Here are some questions I spend a considerable amount of time exploring in the physical and mental emotional realms in the past present and future as part of the question who am I. The only conclusion I have made is that there are no conclusive, definitive, or absolute answers to them.
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what is intimacy, and how is it related (or not) to love?
is it being naked with someone?
is it genital interaction?
is it seeing someone’s ignorance (or shame) and/or allowing them to see your ignorance (or shame)?
is it allowing someone to hurt your heart?
is it sharing vulnerability?
is it knowing someone’s habits, likes and dislikes?
is it being used to someone?
is it the experience of having someone come into your thoughts on a regular basis?
is it confessing or acting out your sins of anger and violence and admitting your hypocrisy, failures, addictions, obsessions, selfishness, and evil thoughts in the presence of someone else?
is it sharing the pleasant or the unpleasant or both?
Is it emotional attachment?
Does it always require love and does love always require it?
And how are intimacy, love, spiritual practice, and social duties balanced and managed?
Intimacy changes like everything else. I notice that my experience of it and needs associated with it seem to have changed. I don’t see it as personal, nor as private, nor as important as I once thought it was, as I maintain a more consistent awareness of the falseness of the personal. Thomas Collier does not last forever, and in a way, has already died. The only eternal is Om, which is even beyond the enduring human attribute one could call “who am I”. The truth is that who we really are was never born and never dies regardless of what happens with gross and subtle bodies, no matter how dramatically pleasant or unpleasant.
It serves me well to know when to be with others and when to be alone, and when to attempt a break from the illusions of ego and addiction and when to maintain and indulge. Distance and closeness, vulnerability and protection, large and small, manifest and unmanifest, creation, destruction, preservation, rajas (passion), tamas (inertia), and sattva (balance) each serve their purpose and are needed in appropriate measure. I remind myself now that I don’t always get to choose, and the choices I do get to make will not always please other people, or myself, or turn out the way I expect. The experience of my mind ego exploding occurs again and again, accompanied by emotional turmoil which I usually find unpleasant to varying degrees.
Every desire is rooted in the desire for “true Self”. That desire is the only one that truly exists for me even though my mind deceives me. I forget and become distracted by petty desires and fears. Here and now I remember, all of it is the path; all of it is practice; all of it is me, despite what the mind, ego, and senses tell me. The path is the goal.
I realize that my mind may never be truly free of seeing people, things, states of being, experiences, and myself as objects of fear or desire. The judgmental thoughts of like and dislike keep coming, as do the associated disturbances of emotion that keep me in bondage and obscure my experience of Truth. I observe that it’s challenging (if not impossible) to be happy for other people’s happiness when I don’t feel happy myself. I am amazed that people seem to succeed in finding happiness and security in acquiring possessions, material success, power, fame, relationships and social interaction (personal, impersonal, intimate and non intimate.) It is not for me to determine; they may have succeeded in finding true happiness, but that type of happiness does not feel appropriate for me. I am very aware of how my attachment to and pursuit of those things causes my own misery as those things are small and never satisfy in a lasting way. My emotional disturbances tell me that contrary to what my ego tells me, I have the same delusion as other people and look for security and stability where it will never be. I accept that people around me may not understand how and why I could possibly find or attempt to find pleasure or some type of happiness without those things. I sometimes (often) feel emotionally and socially inept as a result of this difference, and that will probably always be. When I am not aware of my own delusion (and when I believe that I am different or separate from others), I experience pain and alienation. What did I do or what happened to me to make me so flawed?
The anger and sadness that I associate with the trap of modern life remind me that I have unrealistic expectations of the world and life experience as Thomas Collier. This keeps happening and I don’t see an end to it. My experience of life is often seeing every single thing (person, event, duty, emotion) as an obstacle. I even experience anger and disappointment with respect to the so-called spiritual practices that I enjoy and value so highly. It is extremely challenging for me to let go of the habit of over-efforting, hiding unpleasant emotions, seeking results, progress, and perfection as well as the habit of keeping accounts. I have taken these things on as duties, and my experience is that people rely on me to be this way. Because let’s face it, contrary to what we may say, most of us don’t really unconditionally accept people and circumstances as they truly are. It is no surprise (and nothing new) that the world seems to demand considerable and continual sacrifice. The sacrifices that happen through me are not enough or of the right type to satisfy or sustain the world, people around me, or myself once and for all.
I am increasingly aware of the unstable and impersonal nature of everything, including relationships, emotions, and personality. I continue to walk a path of sadhana (practice), which is my only Truth (and my only real intimacy).
Overall, the balance of rajas, tamas, and sattva will always happen, and I still attempt personal balance.
I have no choice but to surrender to my solitary nature and my tendency to repeat the process of attempting silence, compassion, renunciation, and self discipline, sometimes succeeding, sometimes failing. I am still fascinated with the experience of body-mind-ego, and for varying amounts of time I am hypnotized and fooled by attributes, characteristics, pleasure , pain, desire, fear, inner, outer, results, emotions, and stories. I know on some level that the personal is false and yet I get fooled over and over. Forcefully stopping the process or destroying it doesn’t benefit, and neither does overindulging it.
I feel the selfishness. Part of me just doesn’t care about the things that other people find so important. Sometimes I don’t even care about the things that I usually feel are important. I no longer believe the personal birth-life-death story that we have been told and tell ourselves over and over, so widely accepted and deeply ingrained in our psyche that many of us don’t even question it. Regardless, the body mind still does what it does and spirit endures. Currently, I usually go along and pretend in order to get or give food and shelter, acceptance and perhaps an experience of some physical, emotional, or mental pleasure or relief from pain. I know it is all temporary, and basically I just hope that others are able to walk the path before, during, and after me in their own way. I feel like other people’s paradise is not for me, and that I cannot really be with other people in their version of paradise. I hope that perhaps I help in some way or at least that I don’t interfere. Both of these desires are basically impossible to fulfill as a person with needs and requirements.
I know that my intentions with respect to my vocation, life, and interactions with other people are often less than honorable. I am aware that hidden from my awareness, was (and is) my intention to try to get through life without pain, shame, failures, and really being there for other people and beings, without getting dirty and without attachment. I’m not an exception, even though I desire to be. That desire to be special will bring me to birth-life-death again and again. I know that I can only strive for unselfish motive, going deeper and deeper. My experience is that in the manifested realm, it is never complete or fully achieved.
The false says that I am responsible for only one body, mind, and its possessions and duties.
The challenge is always the same, regardless of circumstance, always maintain the awareness of unity, regardless of pleasure or pain, clarity, confusion, war, peace, order, disorder, realizing that my intentions may not be as selfless as I would like.
It drives me crazy that I can’t achieve absolute perfection, and it drives me crazy that I can’t live up to my ideals in absolute terms. An ability or attribute that I have access to one day, I don’t necessarily have the next, even with considerable or extreme effort to maintain. All of these observations that I put into words are only partially accurate, and when I look really closely, I see how wrong I am about so many things. How many layers of illusion must I (and we) create and maintain? How many chains of bondage? (What proves love what proves courage what proves endurance what proves faith and devotion what proves existence?)
Separation of pleasure and pain is part of the illusion. I confess to my addiction to that illusion and the bondage that I create as a result. I know this in thought, but the challenge is to know it in being and act and abstain in accordance with compassionate oneness. I feel and know that I often fail at that.
The instability drives me crazy, and how I’ve been fooled and perpetuated the lie my for what seems like my whole life contributes to my anger. I can only acknowledge that it is what it is and go on.
Who am I to think that I know the will of the universe (siva-shakti-dahdahdah)?