Commitment vs. Community

“Don’t prolong the past, don’t invite the future, don’t alter your innate wakefulness, don’t fear appearances, there’s nothing more than that.” (via Ram Dass)

When we gather together with people for dinners, meetings, movies, games, music, etc., what creates the draw to gather?  Does this union feel like home, like family?  A family never known?  An intimacy and affection never known?  Probably.  So now I’ll notice this experience, this desire, that has often gotten muddle and mixed into an illusory desire for partnership, as if it’ll fill that need for connection, communion, community.  While intimate partnerships/committed relationships provide connection and a type of communion, the lack of space and individuality that often comes with relationships along with the increased responsibility and compromise with each other creates a much more complicated dynamic.  No wonder so many people wait to “marry/commit” or choose not to all together.  This delay or lack of desire could be a good thing since most people never learn the basics of family or community because it wasn’t modeled or available to them.  So one of the best things we can do for ourselves and others is build a community of support around us that doesn’t require the molding and melding and easy potential to lose oneself like commitments do.  In this way we can learn to stay grounded in our truth but our hearts open to the experiences of love and connection around us – experiences that actually show us our deeper Self and the parts of us that still need work.

How do you build community and continue to invest into it? Do you invest in intimate relationships and lose yourself in your partner as if you are nothing without another?

Know you are whole and complete as you are, committed or uncommitted.  The important thing is the committed to your Self, your Truth, your Path and the teachers you meet along the way.

Namaste.