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As to this, we can remind ourselves that what we call the self is not necessarily in one place. Physically, we are located in what we see to be one time and one space. Yet, we cannot conclude the self is only physical. Intimacy, being a matter of the heart, manifests from outside our sense of time and space. Intimacy, while felt as personal, that is with the self, is transpersonal. Intimacy expresses as I, we, and It ~ It, being beyond the person, so beyond personal, of I and we, is outside time and space and enters in I and we, both being expressions of and experiences of the Divine. In Hindu terms, God-Unmanifest becomes God-Manifest, in Christian terms, the Word becomes Flesh.
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No one can say honestly, "I'm completely comfortable with intimacy." Closeness with the other, be that human or the Divine, this may be the most potent dynamism in the human realm. One is wise to respect and be in awe of this power. Certainly living in intimacy is more than about listening to pretty romantic songs or enjoying alluring poems of loving the Divine. And religion or spirituality is a place we can hide from closeness, but a wise path will lead us directly into intimacy. Love, when we draw close to it, does not always treat us gently.
Love burns us up little by little so that we become Love. Yet, we find what is burned up is not us, but that that is not us. When you love, you are you. Love puts us on its funeral pyre, sets us aflame, that we might become by Love the Love we love. Yet, the lover of the Beloved comes to cherish this burning, knowing the Flame of Love is drawing us closer into the heartbeat of the Beloved. And in this heartbeat, one finds only one heartbeat, for there is only one Heart. As Jesus taught, "The one who loses herself, she finds herself," and, "He who dies, that one shall live."
This writing speaks of this closeness with the Divine, the Self-of-all. When first saying "Yes" to a spiritual path, one soon faces the shadow ~ aspects of self repressed in the unconscious. Or, possibly, it was the pain of this shadow in conflict with the conscious aspects of self that awakened one to the need for divine Help. Whatever the reason, many of us have learned to be afraid of being close to others, though we might not admit or recognize it. And, yes, even if we push it away, we do want closeness, and that is our natural way of being. Our unborn, inborn tendency is to move toward closeness. But many things can happen, especially in the family context of growing up, that can lead us to avoid intimacy. There is no need to judge this fear of intimacy as good or bad, it just is, and one did not ask for it. No one comes into the world with the wish not to be close to others, to feel isolated from others. Just imagine being in the womb. We were born in the most amazing closeness, being held within one who embraced us in Love.
So, while much of my writing is about intimacy with others and the Divine ~ to be intimate with anyone or anything is to be intimate with Life ~, this does not mean that I have no fear of intimacy. I, like you possibly, have been hurt many times by persons I trusted to be safe with. Trust, too, is our natural mode of being, and trust and intimacy go together.
So, what I write of intimacy, this I live and am living into. We are always, when on the Way, living into more of what Life is offering us, what Life is. To some extent, we have to learn trust, we have to lean into closeness with others.
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