In Eros, we are not aiming for a manicured, civilized expression that boils down to an egoic belief that we are here to have dominion over and tame nature. To maintain that belief is to maintain a perpetual state of anxiety, knowing that at any point the levy will break, the earth will quake, and the fires will rage.
To maintain that belief is to live in a perpetual state of suspension of disbelief where in its place we put a hopeful and delusional belief.
We can believe whatever we want. And again and again, nature will trump our concepts of form. We can rationalize this however we want, but it is not going to change.
If we believe we are here to control nature, we will necessarily have to live in a bubble. There is no other option because reality is right in front of us saying otherwise. Reality is here saying yes, we are here through whatever our conception of God is, but by nature's reception and mercy, we have our being.
To believe we are here to tame nature is to be deliberately and increasingly ignorant, distanced both from nature and from the nature that lies within us. The rational mind holds tightly to this belief because it lives in either/or; if we aren't here to tame nature, then we will wind up at nature's mercy because someone must be on top, as the pendulum of the rational mind swings to the other side.
Eros suggests an alternative: relationship and cooperation. Eros suggests we work with nature as we are an inseparable part of it. Of course, we would need to step down from our shaky pedestal, the one that eventually will be washed out from beneath us; life on that pedestal is a life of alienation from life itself. It is a life of chasing control with futile attempts to dominate the elements.
The elements keep popping up and doing their thing, while our futile attempts express in more extreme forms; the control mechanisms disturb the environment so much that basic harmony is lost and the threats become more dire. Mutations develop, as do unanswerable mysteries. We set to work with terrifying analyses and imagine even greater strategies for management.
We are so out of tune with nature and so unwilling to change our domination mindset, with its disposable approach, that we would seek another planet rather than learn to live in relationship with the way things are.
And yet, people say we must save the planet. The planet will do fine and better without us; that is the relationship we have with it at this point. Earth will return to fertile and fecund beauty. Nature will continue to express without disruption and with the elegant design that underlies all.
The holotropic effect of this way of thinking, carried out at every level of abstraction, is the seed that distorts understanding so that we are willing to destroy our most precious commodities in service to this belief. It is the masculine aspects of someone or individuals who are primarily masculine with nature, with their own nature, with the feminine aspects of someone or individuals who are primarily feminine, with marginalized groups.
The notion that not only I can, but that it is my duty to dominate, control, and subdue nature comes at a great cost not just to nature but to the keeper of this belief. We believe ourselves charged with an impossible task that alienates us from life, having to hold ourselves out and away from life, ultimately harming it in order to carry out the imagined injunction.
We chalk it up to greed but we do not go to the source belief—at its foundation, it's an attempt to carry out what the believer believes is noble. We want to punish the holder of the belief, but until we under- stand everyone is motivated by a desire for noble states—love, freedom, power, connection—and that they may simply have faulty maps, we will not understand the dilemma we put them in when it comes to change.
If we believe our access to these higher states is dependent on honorable duty, and that the honorable duty is to subdue all expressions of nature, we will do this at any immediate cost.
When we offer someone two opposing ideas and it looks like there is no way to win, we induce a state of learned helplessness, which may pro- duce paralysis. This is a key understanding for those who would wish to produce change. When we ask a dominating force—the rational mind or a masculine person—to discontinue domination, we must understand we are asking it or him to fail in honorable duty.
If we are interested in true change, we must redefine duty and repurpose this noble aspect in human beings in a way that is in harmony with, rather than in opposition to, reality. The question is, how do we honor and keep intact the noble—albeit misinformed—intention in service to what is beneficial?
Eros is interested first and foremost in what is effective. In other words, there is no point to be proven, no justice to be achieved. There is only the question of what will effectively bring us into harmony with nature in all aspects—including human nature? What will return everything to its rightful place, bringing all to the table with equal reverence generated from understanding various aspects—nature, emotions, sex, and the feminine—on their terms?
The way is to honorably relieve the rational mind or the masculine individual of their perceived duty. He can only let go when he can see there is already a natural order that can be let go into. All he was charged to take care of will be taken care of, including himself.
This letting go must happen for the descent of the mind into the body, the masculine into the natural, the masculine into the feminine, and the dominant culture into the nondominant culture. What is least understood in this equation is the beauty of the dutiful nature of the dominant; there will be no change until this is grasped. It wants to be seen and understood. It must be, before it can let go into the scary unknown, the foreign, and what it has perceived itself to protect against.
Eros would offer a code of ethics in alignment with nature herself.
Use sunlight. Life on earth is a result of solar energy captured by plants and stored. This is then passed on to animals that cannot synthesize this energy. In our time, this process has been interrupted and the life-giving force of sunlight has been replaced with fossil fuels. The equivalent to the sun within us is the life-giving force of desire that has no pollutants and fear that is both finite and expensive. We would shift the fuel we run on.
Conserve. Conservation and limitation are a terrifying notion when we do not know how to use every last drop of what we have. If we do not know how to alchemize life, if we are not working with refuse and using it to our benefit, there must always be more consumption. We often con- sider limitation something terrible that happens to us, rather than the crucible or boundary that makes life possible and makes growth possible, setting us inside a set of circumstances to work with.
The limitations of what Earth can handle, for example, can be a call to develop a resource- ful quality of human nature that translates to vitality, as vitality occurs whenever we are growing. It is also an invitation to be part of, to join in the conversation with nature, in exchange rather than exploitation. That anxious drive for more is replaced with not just ease but a fundamental joy at being in our right place.
Compost. Nature uses everything. The debris of nature is recycled into new plant life that strengthens the overall system, creating solid foundations with critical nutrients—growth in the roots. This prevents leeching nutrients from soil.
This can be extracted into how we work with our interior landscapes. We can take what is viewed as worthless debris—obsession, anger, jealousy, lust, pride, cowardice, judgment, insecurity—and compost these states to produce boundless vitality and a sense of connection to all.
Elegance. Nature rewards elegance, constructing for strength but with- out anything extra. There is an economy that is imbued into all of creation, to make the most of any effort. We recognize we each have within us a valuable blueprint. We must carry out that blueprint and only that blueprint without squandering energy. The work of this life is to discover who we are, what we are here to do, and simply to do that. The extra—the success, the status, the endless building—dissipates the energy necessary for that pursuit and decreases our potency.
Mutuality. Nature is an interplay of offering and reception, each phenomenon organically offering its share and receiving in turn. The approach is to sense what is being offered and to draw from this, rather than seeking how much we can extract. When life deals only in the naturally designed exchange of offering, taking into account where deficits exist and where there is surplus, the yield is rich, consistent, without depletion, and without much effort. We don't expect everybody to be everything. Instead, we learn the unique offering of each and cultivate it, which creates self-supporting individuals and collective systems.
Diversity. Diversity in nature creates stability and balance that is dynamic and alive. This takes two forms: the first is that it prevents one form from having to carry the load and do all the work; the second is that anyone can "fall out" without harm to the overall system. This plays to the idea of unconditionality, which allows equal access to all so the best can be employed.
Full. Nature has a mechanism that informs when a system is full. This is in fact the most challenging for us, as a mind detached from the body has no way of knowing when it is full and knows only the impulse to consume. This is the danger of seeing nature as a possession rather than a home we have been invited into, but will just as easily be asked to leave if we do not figure out our place.
We must be able to feel to know fullness and we must know fullness to know when to stop. This requires the radical notion of immersion rather than ascension. The highest order is not reaching the mountaintop and staying there, but the noble choice to come down and be part of. To understand that as honorable as our intentions are, there is no way to not cause harm even separated from what would have us know, honor, and work with mastery inside of the limitations that are a part of life. To exchange "ultimates" and "eternities" for simple "this-ness" and "now," where the most exalted position is to take our place in the world and exchange our best.
From here we can then look at the ways to work with human nature that are in alignment. If we look at these primary areas, we can reclaim their original purpose—and what they served prior to the notion that they threatened the dominion of the masculine.