The Meditator in Love

    

 

I’m experiencing difficulty in maintaining a relationship as well as meditating and moving deeper into my inner world.

  

When you move on an inner pilgrimage, the energies turn inwards, the same energies that were moving outwards, and suddenly you find yourself alone like an island. The difficulty arises because you are not really interested in being yourself, and all relationships look like a dependence, a bondage. But this is a passing phase; don’t make it a permanent attitude. Sooner or later when you are settled inside again, you will be overflowing with energy and will want to move into a relationship again.

So for the first time that mind becomes meditative, love appears to be like a bondage. And in a way it is true because a mind that is not meditative cannot really be in love.

That love is false, illusory; more of an infatuation, less like love. But you have nothing to compare it with unless the real happens, so when meditation starts, the illusory love by and by dissipates, disappears. Don’t be disheartened, one thing. And the second thing, don’t make it a permanent attitude; these are two possibilities.

If you become disheartened because your love life is disappearing, and you cling to it, that will become a barrier in your inner journey. Accept it — that now the energy is seeking a new path and for a few days will not be available for the outward movement, for activities.

If somebody is a creator and he meditates, all creativity will disappear for the time being.

If you are a painter, suddenly you will not find yourself in it. You can continue, but by and by you will have no energy and no enthusiasm. If you are a poet, poetry will stop. If you are a man who has been in love, that energy will simply disappear. If you try to force yourself to move into a relationship, to be your old self, that enforcement will be very very dangerous. Then you are doing a contradictory thing: on one hand you are trying to go in, on the other you are trying to go out. It is as if you are driving a car, pressing the accelerator and at the same time pressing the brake. It can be a disaster because you are doing two opposite things together.

Meditation is only against false love.

The false will disappear, and that’s a basic condition for the real to appear. The false must go, the false must vacate you completely; only then are you available for the real. So for a few days forget all relationships.

The second thing, which is also a very great danger, is that you can make it a style of life. It has happened to many people. They are in the monasteries — old monks, orthodox religious people who have made not being in a love relationship a life-style. They think that love is against meditation, and meditation is against love. That’s not true. Meditation is against false love, but is totally with true love.

Once you are settled, when you can go in no further, you have reached the core of your being, the bottom rock, then you are centered. Suddenly energy is available but now there is nowhere to go. The outer journey stopped when you started meditating, and now the inner journey is also complete. You are settled, you have reached home.

This energy will start overflowing. It is a totally different type of movement, the quality of it is different; because it has no motivation. Before you were moving towards others with a motivation; now there will be none. You will simply be moving towards others because you have too much to share.

Before you were moving as a beggar, now you will be moving like an emperor. Not that you are seeking some happiness from somebody; that you have already. Now the happiness is too much. The cloud is so full it would like to rain. The flower is so full that it would like to ride on the winds as fragrance and go to the very comers of the world. It is a sharing.

A new type of relationship has come into existence.

To call it a relationship is not right because it is no longer a relationship; rather it is a state of being. Not that you love, but that you are love.

So don’t be disheartened or make it a style of life; it is just a passing phase. Renunciation is a passing phase — celebration is the goal of life, renunciation is just a means. There are moments when you have to renounce; just as when you are ill and the doctor says to fast. Fasting is not going to be a style of life. Renounce food, and once you are healthy, enjoy it again — and you will be able to enjoy it more than ever. Don’t make fasting your life. It was a passing phase, it was needed.

Just fast a little with love and relationships, and soon you will be capable of moving again, again overflowing, and moving without motivation. Then love is beautiful.

Osho