{There are two types of living. One is fear-oriented; the other is love-oriented.}
How is your love this Valentine’s Day? Perhaps the most loving thing you could do on Valentine’s Day is to reflect on your relationship. Don’t judge. Reflect with compassion and kindness.
The more aware we become of what it means to live in a fear-based life, as opposed to a love-oriented one, the more can see and know where we live in our romantic relationships. The poem below makes this contrast vivid and poignant for us. We can apply the lessons in this beautiful poem by Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh to our relationships with family, friends and colleagues, in addition to our romantic relationships.
Most of us have relationships which contain both fear and love, as opposed to being strictly fear-based or strictly love-based. This can also be true of our relationships with ourselves. What really matters is that we can identify what fear looks like and what love offers, hold both, and choose what we want to energize and what we want our relationships to grow into.
Don’t Hold Back by Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh
Brought to you by Dr. Lynda Klau
A relationship is one of the mysteries of life.
and because it exists between two
persons,
it depends on both.
Whenever two persons meet,
a new world is created..
Just by their meeting,
a new phenomenon comes into
existence –
one which was not, before,
one which never existed before.
And through that new phenomenon,
both persons
are changed and transformed.
Unrelated, you are one thing:
related,
you immediately become something
else.
A new thing has happened.
In the beginning, only peripheries meet.
If the relationship grows intimate,
becomes closer,
becomes deeper,
then, by and by,
centers start meeting.
When centers meet,
it is called love.
Where peripheries meet,
it is called acquaintance.
You touch the person from without,
just from the boundary,
then it is acquaintance.
Many times,
you start calling your acquaintance
your love.
Then you are in a fallacy.
Acquaintance is not love.
Love is very rare.
To meet a person at his center
is to pass through a revolution in
yourself,
because if you want to meet a person
at his center,
you will have to allow that person
to reach your center also.
You will have to become vulnerable,
absolutely vulnerable,
absolutely vulnerable,
open.
It is risky.
To allow someone to reach your center
is risky and dangerous.
You never know what that person will do
to you.
Once all your secrets are known,
once your hiddenness has become
unhidden,
once you are exposed completely,
what the other person will do
you never know.
Fear is there.
That’s why we never open.
You can allow somebody
to enter you to your centers
only when you are not afraid,
when you are not fearful.
So, I say to you
there are two types of living,
One is fear-oriented;
The other is love-oriented.
Fear-oriented living
can never lead you into a deep
relationship.
You remain afraid,
and the other cannot be allowed
to penetrate you to your very core.
Up to an extent,
you allow the other to penetrate.
Then a wall comes
and everything stops.
The love-oriented person
is the religious person.
The love-oriented person
is one who is not afraid of the future,
one who is not afraid of the result
or of the consequence,
one who lives here and now.
That’s what Krishna says to Arjuna
in the Gita:
Don’t be bothered about the result.
That is the fear-oriented mind.
Don’t think about what will happen.
Just be here, and act totally.
Don’t calculate.
A fear-oriented mind
is always calculating,
planning,
arranging,
safeguarding.
His whole life is lost in this way.
When you are not afraid,
then there is nothing to hide,
then you can be open,
then you can withdraw all boundaries,
then you can invite the other
to penetrate you to the very core.
And remember,
If you allow somebody to penetrate you
deeply,
the other will allow you to penetrate
into himself or into herself.
When you allow somebody to penetrate
you,
trust is created.
When you are not afraid,
the other becomes fearless.
Kabir has said somewhere:
I look into people.
They are so afraid, but I can’t see why.
They have nothing to lose.
It is like a person who is naked,
but never goes to take a bath in the river
because he is afraid his clothes will be
stolen.
This is the situation you are in:
you have no clothes,
but you are always afraid of losing them.
What have you got to lose?
Nothing.
This body will be taken by death.
Before it is taken by death,
give it to love.
Whatsoever you have will be taken away.
Before it is taken away,
why not share it?
That is the only way of possessing it.
If you can share
and give,
you are the master.
It is going to be taken away.
There is nothing you can retain forever.
Death will destroy everything.
So, if you follow me rightly,
the struggle is between death and love.
If you can give,
there will be no death.
Before anything can be taken away from
you,
you will already have given it.
You will have made it a gift.
There can be no death.
For a lover, there is no death.
For a nonlover, every moment is a death,
because, every moment,
something is being snatched away from
him.
The body is disappearing –
he is losing it every moment.
Then there will be death
and everything will be annihilated.
What is the fear?
Why are you so afraid of being known?
Even if everything is known about you
and you are an open book,
why do you fear?
How can it harm you?
The fear is just a false conception,
given by society,
that you have to hide,
that you have to protect yourself,
that you constantly
have to be
in a fighting mood,
that everybody is an enemy,
that everything is against you.
Nobody is against you,
Even if you feel somebody is against you,
he, too, is not against you.
everybody is concerned with himself,
not with you.
There is nothing to fear.
This has to be realized
before a real relationship can happen.
There is nothing to fear.
For your romantic needs and relationship issues in work and life, please check out
couples counseling, relationship issues and people centric leadership.
May your relationships flourish,
Lynda