The other is in you.....

I have to keep on reminding myself why I started this blog. It definitely was not an attempt to entertain hence the no-frills approach...It is a temptation to want to entertain. This is afterall the age of infinite possibilities, of infinite distractions. The simple art of being is in danger of becoming passe. We feel it is not enough to just be present. We have to be occupied, entertained, thrilled constantly. We need to have something thrilling to say. We are on show.

The most precious thing for me has always been to be in the presence or company of someone who is just there with me. Some of the best times of my life are just standing in the kitchen having a morning cup of coffee with my partner... I love being with him in the most fundamental sense. It never actually matters what we are doing when we are present with each other. Being together and feeling the melange of textures as sensations deep inside me. For these things I am insatiable. I only feel unfulfilled or disgruntled when this presence is highjacked...which often it is...Then the real work begins. To remember to just stay present with the feeling inside me of feeling abandoned in the moment or abandoning myself in the moment by becoming preoccupied with my thoughts of being abandoned...thereby abandoning my partner. You can never really feel totally abandoned if you stay present with yourself and whatever you are exepriencing...even if it is the disconnect from the other. You can only abandon yourself! When I am able to do this somehow the connection gets re-established. The art of being together is another endangered experience. Most of the problems that exist between the couples that I consult with are mostly about all the things that interfere with being present with each other. If we are not paying attention. Our stories about ourselves, our woes, our illnesses, our stresses, our dramas are all in the way of being present with the other. Deep down inside all of us we are strategising for centre stage. Compelled to colonise the attention with "me". "me", "me". Or we so often get caught up in what's happening on the outside, in the activity, in the need for excitement. This is how we miss the other, how we miss being together. Extraneous means of external origin: foreign to; not belonging. Belonging can only be experienced from the inside. The love you feel for the other, the love the other feels for you...the other can only be experienced in you. Otherwise we are in love with and making love to, living with, going out with, a thought, a construct, an ideal.