Intimate Communion: Awakening Your Sexual Essence [Paperback]

To truly understand your intimate relationships, you must read this book! David Deida, internationally known for his work in personal growth and intimate relationships, shares the deep understandings and effective techniques that he has refined through his 20 years of consultation, research and spiritual practice. Learn how to keep your relationships growing--beyond the sexually neutralized roles so typical of today--and create a relationship that is spiritually erotic, sexually deep and passionately committed to love.

David Deida is known internationally for his transformative work in personal growth and intimate relationships. He completed advanced graduate work in psychobiology, sexual evolution and theoretical neuroscience. He also has more than 20 years of training in hatha yoga, tai chi, meditation and tantra. He has taught and conducted research at the University of California Medical School, San Diego; University of California, Santa Cruz; San Jose State University; Lexington Institute, Boston; and Ecole Polytechnique, Paris, France.

Chapter 2 THE THREE WAYS OF ôLOVEö ôI love you, son.ö ôLook at that young couple, they are so in love.ö ôMy God, how badly I want to make love with you.ö In our culture, we have a tendency to use the word ôloveö for three very different feelings. We can begin to understand some of the complexities of our intimate life when we untangle these three different threads of our loving. The practice of Intimate Communion depends on a clear understanding of these three separate elements in an intimate relationship: love, romance and polarity. Love Of the three—love, romance and polarity—love is the simplest to understand and the most difficult to practice. Love is simply what is when your heart is open. You could love your husband, your dog, your mother, your car, a book, your child, a painting or the seashore—or all of them at once. Love is simply the opening of your heart. When your heart is open, you love whomever, or whatever, is in your life. Love is the union of you and the one you are with. Love is what is when your heart is open. To do love is to open your heart. If you are waiting to feel love, as if love will come to you, you may be waiting for a long time. Love happens whenever your heart opens, whether 10 years from now or right now, in this very moment. Love has nothing to do, necessarily, with sex. You can love someone and not have sexual desire for them. You can want to have sex with someone you donÆt even know, or someone you are not loving. You exist as love when your heart is unguarded and opened, and you close yourself off to love when you guard your heart. You can actually learn to love. You can learn how to open your heart, even when circumstances are difficult. Even when your relationship is painful, even when you feel hurt, you can practice opening your heart. You can practice love. This is the foundation of Intimate Communion: to practice opening your heart in every moment, including when you feel hurt. Rather than turn away or close down, you can practice loving. This practice of love extends far beyond conventional therapy. There are many good books about how our intimate relationships often replicate our relationships with our parents. There are many good therapists who know how to work with childhood issues that come up in our intimacies. And when we work with a therapist, we often begin by examining our past, our parents, our childhood. Our childhood stuff seems endless, once we begin to dig. A little digging is good, in order that we understand the roots of our search for love and its resulting frustration. But after a little digging, it is time to release the past and practice intimacy right now, in the present. Rather than concerning ourselves with the past cause of our present unhappiness, we can instead practice opening our hearts, right now. And through this moment to moment practice of open-hearted intimacy, this practice of being love, the power of the past weakens. When you fall and wound y