To become friends, we need to get to know each other. This is the point invoked in the famous scene between the Little Prince and the fox in the rose garden. Familiarity comes from the trust that grows out of encounters and getting closer to one another. When we are familiar with each other, it is like a touch in the spirit that no longer feels foreign.
The personal soul has ’light feelers’ with which it approaches the experience of its environment, illuminating it. Where there is no longer shadow between us, where there is only light in the encounter, we are fully connected—the experience is no longer separate but shared. ‘The other’ is not other but ‘I’. Nevertheless, it always begins with touching each other. I can touch either spiritually, mentally, or bodily, but it is always in touching that I become aware that I am outside the other and the other is outside me, and yet at the same time we have become more familiar with each other.
This is what is miraculous: that closeness and distance increase at the same time for me. Whenever I touch something with attention and devotion, I release it—I redeem it from being objectified. In fact, there isn’t anything or any person that is an object—only our limited perception makes us believe so. If we want to broaden it, we need our uprightness and our I-consciousness, and therefore our willing body. So let us touch our own self! Let us embody ourselves. Let us say to ourselves, “Please, tame me!”
Translation Eliza Rozeboom
Photo Marina Reich from unsplash
