“. . . There are a few flowers of love that bloom only after long intimacies. There are seasonal flowers, too; within six weeks they are there . . . but within six weeks again they are gone forever. There are flowers that take years to come, and there are flowers that take many years to come. The longer it takes, the deeper it goes. But it has to be a commitment from one heart to another heart. It has not even to be verbalized, because to verbalize it is to profane it. It has to be silent commitment . . .
Forget relationships and learn how to relate.
Once you are in a relationship you start taking each other for granted–that’s what destroys all love affairs. The woman thinks she knows the man, the man thinks he knows the woman. Nobody knows either! It is impossible to know the other . . .
To think that you know your wife is very, very ungrateful. How can you know the woman? How can you know the man? They are processes, they are not things. The woman you knew yesterday is not there today . . . Relate again, start again, don’t take it for granted.
And the man you slept with last night, look at his face again in the morning. He is no more the same person . . . So much, incalculably much has changed. That is the difference between a thing and a person. Explore again, start again. That’s what I mean by relating.
Relating means you are always starting, you are continuously trying to become acquainted. Again and again, you are introducing yourself to each other. . .That is the joy of love: the exploration of consciousness.
And if you relate, and don’t reduce it to a relationship, then the other will become a mirror to you. Exploring him, unawares you will be exploring yourself, too. Getting deeper into the other, knowing his feelings, his thoughts, his deeper stirrings, you will be knowing your own deeper stirrings, too. Lovers become mirrors to each other, and then love becomes a meditation.”
– Excerpt from Osho “Love, Freedom, Aloneness”
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