Intimacy

After a long time we few college friends were together in a friend's daughter's marriage ceremony for two days and each one was with his/ her issues regarding the life and relationship as well as intimacy in relationship! I just mentioned to them that are there any problem to go ahead in relationship or problem in achieving intimacy?

And then discussion was on and on with so many ideas and quotes from wise persons and so on; but all were trying to get something from others' saying with cups of tea as an absorbing process: I also participated with my own understanding and experience base and added some kind of stormy things to blow up the smokes and dust from within too! I thought that such discussion has had a common platform and then unfolded the inner things from that! So I would like to share few sparkling processes here with 'gather friends'...

Mostly I will talk about the intimacy as a goal and how one can go for that or how one is lead for that process and how s/he pulled and pushed for such kind of achievement passing through life and its different kind of experiences!

I consider that when we talk about intimacy it is based on here, our manifested life. It means we are really here as an individual to grasp and understand the possibility of human relationship passing through different stages and reaching to intimacy! We have our physical, vital -emotional, mental - intellectual and spiritual identities connected in our 'I', which could be with EGO! And we have to learn to make that identity without ego and make our 'I' free from that bindings as an integrated achievement and intimacy goes with that!

Integrity here means a deep concern from within and with a realization as the outcome of growing relationship without any dilemma and contrast! This kind of integrity leads the person towards intimacy! It means that it has individual realization only? And who has passed through above mentioned process will have such kind of integrity and will go ahead for intimacy? And other/s are not going to achieve that?

If we think by heart then we have to say YES to that, because as a human being the heart is allowing us to relate with the higher level through our purified emotions and connects us with the animal level, vegetation level too! I know mostly people will say that we feel by heart, not think by heart! I have intentionally put here this phrase THINK BY HEART, because I also mean by that the integrity of the mind and intelligence with heart should be achieved for gaining such an intimacy! Mind has so many things wavering and doubts are also shred by mind and intelligence, so their participation will create the real integrity to go ahead for intimacy.

Intimacy regarding person to person always leads us to think first about male female intimacy, in other words, husband wife intimacy: As a human being we are really more concerned about this relationship because it is based on law of natural attraction and love element to regenerate the specie! This one factor separate human beings from the ONLY ANIMAL aspect and put us as a social animal! At the same time human emotional occurrences and human feeling for long lasting association with such kind of relationship lead us to explore it at higher level too! We were bound to think and put this relationship as a prime social and family based real relationship and we have created so many things around that for security and legal aspects and so on! But the intimacy is still different than all those things! You can legalize marriage but you can't legalize intimacy because it should be achieved by our inner growth in relationship and both have to create an avenue for that too! And if it is not developed than you could have a legal relationship and you can live together and try to bring emotional, mental intimacy in between you and the possibility to explore some time the gaining factor and could be achieve also!

Beside that the intimacy is really a very high profile element and for human beings it has a vast avenue! At this juncture I would like to ask that have you achieved intimacy with your own self. We do know that to gain/ to develop intimacy with other/s we must achieve intimacy with our self? I simply say here about self awareness and realization of the self! As we know that without loving our self we can not love other, we can not achieve intimacy without creating intimacy with our selves! I know this is some how not easy to get in to mind, but please try to hear this from your heart and you will find the main thing related with this saying!

Intimacy is on going process like an under ground stream! Its base is love. Who has unconditional love can achieve intimacy as the other side of the coin! And again unconditional love is also one achievement which is not easy! Well, I don't want to make things more confused and non-achievable; but I want to make clear that if intimacy is our goal then what should be with us for an energy exchange!!

I am aware about what you have mentioned in beginning of your posting that 'for many younger people intimacy translates to sex...and that is one interpretation of the word for sure.' At the same time it has other meaningful interpretations about that word too: As per thesaurus intimacy means closeness, friendship, amity, affection, love, understanding, warmth, confidentiality, privacy ... If we try to get through these usages and consider time factor and language process also then we can say that this word has all such integrated references and so we must consider to get the real picture of the word for communication purpose!

Ideally TO BE ONE with other one/s, TO BE CLOSE AND DEEPLY ATTACH with other one/s; TO LOVE closely, deeply and friendly as well as with integrity of one's own totality is THE INTIMACY! This defines highly individual perspective and intimacy is really highly individual thing: You have the right to achieve intimacy with ANYBODY, but you have no right to ask that person should have also intimacy with you!

Well I can understand that your intimacy can touch that person by its intensity and that person might have developed same for you but it is a different matter at all!

I am not denying that both the persons could have same level intimacy but I want to put an emphasis here that such type of intimacy would be based on soul to soul relationship and very creative by all means!

When physical level, vital - emotional level, mental - intellectual level intimacy integrates by live processes and creates a totality based intimacy then and then the soul to soul based intimacy is occurring and establishing/ manifesting completely! And this is not an IDEAL only, this is done by known- unknown persons, and such occurrences are between man- woman, woman- woman, man- man, man- people, woman- people, man - the god, woman- the god and so on... Examples are there and intimacy is here so we too can achieve! Because what is possible for one human being is possible for all human being, but the process and individual responsibility and understanding with love and closeness should be part of our characteristic without fail!