Jointly

I am aware of aloneness and how that forms my life, my experiences, my days.    But there is more.    I am also aware that  I can only come to experience  jointly.    I have a different feeling when I acknowledge that I am handing the fate and form of an experience into the hands of someone or something else.

I have these moments of realizations that I am not at all independent, even while I often seem to act that way.   I know that my present moments are intimately tied up with decisions and essences of others.    For humans, it is their decision whether to enter into the experience.    For all else, it is simply their nature to become part of “my” experience.

All this is true of rocks, plants and humans.    My experience, and theirs, is shaped by what we actively create between us.   It is a binary adventure.   We each bring to the present moment our unique essence, and that shapes our experience.    I think that humans have this unique ability that allows us to choose whether to jointly enter into the shared experience.

The degree of intimacy in the encounter depends on a joint perspective and intent.   It cannot be forced from either side, but relies on the yielding, the letting go by each member of the joint effort.    The reality actually is in the relationship, neither experience is independent of the other.    There cannot be anything like a solitary relationship.   It is a joint effort.    Each member yields some level of solitary, alone autonomy to relate to the other.

I can extend an invitation, just as I do whenever I walk into my garden.   Let us do this jointly, together with one another.    I invite my plants to a moment, to a presence they alone are able to create jointly with me.    We yield to one another.   We share time and space.  We are joined in a shared intimate awareness.

And so it is too when friends and I spend time together.    It is a time and space that we jointly create.   We invite one another.   The relationship experienced between us is framed and shaped by what we are willing to put into it.    Walking, talking with friends is not at all unlike the experienced  world of walking in my garden, except that we each can choose.

We rise in our awareness of one another.    The joint awareness is what makes the moment and experience unique.

Intimacy is not a one-sided experience.   It requires a mutual yielding to the energy, forces and essence of the other.    In that joint time and space, reality happens.