MAKE A NEW CONNECTION (for pairs)
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Like a mirror
ABOUT THE TECHNIQUE
Before we can connect to the whole world, let us first connect honestly to one person! If we look deeply, we find that we are unable to be authentic even in our most intimate relationships. In the first few interactions with a person, we create an idea or image about the other person. Then onwards we relate with our idea of that person, rather than with the real person! Similarly, the other person creates an idea about us, and relates only with that idea.
In this meditation, we try to contact the other person as he or she is, and reveal ourselves as we are – spontaneously, without readymade ideas, without deceit. Obviously, such an interaction can never happen in words! The moment we start using words, we have stepped into the world of concepts. Instead, we use the direct language of silence to connect with the other person. When you connect with words, it is called communication. When you connect in silence, it is communion.
When you enter into real communion with another, a beautiful thing happens. Before your very eyes, the face of the person falls away, the personality falls away. Without words, the identity built on concepts can no longer stand! In its place, the Divine essence that is hidden within each of us stands revealed at last.
Instructions
Duration: 21 minutes
Step 1: This is a meditation to be done in pairs. Choose a partner of the same gender. (Choose someone you don’t know too well – or you will already have a readymade idea of the person!) Choose a fairly private space for your meditation. Sit in a comfortable way, facing each other, preferably on the floor.
Step 2: Sit for a few moments with your eyes closed. Feel deeply that you are going to reveal yourself to the other, just as you are. You are just tired of all the games you have to play with others. This one time, you are going to be totally open, totally vulnerable to the other. You are just going to be like a child. You have no idea what the other person is like. But whatever he/she may be like, you welcome them totally, exactly as they are.
Step 3: Open your eyes. Smile at your partner. Now put out both your hands and take his/her hands in your own. Just sit silently for a while, experiencing you both flowing towards each other.
Instructions (continuation)
Duration: 21 minutes
Then look deeply into each other's eyes. Just look. Don't have any idea what you should see there. Don't imagine yourself or the other to be loving or connected or any such thing.
Just get all ideas out of your head and be still. Look silently into the pools of the other's eyes. Just try to enter into the depth of the other person, not knowing what you might find.
Be clueless, just enter into the other through his/her eyes. Don't let your eyes move anywhere else. Simply dissolve in the depths of the other.
Slowly, slowly, you will find that the identity of the person melts before your gaze. There is no longer a man, a woman, a stranger, a friend! In the other's eyes, you catch a glimpse of something you know so intimately.
Some essence that belongs everywhere, and nowhere. You wonder, are you looking at another, or at yourself? Or is there no difference at all between the two? Instructions (continuation)
Duration: 21 minutes
If the tears flow, let them flow.
If laughter bubbles up, let it.
If you want to hug the other, do it!
But don’t speak a word.
Step 4:
When you have fully experienced this silent communion, release the other gently and close your eyes. Spend a few moments with yourself. Then get up silently and leave. Don’t speak to your partner, or to anyone. Spend the rest of the day silently, just resting deep inside yourself, savoring this experience.
