We hold that a Big Story presents a way of sensing the
energy of human intimacy, and that it offers social and personal
rituals which make intimacy present. Our Earthfolk claims,
more than likely, will not seem apparent
to you upon first reviewing a Big Story because “intimacy” does not seem
to be a clearly stated Big Question. For most people, Big Stories
and Big Questions focus on grand-scale and cosmic events such as, “Where
do humans come from?” “Who or what created the Earth?” “What
is the purpose of Life?” We Earthfolk claim, however, that
Big Stories are, foremost and fundamentally,
all about intimacy.
We Earthfolk claim that intimacy is
the biggest of Big Questions.
More, that the specific questions
about intimacy, such as what is it, how to express it, why are humans
intimate, etc., are the most significant Big Questions in the three
dominant Big Stories. Nevertheless, you would not be
out of line to say, at this juncture, “I don’t see
that. In fact, what I do know about these three Big Stories
is that they appear not to be concerned with intimacy at
all.”
A key challenge of sensual preciousness is to enable
you to see as we Earthfolk see. This requires practicing what we
call the discipline of sensual immersion.
We Earthfolk practice a discipline called sensual
immersion.
One aspect of sensual immersion is “peering
at” and “sitting in silence with”
the Big Stories. Our startling discovery about the centrality of intimacy
as the foremost Big Question comes from the significance of
a negative fact. Namely, that
the dominant three Big Stories collectively
deny that intimacy is sensually precious.
These three Big Stories appear to say
that intimacy must be understood
as other than sensually precious.
Continue—Big Stories
