Navigating Intimacy

i am contemplating intimacy in depth these days. wondering about essential ingredients in the processes of cultivating and deepening authentic connection and sustaining profound, embodied, essential contact. when I asked my FB friends to chime in on the subject of intimacy, this is what we came up with:

openness. curiosity. inquiry. dropping defenses. vulnerability. honesty. a sensing of resonance. mutuality. respect. authenticity. responsiveness. willingness. a sense of humor. playfulness. allowing. surrendering.

what is essential to you in being deeply intimate? How do you create and cultivate intimacy in your life?

to me, intimacy, like a good conversation, is a spiritual practice, involving deepening consciousness with/in oneself and may, as an advanced spiritual, sexual and developmental practice, engage another being in a way that greatly expands and deepens heart and soul. As a partnership path, the potential, synergy, activation, co-creativity abounds with possibility. Yet intimacy can also often go awry. What begins with a passionate start can fall off the cliff! Intimacy can grow into intense conflict, a sense of entrapment, a sense of betrayal and loss of the promised land! How does that happen? How can we both avoid the pitfalls and optimize the potentials for growth??

that/this is what I am dedicated to studying and presenting on these pages.

A good friend, Samantha Sweetwater, had her birthday party the other evening. One thing she said is that she "starts with how she doesn't really know the other". That is radical openness. I like that as a starting and a returning place in authentic relating: Not knowing who the other is. Not labeling them, categorizing them, defining them. So easy to control our worlds by naming, projecting, assuming, limiting and otherwise not see the others true self! We falsify ourselves with our ego identities, lose ourselves and lose sight of who the other is. Our relating then becomes rote, superficial, constructed.

Defining an intimate moment too soon can stifle its growth. "Premature relationalization" is what i am calling that tendency to define something before its time. In the phase of early dating it can be wise to refrain from such stifling practices as: talking about other relationships, talking about other people, talking about relationship(s) at all!

In middle phases of relationship, commitment does of course come into play. Deep intimacy requires a strong container. Relationship agreements, sexual dynamics, emotional needs all need to be negotiated. Our question is: how do we create an optimal holding environment that is neither too restrictive nor too loose?

more on this subject soon...

please leave comments on what interests you!!

be well, be intimate with life! Practice being openness!

see into yourself deeply and into those you chose to be intimate with.