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Walking the Way, that is a being prepared to receive more. See, we can be offered much, but we can receive only that we are prepared to receive. This is a reason that I encourage no attempts to a short-cut in a spiritual way, such as with taking mind-altering drugs, for lost aspects of self are grown back into unity with the whole self-system. This is an organic process of re-integration. Taking trips to a paradise in the mind through artificial means is likely more to evade intimacy than welcome it, and, likewise, it is likely another illusion of the mind. There may be exceptions to this, but why leave this world when what you most seek is here and you can only learn to enjoy it here?
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Likewise, as to this closeness, we cannot reach a point where we can say, "I'll never feel vulnerable again." Rather, we need to feel vulnerable again and again. The Divine, Intimacy, draws us deeper and deeper into Life. This is like a bottomless Sea ~ Where is the bottom? We welcome that sense of resistance to intimacy that arises, seeing this as a sign we are invited into a closer fellowship with Life. We greet the vulnerability as the natural uprising of the meeting of self with the inner call to be more in love with Love.
One way I see resistance to intimacy arising in my quiet time with the Beloved is interesting. In silence, in times of feeling profound closeness with Love, I sometimes begin to avoid the silence. It took time for me to see this was due to the joy of closeness, the power of intimacy.
So, oddly, we fear that we most long for. But there is no need to try to force intimacy, tolerance for closeness cannot be gained by aggression. Closeness cannot be gained at all ~ we experience intimacy and with it the ever-unfurling petals of Beauty as something given us. This is why we respond in gratitude and feel blessed. Indeed, intimacy is a blessing.
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