[Editor’s note: “Extended Intimacy” is Srid’s terminology – derived from Richard Dawkins’ concept “Extended Phenotype”, so as to highlight the fact that intimacy, that is usually reserved for one’s … umm … “intimate partners” (marital, romantic, sexual, etc.), can in fact be extended (albeit taking the other bifurcation at the third stage) to any and all persons – to precisely refer to what is being quoted here, and is not a term utilized by the Actual Freedom Trust. This page is to be read immediately following Grace’s scale of different ways of being for context.]
http://actualfreedom.com.au/richard/selectedcorrespondence/sc-intimacy.htm
RICHARD: The term ‘intimacy experience’ became part of the actualism lingo after a particularly instructive event in late spring, 2007, when at anchor upriver whilst exhorting feeling-being ‘Grace’ to no longer reserve that specific ‘way-of-being’ for those memorable occasions when ‘she’ was alone with me and to extend such intimacy to also include ‘her’ potential shipmates in order to dynamically enable the then-tentative plans for a floating convivium – which were on an indefinite hold at that time – to move ahead expeditiously (this was in the heady context of feeling-being ‘Pamela’ having already entered into an on-going PCE a scant five days beforehand due to ‘her’ specifically expressed concerns to me over the lack of intimacy between actualists). At some stage during this intensive interaction feeling-being ‘Vineeto’, who had been intently following every nuance, every twist and turn of the interplay, had what ‘she’ described as a ‘shift’ taking place in ‘her’ whereupon the very intimacy being thus exigently importuned came about for ‘her’ instead.
To say ‘she’ was astounded with the degree of intimacy having ensued is to put it mildly as ‘her’ first descriptive words were about how ‘she’ would never have considered it possible to be as intimate as this particular way of being – an intimacy of such near-innocence as to have previously only ever been possible privately with ‘her’ sexual partner in very special moments – when in a social setting as one of a number of persons partaking of coffee and snacks in a sitting room situation. Intuitively seizing the vital opportunity such intimate experiencing offered ‘she’ took over from me and commenced interacting intensively in my stead – notably now a one-on-one feeling-being interchange – and within a relatively short while feeling-being ‘Grace’ was experiencing life in the same, or very similar, manner as feeling-being ‘Vineeto’ (hence that 4th of December 2009 report of mine about how these intimacy experiences are potentially contagious, so to speak, for other sincere actualists as the atmosphere generated affectively-psychically can propagate a flow-on effect).