I like this one. I like how you organized it. My experience of this "pleasurable terror" has been when I "seek and search" and get hit in the face with just how infinite "isness" is. I don't mean this from an astronomy-science vantage that the universe has millions of galaxies, but from a felt sense of realizing the fundamental paradox of everything. Words are fundamentally limiting when compared to a felt sense and experience, but the best I can describe it is feeling all feelings simultaneously (terror, anger, sadness, joy, euphoria, creativity) and realizing that your existence is infinite, and settling into a state of pure awe. On the one hand we have finite lives, and yet if we pay attention closer, be more present, time erodes, and we "live forever." People who do breathwork, or have done DMT might experience this. On the one hand there is terror of being vulnerable and letting go of your ego, and the other of experiencing love in the greatest form when you do so.
Separately with romantic relationships - I used to believe in the more limited view that relationships will get "old" over time, since you know this person in and out, and their behaviors don't surprise you. And you lose the sparks and butterflies over time. I now believe this to be false model we were taught from media, mostly. What I now believe (and it could change in the future), and I think what you might be pointing to is...how egotistical of us to presume that we KNOW our partners, even after decades! I now hope to see my partner as an infinitely growing, changing, and endlessly deep being, and myself as such as well - with infinitely deep layers, capable of great change in a short amount of time. It then subsequently follows that the two of us and thirdly our relationship as a separate entity in itself is forever a "new" organism, born again and again. This isn't a steady-state flow of course, we fall into ruts and dips and peaks. I think to commit to another is to commit to choosing to 1. pay enough attention to notice everything about them that is changing and 2. evolving and growing yourself, in order to build something more beautiful, deep, and infinite over time.
I like this one. I like how you organized it. My experience of this "pleasurable terror" has been when I "seek and search" and get hit in the face with just how infinite "isness" is. I don't mean this from an astronomy-science vantage that the universe has millions of galaxies, but from a felt sense of realizing the fundamental paradox of everything. Words are fundamentally limiting when compared to a felt sense and experience, but the best I can describe it is feeling all feelings simultaneously (terror, anger, sadness, joy, euphoria, creativity) and realizing that your existence is infinite, and settling into a state of pure awe. On the one hand we have finite lives, and yet if we pay attention closer, be more present, time erodes, and we "live forever." People who do breathwork, or have done DMT might experience this. On the one hand there is terror of being vulnerable and letting go of your ego, and the other of experiencing love in the greatest form when you do so.
Separately with romantic relationships - I used to believe in the more limited view that relationships will get "old" over time, since you know this person in and out, and their behaviors don't surprise you. And you lose the sparks and butterflies over time. I now believe this to be false model we were taught from media, mostly. What I now believe (and it could change in the future), and I think what you might be pointing to is...how egotistical of us to presume that we KNOW our partners, even after decades! I now hope to see my partner as an infinitely growing, changing, and endlessly deep being, and myself as such as well - with infinitely deep layers, capable of great change in a short amount of time. It then subsequently follows that the two of us and thirdly our relationship as a separate entity in itself is forever a "new" organism, born again and again. This isn't a steady-state flow of course, we fall into ruts and dips and peaks. I think to commit to another is to commit to choosing to 1. pay enough attention to notice everything about them that is changing and 2. evolving and growing yourself, in order to build something more beautiful, deep, and infinite over time.
i love this take on romantic relationships! i definitely want to pull on this thread.