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'A House in Winter'
How happy a time it is
when we sit on the porch,
two bodies, two forms,
but our souls as one.
...
In these forms, we are in the world.
At the same time
we are in paradise.
*The Forbidden Rumi. Trans. with Comment. Nevit O. Ergin, Will Johnson.
* * *
My eyes move over the books. I take one from the shelf - Richard Rohr, Yes, and...: Daily Meditations - and begin looking through it to see if I will want to buy it. I read, "We long to expose ourselves." I feel the truth of the words, taste the bliss of what it points to. To expose means, in my past, something to avoid if at all possible. My whole being echoes, "Yes!" My heart witnesses to the joy of the exposure, for it has known the bliss of it.
* * *
To be open, naked - seen - is a deep yearning reverberating in all false intimacies. False intimacies, promising what they cannot give, excite our frustrated desire. In this disappointment, we can choose to try the next fix or question the collective delusion.
False intimacies expose the futility of accumulation of relationships, stuff, and experiences ... - including spiritual experiences -, thinking the increase will satisfy the longing. We can remain hidden behind this socially-induced mirage, unexposed even to ourselves.
* * *
When wearied of pseudo intimacies, we are prepared for "Yes" to spiritual intimacy - an alignment and sharing of spirits. We recognize those we enjoy closeness with are means, not ends, even as we are means. So, objectifying the other melts in Unity, while the otherness of others remains alongside our otherness. And the otherness takes a back seat to Presence, which is the foreground of the intimacy - the personality, including otherness, moving to the background.
Simply put, psychological relationships and spiritual are different. In psychological relationships - which are most - the person (body-and-mind, ego, false self, personality) is in the foreground. The soul (heart, True Self, essence, spirit) is in the background. With its traits and otherness, the body-and-mind masks the soul. Closeness, here, is transactional and defined emotionally. One can enjoy spiritual intimacy when the person moves to the background and the soul to the foreground. Then, the psychological self is embraced in the True Self's radiance. Finally, resultant heart-with-heart relationships are not emotional transactions. Spirit does not rely on body-mind sensations, and spirit in us is the Spirit in which we are.
* * *
When I moved in Fall 2020 from a community house in which I enjoyed closeness with others, I missed something. I was now alone and in a new place; also, the pandemic hindered my getting out among others. I explored what this missing was. One answer, "I miss them." That would be the usual rebuttal to this question. Yet, the answer arose from a more subtle discernment - not the obvious. I missed something more than them, yet they were a part of what was missed. I was shown in the Silence, as an image, what was missed now. There was the missing of what happened among us. The inner vision given later was of a subtle, spinning, and alive energy - like a vortex - flowing among us.
We often say we miss someone, and while this may be true, we fail to see what is more subtle than ourselves as persons who share. So, to say, "I miss him" is to say, "I miss what arose in our togetherness." And the togetherness and what arises from it arise together. The two are a unity. Both the togetherness and the energies are one; one cannot say the togetherness created the energies or vice versa.
* * *
What we share in spiritual fellowship is a happening, and it is one thing, even when appearing amid a plurality of selves. And while we may live okay apart from others we have enjoyed heart-sharing with, we still need the happening - the intimacy. Persons may come and go in our lives, but intimacy is a need constant.
* * *
Everyone in our life is a possible means to more than the other's presence as a person. We could say we are present among ourselves to be a Sacrament of Presence.
* * *
Does one need to tell all to enjoy spiritual intimacy? Is that the honesty required for such sharing?
No. One does not have to divulge details of one's life to enjoy integrity in spiritual intimacy. The details, anyway, are mostly related to the personality. When you enter spiritual companionship, the past with its details are not priority, only the present is. In all relationships, one is wise to preserve the right to keep to oneself what one needs to keep to oneself. And when one knows your heart, she does not need to know the details to know you. Of course, the freedom not to share the details is the same freedom to share what you decide is wise to share.
* * *
What the heart seeks is another to mirror back the heart to the heart. The sense of heart rises to attention by the same essence in the other's otherness. Who the other truly is elicits that we are. This is a reason we feel such inspiration when we move beyond emotionally transactional relationships to the coupling of the heart - for the heart meeting with our heart is our heart... there is One.
Yet, to enjoy this heart communion, we prepare ourselves for it. To receive it is part of the preparation. Getting a taste of this Love from others spurs us onward to become more an inner receptacle of Grace, so Spirit flows freely into and through us.
Last, we may have times when we do not receive the heart fellowship we need with others. One gift of devotional spirituality is fellowship with Spirit. This does not replace spiritual intimacy with others, as it does not negate our need to nurture our relationship directly with Spirit. Our sharing with others-as-spirit and intimacy with Spirit are complementary.
* * *
*(C) Brian K. Wilcox, 2020
*Brian's book, An Ache for Union: Poems on Oneness with God through Love, can be ordered through major online booksellers or the publisher AuthorHouse. The book is a collection of poems based on mystical traditions, especially Christian and Sufi, with extensive notes on the teachings and imagery in the poetry.
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