Intimacy is a tool given to us to help us come to love and unity. The etymology of “intimacy” is Latin – from the word “intimus” – “inmost” – our inner most core. Intimacy literally means “into me see.” Most of us spend our lives living from the surface, from the ego and from the periphery. We never spend time learning to discover and enjoy the rich blessings of the inner core of the other and of ourselves.
Discovering our inner core and learning to love and cherish ourselves is the first step towards intimacy. Unless we learn to be intimate with ourselves, we cannot be intimate with anyone else. We have to know and connect with our inner most being before we can connect with the inner most being of another. We have to be willing to go inside, turn the light on, see ourselves and clean up where necessary – such that we can love and cherish ourselves.
The unhealed personality cannot allow intimacy with another, because they fear that the other will see the hole, the wound, and the pus oozing out of it. The unhealed is afraid that the other will see that they don’t know who they are, that they are insane, that they don’t know where they are going, that their life is chaos. Hence, the fear of intimacy. Only when we heal our wounds and start loving ourselves can we allow intimacy with the other.
To a large extent intimacy is missing from most of our relationships. Many of us mistake sexual relationships for intimacy. Just to be sexually related to somebody is not intimacy. The genital organs are not all there is in intimacy; they are not even necessary. Intimacy is a totally different phenomenon. It is allowing the other to see you, the inner you, the real you. It is allowing the other to come into you, to allow the other to see you from your inside, to invite somebody to that deepest core of your being. It is the ability to be open, kind and compassionate not just with one person but also with all beings.
Intimacy is an important element of our pursuit of unconditional love and oneness with all beings. When we allow and open up to intimacy, we start to grow an inner richness. Then we start to heal and transform our wounds into love and forgiveness and become more enlightened. This is the magic and miracle of love.
Love is the greatest transformational force in the world. Those who know not how to use it remain asleep, crawling in the dark recesses of existence; they never wake up and reach the sunlit peak of life. Those who discover how to love will wake up and reach the highest peak called enlightenment.
In love and intimacy
Courtney
