"He who has no egoism, no I-ness and my-ness, who has friendship and compassion for all beings and hate for no living things...is dear to Me." XII, 13,14
The Tao Te Ching also reinforces the thorough significance of kindness in relationships:
Speaking with kindness creates confidence, thinking with kindness creates profoundness, giving with kindness creates love.
Such kindness is possible only when we give our people a space to be and recognize them as whole and independent in themselves. I love the words of Rainer Maria Rilke in this regard:
"Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distance continues to exist, a wonderful living side by side can grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole and against a wide sky."
That's what real love amounts to--letting a person be what he really is. Without a genuine freedom to be, pretensions creep into relationships. As someone has said it, 'Most people love you for who you pretend to be. To keep their love you keep pretending.' J. Krishnamurti says in Freedom From The Known:
"In all our relationships each one of us builds an image about the other and these two images have relationship, not the human beings themselves."
Thus without a genuine space and a freedom to be and to be a whole our relationships are caught in pretensions. As we make room for such a healthy space and freedom in relationships we fall in love with the same people so often as we discover wonderful sides to their personality hitherto disguised and most of all we discover the beauty and delight of pure being in them. It is then that relationships bloom like lotus flowers unstuck to any dirt of malice, hatred, prejudice and pretensions.
[ Dr. Surendra Soni has been exploring consciousness studies & applications for the last 29 years. He is a former university teacher with 20 years of experience in teaching and research ]
