Don’t Hold Back: a poem by Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

brought to you by Dr. Lynda Klau

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A relationship
is one of the mysteries of life.
and because it exists between two
persons,
it depends on both.

Whenever two persons meet,
a new world is created..
Just by their meeting,
a new phenomenon comes into
existence –
one which was not, before,
one which never existed before.
And through that new phenomenon,
both persons
are changed and transformed.

Unrelated, you are one thing:
related,
you immediately become something
else.
A new thing has happened.

In the beginning, only peripheries meet.
If the relationship grows intimate,
becomes closer,
becomes deeper,
then, by and by,
centers start meeting.
When centers meet,
it is called love.

Where peripheries meet,
it is called acquaintance.
You touch the person from without,
just from the boundary,
then it is acquaintance.
Many times,
you start calling your acquaintance
your love.
Then you are in a fallacy.
Acquaintance is not love.

Love is very rare.
To meet a person at this center
is to pass through a revolution in
yourself,
because if you want to meet a person
at his center,
you will have to allow that person
to reach your center also.
You will have to become vulnerable,
absolutely vulnerable,
absolutely vulnerable,
open.

It is risky.
To allow someone to reach your center
is risky and dangerous.
You never know what that person will do
to you.
Once all your secrets are known,
once your hiddenness has become
unhidden,
once you are exposed completely,
what the other person will do
you never know.
Fear is there.
That’s why we never open.

You can allow somebody
to enter you to your centers
only when you are not afraid,
when you are not fearful.

So, I say to you
there are two types of living,
One is fear-oriented;
The other is love-oriented.

Fear-oriented living
can never lead you into a deep
relationship.

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You remain afraid,
and the other cannot be allowed
to penetrate you to your very core.
Up to an extent,
you allow the other to penetrate.
Then a wall comes
and everything stops.

The love-oriented person
is the religious person.
The love-oriented person
is one who is not afraid of the future,
one who is not afraid of the result
or of the consequence,
one who lives here and now.

That’s what Krishna says to Arjuna
in the Gita:
Don’t be bothered about the result.
That is the fear-oriented mind.
Don’t think about what will happen.
Just be here, and act totally.

Don’t calculate.
A fear-oriented mind
is always calculating,
planning,
arranging,
safeguarding.
His whole life is lost in this way.