Question: Could you speak about being an individual person and wanting nothing from anyone, also within a relationship? I wish to want nothing from another.
Answer: There is already a key in the word “individual person”. Individual means “not dividable”, impossible to take apart, whole, total, complete. That’s an individual.
We must not mix this up with “person”. Person comes from the word “persona”, and persona means mask. That is an image that we live up to and have become identified with.
I can’t help being like that
That’s my character, I was born that way
Yes, one does that automatically, I am born like that
We all have that in our family
That is what everyone thinks, isn’t it?
Personality is what we make: fine feathers make fine birds. Personality is the creation of an image, and that is what we do all the time, of course. When I go to the store and buy a certain outfit, and I go to the hairdresser and have my hair done in a certain way, I simply take on a type, a character. There is nothing wrong with that. Actors and actresses in a theatre can play out all kinds of characters: “type casting.” The crux is whether or not we are being identified with that certain character. If we are identified, we think that we are that character, and from that fixed idea we live permanently in comparison and measurement in proportion to our surrounding. We are not moving freely, whole and individually. We will feel constricted, and in an attempt to free ourselves, will start to criticize and/or control “the other, the circumstances.” We feel inferior or superior, dual and split.
Play with the different characters dependent on the different situations. When we are truly free to play with these characters, these personalities, we will experience immediately space for clear awareness, playful and flexible by nature. We play so many characters, roles, in a day: passenger in the bus, customer in the supermarket, mother/father, patient at the doctor’s office, employee, employer, spouse, etc.
In this way the individual plays the personality, and is aware of playing and free of it in the same moment.
Personality is the surface. The media eagerly take advantage of this concept by creating all kinds of personality types to obtain the desired results. People are manipulated in a sense of necessity to purchase certain items and to look a certain way. We are even manipulated in a specific way of behavior… for instance believing that we are “cool” by talking constantly in a mobile phone. We “belong” and live in an erroneous sense of oneness and security.
It is asking for drama and disappointment when two personalities go into a relationship. When there is no consciousness on individuality (wholeness), we think we need the other:
Without a partner I am only half a human being
Alone is just alone, I need a partner
He/she has a duty to make me happy if only he/she would do this…change that…
This image is connected to certain ways of behavior, expectations, models; the theatre play is already written and must unfold itself according to the script. The script functions only if both partners act according to that script, and the patterns that are laid out therein. But, it will never function in a truly fulfilling way, and it is incredibly brittle and rigid.
We watch the other closely, thus becoming incredibly dependent. This is not freedom! That is using each other like crutches in an attempt to move forward, an attempt to seek safely and security. The relationship is constantly evaluated against the background of our expectations, and that is how we decide whether to consider our relationship a success or a failure. If it “matches,” we love each other, and if it doesn’t we are irritated or worse.
We live in the premise of being each other's lover, but in fact we are each other’s prisoner. A prisoner will always attempt to free him- or herself because it is against his or her essentiality. When two “personalities’ connect in a relationship, we have in fact a marriage of conditionings. Such a marriage is impossible to be really and truly fulfilling.
So, if you still have the idea that someone must make you feel complete, you are mistaken.
When you have a crippled one and add to that another crippled one, you simply end up with a lot of lameness.
In the early days of the relationship you don’t notice that so much. You are sensing through the bio-chemicals that are freed from the brain, but these can only last in the body for three months. A friend once said to me: I woke up and turned around, looked at him and thought, “you are but a scrawny thing.” The chemicals had run down.
An individual is a whole being, a being authentically and totally impersonal listening to the inner voice: the voice that knows no script. An individual is sensitive and faithful towards that inner voice. The inner voice is the voice of the heart that beats in universal harmony with itself.
This individual lives as a truthful being. A truthful being IS undivided love.
Love is Love and cannot be given or taken. It is inextricable from “BEING”, like water in inextricable from wetness.
Here a relation is in wholeness, complete and nourishing in itself. Such a relation will be a radiant blessing for the entire environment and cannot possibly be experienced in the sense of separateness, being a-part.
This is so intimate. What a delight if someone is near, meditates or reads a book, and participates in casual harmony with the daily activities. Simply observing without expectations, seeing the partner as him or herself, and all therein. Nothing can be more intimate.
I am convinced, and here we enter a whole different area, that when we are in an intimate sexual relationship, we can make an agreement: “Sexually I will only be with you.” This is no love; this is simply an agreement that relaxes the rather busy western mind.
If sexuality would be love per definition, it would be practiced a lot less; you do not even need to know someone’s name. So, it has nothing to do with Love. Maybe we can speak of love when we speak of the sensitivity that can be touched among other things through sexuality. This agreement can bring a lot of peace into the place. But I have never observed that it brings real conclusive satisfaction (fulfillment) per definition.
The partner is such a wonderful mirror to reflect where we are not yet completely individually realised. When both live from the heart, being individual, then existence reveals a balance, in harmony and sensitive by nature. Then there is no dogmatic ethical standard to live up to. Certain things simply do not feel right. We wish to participate by heart, naturally. In fact you do not even need to interfere. We are living in natural harmony.
We don’t trust that anymore, that’s the drama. We watch everything closely. Children participate quite naturally. The whole universe is participating; it participates onto itself. That is the natural tendency. But we tell our children from the start: “Look out, be careful, don’t do that. You will spill it!” In this way we create some kind of duty from which the children try to escape in response. This is often also the case in a relationship. We are raised in such a way that we have lost our natural tendency to participate already by the time we are ready to go in a relationship. That’s the whole drama.
All of our being wants to participate without balancing rights and obligations, and without calculation. Rain participates to the soil, crop grows and we feed upon it. All is One and serves itself by feeding upon itself. It is a natural eternal cycle without interruption.
When we are free of dogmas, an entirely different sensitivity appears. We trust that things happen in their own way and in their rightful time… such as the trees blossom in the spring. We have got nothing to do with it. There is no control; existence does not obey ideas that we carry about it. It is in autonomous and complete harmonious participation: everything serves everything. This is called Kavita; it is the rhythm and rhyme of the universe. This is absolutely so, and it is so utterly rich and auspicious. Here we are free to be with or without our partner, because Being is already complete, individual, whole and holy. “I am” not dependent on someone or somebody, not dependent upon this or that.
Within that individual heart is nectar hidden. This nectar has a scent, a flavor, that spreads itself. And like honey in a flower it attracts bees by itself. Here the partner loves to be with you. Then it is a blessing to spend time together. Then we find a special harmony in silence; a harmony in all of the ebbing and flowing of daily life and living.
Freedom always implies balance. This balance can only be experienced from a flexible, individual heart. A heart that has got nothing to lose, and obeys to the intuitive inner voice. The inner voice is free of dogmas and pre-printed scripts.
Once I asked my Master on the banks of the holy river Ganges: “For thousands of years people have bathed in this river to be purified of their sins. What in fact is a sin?” ShantiMayi answered: “The only sin is not listening to your inner voice.”
When we take this to heart, we start to see how often we do something against our better judgment. Sometimes the inner voice appears only in a flash, yet that’s enough.
If we listen to this voice, we are always at home with ourselves.
From here we have no wish to want anything from anybody.
That has become impossible.
We rest in the Silence of the Heart, peacefully and unconditionally.
Satsang Jivanjili 11 - 2 – 2002, Heerhugowaard, Nederland.