Living in Openness

Living in openness, living in relationship with 'all that is', is not about being open to everything that happens around you, although that is a form of openness, but more in the sense of curiosity or amazement and wonder. Of course, everything around you is a miracle, it constantly amazes you and makes you curious about what is to come, but the life referred to here, the life in relation to 'all that is', is not about your focus on ever-changing events, but about your openness to the relational exchange between your intrinsic value and what is happening in your life.

To engage in this openness requires you to be receptive, so that the resulting sensitivity allows you to let go of your preconceptions. This, in turn, gives you the space to explore uncharted waters and to experience and reflect on all that we call life.

With this in mind, let us begin by reflecting on the word life. The word life originally meant both the body and that which resides within it. All life as we know it is embodied, has a body, has a form, and something also resides in it, lives in it. You are alive, and that means on the one hand you have a body with which you experience how all kinds of events feel, and on the other hand you are also present in that body as a human being who reacts in a certain way to what you experience.

As a human being, you have the ability to learn from and gain insight into life as it unfolds, so that your personal responses can change to be more in line with the value of life that you truly long for.

As your relationship with life becomes more in tune with your longing, you have begun to engage with life in a more profound way. Both you and life have made a deeper connection. You have then more profoundly connected and befriended the life that you experience.

Living in openness means that you consciously enter into this relationship, this connection and cooperation with life. You will then take your body more seriously as the place from which you experience everything, and you will therefore accept the possibility of developing a more and more suitable relationship with it as a human being.

More often than you may realize, however, you end that relationship and withdraw into yourself because of something that happens that you don't like. You then leave behind your connection to both the event that is appearing to you, as well as your body, or a part of it, in which and with which you are experiencing that event.

You may feel that at such a moment you are retreating inward for self-preservation and safety, but is the situation really that threatening or is it just something you are unfamiliar with or unaccustomed to? Furthermore, withdrawing into yourself, retreating behind the walls of your ego, may make you feel safe at first, but if it continues for some time, it will turn into a feeling of abandonment.

And if you feel that this withdrawal is justified, then consider whether everything you think and experience inside, without relating to the life around you, is really “daylight-proof.” If you withdraw into yourself out of fear or dissatisfaction, is what you are feeling, thinking, or realizing really part of the open life in which you want to find happiness, or do these conclusions only apply to your closed experience of that moment?

Are the thoughts, ideas, and experiences you have in seclusion about how you think you should interact with your partner, for example, also valid when you are actually together and interacting with each other?

No relationship can be experienced and prepared beforehand, in a state of isolation caused by fear, in such a way that it will also be fruitful when you are actually together.

Living in openness is an invitation to experience how life touches you and how you then engage with that reality without losing your relationship with reality. Everything that you feel and recognize in this openness then comes from your relationship with the fullness of actual life and not from the rejection or fear of life. The experiential window to the world then remains open so that you are not separated from the whole, because as a living being you belong to the whole; you are an indispensable part of the whole that is life.

When you withdraw into yourself because something feels unpleasant, it may seem that you are connecting with yourself, but in fact you are just retreating behind the walls of your ego: a defense mechanism with which you usually identify. But you are much more than a defense mechanism. Your presence is just as vast, deep and alive as everything around you.

Living in openness also means that you consciously enter into a relationship, connection and exchange with the full depth of what you are. You embrace more fully the depth of your “being here,” you open yourself to your presence, and you open yourself to your experience of life, of yourself, to what lives in you. Then you feel what it is like to be in relationship with it, in an open and tangible exchange, and how that deepens your contact with your essence. How deeply can this feeling touch you, influence you, tell you something about the value that can be experienced in it?

Here too, if you experience something that you do not like or that shocks you, you could retreat behind the walls of your ego. And here too, I invite you not to do so, because what is thought, felt and concluded within these walls, within this area of fear, will not and cannot be valid in actual life.

To live in relationship with “all that is” means that you do not close yourself off from the world around you, but remain in free exchange with it. As a result, it remains perceptible as a living enclosure within which you can freely open yourself to the living and precious relationship with yourself, your soul, or your inner being.

To live in relationship with “all that is” is to open yourself to what you meet, what you receive, and what touches you based on your relationship to both the world and your inner depth.

To live in relationship with “all that is” is to open yourself to what touches you, both from within and without, and to the ways in which it affects you. You open yourself to the energy that generates this influence within you and thus what you contribute to life.

To live from an attitude of openness is to open yourself to this ever-changing relationship between your very tangible presence and the wondrous outer manifestation of life. The relationship between the life that lives within you and the forms it repeatedly takes.

May I therefore invite you to learn to live in this relationship, to learn to live in this openness, to live in openness. May I invite you to learn to let everything that you wish for arise from the fullness of life, from the whole of life, from living in openness, so that it relates to reality.

Loneliness and withdrawal, with their sense of confinement, cannot offer you the full quality of life that you so intensely long for. They cannot guide you to the fullness of the whole, to the freedom of your blossoming, to the fulfillment of your humanity.

Even when you meditate and wish to be with yourself for a moment, you do not have to shut yourself off from the outer manifestations of life. After all, any withdrawal or closing off is a reduction of your openness to the whole that is life.

Especially when you meditate, let the outer world be the enveloping abode in which you open yourself to the inner value of your self. Only then are you meditating in relation to the wholeness of life and will the insights you gain from this relate to the reality of life.

So may your living in openness remain continuously relational, so that nothing is excluded or shut out, but you may remain open to the experience of your self (love) and to the blessings of your essence (meditation) within the living and ever-changing envelopment of outer life.

Only when nothing is excluded or shut out can the experience of the life be a living truth that surrounds you and is filled with the depth of essential life.

In this openness you do not focus on your soul, your being or yourself, because then you narrow your openness, but you are enveloped by life, open to its inner values and you receive its blessings to the extent that you freely exchange with it.

In this openness you do not focus on something around you, because then you narrow your openness again, but you let your inner being be carried by life and you open yourself to the events of life and you receive their reflective guidance to the extent that you freely exchange with them.

So may you live in openness. May you experience everything with your human body and give the essence all the space to radiate from the depths of your being. To close yourself off is unnatural, because to live means that you are in an ongoing relationship, in a continuous exchange, in an open interaction with all that is embodied (has form) and is inhabited (is alive), with your entire humanity and your full presence (the essential that always remains).

To live in openness is to live in relationship, it is to live in interaction, it is to live with the inner fulfilling life and the outer enveloping life, it is to live in the vibrant wholeness of life. Therefore, live in openness, so that you no longer have to suffer the pain and the unsustainable trains of thought that arise from being isolated.

Live in openness so that you can once again feel part of the greater whole, where you belong and are wanted, and taste the greatness that you are as life.

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Translation of the Dutch text: Bezieling door Inzicht - 200 levensthema's voor innerlijke groei, thema: 121. Leven in relatie met ‘al wat is’. (Only available in Dutch.)

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Anandajay (which means “blessing from the heart”) has been dedicated to integrating the spiritual essence into daily life for over 50 years. He has developed twelve teachings (spiritual practices), 50 music albums (mantras, pujas and ragas) and twenty books (written in Dutch) to bring you closer to the natural basis of your existence, your spiritual authenticity, and its wholesome, joyful essence, so that it can also be your shining, spiritual guide in your life. He expresses the core value of his work as: The Light of Being.