More often than not, our tendency is to throw more resources—time, effort, money—at our lives, exhausting ourselves in the very process of gathering those resources, rather than to simply switch to operating from the Erotic mind. The Erotic mind starts with the sense of being gratified.
The tumescent mind starts with the sense of dissatisfaction and the slight promise that if we do everything in our power, it at least won’t torment us. The tumescent mind rewards us not with joy but with temporarily ceasing—and only when we are in perfect, rigid adherence to its code of control—the endless cycle of negative stories.
We attempt to placate the tumescent mind with novelty, diminishing pleasures, material goods, and the fulfillment of our conditioned desires. We learn to comply with and provide for the tumescent mind. We do what it says—to provide it with an endless supply of things to stimulate it—or it will punish us.
What we do not realize is that the tumescent mind conceals precisely what we are looking for—liberation from this bondage—which brings about a basic sense of gratification found in intimacy with our lives. It is already here, hidden right beneath the tumescent mind, which ceaselessly threatens that if we do not get these things while we can, we will lose out.
That if we focus on developing the Erotic mind, on feeding it and tending to it, if we focus on openness and something heretical, we will end up broke, lonely, and without shelter. What it does not tell us is that we will first and foremost be happy. We will have spent our time and energy establishing a ground of happiness from which all that we do, get, acquire, lose, and do not do will be experiences that come and go on top of this foundation.
The tumescent mind will tell us we are being selfish or indulgent or frivolous; that we should be focusing on our survival. But is there anything more selfish or indulgent than ceaseless mass consumption of goods, services, ideas, that will diminish in their capacity to bring joy and eventually be discarded? With the Erotic mind, a little goes a long way.