Freedom as the ability/desire to live well, to live fully, to experience the potential of one’s humanity. Freedom as occurring within the relational process of striving to achieve a way of being that enables mutual humanization.

To decondition is to call attention to previous practices of conditioning and a need to overcome them, to attend to the subconscious desires present within each of us as the result of our combined previous experiences. 

If I was conditioned to deny the possibility that my emotional needs can be met, to believe that love and closeness and vulnerability always exist in the service of power-over, that this power will be abused, that people are not genuine, they do not desire or have the abilities to access depth of connection or intimacy, that feelings of security within relationships are fleeting, momentary, unreal – then my process of deconditioning toward my own wholeness, the process of striving toward my own freedom, is about redefining parameters of relationships in ways that allow me to experience comfort, security, love, support, empowerment, vulnerability, intimacy and pleasure as at least a potential reality, learning to trust without fear, to feel instead of over-intellectualizing, to understand that I can be accepted despite my flaws, that I will find a space within which I can feel at home, where people share my values, have integrity and genuinely value my very humanity. 

What do I have to let go of in order to achieve this deconditioning? Which parts of the unlearning process will I cling to out of fear? How will I attempt to push away potential for the false security of dysfunction? In what ways will I attempt to escape new pains by reliving old ones? To what extent does the realization of my freedom require the discomfort inherent in the expansion of understanding, of coming to realize the shadows on the wall as such? Will I find people through whom I can let go, ascend/descend into new feelings/understandings only to hold on .. and let go .. and hold on .. and let go .. again and again? 

So many challenges are present in enduring this process with another inherently flawed and incomplete human (or more than one) through which we are able to adequately, safely navigate the realization of our deepest desires and our concomitant ability to assist others in their achievement of these desires .. 

To desire intimacy within this space of deconditioning is to reconceptualize its meaning, its possibilities, to actively unlearn the types of intimacy that we expect from others and accept new, unforeseen lessons through these interactions. What if we allow intimacy to be a meeting between subjects, in the fullness of our agency and abilities to engage reality critically and generously, who come together for mutual pleasure, mutual growth, a striving for closeness and self-knowledge, achieved through a variety of relational interactions, premised on the cultivation of particular values – that of elevating dialogue/communication, trust, integrity, respect, responsibility, etc. – the meaning of which is always changing, always negotiable.. ? What if I put myself in situations that make me uncomfortable for the sake of gaining experiential knowledge of their existence, of bridging knowledge and understanding? Perhaps the opportunities to do so are gifts to the expansion of my consciousness.

Can I set aside fear in order to experience another as a challenge to my preconceived understandings of what is possible? Can I find comfort in the chemistry, in the stars, in the flux, as a result of this inspiration to believe in intimacy, in the potential for something that I do not yet even have words for? Can I let go of control just enough to allow my paradigm, my ability to live and feel fully, to expand? Can intimacy enable freedom in the ways that it moves us beyond the most traditional of binaries, overcoming mind/body, subject/object and material/spiritual? Can I decondition myself in pursuit of my own freedom?