The danger of the written word

With each word I write, I take all that I have learned in my 30 years… I sift through for the thoughts and the lessons that are relevant at this very moment. I bring with me so many experiences… things I have lived… stories I have heard and books I have read. And it is only with the sharing of these words that anyone could possibly understand what it is that I have inside of me.

"All the colors I am inside have not been discovered yet" This is a Shel Silverstein quote… a magnet on my fridge. I feel the same way about writing… that until the very moment that we put pen to paper or (in this case) fingers to keyboard… these words can only exist inside my head and I do not even know sometimes of their existence.

There is no such thing as osmosis of our thoughts… no matter how close your head is to mine, you will not know my thoughts. I love that. I love that we can live a whole universe in our minds, and we are the only ones with the key. I find such comfort in that at times. And then, other times… I long to give you a glimpse… to pull the blinds and let you all peer inside for a moment… to see into the depths of me… perhaps for a moment to see what I see.

Ah, but the danger. There is always the danger that you will see something different that what I wanted to show you. I can think that something is so clear and you may see something altogether different. I forget sometimes that we each bring with us our lifetime of experience and stories and books we have read. And for every interaction between two people, there are two perceptions of what took place. And they are both right… they are both the truth. We each have our own truth.

Misunderstandings are so easy… especially with the written word. I have learned this lesson the hard way a few times. Lessons that ended with harsh words that I have never really recovered from. My response used to be to run and hide. For a long time this stopped me from sharing my writing… always afraid what the person reading my words might be thinking… how they might perceive them. I am still sensitive to this. But now I have also realized that people will read what they want… they will see what they want. I cannot control it. All I can do is choose to share or not.

I choose these days again to share what I have inside of me with all of you. I write for myself to set these thoughts free. And I write for you.. whoever you are. I hope that you will be touched by them. I hope you will see some truth in them.. that maybe sometimes you will relate to them. In each of us are aspects of all of those around us. In that way it is natural to look for ourselves in the writing of others. To try to understand perhaps how we fit into each others lives… how we fit into our own lives.

For me, the best writings are the words that touch me so deeply that I cannot help but to take a piece of them with me. Perhaps in them I see a recognition of myself. Perhaps a lesson. Perhaps they are merely thoughts I have had myself before.

My experience is that usually the words that affect us the most are those that hold the most truth to our lives. They hold to us a mirror that we do not necessarily want to look into.

I remember the first time I read "The Road Less Traveled". That was one of those books for me… it held a lot of truths that I didn't want to see. It took me years to read it the first time… I kept putting it back on my shelf. I wasn't ready yet. Now.. many years later I have read it a few times.. I am no longer afraid of the mirror. With each book I read I look for the truth it holds in my life. There is always a truth.

The other thing about words is that I believe they always find us when we need them most. I can without fail go on to my shelf and pull a book that is calling to me.. open to a page at random and know that the message in there is meant for me. Without a doubt, I know that I am meant to read it. That's just how it is with words. I trust in that.

I will do it now... having just moved and unpacked my books. My bookshelves have been calling to me today… to just pick up a book and become fully absorbed in it and let the rest of the world fade away…

The book I selected tonight is called "love, freedom, aloneness – the koan of relationships" by Osho. I have been reading a few of his books recently and I find them to always hold a lot of truths for me. This is the page that I just opened to… of course there is relevance for me, as there always is. Those who know me well and know of my journey of the past six months will see so much relevance in this. This book has been part of my journey…. it held a mirror up to me that I needed to force myself to look into. And when I looked and saw only myself there I struggled at first… with feelings of loneliness and sadness… but in time I saw the beauty and I saw the strength and I found the love.

But no one is courageous enough to be alone. You need someone. Why do you need someone? You are afraid of your own loneliness. You become bored with yourself. And really, when you are lonely nothing seems meaningful. With someone you are occupied, and you create artificial meanings around you.

You cannot live for yourself, so you start to live for someone else. And the same is the case with the someone else also – he or she cannot live alone, so he is in search to find someone. Two persons who are afraid of their own loneliness come together and they start a play – a play of love. But deep down they are searching for attachment, commitment, bondage.

So sooner or later, whatsoever you desire happens. This is one of the most unfortunate things in this world. Whatsoever you desire comes to happen. You will get it sooner or later and the foreplay will disappear. When its function is done, it will disappear. When you have become a wife and husband, slaves to each other, when marriage has happened, love will disappear because love was just and illusion in which two persons could become slaves to each other.

Directly you cannot ask for slavery; it is too humiliating. And directly you cannot say to someone, "Become my slave." He will revolt. Nor can you say, "I want to become a slave to you." So you say, "I cannot live without you." But the meaning is there; it is the same. And when this – the real desire – is fulfilled, love disappears. Then you feel bondage, slavery, and then you start struggling to become free.

Remember this. It is one of the paradoxes of the mind: Whatsoever you get you will get bored with, and whatsoever you do not get you will long for. When you are alone you will long for some slavery, some bondage. When you are in bondage you will begin to long for freedom. Really, only slaves long for freedom – and free people try again to be slaves. The mind goes on like a pendulum, moving from one extreme to the other.

Loved doesn't become attachment. Attachment was the need; love was just the bait. You were in search of a fish named attachment; love was just the bait to catch the fish. When the fish is caught, the bait is thrown. Remember this, and whenever you are doing something, go deep within yourself to find out the basic cause.

If there is real love, it will never become attachment. What is the mechanism for love to become attachment? The moment you say to your lover or beloved "Love only me," you have started possessing. And the moment you possess someone you have insulted him deeply, because you have made him into a thing.

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To love freedom, to try to be free, means basically that you have come to a deep understanding of yourself. Now you know that you are enough unto yourself. You can share with someone, but you are not dependant. I can share myself with someone, I can share my love, I can share my happiness, I can share my bliss, my silence, with someone. But that is a sharing, not a dependence. If no one is there, I will be just as happy, just as blissful. Is someone is there, that is also good and I can share.

When you realize your inner consciousness, you center, only then will love not become an attachment. If you do not know your inner center, love will become an attachment. If you know our inner center, love will become devotions. But you must first be there to love, and you are not.