On intimacy

Have you ever wonder how intimacy functions?

When there is much light, your pupils shrink. In darkness the pupils have to relax; a bigger aperture is needed in darkness. In light, a smaller aperture is enough.

That’s how the camera functions, and that’s how your eye functions; the camera has been invented along the lines of the human eye.

But if you stay long enough in the dark, by and by the darkness is no longer dark.

A subtle, suffused lights starts being felt.

And if you go on looking inside –it takes time — gradually, slowly, you start feeling a beautiful light inside.

It’s not as aggressive light like the sun; it’s more like the moon. It’s not graling, it’s not dazzling, it’s very cool. It’s not hot, it’s very compassionate, it’s very soothing, it’s balm.

That’s how intimacy works.

To put Osho’s thoughts in Intimacy (2001), it simply means that the doors of heart are open for you; you are welcome to come in and be a guest.

However, that’s only possible only if you have a heart that is not stinking with repressed sexuality, a heart that is natural. As natural as trees, as children.

There is nothing more beautiful than to be just simple and ordinary, no?

When you can achieve that, you can have as many intimate friends, as many intimate relationships, as possible because you’re not afraid of anything. You become an open book that anybody can read. There is nothing to hide.

When two lovers are really open to each other, when they are not afraid of each other and not hiding anything from each other, that is intimacy.

When they can say each and everything without any fear that the other will be offended or hurt. If the lover thinks the other will be offended, then the intimacy is not yet deep enough. Then it’s a kind of arrangement, which can be broken by anything.

But when two lovers start feeling that there is nothing to hide and everything can be said, and the trust has come to such a depth where even if you don’t say it the other is going to know, then they start become one.

Intimacy also gives a candid and sometimes disquieting portrait of everyday life where personal anxieties are never far from the surface.

Yet, at the heart of intimacy, then, is empathy, understanding, and compassion; these are the humanizing feelings.

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This essay was first published via Medium on May 2, 2018.