A few months ago I had a night out in Paris with a good friend, and his good friends. I was the outsider friend; everyone else knew each other well.
The night involved many phone calls, coordination, alcohol, parties shut down by the police and other kinds of drama. In the early morning the drama was over, there was no need to run round and search for anything anymore and with that something changed.
The friends were finally able to simply be with each other; they had drugged and otherwise exhausted their resistance to closeness. I felt privileged to be a part of that; every space was full of unspoken love. It seemed like the whole evening lead to those moments. It was a lot of effort for lungs and livers.
It amazes me how complicated we can make simply being with each other even though it something that we deeply long for.
Many of our social rituals are habits that we have associated with allowing this state of closeness. Some of them are beautiful, elegant and relatively simple. Dance, music and campfires fall come to my mind. Others are messy and occasionally destructive like the night out I described above.
Then there are the subtler conditions we place on being. I will allow closeness if you belong to my church, religion or group. I will allow closeness if you conform to an appearance that matches my idea of what a friend looks like. I will allow closeness if you demonstrate sexual receptivity. I will allow closeness if you respect my authority. I will allow closeness if you laugh at my jokes…
So many conditions, it’s exhausting.
Not that I advocate simply getting rid of those conditions. They shape our social world with all its joy and despair. I do not think we can simply get rid of those conditions even if we really want to.
In fact it is already something to recognise that those conditions are in place.
The best we can do is to recognise that closeness, being is already there whether your conditions have been met or not. You are already intimate with the world.
When we cultivate closeness, presence, connection without agenda, without conditions then we begin to recognise the conditions that we normally place on this experience.
Then little by little we develop greater flexibility about how and where and with whom we can connect. The exhausting habits become less and less necessary.
That is what the Intimacy Experience is about. It is a minimal structure and safe space to enjoy the deep pleasure of simply being with each other, to remember how easy it can be.
Can you remember now?
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