The Art of Intimacy

Intro

Imagine you are growing something precious beyond measure. And it will be strong one day. But maybe right now it isn’t yet. Maybe right now it is actually still quite delicate. A new part of you opened up by making contact with Eros through this work, and it’s your job now to take really good care of it as it grows and strengthens. 

The greatest work of our lives is to bring our true self into full expression. Our creativity is the route to this. It trains us to be ourselves fully because of what it demands from us. We learn to practice symmetry and congruency and then we have a taste for it and want to have that feeling in every area of our lives. We want to feel congruent through and through, where our words match out intention, and out intention matches our soul’s calling, and our schedule each day reflects our attention on our calling, and so on. Congruency and alignment.

This work is intense. It dissolves who we think we are, in favor of who we actually are. It shifts us from seeking approval and validation from outside ourselves, to being seated in our interior perfection and instead radiating those things to others who need it. It has us drop things off in our lives that don’t serve our soul’s calling anymore and embrace things that do. It has us learn to love things we would disown or avoid. And it is a long and winding path; elegant yes, but very counterintuitive to the rational mind. 

How do you see yourself engaging with your creativity? How is it teaching you now?

Reading

Our noble work is to be the fierce guardian of the fragile and all too accommodating creative mind. All too accommodating in the sense that it will conform to the vision of whatever authority is looking at it. If we have made the external world our authority, it will conform to become that. If we have determined our own soul is the authority, it will conform to become that.

This creative mind, permitted to run through to its end, will bring about the totality of our being, the goal of this existence being to become fully who we are wherever we are. Creativity, like art, does not see through a lens of good or bad, but rather through symmetry and congruency. It seeks them out. It asks us to become the ever more salient version of who we are, both by dissolving our capacity to manufacture who we think we should be and by revelation of who we are, regardless of who we think we should be. It rewards by sustainable gratification rather than fleeting external approval. And yet be forewarned — who we are and who we are meant to be in this life may not be the form our rational minds would desire.

There is no greater service on the planet than courageously communicating to the world — by example not word — that one can exist being fully who they are, and beyond that, there is another in the world who is big enough and themselves enough to welcome who they are. We can do this only when we have wrestled with and converted the various and true aspects of being that may or may not be in conflict with societal views, and we have massaged them through, remaining loyal, always, to what exists inside of us, seeing its beauty and rightness and integrating it fully into our expression.

Meditation

Set aside 15 minutes in your day. This meditation is called “Envisioning Myself as an Erotic Artist in My Life”. For this one, you’ll be visioning a lot so you might want to have a notepad next to you to write things down. It will be a less sunken-meditation and a more stretching out into the feeling of the life you want meditation.

Choose a comfortable spot. Get yourself settled and start your timer. Imagine what an average day in your life looks like. Work life, sense of purpose, relationships with friends, family, colleagues, and partners. Your hobbies. The routines. Everything you put your energy into on a daily basis. 

How do you feel as you imagine your life as it is? What sensations arise. Thoughts. Emotions.

Begin to think of what it would be like to bring some creativity and artistry into each area. How would you interact differently with your life if you were the artist of it? How would you be in your relationships? Softer? More open? More vocal and expressive? More attentive and devoted? Would you express your needs and desires more? 

Repeat this for every area of your life. How would it feel to be an artist in your work? What hobbies would you drop off or take on? How would the feeling of your routines change? How would you feel in your body?

Let the feeling of the life you desire, the life you interact with and relate with as an erotic artist, fill you up and seep into your skin and bones. Be filled by the energy of it.

As you come to the end of your meditation, take some deep breaths and let yourself readjust to the room. Open your eyes slowly. Write down anything you don’t want to forget. 

Exercise

1. Who are you unleashed? Take some time and journal about who you are when you are fully you. Start by thinking of a moment when you felt that. You felt powerful, confident, and bold, you were unafraid and you expressed yourself. That’s your blueprint. Who would you be if you had access to that all the time? What would your life be like? 

2. Draw or paint something this week. Even if you don’t usually draw or paint. Feel into the creative process of it. How do you sense when to add something here or there? How do you know when it’s complete? You’re feeling into something internally, you’re sensing something and responding to it. Use this time to pay attention to that part of you. When else is it speaking to you in your life? Is it always present? How might that voice relate to you being unleashed?