Welp, I'm not sure mine is a million-dollar answer, but I'll offer it anyway.
If you had asked me as of, oh, September 4, 2007, I would have said intimacy is a disgusting waste of energy, accessible anyway only to those too bored to find real meaning in their lives, or too desperate for happiness to find it within their selves, or too cruel to block out the impulse to take out their miseries on other people.
As of, oh, May 2009, I would have dropped most of that and said it is simply a disgusting method of mind control and emotional manipulation for use by hate-filled children that live within the bodies of adults. Like a slave collar for mean people to brainwash and entrap selected pets and hold them hostage. Males and females alike, neither more or less than the other.
Then, of you asked me after about September of the same year, I would have told you it was a blank mystery, some internal motivation that seems impossible to either subdue or ignore. Programmed within each of us to want to make more people. Which, obviously, the world needs no more of.
And now, now that I have passed through those days, the fiery trials, and returned to the source, in earnest for the first time (at age 30), I can honestly say that everything I ever said about it before has been dropped. Intimacy isn't an energy-waste. It's simply an energy transfer, and most people don't really know the people they're transferring with (despite thinking they do, or wishing they did), and it causes them true unhappiness.
You commit to giving your self to another, and in return, the other self gives to you. If love (actual love, not lust, not infatuation, not temporary surface attraction) is present, it becomes the "trust" that the two (or more, if you're into that) of you share. Essentially, you allow everything (EVERYTHING, mentally and physically) but that one feeling - trust / love - to be taken away. If, then, you are filled with a sense that what you are doing is nourishing, that the trust / love is bringing peace and / or harmony to your heart (and that of your mate as well) by way of integrity and devotion and a strong will, you are allowing yourself a clean transfer of energy to take place, and the result is something magnificent and indescribable by words. It reaffirms a healthy heart that it is not alone in our universe, and that a great many difficulties in life are little more than misplaced or misdirected focus in our minds.
Remember, this is coming from a person who would have, up to age 30, GLADLY allowed the whole of his sex drive to be removed with permanence by any medical method available, after seeing how miserable everyone who indulges it seems to become as a result.
The truth is, intimacy (no matter how much "seriousness" is attached to it by the parties involved) bonds the two of you together on a plane you can't control or describe, so it's CRUCIAL that you know the person you are with, and trust them implicitly. In my opinion (it seems to be a rare one; I don't know if that's a good thing or not, so don't just take my word for it - make sure you ask others and compare), the actual engagement of "intimacy" shouldn't take place until it feels like a physical MANIFESTATION of something that's already PRESENT inside each of you. You're sharing something, and allowing it to take its designed course.
Now, again, that's only the testimony from someone who regards it with such a specialness that he was willing to die rather than allow anyone to have access to it. Which may not be such a healthy thing. Heh.
But it's one perspective! And I can honestly say that as of now (June 2011), I both understand and agree with the idea that it's better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all. If and when I have my heart broken by way of rupturing these invisible bonds I've shared with someone, it will hurt more than anything else ever in my life (except lip stitches), but I will still know what it felt like to share my self with someone who shared her self with me - and to heavenly and enlightening and joyous degrees, thanks to the purity of our devotion to one another. And I will still be thankful that I discovered something so fulfilling in a world so dry of soul and so full of hate and violence and intolerance. All you need is love.
(But you do NEED it.) (Although a vasectomy doesn't hurt either... :) (Well, maybe a LITTLE... But only for a while!)
Does this clarify or illuminate anything for you? :)
(Sorry, both comments from the same person, I know... But it wouldn't let me post it all as one! It said I had too many characters! Boo! :)
Welp, I'm not sure mine is a million-dollar answer, but I'll offer it anyway.
ReplyDeleteIf you had asked me as of, oh, September 4, 2007, I would have said intimacy is a disgusting waste of energy, accessible anyway only to those too bored to find real meaning in their lives, or too desperate for happiness to find it within their selves, or too cruel to block out the impulse to take out their miseries on other people.
As of, oh, May 2009, I would have dropped most of that and said it is simply a disgusting method of mind control and emotional manipulation for use by hate-filled children that live within the bodies of adults. Like a slave collar for mean people to brainwash and entrap selected pets and hold them hostage. Males and females alike, neither more or less than the other.
Then, of you asked me after about September of the same year, I would have told you it was a blank mystery, some internal motivation that seems impossible to either subdue or ignore. Programmed within each of us to want to make more people. Which, obviously, the world needs no more of.
And now, now that I have passed through those days, the fiery trials, and returned to the source, in earnest for the first time (at age 30), I can honestly say that everything I ever said about it before has been dropped. Intimacy isn't an energy-waste. It's simply an energy transfer, and most people don't really know the people they're transferring with (despite thinking they do, or wishing they did), and it causes them true unhappiness.
You commit to giving your self to another, and in return, the other self gives to you. If love (actual love, not lust, not infatuation, not temporary surface attraction) is present, it becomes the "trust" that the two (or more, if you're into that) of you share. Essentially, you allow everything (EVERYTHING, mentally and physically) but that one feeling - trust / love - to be taken away. If, then, you are filled with a sense that what you are doing is nourishing, that the trust / love is bringing peace and / or harmony to your heart (and that of your mate as well) by way of integrity and devotion and a strong will, you are allowing yourself a clean transfer of energy to take place, and the result is something magnificent and indescribable by words. It reaffirms a healthy heart that it is not alone in our universe, and that a great many difficulties in life are little more than misplaced or misdirected focus in our minds.
Remember, this is coming from a person who would have, up to age 30, GLADLY allowed the whole of his sex drive to be removed with permanence by any medical method available, after seeing how miserable everyone who indulges it seems to become as a result.
The truth is, intimacy (no matter how much "seriousness" is attached to it by the parties involved) bonds the two of you together on a plane you can't control or describe, so it's CRUCIAL that you know the person you are with, and trust them implicitly. In my opinion (it seems to be a rare one; I don't know if that's a good thing or not, so don't just take my word for it - make sure you ask others and compare), the actual engagement of "intimacy" shouldn't take place until it feels like a physical MANIFESTATION of something that's already PRESENT inside each of you. You're sharing something, and allowing it to take its designed course.
Now, again, that's only the testimony from someone who regards it with such a specialness that he was willing to die rather than allow anyone to have access to it. Which may not be such a healthy thing. Heh.
ReplyDeleteBut it's one perspective! And I can honestly say that as of now (June 2011), I both understand and agree with the idea that it's better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all. If and when I have my heart broken by way of rupturing these invisible bonds I've shared with someone, it will hurt more than anything else ever in my life (except lip stitches), but I will still know what it felt like to share my self with someone who shared her self with me - and to heavenly and enlightening and joyous degrees, thanks to the purity of our devotion to one another. And I will still be thankful that I discovered something so fulfilling in a world so dry of soul and so full of hate and violence and intolerance. All you need is love.
(But you do NEED it.) (Although a vasectomy doesn't hurt either... :) (Well, maybe a LITTLE... But only for a while!)
Does this clarify or illuminate anything for you? :)
(Sorry, both comments from the same person, I know... But it wouldn't let me post it all as one! It said I had too many characters! Boo! :)