| Animation arising out of our
experience of connectivity is the antithesis of
psychological inertia. It moves us to be different. The
energy and spirit to be different are provided by the self-intimate
experience. The capacity to be different enables us to be
creative, which is the third outcome of the self-intimate
experience. To be creative simply means to think,
feel, or do something we have not done before. So to be
connected is to be animated, and to be animated is to be
creative. To be creative is to be different, and to be
different is to be a more sensitive me, a more
aware I, and more my self. More me,
more I, and more self come out of an
increase in our sense of connectivity, an energizing
increase in our animation, and an increase in our
creativity. These specific personal enhancements occur
only when we have been intimate. I am unlikely to change
my racial prejudices or my paranoid preoccupations simply
in the introspective, meditative experience of my inner
feelings and thoughts. I am equally unlikely to change
these prejudices and preoccupations in the experience of
being close to another person, paradoxical as that may
seem. I will very likely alter both when I am being fully
me, more aware of me than the other but
fully aware of the relationship I am in the time.
Alone, awareness of me does not do it, nore does
the closeness of I to another. Only aware of me
when I am close to another enables me to change.
from "The Art of Intimacy", Personal Process |