Staying in Touch by Touch

You’ve got them in your email circle. Or maybe you’re one of them. They’re the people who collect and then propagate inspirational or touching thoughts through email.

They find a joke or a story or a quote or an insight that touches their mind or heart and then they send it out to mail boxes everywhere. Sometimes they pass along supposedly inspirational messages that ask (and in some cases intimidate) people to send it to five or ten or (choose another number) other people.

If you love Jesus, pass this on to ten of your best friends and on the 4th day see what great surprise unfolds for you. By the way, if you don’t do this, you’ll rot in hell.

People in this Internet era seem to think nothing of sharing thoughts. Some messengers even have this vision that they are better people for spreading positive consciousness everywhere without being asked. They just do it.

With that as a backdrop I wonder why spreading hugs and even kisses is not more widely practiced. The world would be a changed place if people hugged and kissed more freely.

If I got as many hugs and kisses as I got email broadcasts of inspirational messages, I’d be most uplifted. Stay in touch with me by touching me.

Of course, my vision of hugging and kissing may be entirely different than anyone else’s. My dad was a big hugger. I was always fond of touching. And I came of age in Northern California in the 1960s and 70s when showing affection in public was trendier, not like now when you have to get signed and notarized affidavits of permission before you touch.

And the style of hugging and kissing that I have in mind is probably different, too. I think of it as an expression of genuine caring. When I embrace from the heart, the mental state I slip into is akin to praying. The more spiritual I get in my thinking, the more it shapes how I embrace the world, including the people in it.

Touch is a very powerful language for me. It is primal. It often speaks more clearly than words. People can’t babble as easily in hugs as they can in verbalizing. I instantly know if the person I’m hugging is in tune with me or not. If they squirm, slap my back, hold their body rigidly, or rapidly veer away from contact, they aren’t really with me.

Hugs are more than physical. They also express consciousness. Body language broadcasts an inner landscape. You can feel a person’s energy. In my personal lexicon I think of people as hot huggers and cold huggers.

Cold huggers make me feel nervous. I get a general unwelcome feeling from them as if they are just putting up with the act of hugging on auto-pilot. They don’t feel truly present. They usually aren’t into long drawn-out embraces, so the uncomfortable feeling doesn’t last long. In erotic situations, they feel more as if they are coming from the head than the heart. They are an ice flow that needs to be melted.

Hot huggers spew energy. Hugging them feels instantly calming or nurturing. They give off a very come-hither feeling. When you embrace a hot hugger, it’s easy to imagine being plugged into a battery charger. When the situation is erotic in nature, hot huggers are, well, hotties. Hugging them is a gourmet meal in sensual arousal.

At an IANDS meeting one time, a woman talked about her experiences hugging trees, something I had never tried. “You have to hang out with the tree for awhile. I hug it for about thirty seconds or so before I feel this whoosh of energy flood through me.”

Curious, I tried it one day when no one was looking. Just me and this great tree. Despite how vulnerable I felt doing something out of the box and over the top, it was awesome. After about a half-minute of cuddling this tree, I felt a come-hither pull in the form of energy. (I wouldn’t rebuke a retort that my imagination had something to do with this, but it was still a rush!)

It was from that experience that I got the big ah-ha about my own hugging preferences. With trees or with humans, hugging for short durations pulls the plug on energy exchange. Duh. Go the distance.

Most people would eschew elongated hugging on sexual grounds. We’re either afraid that we’ll give off an unintended erotic green light for foreplay or we are annoyed by the thought of being sexual predator bait for an unwelcome body snatcher.

In my own experience, I have found that long embraces in and of themselves do not lead to sexual arousal even when I am sexually attracted to someone. I usually park my mind in a neutral setting. I am present with the person’s energy. I am grateful to be there in the way that I am grateful to God for all natural beauty. Inside my mind’s eye I may see colors or patterns or pictures. I often like to play with the thought that I am hugging another planet as if we are all planets in this vast universe.

There is a certain ineffable mental switch that gets thrown to convert a sweet spiritual hug like this into a sexually potent hug. I believe it actually happens on an energetic or telepathic level. It’s a come-hither feeling with a kick. Thoughts become more erotic. If your erotic green light meets my erotic green light, the switch gets thrown. This doesn’t mean that anything needs to happen; it’s more like a subtle awareness of a longing for connection on a deeper, more intimate level.

Under the right circumstances, which include mutual hunger, extended hugging can erupt into an amazing outpouring of sexual energy. Bodies quake and shudder, moans intensify, breathing gets choppy, genitals go woo-hoo, and the hunger for connection builds. But that’s a story for another day about hugging for lovers.

Today’s story is about connection between humans and how to design the world we want to live in. I have pretty much succumbed to the idea that I am not going to change the whole world to fit my vision of perfection. However, I still have the power to find my niche within the big wide world of diversity.

I can create my own social circle populated with people who love to exchange energy and connect through hugging and sharing. I don’t need the whole world to buy my vision; I just need a few individuals to share it with me.

So yes, I do like great emails containing great thoughts cast in great word combinations, but I also want hugs to flow as freely as emails. Forward me your favorite embraces. Have me hug ten other people.