JOY EXCITEMENT in RELATIONSHIPS

There is some misunderstanding in your mind. The joy is not
gone, joy has never been there--it was something else. It is excite-
ment that has gone, but you thought that excitement was joy. The
joy will come now; when the excitement subsides, only then does
joy come. Joy is a very silent phenomenon; it is not excitement at
all, it is not feverish at all. It is tranquil, calm and cool.
    But this misunderstanding is not unique to you; it has become
very prevalent. People think that excitement is joy. It is a kind of
intoxication; one feels occupied, tremendously occupied. In that
occupation one forgets one's worries, problems, anxieties. It is
like drinking alcohol: you forget your problems, you forget your-
self, and at least for the moment you are far, far away from your-
self. That is the meaning of excitement: you are no longer inside,
you are outside yourself; you have escaped from yourself. But
because of this being outside yourself, sooner or later you become
tired. You miss the nourishment that comes from your innermost
core when you are close to it.
     So no excitement can be permanent; it can only be a moment's
phenomenon, a momentary thing. All honeymoons end; they
have to end, otherwise you will be killed! If you remain excited
you will go berserk. It has to subside, you have to be nourished
within yourself again. One cannot remain awake for many nights
in a row. For one night, two nights, three nights it is okay, but if
you remain awake for too many nights you will start feeling tired,
utterly tired and exhausted. And you will start feeling dull and
dead too; you will need rest. After each excitement there is a need
for rest. In rest you recapitulate, you recover; then you can move
into excitement again.
     But excitement is not joy, it is just an escape from misery.
     Try to understand it very clearly: excitement is just an escape
from misery. It gives only a false and superficial experience of joy.
Because you are no longer miserable you think you are joyous; not
to be miserable is equivalent to being joyous. Real joy is a positive
phenomenon. Not to be miserable is just a kind of forgetfulness.
The misery is waiting back home for you, and whenever you come
back it will be there.
    When excitement disappears, one starts thinking, "Now what
is the point of this love?" What people call "love" dies with excite-
ment, and that is a calamity. In fact, love had never been born. It
was just a love of excitement; it was not real love. It was just an
effort to move away from yourself. It was a search for sensation.
    You rightly use the word "fun" in your question; it was fun,
but it was not intimacy. When excitement disappears and you just
start feeling loving, love can grow; now the feverish days are over.
This is the true beginning of love.
    To me, the true love begins when the honeymoon is over. But
by that time your mind thinks that all is over, finished: "Search
for another woman, search for another man. Now what is the
point in continuing? There is no more fun!"
    If you go on loving now, love will take on a depth, it will
become intimacy. A quality of grace will arise in it. It will have a
subtlety now, it will not be superficial. It will not be fun, it will be
meditation, it will be prayerfulness. It will help you to know
yourself. The other will become a mirror, and through her you
will be able to know yourself. Now is the time, the right time for
love to grow because all the energy that was being channeled into
excitement will not be wasted: it will be poured into the very
roots of love, and the tree will be able to have great foliage.
    If you can go on growing in this intimacy, which is no longer
excitement, then joy will arise: first excitement, then love, then
joy. Joy is the ultimate product, the fulfillment. Excitement is just
a beginning, a trigger; it is not the end. And those who finish things
at excitement will never know what love is, will never know the
mystery of love, will never come to know the joy of love. They will
know sensations, excitement, passionate fever, but they will never
know the grace that is love. They will never know how beautiful it
is to be with a person with no excitement but with silence, with no
words, with no effort to do anything. Just being together, sharing
one space, one being, sharing each other, not thinking of what to do
and what to say, where to go and how to enjoy; all those things are
gone. The storm is over and there is silence.
    And it is not that you will not make love, but it will not be a
"making" really; it will be love happening. It will happen out of
grace, out of silence, out of a rhythm; it will arise from your
depths, it will not be of the body, really. There is a sex that is spir-
itual, which has nothing to do with the body. Although the body
partakes in it, participates in it, it is not the source of it. Then sex
takes on the color of Tantra--and only then.
    So my suggestion is: watch yourself. Now that you are coming
closer to the temple don't escape. Go into it. Forget excitement, it
is just childish. And something beautiful is ahead. If you can wait
for it, if you have patience and can trust in it, it will come.


				*JOY EXCITEMENT in RELATIONSHIPS*