"Who is Preventing You? Join the Dance."

"Everybody is afraid of intimacy – it is another thing whether you are aware of it or not. Intimacy means exposing yourself before a stranger – and we are all strangers; nobody knows anybody. We are even strangers to ourselves, because we dont know who we are. ;

"Intimacy brings you close to a stranger. You have to drop all your defenses; only then is intimacy possible. And the fear is that if you drop all your defenses, all your masks, who knows what the stranger is going to do with you? We are all hiding a thousand and one things, not only from others but from ourselves, because we have been brought up by a sick humanity with all kinds of repressions, inhibitions, taboos. And the fear is that with somebody who is a stranger – and it does not matter, you may have lived with the person for thirty years, forty years; the strangeness never disappears – it feels safer to keep a little defense, a little distance, because somebody can take advantage of your weaknesses, of your frailties, of your vulnerability. ;

"Everybody is afraid of intimacy. ;

"The problem becomes more complicated because everybody wants intimacy. Everybody wants intimacy because otherwise you are alone in this universe – without a friend, without a lover, without anybody you can trust, without anybody to whom you can open all your wounds. And the wounds cannot heal unless they are open. The more you hide them, the more dangerous they become. They can become cancerous. ;

"Intimacy is an essential need on the one hand, so everybody longs for it. You want the other person to be intimate, so that the other person drops his defenses, becomes vulnerable, opens all his wounds, drops all his masks and false personality, stands naked as he is. And on the other hand, everybody is afraid of intimacy – you want to be intimate with the other person, but you are not dropping your defenses. This is one of the conflicts between friends, between lovers: nobody wants to drop his defenses and nobody wants to come in utter nudity and sincerity, open – and both need intimacy. ;

"Unless you drop all your repressions, inhibitions – which are the gifts of your religions, your cultures, your societies, your parents, your education – you will never be able to be intimate with someone. And you will have to take the initiative. ;

"But if you dont have any repressions, any inhibitions, then you dont have any wounds either. If you have lived a simple, natural life, there will be no fear of intimacy, but the tremendous joy of two flames coming so close that they become almost one flame. And the meeting is tremendously gratifying, satisfying, fulfilling. But before you can attempt intimacy, you have to clean your house completely. ;

"Only a man of meditation can allow intimacy to happen. He has nothing to hide. All that was making him afraid that somebody may know, he himself has dropped. He has only a silence and a loving heart." Osho