Solo ... Bono tells the background to the lyrics ...
Original U2 ...
Togetherness is so much more than sharing a common time and place. Persons can share a time and place and not be intimate. Persons can be on opposite sides of the planet and share intimacy. Persons can say nothing to each other and be intimate. Persons may become so intimate at a moment that they do not want to interrupt it with words. You can walk through a city and feel the intimacy all about you without your speaking to anyone. You can be alone in a wood and know this intimacy, deeply, inexplicably. See, the heart, boundless, does not have an address, unless it is "Everywhere."
There is an intimacy never spoken, for it cannot be spoken. This togetherness is our birthright, for it is not other than us, and, yet, somehow it calls to us.
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From the ancient anthology of Chinese poetry called Qianjiashi, translated Poems of the Masters or Poems of the Thousand Masters: the first compilation by Liu Kezhuang 劉克莊 (b. 1187). The poem is "Casual Poem on a Spring Day."
Clouds are thin the wind is light the sun is nearly overhead past the flowers through the willows down along the stream people don't see the joy in my heart they think I'm wasting time or acting like a child
*Red Pine. Dancing with the Dead: The Essential Red Pine Translations.
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When I first read this poem, I wrote a note beside it: ! Brian :-) Yes! . I wanted to return to it. The poem spoke heartedly to me of a sane way of living as a spiritual, compassionate being on Earth. We much need persons like the poet, and in cultures addicted to productivity, accomplishment, busyness, speed - adornments for ego that pale before the depth within us waiting to manifest its fundamental sanity and innate generosity.
I am puzzled by two common questions when persons pose them to me. First, what do you do? Meaning, What is your job? Second, What are you going to do today? Meaning, What are you going to accomplish today?
If we do not appear busy, humming about, in a be-busy culture, people may be puzzled at why we are not interested in appearing busy. After all, is it not a good thing to appear busy? They may jump to the conclusion that we are lazy.
We do not need to appear busy when discovering another valid, healthy way to live - presence before appearance. Or, better, this way has found us. Similarly, as we shift from the periphery to the center - ego to heart - we do not feel the need to rush about to gather credentials - done this, got that done - to prop up ourselves, to prove to others and ourselves that we are worthy of being alive and on Earth. We are not even feeling a need to prove anything to God, like, "Hey! God! Look what I did for you today."
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Hurriedness and busyness often become an avoidance of intimacy. How can I know someone beyond the surface - familiarity - if I cannot slow down to know them deeper than the surface? This intimacy requires some sense of loss of control, of non-management of others and the space in which one moves about. Deep knowing arises when we can slow down to invite closeness. We, then, can sink below person - or personality - and mirror a single, alive presence to each other.
Then, intimacy develops into intimacy. The invitation to slow down and make space, reducing speed, to enjoy intimacy applies not only to humans with humans but to all living beings. To do this, we may have to be honest about how we use speed to avoid closeness.
We may want to know others beyond superficial acquaintance, but we can bypass the space to know them in our rush to the next task. We can make excuses like, "Sorry, but I've been so busy." Or, "We have to keep good boundaries" - boundaries can become walls. In doing so, we spread ourselves thin and become disconnected from intimacy with ourselves.
Knowing others and myself intimately is one knowing. And knowing myself intimately is beyond words and thoughts, beyond what I was somewhere in the past. Intimate knowing is ongoing, not solidified into language or time. Intimacy is alive, present tense, and unfolding now - or not. We never meet the same person twice. Because we cannot freeze ourselves in time, intimacy cannot be frozen. Intimacy flows seen or unseen, entered or ignored.
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In unhurried presence, where do others meet us? They meet us in a welcoming that was present before we met. So, creating outer space for welcome is most natural when arising spontaneously from this space within. That space within seeks to create like outer spaces to complement itself and maximize in form the invitation. Spirit seeks companionship - spirit is the space, the openness, the welcome.
So, we do not create welcome; we welcome welcome, which can be a means for others to enter with us. If those choose not to, the welcome is not affected in any way, for it is not reliant on response.
In the Book of Revelation 3.20, in the Christian Bible, Jesus stands knocking at the door, saying he would come in and share a meal with the person inside. While he is manifesting welcoming - is the welcoming - he will not intrude. In pictures of this scene from my childhood, there is no handle on the outside of the door, so Jesus cannot open it. Yet, whether the door opens or not, the welcome remains the welcome, for welcome arises out of the ultimate dimension, manifesting itself as a scene in which relative invitation and sharing occurs. That is, the ultimate dimension - which Jesus embodies - is where all welcoming manifests from. We can, like Jesus, embody this silent invitation of solitude to solitude.
The whole scene in the Scripture passage is the relative context for the subtle welcome. Scenes arise constantly, taking material shapes, in which the supernal welcome - spiritual, subtle, silent - is offered to us and through us. When we look, welcoming is arising everywhere, and we had just not noticed it before. And all these invitations are arising as the expression of a single welcoming presence in which we knowingly or not participate.
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We discover rich resources by slowing down and living in the moment, including a quiet, abiding joy and sustaining contentment. We discover a childlikeness, including a basic, invitational openness to commune with others deeply.
Intimacy with our true self manifests in a sensing of connection with the heart-of-hearts. So, we can relax among others, not needing to push ourselves forward to be seen and heard or appear sociable.
Meditation is a practice in not appearing sociable or pleasant, for you are sitting in not-appearing altogether. Then, out of this not-need, people can feel a welcome space arising with us, where invitation is a natural outflow of life. Some will step into that space, some not. Some will flee it, afraid of the intimacy inhering in the spaciousness free of need to pull others into it. Some feel safer with people who project an aggressive, even if subtle, need to pull them into their space. When you are not attached to needing others to complete your sense of self, to fill your lack, you can purely be-with them, even if that togetherness does not manifests in relative space.
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Our true self - that we are - is a fundamental spaciousness free of need to do and produce for appearance sake. Our basic self feels no need to be busy or not busy. We can accomplish what needs to be done without avoiding intimacy or feeling busy. Even when we are hurried to do something or get somewhere, we have connected with that within that remains unhurried.
The sinking into the moment, going with the flow - not pushing ourselves - is a relief, and it invites the joy spoken of by the poet. Joy arises with a deeper connection to other beings, including all of Nature. As taught by the Zen Buddhist maxim, "Don't push the river." We are the flow of life and are already in this river with everything. So, intimacy is offering intimacy. In doing this, we experience the intimacy we share, for it is the same intimacy - the sole intimacy.
