Our bodies carry a deep intelligence. They remember, very deeply, the turns that our lives take. We can dream of people with such vividness, it is as if we can reach out and touch their faces that are stuck in time, and yet, we may have not seen them for decades. How? What is it in the deep wisdom of our neurophysiology that carries the profound remembrance of our lives?
When we make love to another, our bodies need to let go, they need to allow the other into the depths of our experience. The height of romance, particularly when we are in the thralls of lust, provides a smoke screen so that we can allow ourselves to disassemble. It is when we begin to know the other that our fears rise to the surface, because now they know our body’s secrets, and if our bodies are betrayed, they roar back like the fiercest lions.
What an incredible opportunity this becomes to really begin to touch the edges of otherness, but make no mistake, it is fraught with all the obstacles of the most treacherous hero’s journey. And should we expect anything else? If we are to learn to die, to learn to wrestle with our existence and to grieve our expectations and dreams, would we not run into moments of non-being where we do not even recognize ourselves? How can we in those moments recognize the other?
Sex needs to move from an act of pleasure to an act of submission, where we are fully displayed, and the strength of our bond with the other provides the container for this dissolution. Isiah McKimmie in this week’s podcast, advocates for the tending of our relationship garden, in the same way, that we would love and nurture anything else in our lives. We cannot expect it to spontaneously strengthen itself. This deliberate act of tending to our relationships can go against our longing for exquisite connection which transcends our actions. This thinking is regressive, and when scrutinized, does not hold water.
The fact that we must adjust who we are, what we believe, and what we know, throughout the maturational process, may not be convenient and may bring intense anxiety, but it is the capacity to tolerate this anxiety that is the goal, not its alleviation. This is popular psychology’s shadow, where psychology is commodified like anything else. Failure is inevitable and promises of overcoming it are hollow and defensive. Let us all relish in our collective failure together and free ourselves from the shackles of expectation. Only then can our bodies relinquish their hold, and we can die in the arms of another.