Relationships
A Spiritual Perspective
A generous guide offering a spiritual perspective on many areas of life such as relationships
John David’s Multi-faceted Approach to Freedom, The pointless Joy of Freedom is an indispensable guide for facing the modern world.
Inspired by quotations from powerful spiritual figures throughout history, this book gives a deep understanding of John David´s teachings and his multi-faceted approach.
With 30 short biographies of ancient and contemporary masters.
Wisdom Reminders
Short Videos with John David's words illustrated by film
Getting Lost in a Relationship
Except from “The Pointless Joy of Freedom”
Thuli Baba was an extremely unusual traditionally minded master. As a child he was completely absorbed in spiritual life. His father was a holy man and was Thuli Baba’s master. Thuli Baba had had a family but when I met him he lived with his close disciples in a gorgeous ashram built by a western disciple. He became well known to a small group of westerners. He was a traditional master, so men and woman lived separately at the ashram. He had a wonderful chuckle and was uncompromising.
Crossing the River on a Crocodile
To realise the ultimate Truth you have to get rid of relationships, you have to get rid of worldly attachments. If you think that we can realise our True Nature by living in the world and enjoying this world, all the pleasures of this world, that is compared to sitting on a crocodile and trying to cross the river. Because the crocodile will kill you.
– Thuli Baba
Dear John David,
For me it feels like there is a natural yearning to be close and intimate with other people. Thuli Baba is saying that you have to get rid of attachments, like relationship, and I find this confusing. I think perhaps I am just misunderstanding something, so could you please comment on this topic of relationships and Truth? Could it be that the relationships themselves are not the problem, rather it is the attachments and structures that then bind us within those relationships?
It’s quite clear that for almost everybody this issue of intimacy with another human being is a strong structure, a strong issue. In the eastern traditions of Buddhism and Hinduism there is a deep understanding that if you seriously want to become a spiritual seeker you become celibate and stay alone.
When we go to India for the January retreat each year we often visit two ashrams: one is Thuli Baba’s and the other is Swami Dayananda’s. In Swami Dayananda’s ashram they teach Vedanta and they completely adopt this tradition. It’s completely accepted that men and women are separate. In Thuli Baba’s ashram, which is rather small compared to Swami Dayananda’s ashram, there are around twelve men and three women, a very small group of people. He also makes his position absolutely clear – the men and the women are completely separate. The main group of people in his ashram are young men who are called brahmacharyas, meaning they have made a decision to be celibate…..
I asked Thuli Baba about this, making the point that in western countries it’s rather common to have a relationship, and that we don’t really have any tradition for deciding on celibacy. His response was that karmic destiny requires some people to live as householders – being in relationship, working to raise a family. Then when the children have grown and the family has been provided for there is a withdrawal from intimacy and a focus on spiritual life. You might even leave the family and go on your way as a spiritual seeker. And for Thuli Baba this is completely essential.
This is naturally quite hard for western people to deal with as we don’t really have any culture that supports this notion. In fact it’s the opposite. We’re brought up with a strong conditioning to be in a couple, to be a married couple. Over the years of our community this has always been something of an issue. What kind of advice could I give? Gradually over these years, after lots of consideration, it always seems to me that it’s case by case.
But at the same time it became clear to me that people joining our community are joining an experiment in conscious living, probably for a limited time, because they want to become awakened, to become free and to live in this freedom. So then the best advice that I can give them is to stand on their own feet, and from this position to relate as spontaneously as possible and as intimately as possible with the other residents.
We have a lovely connection with an English tantra teacher who comes to our community every year, and gives energy encouragingthis intimacy. So my own advice to western people is that if you seriously want to become awakened, if you seriously want to be free, better to stay out of any fixed love story.
In the past it may have appeared that I was against marriage, against relationship and family and so on. This was always a misunderstanding; rather, I’m for awakening. This is something that very few people are going to choose in their lives. So for these few people my advice is to be intimate – I’m not against sexuality – but to stay out of a fixed, marriage-type relationship.
This advice is mostly ignored because actually it’s very difficult for western people. Our conditioning around intimacy and relating is very, very strong, partly because we have funny ideas about love. In our culture love is something that comes from the other.
He loves me. She loves me. I love you. You love me. We’re going to be saved! But of course it doesn’t work like that. This love is actually something that is inside us, and so expecting it from somewhere or someone else leads to tremendous misunderstandings. However much I might talk about this, people very quickly forget my advice when they get into a closed, conditional relationship.
So I thought tonight I would illustrate what I’m talking about. As far as I can see – over the last fourteen years of the community and probably another six years when I was teaching without a community – one of the things that sabotages people more than any other issue is getting attached to relationship.
When this happens you can see that actually Truth was never really the first priority. In fact the priority was to find a boyfriend or a girlfriend and get them under contract, knowing that then you could be happy forever because you had somebody to love you. In fact, this is just falling into the traditional, conditioned trap of relationship.
Right now we have a particularly good example of how this sabotages us. Jill has been here five years and has given a lot of support to the community. When she first came she told me a bit about her life. She exposed the fact that she was quite relaxed about having boyfriends and that she’d had quite a lot of relationships, but unfortunately they often finished in a difficult way.
She was tired from these waves of ‘I love you’ and then the breaking down of the relationship and all the sadness and might-have- beens and so on that came out of that. I suggested that here in the community it’s a little bit different because the focus here is on yourself.
She appeared to be very sincere about doing things differently and wanting to find her own inner peace. As time passed I discovered that she was quite hotly involved with one guy in the community and gradually I discovered that actually this relationship was very dramatic with both of them doing everything they could to make the other one jealous. Anyway, it got to the point where they were actually having a physical fight and out of this fight it was decided that the relationship was not really healthy anymore. I recommended they carry on living in the community but leave each other alone. Which I think they more or less did, for a while.
Over the next months they gradually began tormenting each other again until Jill found another person, Pedro, to be with. And things went on. Another year passed and it became clear that now after two years there wasn’t much sign of peace in Jill. In fact she became recognised as the biggest drama queen in the community. There were almost daily dramas, often fuelled by jealousy.
She could not see that she was very much attached to her separate ‘me’ and that this gave her strong feelings of being possessive of the other – ‘my’ boyfriend. This then led to jealousy if ‘my’ boyfriend was looking at or hugging some other person. Any woman who was friendly to ‘her’ boyfriend was seen as doing something terribly wrong and was treated very coldly.
Her obsessive behaviour continued, not bringing her any closer to what she had wanted when she first came. She was simply carrying on the same structures that had been in her life before joining the community. She ignored my advice that she should stay out of relationship and should look at what came up inside her and take responsibility for these strong feelings; try to understand that they came out of an idea of herself as a separate ‘me’.
Anyway, she continued to carry on with Pedro and after a big drama it was negotiated that they would absolutely leave each other alone and they would both stay in the community. But even then they didn’t really accept that decision, and it was beginning to feel as if Jill wasn’t making any progress at all with her inner work.
Everything came to a head a few months ago and it was decided that she would go to the retreat we have in Ukraine. She’d have a silence badge and she would stay quiet, stay with herself. To support the process, Pedro stayed in Germany.
Anyway, to cut a long story short, Jill spent the time torturing herself with fantasies about Pedro coming to the Ukraine community, meeting a woman, falling in love and having children with that woman. Now she’s back from the retreat and continuing to create more illusions and fantasies that of course never have any reality.
Sitting quietly, meditation and Self-Enquiry are all simple and obvious tools for calming the mind and developing self-awareness. Constantly engaging the mind with fantasies leaves no space for peace or self-knowledge.
So Pedro has decided to go back to his old life and Jill will leave the community. I find this an extremely good example of how we sabotage ourselves. She came to the community with a very sincere wish to become peaceful and yet she fell into the regular patterns of her conditioned mind. And now, three and a half years later, she gives up and leaves the community and any efforts towards peace because she can’t let her relationship structures go.
Postscript.
I understand that shortly after they left the community they chose to live together.
Love and Relationship
Except from “The Pointless Joy of Freedom”
We have two quotes from Deepak Chopra and I find them very interesting because he is not particularly from an Advaitabackground. He was actually very close to the Maharishi Yogi, but of course Truth is one, so what he is saying about love is exactly what Advaita says about love. Deepak trained as a doctor and cared for the Maharishi intimately for a year. Since then he has become one of the world’s best-known spiritual teachers.
Accepting ourselves
Love is our being, being is existence, so love is existence. Your essential state is love. What distorts that is that we look outside for love not realising that the love we experience outside is a reflection of the love we have for our deepest self. When I say deepest self, I don’t mean your ego, which is not yourself. The ego is a socially induced hallucination. I mean your soul, which is beyond your self-image. It is your true Self. Your true Self is love.
– Deepak Chopra
Attracting a profound lover
The first secret to attract a profound lover or a soul mate into your life is to fully embrace, love and accept yourself just as you are. Loving you, with all your flaws and insecurities, turns you into a powerful manifesting magnet. By diving deep into self- acceptance you will find that it is much easier for everyone else to feel at peace when hanging out with you. When you are okay with all your parts, it is easy to open the door to intimacy with anyone.
– Deepak Chopra
Dear John David,
When I was young, I developed quite a strong mechanism to control love. I become aware of this after relationships with women where I gave off a very good impression to begin with and all went very nicely, but after a short time the feeling of love and intimacy would deepen in me and I would close off from the person, ignoring them and treating them very badly. On the journey to come to freedom, is it good to face and challenge issues of relating, or better to simply stay away until something becomes more grounded in me? A deeper self-acceptance maybe. I feel a big struggle with this.
Everybody has some problem with relationships and probably the problem gets stronger the more intimate a relationship is. I’ve been giving advice about relationships and love for twenty years but now I understand that no advice helps, because relationships are driven by very, very powerful conditioning.
We start off as a little child with our parents, before we even know the word relationship, and for many years we are brought up in the aura of our parents’ love affair. Day by day, without anybody needing to talk about it, we are absolutely conditioned by this love affair….
When it comes to birthdays, Daddy buys presents for Mummy, maybe some flowers, whispering ‘I love you,’ and so on. So children grow up with this kind of love affair happening in front of them, conditioned with the idea that love comes from the other. I would guess that very few people ever come across the idea that love in fact is our very existence.
Love is something that somebody gives me and when they give it I feel good. When they give it to somebody else I definitely don’t feel good. So everybody is looking for that perfect partner who will give them love. Even if the parents do not have a very loving relationship the children will still want to create something along the same lines, but better. And as we grow up, of course, the hormones act as a strong magnet. So if you are at the level of the hormones no advice is going to help, and, as I can observe, it doesn’t make much difference how old you are. And remember that probably the most difficult thing to deal with in your daily life is relationships with other people, so it’s going to be a strong issue for almost everyone.
When you are alone you only have to deal with your own stuff. But as soon as you have closer contact with another human being then it gets a bit more complicated. It can be anything from an acquaintance or a work colleague to something more intense and intimate like actually living together.
More intimate relationships between two people often lead us into a lot of suffering because the relationships usually serve the ego of each partner instead of being a shared, open, energetic connection.
Very often, of course, the relationship starts full of hope. We have had other partnerships and we think we’ve learnt our lessons and now something new is happening. It’s a new beginning with a new partner and it’s very exciting and wonderful … and so on.
But of course, little by little, it’s very common to find that after some months, maybe after one or two years, things are less easy. This is usually because each person is attached to their particular story. When you live alone you’re dealing with only one story – your own – and if you’re a spiritual person you’re trying to become clear of this one story. But as soon as you enter an intimate relationship with another human being you’re also dealing with that person’s story.
So now there are two stories and if this intimate connection continues you also have a third story, which is the story of us. There are usually all kinds of conditioned, repeating structures operating inside these three stories. It can even be that you’ve chosen each other because you reflect certain of each other’s structures, even if you’re not conscious of that.
So after some months or some years, very often this weight of stories – your story, my story and our story – starts to take a toll and more and more time is spent on sorting out misunderstandings, different opinions, different beliefs, different desires. Very often these relationships break down and people may just split and try new partnerships or they may persevere, getting some counselling help to deal with all the issues that come up between them.
To some extent we can find this useful. If we are starting out on a spiritual journey and we haven’t had relationship experience then it can be very good to get caught up in some sort of sticky story. In this kind of situation you could learn a lot about yourself because one of the great things about partnership is that you end up as very strong mirrors for each other. Assuming you have a gutsy and energetic connection I’m sure your partner would be very happy to tell you all the things they find they have observed about you!
So in that way relationships can be very useful because they can really help you to know yourself. If we haven’t had much experience of living intimately with another person then we’ve also not really lived intimately with ourselves. But what we can see by taking space from relationship and coming deeply to our being is that actually we’re all one. There aren’t really two. There’s not really you and me. We’re all One.
But it’s hard to think of anybody who ever took my advice in this regard! Can’t even think of one. But I keep trying. The guy asking the question at the start of this chapter has a problem. He is on the road to freedom and he wonders whether he should challenge the issues of relationship or simply stay away. He feels a big struggle with this.
I think when he gets into something more serious than the odd back staircase meeting in the night he finds things get more difficult. So my advice to him, which I know he isn’t likely to follow and he doesn’t have to follow, but I’ll tell him anyway, is first to become more grounded and then carefully test the water of relationship. This is very good advice but basically bullshit because it doesn’t work like that. So my true advice is to do the best you can. Because anyway that’s all you can do, and not only with the subject of intimacy but with everything you do in your life. You can only do the best you can do.
Any great idea of doing it perfectly at some point is all right but in this moment now you can only do what you can do. I like very much what Deepak said about that: ‘… completely embrace, love and accept yourself just as you are and then the Self acts like an enormous magnet and attracts the right person or situation to you.’
As you become more grounded and you become more clear that your very being is love then you don’t really need to be looking for your own partner. In the community there is enough connectedness and understanding about authentic love that for the last year most people have not been searching for a partner to have a love story with.
At the same time there has been a lot of intimacy happening, without much story attached to it. I must say I am very touched by this. I don’t remember giving that advice but I am happy it is happening. This is very particular, very unusual. Have I answered your question?
This topic came up recently for me – not with an exclusive relationship as it used to be, but I had a deeper meeting with someone for sometime. The same behaviour came up, pushing that person away, ignoring, punishing.
After you gave me the advice to just do my best, this is now quite different. I had a talk with this person and I could see it. It’s completely not comfortable.
To see the old patterns?
Yes, really clearly, and it was shocking. Pushing someone away just because they feel love towards me is a very strong thing. Before there would have been such a strong self-judgement but now there is more of a cool seeing and acceptance.
What you are describing is a particular structure of your conditioning and as you start to see it hopefully you start to accept yourself. It’s you, and actually it would help your relationships if you were able to discuss that with your partners. Probably they also have a structure of ‘I’m not good enough’ so when you start reacting from your structure they probably immediately judge themselves from their structure and the whole thing gets highly complicated.
But once you clearly see this structure and you discuss it with your partner you are bringing them into a closer understanding of you and it can only help your intimacy. It can only help and you will feel better because you’ve been able to be more honest in your sharing. It may not stop your structure happening again but at least your partner doesn’t have to take it so personally then and perhaps he or she is even able to give some support in seeing it. Then it becomes a valuable relationship because you are close enough and are able to give feedback to each other. It becomes an honest, open relationship. That kind of relating is rather valuable.
But take care not to get stuck in that kind of relationship story because other people can also give you insights about your structure from different angles. So once you become clear about a certain structure you have, then you actually don’t need that regular partner to keep reminding you; everybody can remind you.
Years ago I used to publicly give the advice not to have a relationship if you are serious about your spiritual work. An Indian spiritual teacher doesn’t even think of people in relationship. A master in India would just assume that all his students are completely in a one-on-one relationship with him and have no interest in intimate relationship.
Anyway, the advice I used to happily give out in all my public meetings wasn’t wrong, but it was silly because the people I was talking to anyway hadn’t achieved the level of spiritual work where having a relationship or not would make a difference. So it’s not really about relationship, but for sure at a certain level in the spiritual work it makes a lot of sense to really focus on the priority to come to your own inner being, to focus on love itself.
Then relationship and the other things in life are less important, because we don’t have to do anything for this deeper love. It’s our nature so it’s very simple. But unfortunately, because of all the wrong information, very few people are looking inside for this love. They are nearly all looking outside for it. And the more empty and destitute we feel inside, the more we’re trying to pull somebody to give us love. Very tragic and completely common.
You don’t have to do anything to get love. If you are doing something to get love, that is not really love. It is what everybody thinks love is, but it is not really love. Real love is just your being. You are this love you are searching for. Similarly, we want to get enlightenment, not realising that we are already That. It is our very nature. The thing we are seeking is our very nature. There is nothing to find.
A Deeper Truth to Love
Except from “The Pointless Joy of Freedom”
We’ve already met Eckhart Tolle, and I have a quote here where he talks beautifully about relationship from the standpoint of Truth.
Eckhart Tolle (r.) with his Wife (l.) and Ram Dass
No wanting whatsoever
A genuine relationship is one that is not dominated by the ego with its image making and self-seeking. In a genuine relationship, there is an outward flow of open, alert attention toward the other person in which there is no wanting whatsoever.
– Eckhart Tolle
Dear John David,
When I realised my relationship was not bringing me the happiness I thought, I began to look inside for it. I started my spiritual journey, but my partner was not very accepting or encouraging of this, and now I am in a conflict with her about me and the direction I’m taking. I can feel this open love for her, but I don’t think she really has it for me. Do you think it’s possible to stay with my girlfriend even when she doesn’t understand this inner journey?
In your case, if you have an authentic wish to do this investigation, I would definitely advise that you share this as much as possible with your partner. Explain to her that you have a dilemma because you love her, you love being with her, she is a part of your life, and at the same time your life is changing. You want to take her along on this exciting journey. Through the power of this intimacy and love you share you can introduce her to this journey. So I would strongly advise that approach – try to take your partner along with you. If for some reason she is absolutely not interested in meditation or looking inside or asking the kinds of questions that you’ve started to ask yourself, this is not going to be so easy. Maybe now in the beginning it’s alright, but you may find some problems come later on….
What is this spiritual journey about? It’s about examining why we are not able to be simply present. If you start to examine this you’ll find it’s because of all kinds of conditioning and identification. Let’s say your partner is completely happy with her conditioned robotic lifestyle and you are busy questioning everything. I think she is going to get pissed off with you.
In a way it’s funny. It’s all about the present moment and most people, including my girlfriend, are not able to live in the present moment without worrying about safety or some security in the future. This is the thing that changed in my life. I am not interested in the future anymore and I am not interested in security because there is no security.
This is why it becomes difficult. If you are starting to feel the juice of living in the moment it becomes extremely difficult to be with people who are constantly talking about the future or the past. You just get a headache.
So if your partner is caught up in the normal kind of conditioning, as you get quieter and more present you are going to find it painful and also irrelevant because she’ll be dreaming of how happy she will be next year when she is on a holiday with you and you will just be cutting the carrots for dinner. You’ll find something doesn’t really meet.
But this issue with relationship is almost without a doubt the biggest sabotage of awakening. It is number one on the list of reasons why people don’t awaken. I am not making any judgement about it; it’s just my observation over twenty years. I see that very often people choose relationship rather than awakening. Why? Because deep down we are so conditioned with the idea of the other giving us love, and to discover your own love is not always easy.
You are planning to climb to the summit of Mt. Everest and then you meet a very nice woman at the third camp up the mountain. She is offering everything and you look up at the summit and you think, ‘It’s going to be a tough climb. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I might run out of oxygen or fall down a crevasse; anything could happen up there and she is right here, completelyavailable.’ So it’s very tempting. And in a way God has set it up like that; existence is like that.
Sometimes it’s about not wanting to hurt anybody. When I’m talking about it she feels the space and the distance and she starts crying. Then I feel the inner explosion of hurt.
Yes, this is difficult. From the way you are talking you are available for her to come with you. You are not saying ‘Go away, I am going to do this alone.’ You are saying ‘Let’s go on the mountain together.’ You can’t take responsibility for her pain. If she doesn’t want to come with you I think you have to make a decision.
It’s true. Step by step.
Just be aware that this is one of the biggest sabotages.
I like the metaphor of climbing up Mt. Everest. It’s really good.
Either you are going to lose her or you are going to lose Truth. You can’t have them both. Truth is ruthless. If you really really want Truth then everything else has to go.
I found on my own journey that every so often there was some kind of situation where I had to choose between something and Truth. In my case it was always easy to choose Truth. And I would move on with Truth, letting go of my family, some friends, my wife, all kind of stuff along the way. Over years you could say, not all in one minute. Maybe this is also why the spiritual path takes years, because it takes time for us to adjust ourselves to our new understanding.
Polyamory
Except from “The Pointless Joy of Freedom”
Osho was always brilliant when he talked about love, as he could combine the western and eastern experiences into one common stream. He wanted people to celebrate love, both between lovers and with existence itself, but not to confine love with our limitations. So I wanted to start with a beautiful quote from him.
Love is about appreciation
If you love a flower, don’t pick it up. Because if you pick it up, it dies. And it ceases to be what you love. So if you love a flower, let it be. Love is not about possession. Love is about appreciation.
– Osho
Dear John David,
As I’ve understood that I am not separate I’m open to being intimate without needing to be possessive. But I’m not really sure how to navigate my way through that because there are such strong conditionings in me and around me that really don’t make it easy. Can you expand on this topic and maybe point me in the right direction?
As you go deeper and deeper into the spiritual understanding – through your own experiences, from reading books, from listening to people – you discover for yourself the possibility that you’re not separate, that actually you’re one with everyone.
So if you’re one with everyone, how does it work to only love one person? If you go out into the garden there are so many kinds of flowers. You might particularly love roses, but I’m sure you also love other kinds of flowers. We don’t think twice. We just love all these different kinds of flowers…
We love all the different types of dogs, birds, trees. There’s a multitude of possibilities. It’s kind of automatic to feel love for many different varieties. We have no problem with it until it comes to people. Perhaps the strongest, deepest conditioning we have is to automatically look for one intimate partner.
We’ve been told that if we find this one perfect partner and relate with them for our whole life, we will live in love. We will live in happiness. We will be fulfilled.
I want to offer you a word, which I didn’t know until recently. This word is ‘polyamory’, the practice of loving more than one person at the same time, and it seems to me to be almost a natural expression of what’s going to happen when we follow a spiritual journey. Because very quickly we discover that we are all one. We are not two; we are not many.
This is actually the meaning of Advaita – non duality, not two. So when you at least have the intellectual knowing of that, even if it’s not your direct experience every day, it then becomes very, very hard to put yourself into a one-on-one relationship and to completely believe that this is the only way to create love in your life.
Our strong conditioning around this belief can break down because of our spiritual work, then it seems to me we can positively play with this idea that we can love more than one. And it seems to me that here in our community, without realising it, we have all become polyamorists.
Maybe one of the reasons why people avoid polyamory is that when you realise that love is already inside you and not something you get from over there, from outside, from the other, then you have to deal with the things that can come up for you: ‘I’m not good enough’, ‘I never had enough love’, ‘I feel abandoned’. This is a bit uncomfortable of course so we avoid really investigating what’s happening. It’s easier to just take the conditioning that love comes from the other.
‘I love you’ is supposed to be the pinnacle of partnership, sweet words. If somebody says ‘I love you’ my advice is to tread carefully because this other person wants you to be in a relationship with them that is actually going to lead to possessiveness. They are trying to create you as the one who loves them.
Jealousy comes pretty directly from the idea of ‘mine’, possessing somebody. You can’t feel jealousy unless you have the idea that this person is mine. Then if they seem to be loving someone else of course you can feel jealousy, which is very damaging to any possibility of love. This is reflected in Osho’s words, ‘If you love a flower, let it be.’
When we understand that love is already inside, that we are the source of love, in fact our Essence is love, then there is no question of getting love from the other, of the other loving us. This is a major misunderstanding. Once you discover this, it’s very hard to go back to the idea that there is only one person who can love you. It doesn’t make sense anymore.
Polyamory is suggesting that you can have a multi-personal relationship. However, if you come to these relationships with your old conditioning that you get love from the other then you will just multiply the drama and suffering. I am suggesting that you approach intimate relationships in a completely conscious way, with full awareness that you’re the source of love.
When I was growing up the only way I could find a partner was to go to a social gathering, like a party or a dance. Social media has changed all that and now it is possible to find many partners very quickly and easily. It’s a revolution that’s happening now in human consciousness, and out of this revolution things are going to change. For people who are becoming spiritually conscious, it doesn’t make sense to only love one. And of course you can also choose to love only one, choosing it consciously and naturally, and not just because you’re conditioned to that choice. My reason for suggesting polyamory is to show that attitudes towards what love and relationship mean are changing, and perhaps it can suggest to you a more conscious and open way to live and love, and to more freely explore yourself.
John David’s Multi-faceted Approach to Freedom
The pointless Joy of Freedom is an indispensable guide for facing the modern world.
Inspired by quotations from powerful spiritual figures throughout history, this book gives a deep understanding of John David´s teachings and his multi-faceted approach.
With 30 short biographies of ancient and contemporary masters.
More to Read
Articles from John David's Blog
Celibacy and Relationship
It’s quite clear that for almost everybody this issue of intimacy with another human being is a strong structure, a strong issue. In the eastern traditions of Buddhism and Hinduism there is a deep understanding that if you seriously want to become a spiritual seeker you become celibate and stay alone.
Sex and Spirituality
Does sex help me to wake up or does it prevent me from that?
I think it can help and hinder. It depends. When sex is just pure, then actually it isn’t such a big deal. It’s an energy phenomenon.
Intimate relating creates an energy field, a circle between the two people. Normally, with sex, it’s between two people, but it could be the energy flowing through twenty people.
Sex, Love and the Illusion
Authentic Love is very different from falling in love. Falling in love is the ultimate illusion. Because to fall in love there must be a somebody. A somebody who falls in love with somebody else. So there is me and you. And as we know, when there is me and you, then I am identified with my life.
Authentic Intimacy
Authentic Intimacy becomes possible when two people meet without the daily drama of “my life.” This relating is about presence, just being there in a dance with the other. Being present with everything that simply is.
