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I was thinking about intimacy, sex, making love.

I was contemplating a piece I thought I was ready to write called “Foreplay of the Heart.” That wasn’t quite there—but this was.

Often, for many of us, sex is a bypass of intimacy.

Orgasm is a bypass of intimacy.

We’ve been conditioned to think that sex and intimacy are the same thing.

They’re not.

That doesn’t mean they can’t be—of course, they can…only if we have a different kind of sex, or rather, in a different way.

But for so many of us, we put sex and intimacy in bed together—which often leads to frustration, a lack of fulfillment, an awareness deep down that something is lacking, that we’re looking for something else. It doesn’t feel…complete.

It’s almost like being hungry and you don’t know what you want. You try a bit of this, a mouthful of that; it’s just not what you want.

And when you find it, ah, the satisfaction. There’s a settling, a peace, a knowing.

Everything inside of you takes a breath, a sigh. There’s quiet.

Intimacy.

We connect arousal and intimacy because we connect sex and intimacy.

And they’re not the same, only when arousal is in the heart.

For most of us, it’s in the body, in our genitals, which is delicious—oh yes, it is.

And when it stays there and we take it into sex in the way we mostly do, then the goal of orgasm, penetration, genital friction, it stays what it is.

Intimacy is of the heart.

Intimacy is presence.

Intimacy is softening, vulnerable revealing.

Intimacy is opening, my heart to yours.

Intimacy is feeling.

There’s a slowing down to feel, to savor the depth, the subtlety.

Intensity arises from this deep place.

It needs openness, softness to come to us, to our eyes, to our mouths, to our skin.

Intimacy is the conversation between our hearts, expressed in our gaze, our breath, our touch.

Intimacy doesn’t have a place to be, a goal; it’s this moment that flows into the next naturally.

I show myself in intimacy—everything, every touch, gesture, word, shows me to you, you to me.

It intensifies desire and at the same time softens it so it can flow into my heart, your heart, between us, around us.

Intimacy is being rather than doing—we are intimate.

One of the most important things I teach is about patterns, conditioning—of the mind, of the body.

I also talk a lot about how we get little education for pleasure, love, and intimacy.

We’ve put them together in sex, and in this, we’ve bypassed intimacy.

So many of us are on an endless search for more in every part of life.

We’re even searching for happiness—fulfillment.

We’re searching for spirituality.

It’s all there, within us. It always has been.

It’s in dropping into our own hearts that we become aware of what’s there.

Bring your desire into your heart.

Bring your arousal into your heart.

Slow down.

Breathe.

Open yourself to be met.

Open yourself so that which is deep within you can drift to the surface, to awareness, to be seen, felt, loved.

Be intimate.

 

 

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