It was a morning gift from Rilke. He opened a fresh vista for me when he pointed out that “those who sense eternity are beyond all fear.”
I’m not sure which comes first. Is it the sensing of eternity or the movement beyond all fear? Perhaps there is no causality. Perhaps they are both part of the same movement, the same free fall, the same plunge into emptiness. Entering the Gap requires a surrender that abandons all fear. Certainly all attachment or clinging to fear are left behind. There is a lack of awareness of consequences, there are no regrets of outcomes from the past, no grasping for the future. The void opens where there is no fear.
To face the reality of my death without fear is to sense the eternal. To be intimately aware that “this will end” is to step into the eternal realm, to approach the other shore.
The intimacy that I want to become a hallmark of my life is the experience of that place of no fear. That place has no past and no future. For me, intimacy is all about learning to simply be, to stand where I reside and be aware of that simple uncluttered spot. Intimacy is becoming aware of the presence of everything and anyone around me, how they exist just as they are.
The rug on my bathroom floor, the tree I touch in my garden, the companion riding beside me in my car are all present in intimate ways. They are present just by being there. For me to experience them without fear, to allow them to simply be as they are is to experience them in an intimate way. It happens in such a deep way that it brings a sense of eternity. The eternal present arises. There are no regrets, no grasping, no pushing away.
These are moments of intimacy, of deep awareness that we are all simply present. There is the bathroom rug, the garden tree, my beloved companion, and me. For wonderful moments, we all settle into a sense of eternity without fear.