Have you ever sat or laid there and just wanted closeness, absolutely craving it like never before? Wanting so much to be next to a person, in their arms and feeling the safety and protection they have towards you emit from them? Wanting closeness so much that it almost hurts and then you realize that it isn’t just a want, that it is a human need? However, I have realized and studied a few things and you better hold on because it is about to get factual up in here, a research paper is on its way.
The greatest struggle for human beings is between their desire to overcome isolation and loneliness and their simultaneous fear of close, intimate contact with another being. Often the desire and the fear are equally strong, so that people are pulled and pushed in opposite directions. This causes a tremendous strain. The pain of isolation will always push people into attempts to escape from it. When such attempts look like succeeding, the fear of closeness induces them to pull back again and push away the other. And so the cycle goes on with human beings first erecting and then destroying the barriers between themselves and others. Now that tid-bit has been mentioned- what do we as human beings need to do about that? How can we work on that ourselves? Your relationship to another person can be successful only when you are motivated by your innermost being. If the relationship is determined solely by the outer intellect and will, these faculties cannot find the delicate balance of allowing your self-expression and also receiving the other’s self-expression. Since no rule can be made about the rhythm of this mutual interchange, the outer brain is unable to effect the balance. Nor can the ego-mind find the balance between self-assertion and giving in, between giving and receiving, or between active and passive participation. These delicate balances cannot possibly be determined in a prescribed way. Yet the outer intellect is an instrument that prescribes, predetermines, and thinks mechanically; it determines rules and laws. By itself it is not sufficiently intuitive and flexible to meet each moment as it comes and to respond to it adequately. For such a flexible response the core of your being must be activated. The relationship with another can be spontaneous and mutually satisfying. Not in contact with your innermost being, you can neither function properly where life requires creative responses, nor can you contact another person’s innermost being. But this, after all, is the real relating, the closeness which eliminates isolation. Intimate self-expression and relating flows with the life-stream and brings dynamic peace. Everything else is strain, effort, and difficult discipline, which is not conducive to the great freedom and joy of intimacy. Why is the fear of self and the fear of contacting others so great? Basically the fear is due to people’s destructive aims, and specifically to your aim of refusing to give yourselves over to life. Doing the work on such a path as this, many of my friends have encountered exactly this kind of attitude deep within themselves. If all people were truly willing to give what they are, both their potential and their already realized selves, if they were to willingly offer their best to life and deliberately held this as their goal, they could not be in conflict with themselves or with life. For each one of you has so many wonderful assets which you neglect or only vaguely sense. And even when you do sense them, it does not occur to you to offer these assets to life. Once you deliberately do that, something must begin to happen. A great inner movement takes place which you have no reason to fear, for it must all happen in beautiful order and harmony. You as an individual can change from being an isolated creature keeping your assets for yourself, sometimes leaving them completely unused, never intending to give these assets for the benefit of life and evolution, except perhaps in a vague way. The moment you change to the new state of deliberately dedicating the best of who you are to life, the change within you and in your outer life experience will be so drastic that words cannot describe it. What was difficult, laborious, fearful, bleak, strained, and lonely will become easy, self-perpetuating, relaxed, safe, and bright. You will feel a deep sense of oneness with the world, with others, with the entire process of creation. Until this change takes place, you must be eternally in the whirlpool of wanting and fearing the same thing. And this truly is torture. At times you desire more: at other times you fear more. The outcome will be problematic, painful, and fraught with conflict because you pull and push in opposite directions. The moment you change your attitude in the way I just described, everything will fall into place automatically. This is the real key. The struggle of wanting and fearing closeness with others, as well as of wanting and fearing intimate contact with one’s innermost self, cannot be settled by making up one’s mind to give up one of the two alternatives of closeness or separateness. This can never work. It can be resolved only when negative and destructive aims are surrendered, and the best of who you are is joyfully offered to life. Only then do you experience that there is nothing to fear from life except your own destructiveness. When this destructiveness is given up, the key to life is found.
The greatest struggle for human beings is between their desire to overcome isolation and loneliness and their simultaneous fear of close, intimate contact with another being. Often the desire and the fear are equally strong, so that people are pulled and pushed in opposite directions. This causes a tremendous strain. The pain of isolation will always push people into attempts to escape from it. When such attempts look like succeeding, the fear of closeness induces them to pull back again and push away the other. And so the cycle goes on with human beings first erecting and then destroying the barriers between themselves and others. Now that tid-bit has been mentioned- what do we as human beings need to do about that? How can we work on that ourselves? Your relationship to another person can be successful only when you are motivated by your innermost being. If the relationship is determined solely by the outer intellect and will, these faculties cannot find the delicate balance of allowing your self-expression and also receiving the other’s self-expression. Since no rule can be made about the rhythm of this mutual interchange, the outer brain is unable to effect the balance. Nor can the ego-mind find the balance between self-assertion and giving in, between giving and receiving, or between active and passive participation. These delicate balances cannot possibly be determined in a prescribed way. Yet the outer intellect is an instrument that prescribes, predetermines, and thinks mechanically; it determines rules and laws. By itself it is not sufficiently intuitive and flexible to meet each moment as it comes and to respond to it adequately. For such a flexible response the core of your being must be activated. The relationship with another can be spontaneous and mutually satisfying. Not in contact with your innermost being, you can neither function properly where life requires creative responses, nor can you contact another person’s innermost being. But this, after all, is the real relating, the closeness which eliminates isolation. Intimate self-expression and relating flows with the life-stream and brings dynamic peace. Everything else is strain, effort, and difficult discipline, which is not conducive to the great freedom and joy of intimacy. Why is the fear of self and the fear of contacting others so great? Basically the fear is due to people’s destructive aims, and specifically to your aim of refusing to give yourselves over to life. Doing the work on such a path as this, many of my friends have encountered exactly this kind of attitude deep within themselves. If all people were truly willing to give what they are, both their potential and their already realized selves, if they were to willingly offer their best to life and deliberately held this as their goal, they could not be in conflict with themselves or with life. For each one of you has so many wonderful assets which you neglect or only vaguely sense. And even when you do sense them, it does not occur to you to offer these assets to life. Once you deliberately do that, something must begin to happen. A great inner movement takes place which you have no reason to fear, for it must all happen in beautiful order and harmony. You as an individual can change from being an isolated creature keeping your assets for yourself, sometimes leaving them completely unused, never intending to give these assets for the benefit of life and evolution, except perhaps in a vague way. The moment you change to the new state of deliberately dedicating the best of who you are to life, the change within you and in your outer life experience will be so drastic that words cannot describe it. What was difficult, laborious, fearful, bleak, strained, and lonely will become easy, self-perpetuating, relaxed, safe, and bright. You will feel a deep sense of oneness with the world, with others, with the entire process of creation. Until this change takes place, you must be eternally in the whirlpool of wanting and fearing the same thing. And this truly is torture. At times you desire more: at other times you fear more. The outcome will be problematic, painful, and fraught with conflict because you pull and push in opposite directions. The moment you change your attitude in the way I just described, everything will fall into place automatically. This is the real key. The struggle of wanting and fearing closeness with others, as well as of wanting and fearing intimate contact with one’s innermost self, cannot be settled by making up one’s mind to give up one of the two alternatives of closeness or separateness. This can never work. It can be resolved only when negative and destructive aims are surrendered, and the best of who you are is joyfully offered to life. Only then do you experience that there is nothing to fear from life except your own destructiveness. When this destructiveness is given up, the key to life is found.
Devote a few minutes every day to thoughts such as these:
“Whatever I already am, I want to devote to life. I deliberately want life to make use of the best of what I have and who I am. I may not be sure at this moment in what way this could happen, and even if I have ideas, I will allow for the greater intelligence and wisdom deep within me to guide me. I will let life itself decide how a fruitful interchange can take place between it and me. For whatever I give to life, I have received from it, and I wish to return it to the great cosmic pool to bring more benefit to others. This, in turn, must inevitably enrich my own life to the exact measure that I willingly give to life: for truly life and I are one. When I withhold from life, I withhold from myself. When I withhold from others, I withhold from myself. Whatever I already am, I want to let flow into life. And whatever more in me can be utilized, still waiting to be brought to fruition, I request, I decide, and I desire that it be put to constructive use, so as to enrich the atmosphere around me.”
If such thoughts were deliberately pursued and deeply meant, problems would have to resolve themselves, pain would cease, solutions would appear on the horizon even to problems which had before seemed absolutely insoluble.
The fear of uniting, of meeting, of reaching, of having intimate contact, exists as long as the individual’s psyche is negatively geared. In such a case union must be frightening and appear a question of “me versus the other.” As long as the depth of your own psyche is frightening — and it will feel frightening when you pursue negative, destructive aims — free self-expression is dangerous, contact with others is dangerous, and giving one’s self up to the bliss of union must be desperately avoided because it threatens to eliminate control. Without this control, your destructive aims could take over and threaten annihilation. Giving up control must appear as death, as the giving up of selfhood and safety, as long as destructive aims persist and preoccupy the psyche. Therefore, in order to preserve one’s individuality, the only available way appears to be building up barriers around the self. Only this seems to keep the self intact. The inherent tragedy is that as long as destructive goals exist in the psyche, isolation gives one a sense of identity and seems to preserve one’s individuality. Yet only in a negative context does loss of control lead to death or to a loss of power over oneself. Ultimately mental disturbance is caused by this conflict. But when your psyche no longer believes in “me versus the other,” but in “me and the other,” and when you therefore give what you have and what you are to life, then you will not fear loss of control because loss of ego-control will lead to more control in a better, fuller, healthier sense. With a completely constructive psyche, the personality can trust its spontaneous, unchecked, free expressions. It can give itself up to the inner powers, so that a free-flowing, vibrating unity between the self and the life force exists. This appears like an act which relinquishes direct control. But through this act more constructive powers deep in the core of the self are activated; they make the self forever more adequate and give it more control over life so it can determine its own fate in the best possible way.
If you can allow these words not only to fill your intellect, but also your inner being and become sincere in your good will to find the truth of “me and the other,” you will experience how safe, easy, and joyful life becomes when you dispense with the pseudo-necessity of pursuing negative aims. Wanting to defeat life, others and yourself, out of spite, you withhold the best of you from life for the so-called safety and satisfaction of your negative aims. These negative aims have to become so conscious that they literally stare you in the face. Only then can their futility be comprehended so blatantly that the personality will dispense with them. You will no longer need to fight and obstruct what you want most, namely the deep satisfaction of being wholly yourself, which also means being accepted by another person as being what you really are, without masks and pretenses, without separating mechanisms which you still think you have to use. When you dispense with the masks and barriers you have so ardently put up all your life, you will be free and know that what you are is good. But this knowledge can come only when that which already is good in you is offered up to life. “Me versus the other” is the whole human struggle. As simple as this is, you as an individual cannot understand these words unless you have made some progress on a path leading deep into yourself. Then you will know what these words mean. As you learn to inwardly assimilate these words, you come closer to passing over this threshold. All of you can make the first step now in a very simple meditation:
“I decide to give up the error of ‘me versus the other.’ There is really no conflict, therefore I can give all of myself. I not only request help from deep within, but I decide to give the best I am to life, without fear. Any fear that still lurks within me is error, and I decide to rid myself of this error and to give myself over to the divine powers to which I open myself totally. I deeply desire to understand the truth of ‘I and others are one’ meaning that there is no conflict. I therefore can give of myself the best that I am. I surrender to those higher forces so that this self-giving may occur in harmony, in rightness, without strain and effort.”
When you are in the unity of being, there is no either/or, for it is always “me and the other,” and then there is no conflict between giving and receiving. There can be no conflict of control. If you do not fear giving, you can fully receive; you can never be shortchanged. When you fear giving, you cannot be open to receive. It is impossible. Therefore you are constantly being shortchanged. The wrong conclusion is thus strengthened, so that you will close yourself up even more. But when you are in the truth of unity, using your freedom to offer what you are to life, it will make you completely comfortable about receiving. You can easily determine this fact.
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