Intimacy: What It Is and What It Ain’t

I just found that there’s an email newslet­ter for the Rad­i­cal Hon­esty site now. This is an arti­cle from it.

INTIMACY: WHAT IT IS AND WHAT IT AIN’T
by Raven Dana

It isn’t the end prod­uct of romance, like the prize at the bot­tom of the cere­al box. It does­n’t require sim­i­lar ideas, shared beliefs, trust, friend­ship, phys­i­cal attrac­tion, or even a con­ver­sa­tion. Inti­ma­cy has no agen­da, occurs moment by moment by moment as a result of contact. 

Look into anoth­er human being’s eyes with­out an agen­da. Report what­ev­er’s going on in your body, in your thoughts & exter­nal notic­ing, and BINGO, you’ve got inti­ma­cy. The para­dox (one of them any­way) is that the POWER to gen­er­ate and sus­tain inti­ma­cy comes from VULNERABILITY. That means let­ting down your guard and being with what­ev­er is there. You can look into a stranger’s eyes with­out any­thing spe­cif­ic going on, and spon­ta­neous­ly Smile from that con­tact, that Inti­ma­cy that is a recog­ni­tion of the real­i­ty that the BEING that you are is the same stuff as the BEING that I am. And that REGARDLESS of any per­ceived dif­fer­ences in beliefs, we ALL want essen­tial­ly the same from life, we ALL have the same basic fears, we ALL are made the same way, and we ALL share a com­mon con­scious­ness ground­ed in both our phys­i­cal expe­ri­ences and our inter­nal experiences. 

LOVE is the result of con­tact. You can love any­one; a friend, a stranger or even some­one you don’t like at all, IF you drop the judg­ments through con­scious con­tact. Love is WHAT IS when we get our judg­ments out of the way. Love is the con­stant sig­nal; WE cause the inter­fer­ence that pre­vents us from hav­ing what we want day after day. Our expec­ta­tions, rules, beliefs and bull­shit mean­ing­less opin­ions deter us from hav­ing the bliss that is ALWAYS ALREADY PRESENT when we drop our judg­ments. It’s what hap­pens when we reveal our­selves and uncov­er the very core of what we are beyond our right/wrong, good/bad insan­i­ties that pre­vent us from act­ing like the com­mon fam­i­ly that we in fact are. 

PRACTICE: Gen­er­ate moments of inti­ma­cy inten­tion­al­ly with strangers by mak­ing eye con­tact, notic­ing what hap­pens and report­ing what­ev­er is there for you. I notice when I look at strangers & they return my gaze I usu­al­ly feel warm in the chest & I smile. I often voice an appre­ci­a­tion to them for their smile or some­thing else about the way they look. DO THIS DUMB. I MEAN REAL DUMB. Just look, take a breath & see what shows up. Let me know what happens!

Raven Dana is a Cer­ti­fied Life Coach and Rad­i­cal Hon­esty train­er with 24 years expe­ri­ence work­ing with peo­ple. In addi­tion to being a part time cheer­leader for Rad­i­cal Hon­esty and a full time friend of Brad’s, Raven runs her own coach­ing prac­tice and leads work­shops, both RH and her own. She is avail­able for coach­ing by phone and can be reached at raven@ravenheart.org or by phone at 216.261.0181.