All intimate relationships are sacred. They are meant to offer us something about ourselves that we would not see or feel otherwise. For me it has been the ongoing challenge of being real, transparent, and staying in the room when a part of me may want to defend, hide, or in the past, just give up. Intimacy is not an easy spiritual path, yet it is the most illuminating, growthful, and rewarding in my experience.

As a man, I find this generally true for many other men as well. The last frontier of our spiritual maturation is our emotional maturation. Notice I did not say, mastery. I feel any attempt to ‘master’ our emotions comes from a part of us that is looking to control or avoid something real and messy. I can admit this has been true for me. But messy does not mean chaotic, like a part of me may feel at times when things get real and on the edge or precipice of the unknown. It just means we are sorting out a ton of wounding that has been held in so many hidden pockets of our heart and soul.

As a teenager, I grew up with two different models for a man’s relationship to his emotional body. It was either dismissive stoicism or defensive rage. Nothing fully vulnerable in between. So I learned both of those as strategies and yet I could also feel how I needed and wanted to be something different. Yet, to be this ‘different’ I would need to have the ‘same’ confronted and challenged. Enter relationships to very dynamic and emotionally aware women.

If I really wanted to shift this masculine lineage of emotional immaturity, I drew the very thing that would put the defensive, angery, hurt, and shadowy parts of me into the Light of emotional reality. That is not an easy path! There is this-life wounding and conditioning, other-life karmic binds, and collective and archetypal patternings that can be like trying to turn the Titanic. In any given rumble there can be multiple layers that are at play at one time and this does make it challenging.

From my trailing, wounded, and defensive part it can be a lot to hold. From my leading edge and higher self it is just an opportunity to become more fluent with what is really happening without analyzing or without getting so spun out that the ground collapses between us. This is the challenge in any intimate and sacred union.

It has been a stand-by to try to manage and preserve or just plain let go. What happens in the space between? What is possible that has felt impossible? What can we learn about ourselves as a man and woman as well as each other in a union?

This has felt like an unknown in my soul history. Maybe we just forgot our ancient past, and are picking up the pieces on our way back to Wholeness and Oneness through our Two-ness. Hiding the pain and fear of feeling separate and alone. The covering up of feeling rejected, abandoned, or harmful. This we cannot avoid when we are choosing to embody our Divinity. Oneness is not just a bliss state of transcendence, it is the grinding, twisty, gristy road back to transparent intimacy. Not a mastery of it, but a real felt experience of it in its truest form we call Love.

It is through this healing process and paradigm called SoulFullHeart, that my beloved Kasha and I can surf these waves and explore these territories with trust and realness. We have inner guidance as well as outer support through community, and that is a blessing. It is why I am being transparent about my journey so that others can get a sense of what the process is like and where we are able to go within ourselves and with each other. May it be a beacon and a service to you wherever you are on your journey of self-love, self-discovery, and relational healing and maturation.

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Gabriel Amara is a SoulFullHeart Facilitator for both men and women.  Visit https://www.soulfullheart.org for more information about sessions, group calls/events, videos, community, etc.