The Art of Intimacy

“It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger after them”

George Eliot

Reading – The Language of the Body: The Ten Hungers

The body speaks to us in hungers. There are the survival-based hungers for food, sleep and security. Beyond them lie fulfillment-based hungers of the erotic mind. When the attention of consciousness is attuned, it can discriminate what the real source hunger is and respond by feeding it, resulting in gratification. When the attention is not attuned or is mis-attuned, when it ignores or attempts to enforce artificial constraints that are disconnected from the actual source hunger, such as deadlines or preferred conditions, we may get “results”. These are temporary results, often damaging, and create a separation from the body and deregulation of the mind that leads to a whole variety of issues that we call the tumescent mind.

It is difficult for a classically-trained or untrained mind — as opposed to an erotically-trained mind — to understand that hungers do not need to be controlled, they need to be attended to. In fact, the training of the mind to tune into, distinguish the nuances and respond to hunger is part of developing erotic intelligence and becoming intimate with the whole of life. We are humbled. What we felt the need to dominate, control or direct is actually what teaches us and helps us grow. The totality of our being is awakened and with it a coherence of perception in the world.

Eros teaches us to listen to our hunger. We notice the impulses of craving or yearning and we learn how we respond. 

1. The Hunger for Truth

There is a deep-seated yearning in each of us for the dynamic spot. Some call it truth; some call it divinity. There is a sense that it is seeking for itself, that there is an internal sensing organ that recognizes itself. It does not stop seeking. This sensation of seeking can be pleasurable, an unfolding discovery, or a difficult burning to know.

This hunger trains the mind in deliberateness, patience, attunement, thoroughness, discrimination, and most important, perseverance.

There is an incontrovertible sensation when we land on the spot or in truth. It is binary, not a gradient. We know it as a moment of illumination, insight marked by a very distinct sense of landing on solid ground. Our hunger has been liberated from notions of propriety. We must know, and until we do there is no rest, only agitation and compensation for the agitation. Once we know, there is then the clear sense that we have arrived and this is all there is.

2. The Hunger for Connection

Our nervous systems, being neither separate nor self-contained, seek stability and regulation both inside and outside of ourselves. We therefore hunger for the connection that will “complete” the loop with other human beings and without which we cannot regulate or stabilize. We seek an optimal exchange of energy flowing between us that is stable, mutual and generative.

At the same time, it is in the relationship between consciousness and the body that we learn a profound lesson in relation to connection that can play out at every level of abstraction. When there is hurt in the body — physical, emotional, psychic — an untrained consciousness will attempt a whole series of things to escape the connection where the pain is experienced. It may try to “cut” by burning bridges, demonizing the body, neglecting it or smothering the pleas and requests it sends. It may deliberately reject the body or force it to do things that are out of tune with the desires of the body. When there is pain in relationship there is often the desire to harm or sever the connection. What we discover is that while the body does not retaliate and in fact opens to consciousness, that connection can never be severed; it continues, only now with a wound in it.

3. The Hunger for Attention

The body naturally craves attention, both internal and external. There is a warmth that nourishes the body when it receives equal, balanced and simultaneous attention — meaning an attention that is open — that grabs for nothing and looks away from nothing. The body, under this “sunlight” of attention, naturally relaxes and softens, opening and offering itself.

4. The Hunger for Unconditional Love

Just as the body craves the sublime experience of truth and light, it craves the healing and nourishing experience of darkness, and of opening the mind to what we keep hidden from ourselves. We want to feel the power that lies in what we have deemed craven or illicit. The body wants the sensation of touching what will shake it of its tightness and bring us out of control. It wants to feel impact — both its own and that of others. It wants to feel the wild and the places of abandon into the mystery, the part of the self that is not cultivated and proper.

In order to hear and respond to this hunger, our attention must develop a deep-seated sense of its own perfection and the perfection of this life so that it can meet it with approval. Desire is sensitive to judgment, especially those yearnings and desires that are collectively judged. We need a strong mind in order to be able to remain with and love what is deemed unlovable in ourselves, knowing who we are beneath a blanket of cultural shame. We access a kind of power that rises from below and then learn how to connect it to the attention. We learn to work with powered attention as opposed to mere passive attention. We need this powered attention to work with the intense material, our primal desires and impulses. For the attention to be able to remain with and not merely renounce, it requires power. At its root, this hunger for experiencing our darkness is the hunger for unconditional love, a love that begins between the attention and the body. 

What we discover as we come to understand Eros is that the deepest healing and relaxation — a fundamental reconciliation with self — occurs from this hunger. It is inside of this place of darkness that consciousness can finally let go and replenish. I would cut this section—I’m sure we’ll get to the same points later. The first graph, which is great, might be better used above…

5. The Hunger for Touch

The body yearns for touch in both the direct physical sense and through the movements of life, by another’s actions, the ways we communicate and impact each other. Being touched melts the body, which desires most to be liquid, dynamic, open to receive and moved. 

6. The Hunger to Express Love

The body hungers to express love; not merely to feel it or receive it, but express it. It longs to do so in myriad ways, from creating to movement to physical connection. It longs to express love at the level of art, to be used as an expression of love, and to develop the sophistication and refinement that can match the depth and breadth of the love we long to express. The body longs to develop the means to communicate the sublime and seemingly ineffable experience of love with the greatest precision. It yearns to receive another as an act or expression of love.

This hunger trains consciousness to be energized, flexible and open. To live as expression of love and to be our best as a result of this hunger requires a stability of mind, but it draws forth a great courage.

The body specifically yearns to express love, devotion and dedication — especially with those who love what we love in a deep and loyal way. These frequencies are challenging for the mind to attune to because it aims to minimize and reduce connection in its march toward freedom. The body, on the other hand, aims to demonstrate a more whole form of freedom through interconnection and interdependency.

The desire to express love also trains the mind in a different kind of openness that is an expression of generosity. It releases the rational mind’s calculations and retrains attention, showing it that the expenditure involved in expressing love cultivates more attention and is in no way a “waste”; in fact, it adds an additional element of refinement to our attention.

7. The Hunger to Hunt

The body yearns for the hunt. An alive, devouring energy awakens inside of us. It is our cellular memory of being both predator and prey. This hunger yearns to wake up in a way that is more than simply not being asleep. It wants to feel its animal self, to experience hairs standing on end, saliva in the mouth. It wants that sense of wanting to seize or be seized, to bring down or be brought down, and to then rest with it. 

This hunger trains the attention to be radically energized, to work with power, and to experience a deep intimacy.

8. The Hunger to Open the Senses

Our bodies crave having our senses stroked with beauty, with scent, with saturation and tactile pleasures, with resonant sounds. Bodies exist in and speak a language of the senses; they awaken and rise for exquisite attention to an atmosphere and environment marked by attunement to nature. When the surroundings are of an aesthetic that showcases the congruency and processes of nature, the mind and body can both meld with the environment and open as one. 

The hunger for this opening of the senses trains the attention towards the flexibility, suppleness, softness and vulnerability of being moved. There is a fundamental intimacy to it, a coming together of the environment, the body, the senses, and the attention so that consciousness can reset and then expand to a new level of openness.  From saturation in this, there is a letting go of all that is not this, which trains the mind to track and trust desire at a new level.

9. The Hunger for Spiritual Union

The body yearns for spiritual union through others. It feels like two magnets drawn together, but without the normal “magnetism.” In these moments, our spirit is often seeking something in another that only seems to make sense in retrospect. That is spiritual reasoning; it operates backwards in time even as we move forward.

Spiritual reasoning speaks to us without words. Our normal everyday process of reasoning and its reasoning are at odds. Its message is subtle, arising before sensory, cognitive or emotional perception. It is like a perfume only softer, a halo only lighter, a note of sound only quieter.

Is there something ineffable pulling us toward this other person? Do we have a feeling of curiosity and maybe even wonder? Do we feel we might lose and find ourselves at the same time? The real experience is communication that happens without words or images. They occur as the mind’s perception of spiritual reality.

The attention is trained by this hunger to submit to the power and magnetism of the body, to be used in service to the deep truth that lies within it. It is trained in intuition to follow what it cannot see. 

10. The Hunger for Digestion 

The final yearnings of the body come in the form of digestion. The body desires a conversation about exchange with consciousness. While it will accommodate, and while it is amenable to following orders, we can never know the world of the body until attention is made conversant in listening to what will bring flow. Flow is the dynamic state of consciousness that arises when consciousness and the body are transceiving — both concurrently sending and receiving — energy. The body is concerned first and foremost in emptying what is full and filling what is empty so that this dynamic flow is happening constantly.

Meditation – Hunger is your friend

Get into a comfortable position, either in a chair or seated in a meditation cushion. Set your timer for 20 minutes. Close your eyes and become aware of your breath and the sensations in your body. 

Notice any sensations which indicate hunger.  It could be a hollow, gnawing feeling in your belly.  It could be a hunger for security.  It could be a hunger for touch.  It could be a hunger for connection.   For each sensation you notice, ask your body what it wants.  For example, if you notice a hunger for warmth or security, ask your body if wrapping a blanket around yourself is what it wants.  

At the end of the meditation, slowly bring yourself back into the room. Feel the seat beneath you and the sounds around you. Slowly open your eyes when you are ready. Journal your insights and how you felt about the hungers that made themselves known to you.

Exercise

These are the 10 hungers that the body experiences. 

Hunger for truth 

Hunger for connection 

Hunger for attention 

Hunger for unconditional love 

Hunger for touch 

Hunger to express love 

Hunger to hunt

Hunger to open the senses 

Hunger for spiritual union 

Hunger for digestion 

Make a list of 3 hungers you’ve experienced in each of these categories and be as specific as possible in how it has shown up recently. For example: 

Hunger for truth- I’ve felt that there is something deeper that I want to do with my life. 

Hunger for connection- I’ve been wanting to reach out to an old friend of mine. 

Hunger for attention- I’ve wanted to spend more time with John. 

Example 1

In the first year of my marriage, I lost a lot of weight and felt almost bony. I noticed it especially in my face. I was sad and unhappy though I wouldn’t admit it to myself. I was trying to be a “good wife”, whatever that’s supposed to be! I was caught up in the idea and I was suffocating myself in the process. Later I realized that I had disconnected from my body in most ways, losing my connection to what kinds of foods I desired and to the pleasure of eating. I disconnected from my need for truth and connection. In trying to be a good wife to my husband, I actually alienated him along with everyone else. People would ask how I was and what I needed, and I didn’t know because I couldn’t feel anything. It took a long time to find myself again after that. I had to rebuild my whole relationship with my body, putting it first and really learning how to listen to its needs. Reprioritizing like that eventually got all my relationships back on track as well. I learned a lot but it was a rough journey!

Example 2

When I reached a certain age, I began feeling alone. My children had flown the nest and I was divorced. There was an emptiness inside that was so deep, it felt like a black hole I was being sucked into and a bone-deep hunger that I wasn’t sure how to fill. So, I started to fill it with whatever I could find, including alcohol and non-stop working. The alcohol numbed me and the work, and the accolades I got from it, filled me, but only for a short while. Then I felt hungry again. Nothing worked to fill it, not food or running or frantic bouts of house cleaning. I finally, in meditation, realized that this internal hunger could only be filled internally, and I began to pray and do more spiritual work. Slowly, the hunger abated and I felt more full and content with my life. I stopped working so much and drinking so much and started doing things that felt truly nourishing to my spirit.

A hunger for connection cannot be satisfied by binging on something that creates disconnection. It may at first fill the gaping void, but the void will reopen once again.

Summary

You now have tools to help you get more in touch with your body and identify your hunger. This allows you to properly feed them in ways that serve you and nourish the soul. In the next lesson, you will look at a particular hunger that manifests in fixation, and how to overcome it.