Doggy love 3 (June 2018): "The Sensitive Life"

 

Coincidentally with several patients this week, when I asked about their mood or feelings, they did not know or worst, they answered “I need to think about it”. I wonder, how are you going to think about how do you feel? You can contact with what you feel, you can describe it or name it; but, if you need to "think about it" ... you're going to analyze, judge, value, argue, but you're not going to be feeling.

Every morning I take my dog hiking and it is always wonderful to discover how the lake dawns. I feel the weather, I feel if there is a rough wind that curls the water, a gentle breeze that caresses me or if everything is motionless. I see if the lake is a transparent mirror or is covered in the fog... I do not analyze whether it is a positive or negative day by the weather forecast, whether the picture of the sky reflecting on the water is correct or incorrect or how the landscape around me is supposed to look to describe it as beautiful or ugly. You just need to describe your inner lake to realize how do you feel. You do not need to fix it, justify it, make it "positive," or feel fearful or guilty about whatever moves within your depth. Hiking with Aegon connects me with his immediate needs and with the nature in which his experience is immersed... as it is. I have also stopped "thinking" about myself, to simply have a sensual openness, that is to feel with all my senses what unfolds inside and outside me.

I have read so much about living in the now moment, that even the phrase annoys me. The problem is how do you turn that idea of being in the present into a genuine sensual experience and not the mental repetition of another self-help recipe? 

 I am not saying that adopting a dog will lead you to present awareness and happiness, fill every empty space with love, or bring you closer to enlightenment if that is what you're looking for. To begin with, I do not think that the recipe from any teacher, guru, therapist, or coach will solve your problems, they are just potentials you can choose to explore. I believe that every human path is so wonderfully individual and unique, that it is almost disrespectful to suggest to somebody else what worked for yourself. In my personal case, I am immensely affectionate, loyal, and sensitive... being able to hug and care for me is my way to contact someone else. My dog just brought me back to my nature. After years of psychoanalysis, human experiences, spiritual search, philosophy, meditations... it was just the immediate simplicity of feeling alive and the nature around me, walking my dog, what invited every aspect of me and my soul to a final integration in this human experience.

I go to the gym to swim and every day becomes more intense my experience on the water. I told a friend that I have sometimes felt a kind of almost mystical experience swimming, an instant when I feel in an immensely loving, pleasurable, tireless state, embraced by the water... and she answered very amused that it was just an orgasm of endorphins. I honestly do not know if that thing exists and to be honest, a “mystical experience” sounded better, but I think it clearly expresses that sense of sensitive connection with myself and what surrounds me.

Also being in a relationship in this state of sensitivity takes love to a new level. It is about the sensitivity that you perceive every touch, every look, or every kiss. If you are attentive, sensitive to what's going on inside you and the other, communication unfolds at multiple levels that leave verbal language far behind. You can feel what your partner desires in privacy, you can sense without conflict or doubt about his love, his need for closeness or individual space.

Throughout so many years of experience in consultation I have seen many people try to vary the stimuli in their sexual relationship to avoid falling into the routine, however, many times that is distorted in a kind of addiction to simply seeking increasingly intense stimuli or sometimes even perverting what is the encounter of two complete beings; which usually leads to a progressive stun of sensitivity. The truth is that if your sensitivity intensifies, it opens up... every touch is filled with greater magic, the discovery of nuances and colors that you could not imagine. Even if you are silent and motionless you can feel an ocean of life flowing through you, caressing with infinite enveloping currents two souls in their encounter.

I know that sometimes it is scary to feel deeply and with a greater conscious presence because that takes you out of the comfort space of the mind. You learn to perceive each experience in greater depth, to realize what happens inside and around you, to enjoy life and love, but you also risk integrating your old wounds or grief when an experience ends. Most importantly, however, is the sensitivity that awakens to your own Self.

I invite you to awaken your sensibility simply by being present, perceiving with all your senses the wonder of being you at this moment and feeling the universe that caresses your senses.

Tibaire Cristina Gonzalez