intimacy is more than just connection. You can have a connection
with a person, and afterwards wonder, "What was that about."
Intimacy, on the other hand, involves really knowing a person, really
knowing a situation, but without judgment, expectation or projection.
In a sense, intimacy requires a super-human capacity: you have to
be beyond any kind of vindictiveness or judgment or guilt, because
many times what you see in another person is something that exists
in you too. This "super-human" capability is
the next step for humanity. Humans are going to have to master
intimacy in order to move to the next level, because the next level
functions in a connection, an intimacy, that involves knowing others,
seeing a very clear picture of other people and what is happening.
That clarity does not happen if you have a lot of judgments and
expectations.
With intimacy, there is a great relief, because you have let go
of your story, the persona you have held up to portray "who
I am." In intimacy, that persona disappears, and you
simply "are," so you don't have to hold onto your story.
There is also self-intimacy,
that is, intimacy with yourself. Intimacy with self means
accepting yourself and being aware of and open to who you are, without
reservations, without explanation. In other words: what
you see is what you get. Self-intimacy is not a narcissistic
self-love, but a connected presence, an ongoing appreciation of
who you are as a unique expression of Life, appreciating the embodiment
of intelligence that you are, and looking openly at that without
judgment. Self-intimacy is much like becoming your own best
friend; you understand "you," you talk to "you",
you are gentle to "you."
Usually, fear is the main barrier to the openness of intimacy: fear
of knowing too much, fear of seeing too much, fear of not "being
enough." Fear distorts or annihilates intimacy.
For instance, someone may say something about you and
the intellect worries, "Oh, what if that is true?", and
that creates a wedge, an obstacle to intimacy.
Now, it is difficult to see yourself in the inter-relationship with
other people, because you see yourself through your own intellectual
arena, and there may be things to which you are blind.
When you interact with someone else, those things may
bounce back to you. They may bounce back in a distorted
way, a seemingly threatening way, but you can still look
at them, be with them, and see whether there is something there for
you to know.
In openness and intimacy you are always willing to know everything
you can know. There is no resistance to what you can know:
good, bad, ugly -- it doesn't matter. You are totally open
to what you can know, and that is where it becomes hard, because
most people have a lot of secretiveness about them: they are ashamed
of how they see things, fearful of revealing what is there.
In intimacy, there is no need for defense, no need to be right.
Your internal "critic" creates the need for defense.
The best thing to do with the critic is to be aware of it:
"OK, you (the critic) are running again; what are
you going to do with me?" Make fun of it, laugh about
it, joke about it-- "Aren't I being silly?"-- something
to shift the focus, to shift the energy away from it, because if
you resist it, it gains power. If you sort of embrace it and
say, "Oh, the critic is running again, having its way. So
what?", that can take its power away.
This is not easy. The lower intellect, where the critic resides,
has controlled your life for so long that it is not willing to give
up control. You have to appeal to the superior intellect that
sees more, sees a bigger picture. There is no set way to deal
with the critic, other than just to do it. You can laugh at
yourself when the critic comes up. Another technique is to
throw yourself into something and forget about the critic, because if
you are really engaged with the present, the critic cannot appear.
The critic, and the way it appears, are unique to each individual,
so you have to come up with your own way of dealing with it.
You have a story, a description of yourself that you have collected
over your lifetime. Unfortunately, most of the things you
have collected are negative, demeaning. Your body-being
takes that story seriously. It is an energy-price you pay
constantly; it diminishes the quality of your life. The
body doesn't know anything other than what the intellect is saying.
Changing your story involves deliberately beginning to change what
you say to yourself. Suppose your story is that you are stupid.
Changing your story involves realizing, "Yes, I've acted stupidly
sometimes, but it doesn't need to be that way all the time."
The more you see it, the less it happens.
When some criticism is leveled at you from the outside, it doesn't
have to become part of your story. When you hear the criticism,
you don't reject it, but you don't own it either. You can
be with it, and ask "What does this mean to me? Is this
saying something to me?" If you experience an internal
resistance to what has been said about you, then probably there
is a kernel of truth to it. The goal is to have the awareness,
because the moment you have the awareness, things can shift. It
is not a matter of being guilty about it. It is simply the
awareness, "Yes, this may exist, and I'll look at it and see
if it does." You have the final word on any information:
You can add it to your story, and make yourself more wrong,
or you can see it just as a piece of information about which
you determine whether and where it fits.
You try to look at yourself through the eyes of the person who is
criticizing you, and you will see whether that person
has an agenda, an opinion, or a projection, and then you are liberated.
It doesn't matter what the truth is; all that matters is that you
become aware of something. Life is about gaining awareness,
not about gaining anything else. The awareness is liberating.
When you reach true intimacy, you can be "slapped"
with criticism and not feel it. You can look at it to see
if there is any truth to it, but feel no hurt from it.
You don't have any judgment on yourself, or on the person who said
it.
I have a blanket assumption: everyone wants my highest good, so
everything is helpful. I have reframed my life in that context,
and as a consequence I am liberated. You can do that too.
Everything coming from the outside is hearsay, but if you
have any kind of reaction to something it is a signal for you
to look at it a little closer to see if there is a message in it.
Sometimes there is. Sometimes the person criticizing
you is just having a hard day, and you needn't take it personally.
I don't take criticism personally, and I see that my frequency makes
all the difference in that. I see where things are coming
from, I see a bigger picture, and often I have to be careful not
to laugh at what is happening with other people because I see
the dynamic that is occurring, the hilarity of it. Mostly,
I find it hilarious because I did the same thing in the
past. Yet people who are in a very emotional state may not
like it if you laugh at what is happening. top
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