Mirror, mirror on the wall, show me why I always fall
    
 
My partner acts jealous and it feels as if he makes me more important than I am.

“Not jealous — I think he feels that he is inferior. You are using the wrong word. He thinks that you are a goddess and he is worthless. Is that what it is? (she nods) Then it is not jealousy!

“That too is a way of manipulating people — to make them very important. That’s a kind of strategy, a very parasitical trip. When you make somebody very high, you have power over the person because it is in your power now to keep him high or throw him down. If anybody — for example, [your partner] — puts you very high on a pedestal, you think he is making you powerful. But he is also becoming powerful, because only he can keep you on that pedestal, nobody else. And he knows that — that you will have to depend on him otherwise you will not be on the pedestal; you will be an ordinary woman. He has made a goddess of you! So it is a very very subtle strategy to keep control over you.
“By being dependent on you, he makes you dependent on him. And you enjoy the trip — that he is making you so high. When you enjoy the trip, you have to fulfill a few conditions. This is the trick; this is very ancient. [He] has not invented it; it is very ancient.
“Man has always put woman on a pedestal so that she cannot come down. Man has either worshipped woman or condemned her. Either she is a worm crawling on the earth or she is a goddess, but he never makes her equal to himself; that is dangerous. Both are okay — either she is very high in the sky, untouchable, or she is very low, again untouchable, but she is never equal. When a woman is very low she can be repressed, punished for anything that the man feels is wrong. Or she is a goddess; then she can be thrown from the pedestal — that too is a kind of punishment.
“But woman needs to be equal to man — neither low nor high — and for that man is not ready, because to make the other equal means you cannot control her any more. You cannot control an equal. Low and high can both be controlled but the equal person is free; the equal is equal.
“So get down from the pedestal. Just tell him that you are a human being, not a goddess. Now what are you doing? — you must be pretending to be a goddess, so you are cooperating with him. Don’t cooperate! You simply tell him, ‘I am an ordinary woman as you are an ordinary man. I don’t want to be worshipped like a goddess. I have all kinds of desires as any woman will have. I am just plain ordinary.’ Get down from the pedestal rather than him throwing you; simply get down. You will feel good and you will unburden him also.
“If he cannot love you, then he will find some other woman whom he can put on a pedestal and worship. He may be in need of a mother and not in need of a beloved; then that is his business. But you get down from the pedestal. Never allow anybody to put you on high, otherwise he will manipulate you. He will say, ‘I have made you so high — now you have to follow me. Don’t do this; that doesn’t suit you. Don’t do that; that is below you. Keep your status.’
“So you enjoy the status but then you feel petrified. You would like to be an alive human being. So you are trying to do two contradictory things. If you want to be a fully warm-blooded woman, a real woman, then get down from the pedestal. All pedestals are a kind of disease I call ‘pedestalitis’.
“Get down and tell him that you are not going to become a goddess. Be natural and true and whatsoever happens has to be accepted. If he leaves you, that’s his business. If he remains with you, you will be more free; he will be more free. And this will be helping him too...because he is also wrong. He will never be happy. First you put a woman on a pedestal; then you cannot make love to her. How can you make love to a goddess? — it looks ugly. You cannot make love to your mother and you have put her up as a mother, a mother superior. Then you cannot make love to her, or even if you do, you feel guilt. He will not be happy, because he will continuously suffer from inferiority; he has made you superior.
“Tell him ‘I am just an ordinary woman. I don’t want any other respect.’ That is the greatest respect we can pay to each other as human beings! That will help.”

On Overwhelm?
    
Often a feeling that I can’t describe fills my heart and my whole being. It is there in deep love — but a similar feeling also comes up in fear, anguish, pain, helplessness and frustration.

There is certainly something very similar in very different emotions: the overwhelmingness. It may be love, it may be hate, it may be anger — it can be anything. If it is too much then it gives you a sense of being overwhelmed by something. Even pain and suffering can create the same experience, but overwhelmingness has no value in itself. It simply shows you are an emotional being.
This is typically the indication of an emotional personality. When it is anger, it is all anger. And when it is love, it is all love. It almost becomes drunk with the emotion, blind. And whatever action comes out of it is wrong. Even if it is overwhelming love, the action that will come out of it is not going to be right.
Reduced to its base, whenever you are overwhelmed by any emotion you lose all reason, you lose all sensitivity, you lose your heart in it.
It becomes almost like a dark cloud in which you are lost. Then whatever you do is going to be wrong.
Love is not to be a part of your emotions. Ordinarily that’s what people think and experience, but anything overwhelming is very unstable. It comes like a wind and passes by, leaving you behind, empty, shattered, in sadness and in sorrow.
According to those who know man’s whole being — his mind, his heart and his being — love has to be an expression of your being, not an emotion.
Emotion is very fragile, very changing. One moment it seems that is all. Another moment you are simply empty.
So the first thing to do is to take love out of this crowd of overwhelming emotions. Love is not overwhelming. On the contrary, love is a tremendous insight, clarity, sensitivity, awareness.  But that kind of love rarely exists, because very few people ever reach to their being.
There are people who love their cars.... That love is of the mind. And then you love your wife, your husband and your children — that love is of the heart. But because it needs change to remain alive, and you cannot allow it its changeability, it becomes stale. The same husband every day — it is such a boring experience. It dulls your sensitivity, it dulls every possibility of joy. You slowly start forgetting the language of laughter. Life becomes simply work without any joy. And one has to work because one has a wife and one has children.
You have to take your love out from the emotional grip where it has been since your birth, and you have to find a route to your being. Unless your love becomes part of your being, it is not much different from pain, suffering, sadness.

Experience life in all possible ways
good-bad, bitter-sweet, dark-light,
summer-winter. Experience all the dualities.
Don't be afraid of experience, because
the more experience you have, the more
mature you become.

‎'TRUTH is simple. Very simple-so simple that a child can understand it. In fact, so simple that only a child can understand it. Unless you become a child again you will not be able to understand it. It is an experience, not speculation.

I would like to make you more insecure, more uncertain -- because that's how life is... When there is more insecurity and more danger, the only way to respond to it is by awareness. ... In your unintelligence you feel secure -- all idiots feel secure. In fact, only idiots feel secure. A really alive [person] will always feel insecure. What security can there be? Life is not a mechanical process;... it cannot be certain, it is an unpredictable mystery. Nobody knows what is going to happen the next moment. ... a secure life will be worse than death. ... Life is full of uncertainties, full of surprises -- that is beauty! ... When you say you are certain, you simply declare your death; you have committed suicide ... an intelligent [person] always remains uncertain.

Consciousness without thinking: that’s what awareness is. Being alert and with no thought. Try it! Whenever you see thinking gathering, disperse it! pull yourself out of it! Look at the trees with no screens of thinking between you and the trees. Listen to the chirping of the birds with no chirping of the mind inside. Look at the sun rising and feel that inside you also a sun of consciousness is... rising… but don’t think about it, don’t assert, don’t state, don’t say. Simply be. And, by and by, you will start feeling glimpses of awareness, sudden glimpses of awareness — as if a fresh breeze has entered into your room which was getting stale and dead; as if a ray of light has entered into the dark night of your soul; as if, suddenly, life has called you back.

Ice-olation

We are miserable because we are too much in the self. What does it mean when I say we are too much in the self? And what exactly happens when we are too much in the self? Either you can be in existence or you can be in the self--both are not possible together. To be in the self means to be apart, to be separate. To be in the self means to become an island. To be in the self means to draw a boundary line around you. To be in the self means to make a distinction between 'this I am' and 'that I am not'. The definition, the boundary, between "I" and "not I" is what the self is--the self isolates. And it makes you frozen--you are no longer flowing. If you are flowing the self cannot exist. Hence people have become almost like ice-cubes. They don't have any warmth, they don't have any love--love is warmth and they are afraid of love. If warmth comes to them they will start melting and the boundaries will disappear. In love the boundaries disappear; in joy also the boundaries disappear, because joy is not cold.

Commentary:
In our society, men in particular have been taught not to cry, to put a brave face on things when they get hurt and not show that they are in pain. But women can fall into this trap too, and all of us at one time or another might feel that the only way to survive is to close off our feelings and emotions so we can't be hurt again. If our pain is particularly deep, we might even try to hide it from ourselves. This can make us frozen, rigid, because deep down we know that one small break in the ice will free the hurt to start circulating through us again. The rainbow-colored tears on this person's face hold the key to breaking out of this 'ice-olation'. The tears, and only the tears, have the power to melt the ice. It's okay to cry, and there is no reason to feel ashamed of your tears. Crying helps us to let go of pain, allows us to be gentle with ourselves, and finally helps us to heal.