Love means the desire to be with somebody else; love means to be focused on the other. And meditation means to forget the other and be focused on oneself. Now… both desires cannot arise together.
When you want to be with somebody else, that means you are tired of yourself. And when you want to be with yourself, that means you are tired of the other. It is a beautiful rhythm! Being with the other creates a deep desire in you to be alone. You can ask the lovers — all the lovers feel that desire arising sometimes tremendously. But they are afraid to be alone, because they think it is going against love, and what will the woman say, or what will the man say? The other may feel offended. They pretend, even though they want to be alone, left alone; they want their own space, but they pretend and they go on being together. That pretension is false, it is destructive of love. And it makes your relationship phony.
When you feel like being alone, with all respect, with ali love, tell the other, “A great desire to be alone is arising in me, and I have to go into it — there is no question of choice. Please don’t feel offended. It says nothing about you; it is simply my own inner rhythm.”
And this will help the other also to be authentic and true with you. And, slowly slowly, if you really love a person, the rhythms start falling into a togetherness — that is the miracle, the magic of love. If love has really happened between two persons, this outcome is absolute, this consequence is going to happen. They will start finding at the same times the desire arising to be together and the desire arising to be separate. They will become a rhythm: sometimes coming together and being together and dissolved into each other, forgetting all about themselves; and then sometimes arising out of each other, moving, withdrawing, separate, into their own spaces, becoming their own selves — becoming meditators.
Between meditation and love, there is no choice. But both have to be lived. And whatsoever is arising in you, whatsoever is the deepest longing in the moment, move with the longing. OSHO
