Intimacy is a sacred imagination. How do you imagine intimacy?
THE FOUR GREAT QUESTIONS
There are four great questions for becoming I and cultivating a conscious evolving imagination of self.
1. How do I fulfill my purpose? The Imagination of Contribution.
2. How do I relate to others? The Imagination of Intimacy
3. How do I regulate my life? The Imagination of Balance.
4. How do I evolve? The Imagination of Moral Development
We answer these questions through imagination. Imagination is not fantasy or dream or wish. It is a building of a clear image.
WHAT IS YOUR IMAGINATION OF INTIMACY?
This post looks at the question “How do I relate to others?” and offers ways to imagine intimacy. No matter what your age, your relationship status or history, you will find value here if you are willing to imagine.
Once maturely imagined, intimacy becomes a challenge to establish and sustain. What relationships with others fulfill your imagination of intimacy? What are the elements of intimacy that you struggle to establish?
Of course, if you haven’t imagined intimacy, just fantasized and desired it, driven by appearances, hormones and loneliness, you have probably faced some great difficulties, doubts, and disappointments and not known what to do.
I am offering a 5 session webinar on Imagining Intimacy. This live, interactive online course offers insights and tools to support you in creating your own imagination of intimacy. With your own imagination of intimacy you can forgive the pain of intimacy failures, liberate your intimacy needs and expressions, and empower your ability to form meaningful and fulfilling intimate relationships.
You can learn about it and register for it here.
YOUR INTIMACY WORDS
Meanwhile let me suggest a simple exercise for beginning to recognize your personal experience of intimacy.
Consider parts of speech:
- the verbs that denote actions,
- the nouns that denote states, qualities, and things,
- the prepositions that indicate the relationship of the subject and object.
Write down a list of the words that you feel express intimacy or do not express intimacy. This is a great exercise to do with a spouse, a lover, a friend as each word can generate an illuminating and creative conversation. And if you do it on a flip chart or big sheets of paper that you can hang on the wall where you can see the words and it can become a growing list.
Some verbs that come up for me: connect, create, cuddle, attune, trust, agree, negotiate, fart, cook, surrender, support, laugh
Some not verbs: abandon, lie, force, dominate, seduce, ignore, surrender (note that I put surrender in both), resent
Some nouns: love, interest, curiosity, playfulness, seriousness, neutrality, trust, kindness, offer, touch, lips, boundaries.
Some not nouns: resistance, symbiosis, fantasy, magic, pretense, doubt, meanness, demand, denial
Some prepositions: with, beside, near, and
Some not prepositions: away from, within, but, beneath
And now you can add some qualifiers: the adjectives and adverbs: sweet, tender, difficult, amazing, slowly, creatively, truthfully, alive.
and not qualifiers: numb, withheld, violent, distant, pushy, urgently, negatively
Enjoy this exercise and take it seriously. You can have fun and grow wise at the same time.
Please consider the Imagining Intimacy webinar. It will truly guide you to your own deep sense and true expression of intimacy in all your relationships. And I want to add that boundaries and openness are two aspects of intimacy that must be self-imagined and will be addressed in the course. Learn more here.
