Welcome back, Pilgrim, I’m glad you made it. Here is another little something that bothers me.
I love being naked. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. That’s very funny, I must remember to repeat it to my gran.
When I am naked I am like a child. I dance.
Some people think that it is sordid and disgusting to be naked. You have most likely been taught since you were but a toddler that it is Yuck! A child has no reason to regard clothelessness as remarkable until the parent tells the child it is Yuck! Only because those same parents were told as a child that it was Poofie! This perception is reinforced by terms like dirty jokes, dirty old men or filthy language. So this, to my mind irrational abhorrence of nudity is inculcated in people and holds them back from the naked experience. And Fear. A privacy is opened up that you have been taught to respond to with vulnerability.
If it is possible for you to approach the subject openly, without prejudice, then a truth might emerge, but reading it with the intention of finding smut to respond to with self-righteous indignation or for that matter, the gratification of some pubescent sexual need, will only taint your reading of it. You make it sordid with your search and corrupt an experience in which the absolute delight of being alive can be expressed.
Come. Come with me, Pilgrim, let’s go to the beach. Surf’s up! The weather is fine. Here, sit on this handy towel. Look around. This place is where the normal people wear the least in public. The beach is where it all comes off, save for the smallest scrap of material that fails admirably in covering the shame of being human. Bikinis and Speedos do not cover up the genitals and breasts, as much as they draw attention to them.
Study these people. I have very seldom seen anger expressed at a beach. I have seen folk enjoying their physical presence. Exploiting the space and lack of restrictions to run, kick, whack, dig, float, fly and flop. When I get home after a day on the beach the house is different. It feels like a remnant from another life. It is not the house’s fault, it is I who have changed, or been changed by the day outdoors. Do you often get that feeling? Of course you do. You don’t always recognise it. A day spent on the beach is an uplifting experience. It allows you to dress down to make yourself most receptive to the energies of nature and the sea.
There is a sensation that I’m trying to describe, but, like a sneeze, there is no way of understanding it unless you have actually sneezed yourself. But lets have a crack. On the first day that you go to the beach after a grim winter, you undress to your costume. Your body responds with a hyper awareness. Every sensation created by the air and the wind is magnified. Stop and explore and enjoy that sensation. Close your eyes and focus on the senses – all five. Try to put yourself in that space alone. Nothing else exists. You have no history and no concern for the future. Make it your first ever experience. That sensation is the joy of being alive.
Magnify that sensation by being completely naked.
Why should that make difference? Allow me my dignity, my respect. Why naked?
I hear you Pilgrim, I hear you.
Point One: Look by hanging on to the final patch of material, you are holding back. You are not giving yourself entirely to the experience. The fear you feel and negativity you will bring to the experience is making you hold back. Those emotions are to be resolved. Perhaps they are issues you have to work through. Its your body and being reluctant to let it out of its prison indicates that you have issues with it. You can only have the view from the mountain by getting to the top. Halfway up – Half the view.
The nudity is a necessary expression of the commitment you make to the experience.
Point Two: There are no distinctions amongst naked people. You cannot tell rich from poor, or educated from ignorant. You cannot hide yourself behind the materialism of society. (No pun intended) Often people identify themselves by their jobs – Hugh Fiasco, Lawyer – and they so proud of their material lifestyle – the Merc, the Watch, the holiday house in Hermanus – that they identify themselves through their possessions, especially their clothes. All the personalities you use as barriers against a tough world are discarded with the clothes. Nudity forces you to be yourself. If you are not comfortable with the person you are you will find it difficult to be naked.
The nudity is a necessary expression of humility.
Point Three: Your own intention shapes the experience. Everything we do in life is motivated by emotion and desire. We eat sleep drink walk play live because we have the desire to have a better next minute than the present one. Everybody, bar none, wants to be happy. Some of us go down some strange avenues to achieve this. Our education and experience guide us to be skilled at finding happiness. (Our spiritual education and experience tells us where it will be found, but we are not listening) Again, you will find it hard to join in on a naturist beach, if the intent behind your being there is not pure. That’s why the seedy folk are usually hiding in the bushes so that nobody can see their shame.
The nudity is a necessary expression of the purity of your intent
Point Four: This deals with a bit of biology. Your skin is the largest organ of the body and it’s a sense organ. What about the senses then? Clearly, taste and smell, though important, are not our primary senses. Sight and sound are contenders, but the deaf and blind can survive without them. And the last candidate is the skin. The sense there isn’t touch, but feeling. You feel with the skin. You can’t see when a thing is hot or not if its not glowing. You can’t hear it being scalding. You can’t taste that it’s a hot day. You feel that it is hot with your skin. Without touching it. Touch is expressing. You express love with a caress, empathy with a pat, anger with a punch (a brief but powerful touch experience). You communicate with your skin. Baffled from Bapsfontein and I are both completely agog that so vital an organ should have its entire existence negated by being buried and gagged under layers of clothing for its entire life. And why? All because Adam and Eve were ashamed that they broke a promise made to God and they expressed their shame by covering their bodies. (See discussion of not being able to go naked when you are feeling guilt) As protection against extreme weather clothing is indispensable but as guardian of our morals they don’t work. Pick any page in any newspaper to see the corruption and scandal surrounding predominantly well dressed people. In the meantime the skin is not getting the opportunity to sense the things around you. Stifled by this weird collective guilt, the skin remains almost dormant, unused. Give skin a chance. We also have a half collective memory – half cultural image of a sixth sense that nobody can identify properly. Could it be that there is a connection?? Did our covering up of the skin result in the loss of the sixth sense? I am not telling you, Pilgrim. Every person has his or her own experience and I would taint that by creating expectation through telling you of my experiences. I am telling you to do it. Go out into nature where its most remote and nobody wants to see you. Where you can all by yourself feel that wind caress, the sea-spray tickle and the teasing sting of windblown sand. And I will bet that it won’t be long before you are whooping and dancing, mentally perhaps if you are too staid for a frolic.
The nudity is a necessary expression of your existence.
