On Intimacy, (In)Security and Peace
Our defensive selves often block peace within our hearts and further in the world. The more ego guards our sense of strength, the less we trust others. Insecurity is uncomfortable and we seek remedy for our discomfort via various means. The boldest of us allow our vulnerability to embrace others vulnerability in a reciprocal act of equanimous acceptance, also known as intimacy. We all need hugs. Not just physically, but also mentally being embraced by others. Yet this is hard, I believe it is harder to show our subtle nature than the traditionally portrayed heroic acts of cold resolve claiming power.
A lonely woman stands on stage gazing firmly into the audience. Silent after that strangely calm bang of her speech, they no longer laugh at her. They seem to have realised something. Something that resonated deeper within and they could not skip it over lightheartedly. Her speech was like an opera song.
What did she do, what did she say and why would the audience laugh at her? She was not a comedian, she was a sincere individual who tried to connect with the wrong crowd.
She was dressed in a charcoal blazer, loose, belted pants and comfortable boots. Her hair was not coifed, never died, but confidently open in curling beach waves that organically farmed her gentle face. She did not try to seduce the audience by her attractive looks, neither did she try to look smart, manlike, she was unafraid to show herself purely as she was. A human being making mistakes, but open to admit that and show others that they need not to apologise. Instead, she plied to them for owning their mistakes openly as a learning experience. That was her message. Honesty over calculating manipulation of her audience was something not many Ted talkers perform. Some would see her weakness-admitting performance as a tragedy, but in reality she was unafraid to show her strength and a holistic acceptance of herself.
You, the moon
I won’t go into her full story here, but my focus is on the observation that overconfident speakers have fooled billions over the course of history. Authoritarian egoists often mistrust others, believing in scheming against their chosen rule. From Nero, through Shakespeare’s tragedies, to more recent Stalin, Hitler, Putin, Trump, their ego power was and seems insatiable and leads to violent outrage stirred by the boiling anger they relish in heating up.
We need different kind of emotions flowing into others hearts if we want to shake the world into a more gentle, peaceful and kind place to share existence. We can reflect the light as the moon does at night.
Leading by ego only temporarily won the so called success. Ultimately, as a recent broad study by Harvard Medical School found, happiness is about relationships. The most essential of which is the relationship with yourself. Acceptance. Artists daring to go deep within human psyche like Louise Bourgeois knew that very well.
Not everyone is ready to receive. We think more about the future, while we are in the present.
Yet it is precisely that our behaviour in the present will be imprinted in our personal life stories.
Only some people appreciate intimacy in public. Being intimate means fully immersing yourself into the now with others connecting with you eagerly. Most prefer to perk up, show off, compartmentalise away from others. Pretending their importance while deep within even if they are materially wealthy, they are poor in their soul. These loners are so because they do not trust others, and without trust no genuine intimacy exists. We block off the potential maximum that can only be now in this particular moment dipping in ours and others presence.
Intimacy and empathy: what it means to be bold
We rarely tell others what makes us vulnerable. In the extreme, we may even imagine that the vultures pray at your weak moment to ridicule us for their own entertainment. The flocks of them circle in their own mind within their darkness, unwilling to see the spark of light they can offer, were they willing to leap, to leave the crowd-think. Veiling their own insecurities by bold facade is their way to face the world.
It is sad to think that good people are a rare breed. So many injured souls need to wound other sensitive hearts. Perhaps the revolution we need is the evolution of consciousness. Jim Morisson was reported saying: “The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your reality for a role. You trade in your sense for an act. You give up your ability to feel, and in exchange, put on a mask. There can’t be any large-scale revolution until there’s personal revolutions, on an individual level. It’s got to happen inside first.” Indeed we need personal evolution and maybe then only wars can cease to reduce us into insensitive beasts.
From a holistic eastern perspective, if we work on comforting ourselves within, no rage would erupt onto the exposed others. Unfairly burning those not deserving your fiery lava of hate, jealousy and insecurity. Some were probably hurt many times, maybe more than the vultures ever were, and if we want to help healing them and the world, person by person, heart by heart, we must start by being brave enough to be vulnerable with others, not to burden them with our pain and trouble, but to make them feel heart. Like a friend or therapist would do to ease your mind and the heart as well in your current suffering. The conundrums of life unpredictably stab us where we are the weakest.
Who deserves our stabbings and who deserves our pity? Judgement divides us, and criticism lessens a good enough experience. Hunger shall be sated by little, not craving more, but the mind plays games with us and often we give in too easily.
Sincere gratitude remedies the ranking tendency. Awareness is a savvy move by the chess player. As if the attitude of appreciation consciously chosen also rewired our minds into a satisfied bliss. Rooting in the present, not bound to the past, nor anxious or anticipating something concrete from the future. Just openly, with a child-like curiosity, seeing what is being offered in the moment.
Open to support
To protect ourselves in a healthier way then by summoning up the ego is to clarify our weakest spots to ourselves and then strengthening them. Like muscles through training. Expose your impatience, your insecurity, your hurt self to the elements outside of yourself. Let them empower you as this time react differently than before. Do not internalise rage, but transform it into clarity. When I overcome myself I feel not just brave, but often as if the ray of light caressed me entirely in its warm bath of joy through the clouds above me. Those old self-wounding habits got to go. They do not serve me, they merely stick like a tape on your shoes as you all though an unclean city. The past sticks, but noticing it now, you can clean it away.
My personal story here might illustrate this process better. I shifted my perspective from diving into melancholy in challenging family situation that just kept piling up. I was able to soar into an elevated flight because someone else opened my closed eyelids to the light shimmering from behind the clouds. Another kindred being, a friend, lucky me a few friends, some decades-old affectionate beings others more recent souls attracted by my aura and common quest, encouraged me to claim my heart’s longing, my desires and truth in the moment.
Through their virtual (that could be turned into a podcast) and in-person (hugging and feeling he rainbow of presence with me) support I was able to elevate my authentic unique contribution to the joyous presence of others once again. The empty vessel started to fill up through my thoughtful giving away without expecting nothing in return. Intimacy was the key to that treasure box. For too long I cast my capacious allure to side because of some limiting beliefs of society and conservative ideas about commitment.
Still, happiness is not just about your relationships with others, but above the embracing of yourself. That is the task of the midlife transition that some master, others get lost in.
Acceptance, not denial, because the later will always show up like a troll somewhere in your life sucking joy away. Not only I can still pull that minidress up in my 40s, but I can start a new mission, job, a communal project to fill my heart with bliss. It is never too late to change, only fear and the loss of comfort for some time block us. We shall assess reality, but still dream about the seemingly impossible for some dreams are premonitions of what is to come and what we desire.
The overcast sky in some places as if could not clear up, the heaviness weighs you down, the sun rarely graces a visit into the gloom. We are to light sensitive beings, so are plants and most animals. Some even seek darkness, but most thrive on sunlight or artificial light as some indoor vertical farms. Be the light for others who need you in critical moments, but do not let yourself being dragged down into their darkness, by insisting on light, you strengthen yours.
Peace in the mind, peace in the world
Insecurity and love are estranged relatives. Sometimes they get along, but usually they split when they mature into an independent individual trusting themselves and their abilities. That is why limiting love is toxic, while liberating love is its highest form, a true intimacy. It is not easy and possible for everyone, but it is certainly worth the quest as some wise poets once realised (R.M.Rilke was one of them). The more we repeat our success, the more confidence and trust in our performance we gain. Practice makes perfect. Give time into it and it will become better. Patience again!
Why am I being upset by someone I care about not replying to my messages within days (even before she became a mum)? Perhaps that is just their way? Some people are just so overwhelmed by life, work and urgent matters that virtual philosophising does not have enough space left to expand. At other times it seems as if we were afraid of committing for deep, intense virtual conversations because the expectations of others to be online usurps our personal space that we want to devote to the life in the moment. Taking digital breaks is healthy. It recalibrates the energy needed for more pressing issues. I do that when I can , when a gap in my schedule presents itself to go offline for a couple of days and the mental rewards I felt have proven their usefulness on a regular basis.
Personal growth shall dwell close to that summit of our life pursuits. Feeling humanity through technology defying time and space within seconds. We just need to be plugged in. Something what gives also takes, intimacy does too.
During a recent storytelling workshop the author and speaker Vika Viktoria cautioned us: Be gentle with yourself, don’t shut down. What would it feel like if it were easy like dance? I assume she meant an intuitive, spontaneous dance, not a choreographed and rehearsed performance, for that is never easy unless you have trained your entire life and focused on not much else. Doing something without a concern about the results or being judged by others is liberating and in art it frees the muse.
What is it that you deep down desire? I would say love, pleasure and bliss from one source. Yet this is not easy to receive as too often these needs come separately, rarely sustainably from one source. Unless you imagine this trinity or put your faith in the divine. Can one trust a man? The law of change is merciless, life turns into death, health into suffering, bliss into pain, unless we nurture intimacy in a spiritual way that connects souls beyond physical and emotional swings of reality.
This grief without reason
It’s far the worst pain
To never know why…
Tears without reason
In the disheartened heart
What? No trace of treason?
Paul Verlaine
Besides the intense French poets, the English tragedies of Shakespeare patched together the vast breadth of human quality and vice. Not all of us are King Lear. All the better for us as loosing control over one’s ego can lead to cruelty and madness. Shakespeare journeyed his ego to humbleness before the character’s death, but before much harm was done through his foolish arrogance that could not be remedied by too late a repentance.
Our intimacy with ourselves affects others. This is also about selfishness. We can claim our boundaries and needs, but it is more liberating to become selfless. Not that we do not care about our wellbeing, but we are not attached to our self-importance. We accept ourselves wholly and so we are able to empathise with others on a more equal level. It feels sublime and that is the reward. These are the ancient as well as newfound riches of an evolved human consciousness. Timeless.