On the path of Eros, we note the distinctions between various expressions of consciousness and the treatment of desire that issues from each. The forms of desire described here are native to Eros. They are process-oriented and represent a shift from what we on the Erotic path refer to as climax consciousness. When we live in climax as opposed to Erotic consciousness, we have somewhere to get to and we better get there fast.
Clearly, being present to this moment is inconvenient to getting where we need to go because where we need to go is a place of relief that is very unlike this place with all its feelings and subtleties and invitations to sink in. And we’re going to go there, we’re going to get there, we’re going to get this thing, whatever it is, that we’re after.
This conversation may remind us of sex. While climax consciousness can certainly rear up between two naked bodies, we’re not just talking about sex, although let’s continue on with that example.
So our desire is drawing us toward some object, situation, or condition that will provide us with the relief we seek through obtaining an end result. And make no mistake—it is the end because once we’ve got it, consciousness will feel entitled to punch its time clock and check right out of whatever comes next. Climax consciousness has no script for what happens after its goal is reached; it just knows it’s time to sleep.
But climax consciousness has a tell. In the actual moment of huffing and puffing and getting there, we will notice a hint of impatience, of something unsettled and unresolved.
We push toward climax with a kind of grinding, often pressured determination, which can even turn violent. This type of aggression can be productive and cathartic, and it can feel good in sex if we’re in an aroused state, but what usually happens is our arrival and participation in the sex is tinged with this need to expel tension and blocked energy. No matter what other guise under which the act may be happening—tenderness, love, passion, lust—if we are in climax consciousness, it will be drowned out by the need for relief, for release.
In sex, we feel our partner better get us there, often the quicker the better, because this thing is getting ready to blow, and if it doesn’t blow then we are in really big trouble. A huge expulsion needs to happen . . . so we can come down . . . and begin the whole process again! Climax consciousness looks great bathed in the spotlight. It performs adequately, even admirably. But back in the recesses of the mind, behind the scenes, it’s a pauper consciousness, a one-trick pony.
Because all attention is fixated on achieving the goal, the goal is the very greatest thing that can occur.
Its greatest insecurity is located in the knowledge that if desire were to visit and extend its subtle finger in a new direction, climax consciousness would neither have the capacity, much less the available energy, to follow it.
This is how our culture is constructed. It’s how literature is constructed. It’s how movies are constructed. It’s how the days of the week are constructed. The process-based nature of desire isn’t just flattened into a two-dimensional productivity chart; it’s rendered, for the most part, irrelevant. Climax consciousness leads us toward acquisition, final confrontation, apex, and resolution.
The Erotic mind handles desire very differently. We don’t drive it toward climax, which can be irritating to those of us who are attached—addicted might be a better word—to climax consciousness and are always looking for more and better. That unsettled, unresolved sensation? Those are the seeds of Erotic consciousness.
