To connect or NOT to connect...

I have the great privilege of talking about intimacy with lots of people, and I’m often heart broken by the number of people who readily acknowledge that their love life is mediocre, at best. Why? Why aren’t these lovers bursting full of heart and soul, radiating passionate life force? Why aren’t their days filled with the energy of love sweetly rushing through their bodies as they go their way? Why aren’t they swooning with inflamed hearts and bodies full of bliss hormones when they are together??

Painting by Arna Baartz

Small beliefs, small experiences

A distortion I often encounter is that people think the goal of sex is orgasm. Oh honey, there is sooo much more. Have we mistaken “technique” for connection? How often do you feel well and truly met? How often are you fully present and available to connect with your partner?

There are realms of passionate energy that dwarf the experience of genital orgasm, or even whole body orgasm. And while orgasm, especially whole body orgasm is a wonderful moment of deep alignment with our larger self and an excellent way to re-balance our energy fields, there is more. Sex is essentially about amplifying frequencies of connection with the result of exponentially increasing the energy between you, which opens access to the frequencies of passion, ecstasy and oneness.

Underneath all the half-hearted gestures of romance, all the fumbling caresses, pecks on the fly and almost hugs, or the casual inquires about our well-being are all an intent to make connection. And yet, how often do you really feel there has been even a breath of oneness in these moments?

If we’re paying attention at all, these near-miss connections will actually feel non-nourishing, empty, like false food. Like an addiction they give us some small measure of what we’re seeking and leave us deeply hungry at the same time. Some attempts offer us a small sense of companionship which is comforting, and yet these too often leave us hungry for more. More depth, more zing, more abandon, more heart and soul, more seeing and being seen, more met, more touched.

Come on baby light my fire….

Why do these semi-connections fall so far from the flames of passion, and many times leave us feeling even more depleted and lonely? Why does the tired mom feel that having sex with hubby is just another chore to do? Why do most men feel exhausted after making love? Loving and intimacy ignite us when we first reveal ourselves to each other, when we feel so deeply met. How do we loose that energy?

I have a hunch that it’s because most folk just don’t know how to activate and sustain an ever deepening connection. We’ve even lost an ability to imagine the possibilities. After all, there was no class for creating intimacy in school, our parents were usually unable to model these behaviors, and other than the fantasies of movies, we’re left pretty clueless as to the realm of possibilities and how to tap them.

Technologies of frustration

Most folks are seeking chemistry with another but are not activating their own chemicals. We’re looking for someone else to do it to us. We live in a very co-dependent society in which we think our beloved is supposed to deliver the joy juice to us, i.e. if we like the way they look in those jeans then we can get turned on by them. If they don’t turn us on then we decide that they’re somehow not meeting our needs. This is a sad but maybe subtle tone in most relationships these days.

So what happens for most folks when they can’t get turned on? They amplify the technique, rub harder, buy more gadgets, and try gimmicks, fantasies, plastic wrappings or pain, anything to FEEL more. But again there is little or no attempt to make an energetic connection; the experience is flesh limited and a huge displacement of one’s inner power. The actual Source energy is left untapped, not felt, and not shared.

The truth is most of us don’t know how to connect from our inner selves, to another being, be they our partner, children, friends or the wait person at our table.

One of the common versions of dis-connection in our current culture is even called the hook-up. That pretty much tells all, we send our energy out to another and hook their energy for our benefit. We hook up to get our needs met; or to make sure they see us in a particular way. We even engage in heartless sex to try to feel something, anything. We seek the heartless blow job to relieve stress, cultivate the keep-me-company-so-I-don’t-have-to-feel-so-alone companion. We settle for so little by giving so little of ourselves.

Connecting means gifting yourself, your heart, your focus, your presence, your sexual energy, your soul to another, to this moment, to the deed being done, but it does NOT mean giving yourself away. To connect we begin with us, stand in our own energy, get grounded, present, and willing to connect. Our energy radiates in our being but doesn’t go jumping into the other person, or hooking them to us. When a person is energetically in this position, and revealing their true self there is an enormous amount of energy that gets activated and is available to share.

When our beloved also has this inner stance and wants to connect from their true self we generate an exponential energy surge together. This amplification happens even just standing still in front of each other gazing into their eyes IF both people are connected to themselves, grounded, and open to reveal themselves, with masks-off.  From here energy builds like crazy, to the degree we remain open, present and soft hearted.

NOW we’re talking intimacy, the experience of being transparently present in the frequencies of love! Oh, and this kind of fulfillment could take some practicing; for joy, for joy! Grin, sigh, moan…