If we weren't meant to be separate, God wouldn't have created skin.
It keeps our mushy stuff inside and other people outside (unless they are invited in, figuratively and literally.
) Where my skin starts, everyone else stops, or they should.
Sometimes they don't.
Sometimes I have strange thoughts.
When I'm safely alone (and this could be a damn good reason why I AM alone), I let them take me wherever they want on a Bohemian magical mystery tour inside my head.
And sometimes those thoughts actually begin to make sense after a while, like the ones about skin.
Romantically speaking, symbiosis can feel good.
Boundaries disappear.
You blend into me, I blend into you.
Two become one, and so on.
It can feel safe, warm, and secure, but unless it's wanted by both parties, it can feel like a violation.
Underneath it all, in spirit, I am sure that we are all interconnected, but there has to be a reason for our identifiable characteristics and individuation, otherwise we would be one pulsing, Java-the-Hud entity in a self-contained orgy.
We are each unique in our own encapsulation, in spite of the humanity we share.
We are also recognizable by how our skin fits on our face and body.
I once heard the opinion of a spiritual teacher who dissuaded sexuality and attraction by reminding his students that under everyone's skin was simply a mass of blood and guts.
Great image, I know, but it's one of those things that stick in your head and it did actually make me nauseous for a while so I guess it might work if I started to visualize every man I was attracted to skinless.
Then again, I have trouble enough with my attraction apparatus, so I need to put the skin back on my guys (who seem to like seeing more of mine.
) It's interesting how we classify people as good looking or not because of skin and the outer appearance.
We'll deny this, of course.
"Oh, but I love his eyes," we'll say.
Picture him and his beautiful eyes without his skin for a minute.
It is only one elastic organ (yes, the largest), but we put so much emphasis on it.
We have firmly ingrained opinions based on the color and the condition of skin.
Some people tattoo and pierce their skin (hopefully theirs is the thick kind) while others spend tens of thousands of dollars to have it stretched, lasered, and poked in a desperate search for a youthful appearance and instead come out looking like an alien-wannabe-human.
Some of us would sell our souls to have it look and act like it did when we were young, although we are always shedding our old skin cells all of the time and regenerating new ones, so I still don't understand why we grow older and wrinkle.
Maybe our insides shrink? Again, judgment follows skin like a five-o'clock shadow.
Do you remember the big deal that was made over the untouched Newsweek cover of Sarah Palin that showed pores and facial hair? Skin accommodates us and stretches and expands without popping, no matter how big we get.
It starts out covering our baby body and keeps on growing (sometimes too much.
) It gets scratched, cut, and burned, and it keeps on healing.
We underestimate this 1.
5 mm thick organ.
It can give us incredible pleasure or the most excruciating pain (kind of like love.
) It can be an indicator of sexual and romantic chemistry (I remember buzzing every time a particular man touched me) and pheremonally speaking, the scent of a person's bare skin can be intoxicating or enhanced by cologne or perfume.
Skin also regulates our body temperature so that we don't get too hot from all of this.
So what is the real thick and thin of skin? Thin-skinned refers to a person who is emotionally sensitive (I've been accused of this.
) Thick-skinned means that he or she is able to let more go by without reacting to it, like criticism, sticks, stones, shoes, whatever.
But what lies beneath a person's skin, other than the guru-inspired forensic images mentioned above, is what counts.
Values, ethics, feelings, compassion, and personality all live under our skin.
Our hearts, souls, and spirits live inside of it.
It should always be a conscious decision as to whom we will invite into our bodies (if we are a woman), our hearts, and our minds.
Skin serves as a boundary that we have been gifted with and ultimately it is up to us to decide whom we will let get under ours.
I believe that we should be very selective in this process and consider what is really under his.