Intimacy... a deep look into ones own Self.

Tantric yoga is all about looking deeply into ones own mind and heart by peering into the eyes of another. This is relationship: two humans connecting, in love.

Love is not a scary thing. It is a sacred thing.

It is easy to say "I Love You" to family, to those that we connect with on an emotional level: friends and lovers that we are intimate with.
In my life, it has been easy to be In Love with people that are comfortable with love. But what of those that are scared of it? What of those that the words "I love you" have rarely been heard in their lives?
I spent my 1st 21 years being scared of "love". When someone I just met said: "I love you", it scared me. It sent me rolling into a spiral of dissolution. This is because I was uncomfortable with my own heart--with the yearnings, the burnings, the passions, the fires that triggered me deeper into an intimate union with who I really am.

We are a puzzle to our own selves. Rumi, one of my favorite Sufi poets has a poem:

Come out of the circle of time
and into the circle of love.

Upon my 1st read at this zen koan of a poem, my heart understood, though my mind was fearful to explore the depths of this brief whirlwind of a statement.

Life itself is a koan: a puzzle that is not meant to be analyzed, but felt and lived...and understood in that process.

What is it about intimacy that scares me? I have been in relationships where I've only been comfortable sharing parts of true self, because I fear really expressing who I am: a woman in love with all of life. All people intrigue me. It is perhaps the most complicated and crazy that move me most. Those that I meet and want to run away from have opened my heart the most and continue to do so.

I have been meeting people in my sojourn in Korea that have triggered this look deeper into my own heart--people that I instantly feel a love and a fear for at the same time. People that trigger me to look deeper at my own binds and restrictions--and spiral deeper into intimate union with my real self.

I have a friend here who is so open and giving with herself, and yet battles with depression. With her I have only felt love, but in her, I sense a deep yearning to be free of her own limits and restrictions-- to truly let loose and be completely in love with the goddess that she is.

I have a male friend with whom I instantly fell in love with because of his open heart and child-like nature. Through my friendship with him, I have grown more comfortable with my own innocence--embracing the feeling of being re-born each day to the newness of all that is life.

Another beautiful woman recently joined our team of teachers. She is an African American woman from Georgia--the only black woman in our all white group of foreign teachers. She is passionate and comes from a Christian Gospel background. After only our second heart to heart talk, she told me she loved me. These are words I have not been able to mumble to friends with ease right off the bat. But she admitted to me that these words come out of her when she genuinely feels an open-hearted compassion from another human being. And isn't that all intimacy really is: just being completely in love with each moment--each animal, flower, human, meal, or even the thoughts and dreams we have?

As humans, we all tend to have fears or restrictions of some sort of another. And if those restrictions aren't predominant in our lives now, then they were at some point. We have all gone through trauma of some sort or another--and no ones trauma can be measured against anothers. It is all real. It is all hurtful. And all of it has made--or is in the process of making-- our hearts grow bigger.

I love hearing peoples stories, because they are all as different and unique as our own souls. We are all made up of the same atoms, yet they form a different sort of flower in each of us. Some may appear beautiful at first sight, while some have to grow on you, like the taste of a fine wine. It takes time to acquire a taste for love in all its forms and manifestations. Everyone in my life was put there to learn something from--including...most of all...my"self".

I know it may sound narcissistic to some to say "to love your own self is to know the greatest love of all"--but this is the truth. On my journey to understanding and growing in relationship with romantic love, I have found that the greatest romance is the dance between you and your own heart and mind. They are tremendous gifts we are given as human beings. Sacred gifts to be cherished and appreciated with time. The "circle of love" Rumi alludes to is just of this sort. However, "time" is relative to ones own life experience. Everything is always in divine harmony; each atom is dancing in its natural way.

Again, this relationship I've been seeking is not in another. As Rilke answers in his "Letters to a young poet":

Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.

And that is the magic that is life. This woman from Georgia made me remember that "I seek, therefore I am." It is in the seeking that I am finding myself more and more.
It's interesting, because I am leading myself more into my own confidence with who I am and what I am here to do. This is what sparks me: connecting deeply with my own heart and mind, sharing it with others, and hearing the sparks and yearnings--the deep burning questions of all of those I connect with, in this form or any other.

I am never alone. But a month ago I felt I was going crazy without a lover-- someone to come home to at night and be physically, emotionally, and mentally intimate with. Now I realize that there will never be any one person that I will connect that deeply with--on all levels. I had the expectation that this one person would fulfill all of my needs for intimacy. But I now realize that this is why I am a human--a social creature intrigued and turned on by connecting intimately with many people within the course of a day. Even if I spend the day alone, I find that I turn on the computer and desire to connect with others via cyberspace or phone. And sometimes that is enough.

When I lived in New Mexico at Lama Foundation, the spiritual community founded by Ram Dass and others in the late 60s, we all had 10 days of hermitage time, where you were supposed to spend 10 days in solitude. Alone. With only yourself. I chose to do a Vipassana during this solitude time. And, while I spent the 10 days in silent meditation with a group of 50 or so others, I was very much alone. We were not aloud to make eye contact and could only talk to the teachers about meditation questions, or to the female manager about any urgent matters or health issues. It was a very difficult experience. It was my first time away from my ex, with whom I was living, working and playing with constantly. It made me realize how little time I'd taken for myself in the few months I'd been with him at Lama. It made me aware of ways I was not giving myself space to explore other intimate connections with family and friends in my life.
I tend to dive deeply into things--immersing myself in all the wonders of whatever I'm doing. My life at Lama, however, which was physically very grueling, living on the mountain, trekking through 3 to 4 feet of snow uphill to get a meal and shower in the winter and working almost 7 days of week during the summer retreat season--reminded me how important it is to listen to my needs and take time for myself.

And my traveling nature, which is one layer of my heart I am coming to fully embrace, has also kept me on the fritz with any long-term committed relationship. Though, I'm realizing that as I come to accept who I am fully--as a traveler, a writer, a yogini and a passionate sojourner of the heart--that the more I embrace this, the more easily all I want will come to fruition.

Another Rilke quote that spoke deeply to me, posted at the bottom of a girlfriend's email was:
"Our deepest fears are like dragons guarding our deepest treasure."
And so I've discovered that those people that I've wanted to run away from have helped me the most.

So... this weeks question is:
WHO are you most afraid of, and what makes you want to run from them? (It could be an aspect of yourself).

May you continue to peel and savor the taste of each layer of your own self.

Namaste,
sarah <3