The rational mind is fond of lines. It likes to draw a line through experience and call it time. It likes to draw a line through reality that breaks everything into opposing sides; a classic one is good and evil. It likes to draw arbitrary lines on the planet and create an us and them. It likes to turn that line perpendicularly and cast the higher as superior—on top of the lower, which is inferior. A favorite line is the limited physical reality of skin that determines a me and a you. And then the rational mind makes a whole host of rules everyone must follow according to these lines.
Our primary indoctrination into the world is first a matter of knowing where these lines are and memorizing the multiple layers of rules that follow the concentric circles of family, culture, planetary—and then get in line and adhere to those rules.
There is a range that we are permitted to stray from the arbitrary lines without recourse. There is even a line that crosses every line. If we stay at the first drawn line, we are considered pious but likely rigid. Going out further to happy and healthy, further to innovative and edgy, and then we tip into the singularity of the unknown territory. Because it is unknown, the end of that line is considered evil.
In the arbitrary polarized lines, evil is the opposite pole of good and is cast out, punished, and rejected. The indoctrination then taps into the biology that needs to live in connection and learns to not go over that line. This is how the rational manages the lines. It simply says that if we cross over this line then we will be cut off from connection.
There is a presumption that if these lines are not rigorously maintained like a carefully manicured garden, chaos will ensue and there will be no order. Life as we know it is a continuous maintenance of these lines we call morality. This side of the line gets connection and that side of the line does not, in order to uphold the good for the benefit of the species.
Rarely, if ever, do we question the lines. Rarely do we look at the suffering of life and ask ourselves if the cause might in fact be these lines. We don’t question because there is a line about lines that we are indoctrinated into. There is a limit to how much we can question a line and there is a punishment if we cross it.
Then there is a self-reinforcing reality about the superiority of this side of the line because few ever cross it. Those who do are punished, so we believe bad things happen if we cross the line. There is another line—imperceptible to everyday consciousness— that sees the bad that happens to those people might just be a result of other people punishing them for crossing over the line; and perhaps there is in fact, no real evil over there.
More often than not, Eros is perceived as being on the evil side of the line. It exists on both sides but because there is a line and a corresponding rule that says it does not matter how much of us is on this side of the line—the good side—if any part of us is on that side—the bad side—we are tainted and defined by the bad side.
The rational, while exalting lines of logic, rarely makes logical sense. It elevates the above, including a set of ideas like God, Love, Light, and Enlightenment, that are in fact so superior that they represent another set of exalted ideas like omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent.
The good-God-love-light side of the line in fact takes pride (good) and sees it as its honorable duty (good) to overtake and overthrow darkness. Violation is regarded as good if it is in service to this side of the line; although there is omnipotence, there remains a threat from inferior darkness we must be constantly vigilant about. God is necessarily up there where the superior things are, and humans are down here. There is a list of rules for how we must relate in the up there/down here relationship in order to have access to up there.
There are those who fall on this side of the line as closer to up there. Those who do not, must then relate to the ones who are closer in the same way as the ones who are closer must relate to up there.
When full indoctrination has occurred, it seems as if this is simply the way of things, so much so that everything is perceived as equal—because visible lines are unseemly. There is a line about pointing out the lines, and the lines said to not exist become very clear when they are crossed.
If a force could have a response, the primordial non-membrane response of Eros would be amusement. Eros, being actual love, would love all of it; the whole display.
There is something eternal that operates beyond our big, important gardens, that was here before them, and will eventually take over the land again where we have planted it.
Whereas the rational-line method operates with the threat of cutting someone off from connection, Eros operates according to a deeper sense of self-organization: that which contributes to the system thrives and what doesn’t, does not.
The transition from the black-and-white, clear, linear, thou-shalt-and-thou-shalt-not world of lines into the world of Eros can be quite confusing, threatening, and seemingly lawless.
There is a now-based attraction and repulsion that is not set on a line, so may not repeat at a later time based on attraction or repulsion. Everything is open to be moved in its position.
The good news is that our experience of in or out is determined entirely by our preference. We may like remaining in a repulsion territory or not entering an attraction territory, but we do have the option of always being in the attraction territory provided we are willing to be moved to wherever it moves to—and move it does.
A good way to tell the difference is to notice if we are spontaneously happy and joyous, if we have a sense of humor, if decentralized love emanates from us, and if we feel filled with a steady, guiding, intelligent presence that is for us.
We may see one of “them” and have a moment where they do something that blurs the line or makes it difficult to uphold and our mind gives way to judgment and there is the threat we will be tainted—and we may be tainted.
This is Eros and we are never not in it.
