Welcome to the Buddhist Boot Camp Podcast. Our intention is to awaken, enlighten, enrich, and inspire a simple and uncomplicated life. Discover the benefits of mindful living with your host, Timber Hawkeye.
Podcast listeners and readers of my books often have follow-up questions they either submit for me to answer via Throne, which is an online platform you can access through my website to publicly post your questions that I will then answer in a podcast episode just like this one *please note, it is no longer on the site* or you can schedule a personal one-on-one video chat with me; more information about that also on BuddhistBootCamp.com
But if you enjoy these short podcast episodes and want a little more background or to listen to something longer, or more in-depth, for example, you will thoroughly enjoy my audiobook Faithfully Religionless, which I have also narrated. But don't use your precious Audible credits to download a copy of my audiobook because it's only $4, save your credits for those $30 audiobooks instead.
Faithfully Religionless is about the beauty of letting go of the need to know, the difference between feelings and emotions, the disparity between truths and facts, and the countless benefits of mindful living. The question I will address today was posted on Throne by Jojo. She said, "I have always been an affectionate person, hugs especially, "but since the lockdown, I can't remember the last time I had that kind of contact "with someone other than my family.
"How important is it that we rely on physical contact to show affection? "And do we now live in a world where we have to find other ways to show this?" Jojo is not alone in this, I've actually given this topic many years of thought a long time before Covid and social distancing was even a thing.
It started with a friend of mine telling me one day, how despite everything going really well in her life; work was good, health was good, and her yoga, spiritual, and meditation practices were consistent, comforting, and balanced, she still found herself every once in a while craving physical contact. She called it needing the weight of a man on top of her, not sex, she said, just the physical closeness and connection; a hug, a warm embrace, some contact.
When I hung up the phone with her, I thought to myself: How can I make sure that no matter how far I go down the spiritual path, I don't still find myself lacking something like physical contact at the end of the day someday? I couldn't bear the thought of possibly feeling like something was missing from my life instead of focusing on how rich it is, so I decided to conduct an experiment of sorts.
I used the same logic I had applied in the past when I quit smoking, drinking, and eating meat, for example: after enough time passed, I stopped thinking about any of those things as an option. There was no craving, nothing was lacking, it was just a new normal as if that's the way life always was. I wondered what would happen if I were to eliminate physical contact altogether, just like I eliminated those other things.
Would I ultimately lose interest in physical connection the way I lost interest in smoking, for example? And would I, therefore, free myself from any craving or the sense of emptiness that my friend was experiencing? So, for over five years, I abstained from any and all physical contact more intimate than handshakes. I mean, no hugs, no kisses, nothing beyond a fist bump, and the experiment actually worked.
Not only did I no longer find myself longing for physical connection, I became extremely aware of how much other people relied on it, needed it, and either used or abused it for various reasons. Going back to Jojo's question, do we now live in a world where we have to find other ways to show affection? That was exactly the unexpected side effect of my experiment: It forced me to redefine intimacy in non-physical terms, to be intimate without so much as a simple hug at my disposal.
One of the teachers at the monastery guided us through a sharing exercise, which I thought was extremely intimate. He had each of us sit cross-legged directly in front of someone we didn't know, and then he invited one person from each pair to ask the other participant a question. When the person across from us answered the question, we were instructed not to react to the answer they give nor discuss it any further, but to simply ask the question again.
At the monastery, the questions were practice-specific, but you can imagine doing this exercise with a question like: What are you angry about? And when the person answers, you just ask them again: What are you angry about? We all have answers for most questions readily available in our back pockets, so to speak, and we are prepared to give those canned answers to anyone at a moment's notice. That was exactly the answer we each gave the first time a question was asked.
And when the question was asked again, we all reached for our in-case-of-emergency backup answer. But when the question was asked a third, fourth, and fifth time, we had to really peel back the layers and dig deep to share from our core. It made all of us vulnerable, exposed, raw, radically honest, transparent, and more often than not, extremely uncomfortable.
When the person sitting across from me repeatedly asked why I chose to live at the monastery, I initially gave the expected response: to learn, to grow, or to find peace. But when I finally arrived at the truth, I broke down crying and admitted there was a lot of fear behind my decision. I was afraid that if I couldn't fit in at the monastery, after not being able to fit in anywhere else, I might never find a place where I belong.
Once all of our quote-unquote "fronts" were dropped, we unearthed repressed memories, unexamined fears, insecurities, and anxieties, and we finally looked at ourselves, dark spots and all, sometimes for the very first time. It occurred to me that it's very easy to spend time with a friend, give them a hug, and share small talk, but it's not so easy to practice this level of radical honesty with one another, even though it's extremely important and beneficial.
In the long run, abstaining from physical contact with others and committing myself to this new level of intimacy instead, has proven to significantly strengthen my relationships with everyone in my life, not weaken them. So, yes, Jojo, I not only think we will need to learn other ways to show affection, I'm glad we are, because vulnerability is true intimacy. Much deeper, I think, than a hug. I mean, imagine me sitting across from a friend crying her eyes out,
and I need to console her without a hug. I would need tools like empathy and compassion to do that, tools we can all afford to add to our belts. The key is for all of us to be comfortable with who we are, not despite our blemishes, but by realizing that we aren't marred in any way whatsoever. John Lennon was so right when he said: Being honest may not get you a lot of friends, but it will always get you the right ones.
Having said all of that, keep in mind that for early childhood development and mental health, physical contact and reassurance is essential. As adults, however, I think we can tie this into my previous episode about our unmet so-called "needs," and figure out what it is we are truly looking for when we quote-unquote "Need a hug," and we will often find that it's actually a sense of security we are after, comfort, reassurance, affirmation, support, being heard, connected, and so on.
And if we develop the communication skills with which we can do all that without physical contact, we wouldn't be left with any void or a feeling of lack. So now, if someone wants a hug from me, I'm usually more than happy to offer one, but I no longer feel like I "need" it, you know? When we cure our underlying sense of not-enoughness by being grateful for everything in our lives, we can live in absolute abundance, whether we choose
to hug one another or not. Namaste Timber Hawkeye is the bestselling author of Faithfully Religionless and Buddhist Boot Camp. For additional information, please visit BuddhistBootCamp.com, where you can order autographed books to support the Prison Library Project, Watch Timber's inspiring TED Talk, and join our monthly mailing list. We hope you have enjoyed this episode, and invite you to subscribe for more thought-provoking discussions.
Thank you for being a Soldier of Peace in the Army of Love. 🙏🏼