Cultivating emotional intimacy.
How do we even go about that?
How do we even approach another?
Another person without any clear assumptions about their appearance,
About judgments.
Are they like me?
Will they like me?
Fears,
Apprehensions.
In the poem by Emily Dickinson,
She asks a great question.
I'm nobody.
Who are you?
Are you nobody too?
And it's a good question because right away we are asked to be in the place of curiosity,
Genuine curiosity.
It's a good question.
Who are you?
Are you nobody too?
Asked from a place of openness and emptiness,
Without assumptions.
That's kind of like beginner's mind.
That's kind of what we cultivate when we sit every day.
We cultivate emptiness,
Cultivate awareness.
We cultivate our separation,
Perhaps from all of the identity,
All of that which we think we are,
All of the constructs.
And for a moment,
We can just sit in a place that's just pure beginner's mind.
And so the question is,
Can we bring that awareness with everyone we meet as if we're meeting them for the first time without the elements?
And then within that,
There's an opportunity to really see them to be in a place of genuine curiosity.
About them,
What would it be like to be curious around each other,
Even be curious around conflict?
Who are you?
Are you nobody,
Too?
Within that emptiness,
There's a freedom and creativity to be whoever,
Whomever at that moment without attachment to our identities we think we are.
Within that moment of emptiness,
We recognize the dependent co-arising that everything in self has no true inherent nature and we can be in touch with the lack of self,
The anatoma.
Within the sense of no self,
We have a choice.
We can see beyond the assumptions because there are none to make.
Within this space,
There's no separation.
We can see that person sitting in front of us as the same.
We all have true nature and we can recognize that any moment,
Especially if we're curious and open to it.
So what does that take?
Perhaps it takes a lot,
It takes practice,
Takes awareness.
And so every time we come to the cushion,
We get to practice.
We get to practice shedding the layers of separation.
We get to practice anatoma,
No self,
So we can be present and intimate with everything.
I'm nobody.
Who are you?
Are you nobody too?
