I can’t explain to you how sex will be if you do the work.
I can’t explain the way that, when you make breath a practice, a sensation that was once as though at a distance will consume your whole being.
I can’t explain how, by following the breath into the places in yourself that scare you, you will unlock pathways in your body that pleasure will travel along like wildfire.
I can’t explain what it will feel like when you become willing to have those places in you seen by another so that you break open, and are blessed.
Nor can I explain what it will be when you are able to return that blessing at last, when you are fully present with your beloved, in mutual connection and in mutual consent, and thus also present when the space between you becomes a rising wave carrying your bodies into brightness.
I can’t explain to you how love will be if you do the work.
I can’t describe to you the melting feeling that will find all those tight places in your chest after you have learned to listen deeply enough to yourself to be able to share the stories you find within – and then listened equally deeply to your beloved, and woven their stories with yours to make a richer, fuller, truer thing.
I can’t describe the intimacy you will find on the other side, when you learn to walk through together, rather than running away from separately.
I can’t describe the triumph you will share when you have nurtured in each other the courage and creativity to take hold of the hand-me-down worn-out tenets of togetherness, and wrestled them into something you can each consent to, contribute to, commit to with your whole hearts.
I can’t describe the relief that comes when you practice a living openness with one another, such that there is no one need pretend, perform, please, or posture – and you can simply breathe out, and be the person that you are, the person that is loved by them.
I can’t describe the feeling that will blossom in the centre of you when you have made love without guise or guile, when you have looked deeply into your beloved and allowed yourself to be seen in turn – nor can I describe the way you will reach for words like wonder and tenderness, and find them wanting.
I cannot explain to you how life will be if you do the work.
I can’t tell you how both subtle and profound the transformations that being in relationship with not just your head, but also your heart, your belly, your sex, and your spirit will wreak on your life, nor how your choices and actions will be changed by allowing all of these a say.
I can’t tell you the power that lives in all those parts of yourself that you currently deny, or how your liberating that power can change you, your life, and your world.
I can’t tell you what it’s like to be in partnership with life, rather than working constantly to outmanoeuvre, correct, or escape it – or what it’s like to realise in your body your interconnectedness with our planet, with other people, and to be called to action on their behalf.
I can’t tell you how it is to look around, and find that all that work you did – in hope and in hopelessness, in fear and fierce love, one step, one breath, one kindness at a time – has brought you to this place. This place where you are loved because of, not in spite of, who you are.
***
I can’t explain things that have been in the corner of your eye, at the edges of your dreams, in the centre of your longing, but not yet in your body. Understanding is an embodied experience, and I cannot convey an experience to you with words that can only be fully grasped by the senses and the spirit. So I can’t explain how it will be when something in you cracks open, or expands outward, or overflows, and suddenly the colours of yourself and of the world around you are unutterably different.
All I can do is encourage you to do the work, and see them for yourself.
