The Art of Intimacy

We hear words, but we learn from experience.

Intro

The way the path of Eros works is not by ascending above our lives into some spiritual cloud and avoiding the chaos and snares of our psyches, but instead putting us down smack dab in the middle of them where we can experience it all. It is a profoundly experiential path that at the foundation trusts in the resilience and volition of each human being. This means that “stuck” is not a problem; there is nowhere to get to—no ultimate nirvana where we finally make it to the top of a mountain away from it all. Every moment holds precious gifts if we stay in the moment and not try to resist or change it. Even those times with our heads up in the clouds or our hands down in the dirt. The gifts are there, awaiting our discovery.

Reading – An Experiential Path, Not Renunciation 

Eros is the foundation of all work, but most important the foundation of working with conditioned patterns. The way the path of Eros works is not by ascending above our lives and avoiding the chaos and snares of our psyches, but instead putting us down smack dab in the middle of them. It is a profoundly experiential path that at the foundation trusts in the resilience and volition of each human being. This means that “stuck” is not a problem; there is nowhere to get to—no ultimate nirvana where we finally make it to the top of a mountain away from it all. 

And do know that if we could get stuck, there is a lesson. We love to read the last page and pretend that we know what happened, but in doing that we rob ourselves of the power that comes from having gone through it, and of the experiential compassion and empathy it develops. If we try to bypass the arduous process of understanding our own inner workings, it robs us of learning how to convert delusion to wisdom. Yes, the conditioned world is delusion, but if we are at the mercy of it such that we must renounce, avoid, and resist — doesn’t it still control us? And most of all, are we not missing an opportunity to use that delusion as the base metal for the gold of wisdom? 

At the same time, it is vital to recognize the power of delusion and to respect it. We cannot afford to get cocky. Just because it is not true and we must ultimately at some point bow to the truth does not mean it cannot have its way with us in such a way that it robs us of an entire life. Of course, Eros would say that would be fine too; but we might not be fine with that. 

Respect and seeing everything of vital consequence are the weights we can enter with that can potentially keep us from being utterly taken over. We respect our obsession and our fantasy and our jealousy, our big egoic self-importance and our hunger for money and prestige. Our tendency is to want to diminish, or, in order to save face, to drive the desires underground and pretend we are not moved by these things.

Respect includes admission. We admit these things are in us. We get to know the size, shape and intensity of our obsessions, how intense the sway is when we do not try to counteract it with self-will. And then we enter. We enter wanting to know this phenomenon with every cell of our bodies. We enter as if we may spend the rest of our life there — because we might. It may thrash us about; it may retract from our view. We do what it says. We follow instructions precisely. This is what we do not do most of the time.

But there is a promise; all things are born from freedom and will lead us there if we let them have us. We have the choice. We can simply be imprisoned by them; we can escape them but never be able to enter them for fear of being imprisoned by them, or we can enter them with consciousness and respect and possibly know a life where we can come and go in our own reality freely.

Meditation

Get into a comfortable position, either in a chair or seated in a meditation cushion. Set your timer for 20 minutes. Close your eyes and become aware of your breath and the sensations in your body. 

Visualize yourself connected to your environment.  If you are surrounded by family drama, choose to be connected to it rather than viewing the scene as something to separate from or overcome/dominate.  If you are obsessed with collecting Beanie Babies/puffy stickers/vintage motorcycles/snow globes, etc., choose to embrace your collection instead of being embarrassed by your obsession. Open to accepting and approving of what is, without desiring to stop, resist, or change it. Let it be. What do you notice when you become part of what is happening rather than a victim of it/an outside observer to it?

At the end of the meditation, slowly bring yourself back into the room. Feel the seat beneath you and the sounds around you. Slowly open your eyes when you are ready. Jot down your insights and whether it was easy or difficult to accept what happens in your environment without trying to force something else into being. Why do you feel this? Can you feel a sense of deep relief when you allow life to just be and embrace it all?

Exercise 

Eros does not have us avoid any aspects of life but rather pull us down right into the  midst of it. Obsession is often one area of life where we try to avoid. Write about a time you were obsessed with someone or something. What did it feel like, what emotions and sensations did it come with? What did you secretly love about feeling that way? Did you get the object of your obsession, and if so, how did that feel? Was it all you had imagined or a huge letdown? If not, did you continue to obsess or did that energy eventually run its course? What might obsession be distracting you from feeling or experiencing?

Example

I was obsessed with a particular man from when I was 23 years old until I was 28 years old. Obsessed. I had a boyfriend when I met him – then in the blink of an eye, the boyfriend was gone, so I could pursue this man. He was dashing, he was charming, he had a way of raising a dark eyebrow and smiling sideways at me that just did. Me. In. I spent every last ounce of my passion and energy and attention on this man. I moved cities for this man twice. I neglected my own needs happily. I was an introvert but to keep up with him at parties and such, I grew an extroverted appendage onto my identity. I plotted and planned on how to keep him away from other women. Obsessed. After it was finally over after five years, I was ashamed of my behavior. I felt like I was surfacing from a spell. I didn’t talk about it much for a long time. And then many years later, I started writing a book and though the book wasn’t about him, it unlocked something deep within me: a revelation of the rightness of the obsession, the absolute beauty of it, the profundity of it, how much it grew me and drew me out of myself and into the world, how much it changed me and sent me on a thousand adventures I never would have gone on, how much it meant to me, how deeply I loved and felt and yearned and received. This revelation forever changed how I relate to things like obsession, jealousy, pride, all the deadly sins and all the non-deadly sins. I respect and appreciate them more now.

“Just imagine becoming the way you used to be as a very young child, before you understood the meaning of any word, before opinions took over your mind. The real you is loving, joyful, and free. The real you is just like a flower, just like the wind, just like the ocean, just like the sun.” – Don Miguel Ruiz

Summary

When you learn to meet life where it is at, openly and approvingly, you truly begin to love your life, even when bad things happen. Your suffering comes from resisting what is, and you now can surrender into it and know that it is all a part of your rich experience. Life would not mean as much if you only got to experience the good without the contrast of the bad, and soon you come to realize the bad is not really bad at all except in your own limited perception. Eros asks that you expand that perception outward to include all of life.