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intimacy
TRUSTING ONESELF
AND THE OTHER "Hit-and-run" relationships are common in a society that has grown more rootless, less tied to traditional family structures, and more accepting of casual sex. At the same time arises an undercurrent of feeling that something is missing - a quality of intimacy. In this gentle and compassionate guide, Osho takes the reader step-by-step through what makes people afraid of intimacy, how to encounter those fears and go beyond them, and what they can do to nourish themselves and their relationships to support more openness and trust. Osho: INTIMACY -
Trusting Oneself and the Other,
pb. 172
pages, euro 14.50 - order here
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The first step
is to accept yourself
in your totality, in spite of all your traditions, which have driven the whole
of humanity insane. Once you have accepted yourself as you are, the fear of
intimacy will disappear. You cannot lose respect, you cannot lose your
greatness, you cannot lose your ego. You cannot lose your piousness, you
cannot lose your saintliness - you have dropped all that yourself. You are
just like a small child, utterly innocent. You can open yourself because
inside, you are not filled with ugly repressions which have become
perversions. You can say everything that you feel
authentically and sincerely. And if you are ready to be intimate, you will
encourage the other person also to be intimate. Your openness will help the
other person also to be open to you. Your unpretentious simplicity will allow
the other also to enjoy simplicity, innocence, trust, love, openness.
You are encaged with stupid concepts,
and the fear is, if you become very intimate with somebody, he will become
aware of it. But we are fragile beings - the most
fragile in the whole existence. The human child is the most fragile child of
all the animals. The children of other animals can survive without the mother,
without the father, without a family. But the human child will die
immediately. So this frailty is not something to be condemned - it is the
highest expression of consciousness. A roseflower is going to be fragile; it
is not a stone. And there is no need to feel bad about it, that you are a
roseflower and not a stone.
Only when two persons become intimate
are they no longer strangers. And it is a beautiful experience to find that
not only you are full of weaknesses but the other too... perhaps everybody is
full of weaknesses. The higher expression of anything
becomes weaker. The roots are very strong, but the flower cannot be so strong.
Its beauty is because of its not being strong. In the morning it opens its
petals to welcome the sun, dances the whole day in the wind, in the rain, in
the sun, and by the evening its petals have started falling. It is gone.
Everything that is beautiful, precious, is going to be very momentary. But you want everything to be
permanent. You love someone and you promise that "I will love you my
whole life." And you know perfectly well that you cannot be even certain
of tomorrow - you are giving a false promise. All that you can say is:
"I am in love with you this moment and I will give my totality to you.
About the next moment, I know nothing. How can I promise? You have to forgive
me."
But lovers are promising all kinds of
things which they cannot fulfill. Then frustration comes in, then the distance
grows bigger, then fight, conflict, struggle, and a life that was meant to
become happier becomes just a long, drawn out misery.
If you become aware that you are afraid
of intimacy, it can become a great revelation to you, and a revolution, if you
look inwards and start dropping everything of which you feel ashamed. And
accept your nature as it is, not as it should be. I do not teach any
"should". All shoulds make human mind sick.
People should be taught the beauty of
isness, the tremendous splendor of nature. These trees don't know any ten
commandments, the birds don't know any holy scriptures. It is only man who has
created a problem for himself. Condemning your own nature, you become split,
you become schizophrenic.
And not just ordinary people, but people of the status of Sigmund Freud, who contributed greatly to humanity, about mind. His method was psychoanalysis, that you should be made aware of all that is unconscious in you. And this is a secret, that once something unconscious is brought to the conscious mind, it evaporates. You become cleaner, lighter. As more and more unconscious is unburdened, your consciousness goes on becoming bigger. And as the area of the unconscious shrinks, the territory of the consciousness expands. That is an immense truth.
The East has known it for thousands
of years, but to the West, Sigmund Freud introduced it - not knowing anything
of the East and its psychology; it was his individual contribution. But you
will be surprised: he was never ready to be psychoanalyzed himself. The
founder of psychoanalysis was never psychoanalyzed. His colleagues insisted
again and again: "The method that you have given to us - and we all have
been psychoanalyzed - why are you insisting that you should not be
psychoanalyzed?"
He said: "Forget about it."
He was afraid to expose himself. He had become a great genius and exposing
himself would bring him down to ordinary humanity. He had the same fears, the
same desires, the same repressions. He never talked about his dreams; he only
listened to other people's dreams. And his colleagues were very much surprised
- "It will be a great contribution to know about your dreams" -
but he never agreed to lie down on the psychoanalyst's couch and talk about
his dreams. Because his dreams were as ordinary as anybody else's - that was
the fear.
A Gautam Buddha would not have feared
to go into meditation. That was his contribution - a special kind of
meditation. And he would not have been afraid of any psychoanalysis, because
for the man who meditates, by and by all his dreams disappear. In the day he
remains silent in his mind, not the ordinary traffic of thoughts. And in the
night he sleeps deeply, because dreams are nothing but unlived thoughts,
unlived desires, unlived longings in the day. They are trying to complete
themselves, at least in dreams.
It will be very difficult for you to
find a man who dreams about his wife, or a woman who dreams about her husband.
But it will be absolutely common that they dream about their neighbors' wives
and their neighbors' husbands. The wife is available, he is not suppressing
anything as far as his wife is concerned. But the neighbor's wife is always
more beautiful; the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. And that
which is unapproachable creates a deep desire to acquire it, to possess it. In
the day you cannot do it, but in dreams at least, you are free. Freedom of
dreaming has not yet been taken away by the governments.
It won't be long - soon they will
take it away, because methods are available, already available, so that they
can watch when you are dreaming and when you are not dreaming. And there is a
possibility some day to find a scientific device so that your dream can be
projected on a screen. Just some electrodes will have to be inserted in your
head. You will be fast asleep, dreaming joyously, making love to your
neighbor's wife and a whole movie hall will be watching it - and they used to
think that this man is a saint!
This much you can even see; whenever
a person is asleep, watch: if his eyelids are not showing any movement of his
eyes inside, then he is not dreaming. If he is dreaming then you can see that
his eyes are moving.
It is possible to project your dream
on a screen. It is also possible to enforce certain dreaming in you. But at
least up to now, no constitution even talks about it, that "People are
free to dream, it is their birthright."
...
Intimacy simply means that the doors
of the heart are open for you, you are welcome to come in and be a guest. But
that is possible only if you have a heart which is not stinking with repressed
sexuality, which is not boiling with all kinds of perversions, which is
natural - as natural as trees, as innocent as children. Then there is no fear
of intimacy.
That's what I am trying to do: to help you unburden your unconscious, unburden your mind, to become ordinary. There is nothing more beautiful than to be just simple and ordinary. Then you can have as many intimate friends, as many intimate relationships as possible, because you are not afraid of anything. You become an open book - anybody can read. There is nothing to hide.
Every year, a hunting club went up into the Montana hills. The members drew straws to decide who would handle the cooking and also agreed that anyone complaining about the food would automatically replace the unlucky cook.
Realizing after a few days that no one was likely to risk speaking up, Sanderson decided on a desperate plan.
He found some moose droppings and added two handfuls to the stew that night. There were grimaces around the campfire after the first few mouthfuls, but nobody said anything. Then one member suddenly broke the silence. "Hey," he exclaimed, "This stuff tastes like moose shit - but good!"
You have so many faces. Inside, you
think one thing; outside, you express something else. You are not one, organic
whole.
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.
One should live totally, intensely, joyously and just like an open book, available for anybody to read it. Of course you will not make a name in the history books. But what is the point in making a name in the history books?