Intimacy is a faculty that imposes no conditions other than the reception of another. It requires no commitment, no agreements, no special status, no kindness; it requires only the choice to be in connection with another person. It requires no external conditions to know what is true.
Those conditions are negotiations for whether or not we will be willing to be intimate, but they are entirely incidental to the process. More often than not, they are only the demands of our historical or biological conditioning—demands on ourselves or others.
We can, in fact, face the conditioning, decouple it, and prevent it from ruling us. Sadly, more often than not, what passes for intimacy is enmeshment—a subtle form of hostage taking. In this dynamic we grow smaller, rather than bigger and more available for our lives.
This kind of conditioned relating—focusing primarily on this one other person—is a subtle form of an extension of our own ego. It does not bring us closer to accessing the state of mind we seek, which is more akin to the breath than it is to any gripping. It does the opposite of what true relating aims to do, which is to dissolve the sense of a separate self.
Enmeshment gives our separate self the illusion that the other person will provide us safety or refuge from the world by allowing us to stay away from it. But remember, if the ego is anything, it is isolation. Only now, we are in isolation with another body.
All true things perpetually dissolve the forms that would constrain them. Anything that requires or demands a specific form rather than merely allowing forms to arise, should be questioned. Especially when it demands that the form be held irrespective of shifting dynamics. Forms, in and of themselves, are good provided they are there to serve a deeper purpose and not demand that the deeper purpose serve the form.
