What Is True Relation?

Great hidden entities are passing by. We are inexplicably connected to each other, through curiosity, longing, hope, and desire. Can we know each other? Can we love each other? Or are we doomed to be separate?

True relation is not just a feeling, which comes and goes, or an idea, which aims for something that does not exist. It is not loving or being loved, which are the experiences of beings that are essential separate. The actual connection is the truth of the relation.

Do you find happiness in the context of a person? Or do you actually sense and hold the eternal quality of the relationship, and is this primary? There is a fundamental and irrevocable choice: between superficiality and depth, narrowness and eternity. In silent recognition of mutual truth, a new relation arises. We perceive the truth of the other: what weakens them and what makes them thrive. And we join in reciprocal action to reformulate society on this basis.

There is a standard of the truth, quality, depth, meaning, and reality of the relation, and we have access to this standard. We want to cultivate this rare, wonderful faculty for perceiving relation. We all have this little understood and underdeveloped capacity, and we all catch glimpses of true relation. It is a component of the whole self, a precondition of becoming fully human.
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Elements of Connection

Never fail to strive to see into the heart of people and things. The inner, secret longing is the truth of the relation. Relation is multi-faceted, illimitable action, expressed with the totality and integrity of one’s being.

Our commitment is as important as the love of our life, because it is the love of our life, only not fixed on one person or one thing. It is as passionate as romance, as binding as marriage, as pure as love for a child.

Some things one should never do: satisfy one’s need at the expense of the integrity of another person. Personal interests are perfectly valid, but should never be pursued until the effects on others outer and inner state are taken into account.

Some things one should never think, if one wants to cultivate the exquisite capacity for love of humanity: desire a human being primarily as the means to satisfy a need.
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Deep Relations Alliance

Can deep relationships occur by chance only, spontaneously, sprouting up unexpectedly? Or is it possible to learn how to be less superficial, to become capable of real depth, and to design places where relationships of this kind occur?

We want to join together, to make a commitment, to set aside a place and time: to learn about how love in society itself is possible, and to establish deep relationships, personally, locally, and globally.
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True Friends Association

Consider the difference between ‘sisters’ and ‘true friends’. Sisters know and care about each other; but they may be very different from each other, and they may have entirely different ways of looking at the world. ‘True friends’ have the same intention: to become capable of connection on the deepest possible level. This is what true friends would find in each other: mystery, an unfathomable depth, pure beauty, the chance to conquer time and to annihilate separation. ‘True friends’ would make a commitment to each other, implicit or explicit. They would also engage in shared action, to a lesser or larger extent.

How would this network function? What would the ‘shared action’? I don’t know, but I do know that pure friendship, unencumbered by personal needs and goals, is transforming action. And it raises another possibility: a whole community of fellow friends, and the totally new institutions which they create.
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Relationships with the poor and faraway

The difference that exists between people, and especially between faraway peoples, is the same as the division in our own soul. Healing the division between peoples is the same as healing the division in our own soul, only more important, because the scale is so much greater, and so is the suffering.
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That’s not good enough!*

You are kind and sensitive, helping when you can. When you meet a suffering child, your heart melts. When you see injustice, you get angry. You never willingly or intentionally cause harm.
There is a gracefulness and beauty in you. Your face evokes something I cannot name. I am entranced.
You read the papers, and discuss global crises. You pay taxes and obey laws. You’re a member of non-profit organizations.
You make beautiful things. You give to the poor. You drink Fair Trade coffee. You protest injustice.
You give pleasure, and receive pleasure in return. You love your partner and your friends. Your family is more important to you than life itself, and you would do anything for them.

* Do you love strangers? Are you willing to give everything—your money and your own happiness? Do you know the extent and the limits of compassion? What is going on in the most hidden and private sector of your mind? I want to know!

more reflections about authentic relationships