The Art of Intimacy

“Every particular in nature, a leaf, a drop, a crystal, a moment of time is related to the whole, and partakes of the perfection of the whole.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Introduction 

In building an intimate life, we begin at: you are perfect. 

Perfection is the starting point, the ending point, the ground, and the foundation of the Erotic life. In the same way that a loved one’s flaws and failings can become part of why you love them, can add texture and flavor to why you love them, so it can be with life itself. Eros shows us how to create intimacy with life by teaching us how to see the perfection in all things–just as they are right now. 

This is not a perfection where you must present something pretty on the outside while you fall apart on the inside, although everyone feels like that sometimes and that’s perfect too. This is a moment-by-moment, uncovering-the-secret-gift-inside-your-pain perfection; a dig-deep-and-realize-your-whole-life-has-brought-you-to-this-point perfection; and a you-must-wrestle-with-it-and-test-it perfection. If you start with the idea that you are already perfect, with room to evolve, then you start at happiness. A hundred arguments arise to combat this idea–this is a good sign. It is the disruptive truth that stirs us up the most. 

Reading – All is Perfect With Room to Evolve

The foundational premise of Eros is that all is perfect with room to evolve. The whole of the Erotic path is implicit in this statement. We practice immersed in perfection; the feeling in our bodies of how rich and succulent life is, the full measure of the sensual world that is in us always and forever. We feel a pulsing fullness, the body magnetized by the world around it. We are incontrovertibly connected. We are mesmerized.

We surrender to the wisdom of the body as we recognize that it is through the body, and only through the body, that we perceive the world. It’s not up to us to perfect anything. This disposition of mind removes any aim. It asserts that both the present moment and its content, here and now, are already whole and complete and there is no need for us to activate the will. Instead, we give implicit permission to the ever-evolving agency of Eros to come through the will. We do not need to help the experience, nor do we need to seek for more. We simply need to allow ourselves to attend to the current of life that is always flowing through us. We offer ourselves over as an agent of that flow, of what is inside our bodies, the very incarnated substance of us, here and now. 

All we want is access to that turned on state but we’ve been given all the wrong maps to enter it. Seeking abstractions and ideas, we’ve been lost in the perfectionism of trying to capture perfection. There is an Erotic axiom that says that if you can keep the mind turned on to whatever comes into your field everything becomes beautiful. In a sense, the roles are reversed: We are not helping to fix a broken reality. A perfect reality is helping us to perceive its perfection and then employing and including us in its seamless journey of ever-deepening itself.

We learn the mechanics of life both by becoming more like it — interconnected, dynamic, all-welcoming — and by developing the capacity that allows it to flow through us. Eventually, this force animates every dimension of our being, activating an often dormant knowing that lies within.

The beauty and fun of this life is to participate directly in this evolution, this unfolding; to immerse in experiences that open and refine the complexity of the mind in connection with an ever more resilient body; to experience a sustainable and increasingly expansive sense of fulfillment. Our fulfillment, then, also evolves, as we move in perfect accord with the life force of Eros.

We may, however, have patterns that are out of sync with this organic movement; patterns that have been grooved by a notion put into the mind that diverted the natural flow of Eros in our bodies. Eros says that this, too, is perfect; part of what continues to create our uniqueness with room for ever-more dynamism. It is never that there is something wrong with us; there is simply room for more experience of life, for more discovery and growth.

There is both a universal quality of perfection to our existence and a desire for further evolution. This is our inescapable paradox. It can get painfully reduced to the idea that perfection is “out there” and we are somehow separate from it and thus imperfect. We acutely feel the gap between what we can conceive of as the perfection of life and our capacity to experience it as such. 

Only through realizing our own perfection will we stop looking to false idols to give us fulfillment, meaning, and purpose. Without this realization, we will continue to labor under the delusion that we are separate from the flow of life, from Eros. The feeling that something is wrong will remain. Only perfection can heal the imperfection that hurts.

Example 

When my grandfather was in hospice, I had the chance to sit with him for a few moments. My grandmother had passed a year before, and I knew my grandfather was eager to see her again. He told me something that would change me forever. I had asked him if losing the love of his life made him want to hasten his own death, so they could be together again. I thought for sure he would say yes, but instead, he told me that despite the tragic loss and the heartbreak it caused him, he saw her death as a part of the cycle of life, and that though he grieved, he saw how perfect it all was. It helped him find comfort in his final time alone, seeing life as it was and that it was all perfection as part of a greater, grander cycle that would include his own death. He died a week later in a most peaceful state, not fighting or resisting or wishing anything were different. 

Video – Eros Starts with Perfection 

Eros believes we are fundamentally perfect with room to evolve. There is nothing evil, broken, or wrong with you.