Pairs

It is a strange dynamic, that exchange of energy that fulfills.

What draws people together? What pushes them apart? Personalities are living and growing and developing, needs are always changing, and so do relationships.

While relationships may last from a few moments to a lifetime, roles may be ever-changing.

By exposing some personal nature and sharing time, the mellow with a business client changed to friendship, with the introduction of affection and attachment. As brother and sister we found solace in each other's understanding of our views about life and the world, sometimes verging on the teacher-student situation when one's experience surpassed the other's in a particular field. Sometimes I could be as his mother, sometimes as his daughter.

Then a misunderstanding brought about disappointment that could only be experienced by lovers, such intimate affection was there although that exchange had never come by... and then again, we became like strangers.

Days passed. A tall, dark stranger caught my eye, and soon we were lost in words. Much later, he was still holding my hand. So comfortably natural it was, I had barely noticed. We complemented each other, two became one... until cultural circumstance dictated that our affections could remain only on a friendly level, but one that would last.

Any two individuals, a unique relationship.

In Sanskrit, the term rasa refers to the degree of intimacy and sweetness of relationship with the Divine (shanta - peaceful, dasya - servitude, sakhya - friendship, vatsalya - parental or madhurya - conjugal).

It is clear that fragments of rasa are reflected in every relationship experienced in this world, because we are sparks of that eternal flame, the Original Source, cause of all. 'Made in the image of God,' we are similar in quality though not in magnitude.

While it is natural that we are attracted to experiencing these mellows in the here and now, bound as we are by space and time, impermanent is their nature, nobody can deny this fact.

It is said that the Eternal, Krsna (He that is irresistably attractive to all souls) is the origin and reservoir of all rasa to the infinite degree... yet how hard it is for us to realise, and feel!

Thus we continue to search the light and warmth of a candle instead of journeying to the sun.