Intention: Irrelevant

Again and again, my intentions for my work reveal themselves to be irrelevant.

I began the workshop Something Like This with a simple intention.

I wanted to show women (and anyone who wanted to learn) the way of looking at relationship “potential” which is sustainable in the only way possible: through Intimacy.

(Intimacy is the practice of being in love with what is.)

It was immediately clear that Something Like This was an initiation portal to a new way of processing connection, and I quickly built Damsel In Delight, an ongoing support program with at least three call times every week and an unlimited structure.

I wanted to make sure that the women who came through Something Like This had the opportunity to learn the beliefs and practices of this way of relating in the granular nuances of their own and each other’s lived experiences. I wanted them to have constant access.

All of my intention was focused on healing the wounded abstraction of the romantic dyad.

I have seen and been subjected again and again to the destruction and delusion, the distraction and distress produced by the understanding we hold about romantic partnership, how it is “supposed to” look, what it is “supposed to” provide, how nourishment is allowed to enter lives shaped to the standards of western “civilization.”

My wild eros refused to be tamed, so I clarified the innate ways which require no path. It was a form of self defense, an adaptation to delusion which preserved my primal nature.

I created for myself a bridge, and it’s one so clear and steady that again and again, in my personal life and in my work, people choose to walk it to an unknown destination, rather than risk the rickety track to a golden vision of love they’ve never yet tasted.

Since I’ve deepened into this way of relating, I know the unknown destination as Love’s Forest.

I myself have only barely ventured into this forest of love.

But holding the portal of Something Like This, the structure of Damsel In Delight has expanded my living of this Way, my understanding and experience of this forest.

This is where my intentions ceased to be relevant.

Those of us in Damsel In Delight have entered the cathedral of trees, the mulching miles of root structure, the secrets of mycelial resource transfer, the abundant intricacy of connection that blows the romantic dyad cleanly out of the water.

I’ve felt stymied, these last few weeks, by my own utter flippancy toward ideas of romance and sex.

I have had bodies on my body constantly, cuddle loves, erotic whispers, artistic leanings, bed mates like my childhood sleepovers, somatic processing, babies, women, men.

I am glutted with connection. Sure, I have a couple lovers, but who even cares when I have LOVE?

It’s happening to all the loves in Damsel In Delight.

They’re finding connection in flames that were stifled by the romantic dyad box.

They’re finding resonance and ease all around them, in relationships that had only been waiting to occupy the foreground of their attention.

They’re rooting into platonic connection, discovering their village exponentially, turning toward experiences that light up their adoration and delight.

They’re in their art, attuning to their small material comforts, improving on their every here and now. The circumstances are so similar, yet somehow they feel so different? Is something different here? What is it?

They’re busy, so busy! They’re busy loving, too busy for connections that are boring, let alone stressful or fraught or simply incompatible.

They’re calm, so calm. It’s all so easy and efficient, the easiest breaths they’ve taken in years. What WAS all that stress about?

Yes, I have been stymied. The women in this offering are not really finding a lot of “romantic” prospects. They’re deeply capitalizing on the ones already there, but nourishment is flooding their lives in so many ways that this is almost a boring notion, almost beside the point, casual and clean.

How can I write and post about this ideal to seduce you into Something Like This?

I found I could not, so I didn’t. I wasn’t. Integrity is a pillar I trust in myself such that I trust my own resistance absolutely.

I waited for the clearer vision to form.

Finally, it is here.

Something Like This is an initiation into a practice of attention which frees you from all abstractions, getting you intimate with the here and now.

When you are through that portal, Damsel in Delight is the container that will free you into the nuanced and intricate practice of living this way of intimacy in every here and now.

There are ways that are dogmatic, like a dancer can use a pole or aerial silks or the floor as their supports, can choose a specific style of dance. These elements of technique and structure are equally incredible, empowering, limiting, refining. They are all equally valuable.

The Ways on offer in Something Like This, in Damsel In Delight, and in intensive mentorship containers with me are like the properties of physics that enable every form of dance. Gravity, inertia, density, mass, spatial proximity, timing, rhythm, structural integrity.

These are forces, too, which are incredible, empowering, limiting, refining, but in contrast to dogma or to material structure, they are not optional, not replaceable, they are finite laws of attention and experience which manifest all we experience in this human life. We must obey them, which means we already are.

Applying understanding of these Ways means being in right relationship to all of life, and from there, possibility floods into your life. This is not the abstraction of possibility and potential that keeps you wanting, but the here and now opportunity of RECOGNITION, where you recognize all of the opportunities on offer right here and now.

When you recognize the opportunities around you, you go from wanting to choosing, from yearning to actually having the object of your longing.

It probably looks nothing like the vision you were sold, and that’s why I can’t bring myself to sell you toward that vision.

I have connection so good I can’t even want a partner right now, I can only feel delight in the idea of him joining me in exactly the right timing. My longings have been replaced with gentle dreams, when I have some span of time to myself. I have constant experiences of deep connection, true love, reverent attention that welcomes all of what I am in any moment.

I cannot invite you to a fairytale that has ceased to hold weight for me and for everyone I initially sold it to.

But if you want what I’ve described here, if you’re ready for the lushness of love’s forest, I can give you Something Like This.