Why do we Hide from the Intimacy we seek?
This week in our Breathe The World session I asked two questions:
The first was: In which part of your life do you want more intimacy?
The second: As the creator of your own possibility, what’s the next best step to do something about it?
“With my Inner Child….”, “With my family…”, “In my primary relationship..”
Sometimes we do find ourselves distant from that which we yearn for most, yet I am grateful that we are empowered to do something about it. Instead of just accepting this is the ‘new normal’, we can take steps to transform that distance into something more intimate.
Of course, especially when breathing, the pathway to intimacy is to feel. We can’t be intimate with anyone else unless we are prepared to be present with our own feelings. Sometimes we get caught up with mental processes that get in the way of feeling. We are also not used to feeling and breathing at the same time.
You may notice when you are emotional, you breathe less completely. We need to be reminded that breathing is possible, even in the most trying of times. It is a part of the human affliction to think that we can avoid the more unpleasant ones!
“Continuing to hold space for feelings I’m uncomfortable with like sadness or grief” was a great share for the group, as it brought the awareness that unless we are able to feel pain, then we will insulate ourselves from joy and happiness too.
As I often say during an introduction to the session, the words sentient comes from ‘sentire’, meaning to feel. If we want to reclaim our right to wholeness, we need to soften the scars atop our trauma and feel again.
One of the most wonderful things I have read from Gay Hendrix, a teacher of mine, was The 6 Co-commitments. Google it and you will get to read that a fundamental of creating the right relationship is to commit to being close. This is intended as a commitment to another, but it equally applies with ourselves too.
We know that when the chips are down, with all protections and pretences dropped, what we really want is to love and be loved. But we forget, with minds necessarily active to meet the continual stimulus of the outer world, that thinking is not everything. It can mask us from our fundamental human right, that is to be sentient beings.
So, I leave you with the questions we asked this Sunday:
In which part of your life do you want more intimacy?
As the creator of your own possibility, what’s the next best step to do something about it?
Love Anthony
