Anchorhold

Welcome to a space for the spirituality of gay and bisexual men. We have within ourselves the resources for our healing, liberation, and growth. Connecting with each other, we encounter the grace to lay hold of a richer, juicier life. Losing ourselves in deep play, we rediscover the bigger, freer, more joyous selves we're capable of becoming. Here I share my interest in personal and communal ritual, making art that expresses my inner life, and an intentional practice of erotic spirituality.

Thursday, October 26, 2017

What is Sacred Intimacy?

While facilitating a small private retreat this last weekend, I offered participants the option of individual Sacred Intimacy sessions during the unstructured periods that punctuated the schedule. It was a rare experience of using the term to a group without immediately needing to explain myself.

In some circles I move in, the term “Sacred Intimacy” has currency. If you’re reading this, you may have heard it at least in passing. But even most gbq men don’t have a clear idea what it means. Declaring a calling as Sacred Intimate involves giving an endless series of elevator speeches and hoping your explanation doesn’t sound like a transmission from Mars.

So here goes. Just what is “Sacred Intimacy” anyway? For me, it’s a heart-centered connection that uses the erotic energy between a practitioner and his visitor for the good of the latter.

You’re likely to get a slightly different answer from every Sacred Intimate you ask. There’s no standard training that we all go through--and certainly no regulated standard that we conform to. So if you’re drawn to the possibility of working with an S.I., it’s a really good idea for you to have a clear sense of what you want and need from the interaction, so you have a clear idea going forward whether the two of you are in sync.

Below, I unpack what I view as essential to Sacred Intimacy as I practice it with men who come to me. You may agree or disagree. I hope that sharing my understanding of what my visitor and I are doing together may help you clarify for yourself what you hope to receive when you begin working with an S.I.

1. “Sacred”

What passes between me and my visitor is holy.

I would call it the presence of God. You as visitor may not. But what I count on you sharing with me is an awareness of a living and enlivening energy, bigger than us and enfolding us. I do what I can to encourage you to pay attention to this sacred dimension of what passes between us. Whatever unfolds in the session, the presence of this transpersonal love makes our connection possible and worthwhile. It’s not for me to influence how you understand this energy or the language you’d use to describe it.

Staying grounded in this energy enables me to open my heart to you and to desire your healing, integration, and growth. My ability to function as an S.I. depends on the integrity of my own spiritual practice. Meditation, prayer, and study are the foundation stones for this work.

2. “Intimacy”

Our heart-to -heart connection, in service to you as visitor, forms the essential core of the session. You’ve come to me willing to spend an irreplaceable hour of your life with me, and for that time, being with you for an irreplaceable hour of mine should be the only thing in the world that matters to me. Whatever else happens, that’s the most important gift I can offer.

Above all, I strive to listen with my heart, and to trust my intuition of how to help you clarify your intention for the session and move forward. I encourage you to drop down into the deep wisdom already present within you. Words are important, but they can quickly become a distraction from what we can best access in the relatively brief time we have together. So we move as soon as we can into more embodied interaction. This might be simple, gentle touch, or quiet, full-bodied holding.

More erotically engaged touch is always possible, and there’s good reason to move in that direction if it feels right to both of us. The poet and queer utopian visionary James Broughton said, “the penis is the exposed tip of the heart, the wand of the soul.” There are few means more powerful than erotic play to help you drop swiftly down into the fullness of who you are, providing our hearts are open. You may well arrive with a focus to the session that already explicitly involves your erotic life.

The intimacy of the session is precious, and protected by the boundaries around it. Sometimes the urge is strong to want the intensity and openness between us to continue beyond the end of the session, but it’s essential to stay mindful that as visitor you need to carry away within yourself whatever has happened. As S.I., I need to be released from the energy of the session in order to move on with my own life--as well as in order to be as fully available as I can be to other men who come to me. The session is over when it’s over, and what’s happened in the session stays in the session, for the good of us both.

This is no way compromises the reality of what you’ve experienced, of what I feel for you, or of the connection we’ve shared. Instead, it ensures that you take it away with you, instead of believing that you’ve lost it and need somehow to get it back after our session ends.

I started by observing that if you talk to several Sacred Intimates about what they do, you’ll probably get several significantly different answers. You’ll decide for yourself who feels like the best fit with your own intentions and needs. When you find a good fit, I wish you wholeness, growth, adventure, surprise, expansion, and deep joy.

3 comments:

tarotbyhicOctober 29, 2017 at 7:56 PM
Thank you. I’ve thought about, but been too shy and intimidated to, seek out the Sacred Intimate experience (and have even pondered the possibility of the pursuit for becoming one). Thank you for being willing to share your perspective and approach with us. 🙏🏻
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David TownsendOctober 30, 2017 at 10:42 AM
It's good to hear that the post was useful--thanks! The relationship between the S.I. and his visitor depends on deep trust. That trust has to be nurtured and grow within the session, as much or more through intuition and physical means as through language. But words to describe the practice are at least a starting point. I believe in building on a foundation of initial clarity.
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Stained Glass Santa ClaritaDecember 3, 2022 at 5:54 PM
Very nice blog you hhave here
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Sacred Intimacy: Companionship in Spiritual and Erotic Healing

Different practitioners use the term "Sacred Intimacy" to mean different things. It's important to remember that Sacred Intimacy work is different from therapy, and can't replace therapy. I'm not a therapist. I don't claim to offer services in any officially regulated modality. (Some Sacred Intimates are also practicing therapists, but they're clear with themselves and with clients which modality they're working in.) Put simply, I offer heart-centered companionship and deep listening.

For me, first and foremost, Sacred Intimacy means that what passes between us is holy. It's filled and enlivened with the presence of the Divine. I will do my best to be as present to you, as available to you for your good, as I'm capable of being. My intention is to be open to working in whatever modality we agree will be helpful to you. A session begins with a short conversation in which you explain to me where you're at, and what you hope to take away from our time together.

The emphasis is on healing, growth, and the expansion of your life. You may, for example, have issues of erotic shame that you want to work on, or grief, or body image, or intimacy. I may ask for clarifications and make suggestions. Together we agree on the starting point for the experiential work that will follow.

A session might unfold through breathwork, guided meditation, bodywork, intentionally focused erotic interaction, creative movement, the shared creation of ritual, artistic practice, psychodynamic role playing, or some combination.

I can't hope to be of service to you unless I feel competent in the role I assume, and unless I have the sense that what we do has potential to help you move forward with your declared intention. So our initial conversation may involve some give and take around what's possible and what's useful.

It's essential for your integrity and mine that we maintain full confidentiality and respect one another's boundaries. We enter into sacred space together at the beginning of a session. We leave sacred space at the end, and what's happened within the safe container of the session remains distinct from any interactions we might have before or after the session. What happens in the session stays in the session.

Every Sacred Intimate has his own understanding of the nature of his work. Just below you'll find a series of links to the web pages of a number of Sacred Intimates working in various cities and areas.

Finding Yourself, Claiming Yourself

I invite you to celebrate who you are, and who you want to become.

Think of the times your life as a gay or bisexual man has flowed without effort.

Think of the times you’ve struggled to lay hold of your life more fully.

Maybe those times feel like opposites. But they’re parts of a single cycle: sowing and harvest, labor and rest, preparation and enjoyment. We can’t work toward a fuller life unless we already feel some trust that life will rise up to meet us. We can’t sink deeper into our present joy and satisfaction in life without being reminded that it took a long journey to get here.

Please join me in considering a place where the two halves of this cycle come together: in the safe, empowering container of ritual space and ritual time.

What's an Anchorhold?

For centuries in Europe, a handful of men and women took a vow to devote themselves to the cultivation of their inner lives and to make themselves radically available to their communities for spiritual counsel. Committing themselves to remaining in a single dwelling for the rest of their lives, they were known as anchorites; the houses in which they lived were their anchorholds. Those who needed what the official channels of the religious establishment couldn’t provide came to the anchorhold for conversation and support.

Neither priests nor monks, the spiritual practice of anchorites and their interaction with those who came to them fell outside formal control of the Church. As a result, religious authorities often viewed them with suspicion. One of the best known of these dropouts from ordinary social and religious norms was Julian of Norwich, a woman who had a near-death experience in 1373 and spent the rest of her life thinking about what it meant, for herself and for the world at large. The book she wrote about her revelation, the first in English that we know for sure was written in by a woman, is an astonishingly daring and original rethinking of Christian theology: a vision of a God in whom there is no wrath, who is both Father and Mother of Creation, and who will somehow, by a miracle beyond our ability to grasp, eventually effect the salvation of every living being.

Men and women of spirit who fell between the cracks, anchorites practiced what in its own way was a profoundly queer inner life, following the instincts of their own experience, flying under the radar of the powers that claimed to control access to the Divine.