Relating Quotes

“If suffering like hers had any use, she reasoned, it was not to the sufferer. The only way that an individual's pain gained meaning was through its communication to others.”
― Diane Wood Middlebrook, Anne Sexton: A Biography

“I'm always looking for meaningful one-night stands”
― Dudley Moore

“A male-female close-friendship hardly differs from a relationship; it takes "relating" to be friends. But sadly, not every relationship has friendship in it. It's just ironical that two people who are not good enough to be best friends are in love and want to spend the rest of their lives together.”
― Olaotan Fawehinmi

“My grandfather had been the ugliest, darkest, foulest, most depraved figure of my childhood, more beast than human, and I had grown up to be him, locked in the basement with my secrets as the rest of the family reveled in the petty and ordinary upstairs. Down there, I saw my black, ancient, ineluctable core exposed, like a crab forced out of its shell--dirty, vulnerable, and obscene. For the first time in my life, I was truly alone.”
― Marilyn Manson, The Long Hard Road Out of Hell

“Very unlikely people, you know, will share confidences with each other if they think the other person understands. A prisoner who won't tell a guard anything will thaw immediately if he's put in a cell with another man in for the same crime. And doctors who would bite off their own tongues before showing indecision to a patient will tell another doctor about how little they know and how frightened they are. I've seen it happen many times. It's how spies work.”
― T. Kingfisher, Nettle & Bone

“Cliches remind and reassure us that we're not alone, that other have trod this ground long ago.”
― Miguel Syjuco

“Spirituality is a vague realization of relating to a supernatural cosmos”
― Sunday Adelaja

“If it had lips, we'd feel closer to it. All we need are eyes and lips, apparently, and we think we can say hello. I don't think I realized that before, how much we need the world to look like us.”
― David Vann, Aquarium

“Everyone has a story. Cultivate the patience to listen to people’s stories, and you will have better relationships.”
― Wayne Gerard Trotman

“The love that we know is momentary. One day it is there, the next day it is gone. The momentariness shows that it is not real love.
It can be many things, but it is not real love. It can be sex, a psychological need, the fear of being alone, an effort to remain occupied with another person or the need to fill one's loneliness and emptiness.
If it is real love, the most essential quality would be that it is everlasting. Once you have tasted eternal love, timeless love,
it ill transform you. Then you are no more part of the mundane world. You have entered into the sacred world. You go on living
in the same ordinary world, but you become more ordinary than before. You lose all pretensions. You forget about being somebody. You become utterly ordinary. In that ordinariness, there is a silence, a grace and a beauty. You become full of light, because you are full of love. you are always ready to share with others, because you have found an inexhaustible inner source.
This love has nothing to do with relationships. The love that is eternal relates, but it never creates relationships. It relates with the trees,
with the wind, with the animals, with the people, with the earth and with the sun. Relating is like a flowing river, while relationships are something stagnant, which has stopped growing. And when something
has stopped growing, you start feeling bored, because you start losing contact with life.
Life is always like a river, but you are tethered to something: a wife, a husband, a relationship. Man's greatest joy is to be free.
And a relationship is creating a situation in which that freedom is lost. A being is alive when it is becoming. Being is becoming.
If you stop becoming, your being becomes like a rock.
You have to know the difference between relating and relationships. This is true about both life and love. Never lose your freedom. And never destroy anybody else's freedom.
A real religious person remains free, and he helps people who come to him, to be free. He never possesses anybody, and he never allows anybody else to possess him. Then life becomes a constant growth, which goes higher and higher.”
― Swami Dhyan Giten, Man is Part of the Whole: Silence, Love, Joy, Truth, Compassion, Freedom and Grace

“We know a love that is momentary. It is a love that one day is there, and another day it is gone. Its very momentariness shows that it is not real love. It is something that is masquerading as love. Maybe it is really lust, some psychological need, the fear of being alone, an effort to remain occupied with another person or an effort to fill one's inner emptiness. Itcan be a thousand and done  things, but it is not real love. 
The most essential quality of real love is its quality of everlastingness. Once you have taste the eternity of love, the timelessness of love, you are transformed. Then you are no more part of the mundane world. You enter  into the world of the sacred. you enter  into  the holy world. 
You can go on living in the same ordinary way. In fact, you become more ordinary than before. You lose all pretensions. You lose all egoistic trips. You forget about being somebody, you become utterly ordinary. But in that ordinariness there is a light, a beauty and a grace. You are full of light, because you are full of love. You are always ready to share, because you have found  an inner inexhaustible source. You have found the inner source of love, which is our true nature. 
This love has nothing to do with relationships. The love which is eternal relates, but it never becomes relationships. The love which is eternal relates to the trees, to the animals, to the birds, to the wind, to the people, to the moon and to the sky. It is a twenty-four-hours-a-day relation, but it does not create any relationships.  Relating is like a river. It is a flow, it is a movement, it is alive. It is a dance.  
Relationships are something stagnant, it is something static. Something has stopped  growing. The joy has disappeared. You start feeling sad and an anguish arises in you, because you start losing contact with life. 
Life is always riverlike. Man's greatest joy is being free. But in relationships you are tethered to a husband, a wife or a friend. 
The human mind continuously creates situations in which the freedom is lost. The seeker of truth and freedom have to know the difference between relationships and relating. Never  lose your freedom, and never destroy any else's freedom. A really religious person remains free, and he helps other  people to be free.  
It needs constant awareness and vigilance to be free, because our minds always want to cling. The mind wants to cling to the known, to the secure and to the familiar, because you are afraid of the unknown, the unfamiliar. 
So on one hand you cling, and on the other hand you want freedom. We can only grow in freedom. When we choose freedom, our life will become a constant joy, a constant growth. ”
― Swami Dhyan Giten, The Way of the Heart