I find myself trying to break away from my learned notion of what it means to be intimate. A comment from a friend recently reminded me how I think that intimacy is not the same as cuddling. How humans might behave with one another may be based on the intimacy that is present. But the intimacy is there no matter how we behave.
The kind of intimate connection I experience and want is there with or without my awareness. For sure, I want to be aware of it. My intended awareness is an open-eyed attention to that intimacy that naturally occurs.
I want to live in an awareness that I have an intimate connection with the whole world around me. It is the awareness that I experience when I brush up against the plants in my garden or when I hug someone. I do not create the intimacy. The intimacy is already there, and what I bring to it is my awareness rising out of concentration. I am able to see things and people as they really are and experience the relationship I have with them.
I intend to unmask the social illusion that intimacy is something special and that we have to be careful. I have been taught a social illusion from birth that I am meant to be separate. This illusion has been reinforced throughout my life by the barriers cautious people put up. I intend to refashion the illusion I have of reality.
Naturally, my approach has everything with being mindful. The deeper my concentration becomes, the more I am aware of people and things as they really are. And that includes the natural relationship I have with them. By being mindful, I experience the connection I have, and the more I affirm that connection the more I understand its meaning.
Intimacy is not something that I create. Intimacy is something that I recognize and experience. All is connected, and the more I realize that connection and experience it, the more I become immersed in the intimacy I have with all things.