The Natural shape of connection
I’ve been finding myself teaching a lot about approval recently - how it’s the alchemizing factor that opens any moment. Whether it’s in meditation or the erotic or quarantine life, it seems to be a universal key. When we’re judging reality, lost in our wish for it to be different, or trying to twist it into a preferred shape, it’s hard to see its true nature. Our disapproval blocks our sight. It’s not that desire, or the wish for something different, is wrong. It’s that when we start with approval, an acceptance of how things are, truth is revealed that we might otherwise miss. I know this is how it works with my own heart.
I’ve also come to know it’s what works for relationship. In between us and another, there is always a natural expression of connection. You can think of it as a third, the unique result of your particular being meeting another being. That third may take the form of friendship, lovers, acquaintances, creative colleagues, benevolent adversaries, or infinite others… Yet we most often come to relationship with an agenda that prevents us from seeing the most resonant form. Just like in meditation, where we want our experience to be a certain way - for our breath to be smooth, emotions to be calm, and body-mind to be at ease; in relationship, we want someone to fit securely inside our preset categories. We label that which doesn’t fit as inconvenient or wrong. We don’t approve.
This came up for me recently with a friend. Over and over again, I was feeling frustrated with our connection - I had a growing list of things I wished were different. Until one day I realized I was operating from an idea of what a close friendship was “supposed” to look like. I was trying to squeeze my friend into the box of my expectations, rather than being curious about who she is and how we naturally fit together. As I’ve begun to let the relationship take its own unique shape, it feels SO much better. There is less disappointment, and more appreciation for her.
So it has me question, what if instead of imposing our ideas on a connection, we felt for what the connection wanted to be? Kind of like tuning into the underlying beat between us and another, with willingness to hear its unique song. This is the practice of erotic relating.
Here, we might find someone’s gifts most beautifully expressed as “occasional lover”, or another as “Sunday morning coffee friend”. Ultimately, we experience the connection beyond form - attuning to what it is uniquely in each moment. We learn to receive others, and ourselves, with approval for exactly who we are, our sight fully open to the truth of what is. Like I said, it’s a practice! But one in which we don’t have to distort or discount any relationship or what it has to offer.