How I Feel Co-dependent Arising

Experiencing myself and everything I encounter as sewn, stitched together at the seams but still with distance in between, is transimmanent intimacy, one that is both profound and unconditional! It's a quality of intimacy that arises when I feel, not just conceptualize, co-dependent arising (in Buddhism - dependent origination) of oneness and separateness, self and other, as a palpable reality, the sense of everything being the universe in relationship with itself, ushering in tender strength and a security that doesn't over-ride my vulnerability but lets me expose it more freely, because inter-personal dynamics don't feel threatening anymore, so my entire system feels safe to finally let it's guard down again and feel at home in my body, among other bodies that are other unique expressions of what I also am. We are ourselves, and also each other. It makes me feel like a distinct part of the sweeping whole universe made of infinite other parts, and it carries a conciliatory quality, a drive to lend myself to mending things, caring for things neglected, to connect more personally while connected to being the universe as a person,  I soften to the defenses of others and soften my own, with a felt sense of our fundamental commonality of humanness. We know why intimacy feels so threatening, without needing to know the details.  We know what it looks like when fear presents itself as anger and when anger has turned itself into sorrow so we feel less threatened, because we see and validate the burden and saving grace of our conditioned defenses, the empathy of seeing them because we know them from within enlivened we feel the truth of being cut from the same cloth.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

So when I feel grief, sorrow, my grief and sorrow find and unite with everyone else's, to their universality, and then flows grace, compassion, tender strength in numbers, my joy seeks everyone's joy, and because all of this is god, I want more than ever to be with every feeling I've ever recoiled from, cast away, and I want to hold this sweet-bitter world close to my chest like a baby.