FIRST WORDS FROM THE PODCAST
Whenever we’re looking through the lens of karmic tension, there are habitual patterns of body, energy, and mind. Whenever we’re operating on autopilot because we’re following some established pattern that doesn’t really relate to our present situation, but it’s something that’s moving through time and just sort of steering the boat for us, any kind of karma, any kind of karmic fixation, any kind of tension or realm vision represents a loss of intimacy. The situation that we’re in is what ordinary mind would consider to be a very intimate situation: having a conversation with a friend, or having sex, or whatever we’re doing. If we’re doing it in a way governed by our karmas, by our karmic fixation, our compulsions, then no matter how close we appear to be to other people, we’re still experiencing a lack of intimacy. And I think everybody can understand that if you refer to your own experience.
In this tradition, one of the ways we can talk about what self-realization is is by saying that it’s a condition of total intimacy in which there is no barrier of body or energy or mind between you and everything else and where you’re experiencing everything else as an aspect of oneself. Not an aspect of this little self. That’s also a misinterpretation, but an aspect of one, continuous Self of which you are an expression. So, that is a condition of intimacy. In other words, you could say, “Oh, yeah, that sounds like a logical form of intimacy if there’s only one, continuous self, and I’m experiencing this as being integrated with that.” But it’s an actual experience of intimacy.
