Working with Eros requires an approach that is diametrically opposed to the one we employ with the rational mind. With the rational mind, we seek to control; with Eros, we seek to live at the edge of our control, pushing our boundaries consistently. This is how we develop the skills that fill the gap between our current capacity and what draws us forward into the unknown. True power is 360 degrees of power; it is the capacity to access power in all directions. All power is rooted in the body and in the deeper truth of our perfection. If our actions are akin to a sword, the power behind the sword that gives us the capacity to wield it is our understanding of perfection. Perfection buys us time and space outside of the maelstrom of mind traffic, allowing us to gather ourselves and determine the precise action required while also always operating within the seamless connection of the whole.
The power rises up in a particular form to act, think, and see in conjunction with all other aspects of reality. Power can also pull down and in, drawing forth our excess to empty what is full; or it can come from the other in order to expand what can flow between the two. Power is the ability, in equal parts, to go and to stop. We go when we are called, stop when we might crash, and we sense the difference between the two beyond what our preferences might tell us. When the mind is in service to the body and the body is in service to Eros, we become powered—the impersonal capacity to be operated through.
As we inhale, we absorb tumescence and draw forth power. We use our attention like a sword to cut through tumescence. The power then becomes the breath, exhaling with agency. The Eros that lies within us is what converts and sends the energy back out, now purified as love. When the mind is disconnected from the body and thus disconnected from the environment (in this case, our partner) one of two things occurs, likely in an alternating current. We experience a lack of power or powerlessness, and then to counter, we use force. Power would never use force because it knows it does not have to. Power understands that force will never yield erotically beneficial results for anybody.
This is because it is action originating from the rational mind, which is disconnected from the whole by its nature. Force is an activity of disconnection and so carries out further disconnection. This includes “rationally good” activity. Power understands the recognition of our powerlessness is in fact the most powerful admission we can make. Vital to note, however: true power may hurt. In our tumescent culture, we often conflate hurt and harm, which hinders true power. Hurt is good and often the first step away from harm.
Hurt is the experience of fixing a cavity, whereas harm is the choice to eat sugar and not care for our teeth. More often than not, we disallow the activities that would bring about the sword that cuts through tumescence, labeling them “harmful.” This single misunderstanding has astonishingly dangerous results. Tumescence is allowed to run rampant. We are rendered fragile and incapable servants to the ever-increasing demands of the discomforts of tumescence. Our capacity for resilience is inhibited. We become slaves to our attempts to decrease the intensity of life to accommodate our fragile, overly sensitive selves, rather than developing and unleashing the internal power that could meet life on its terms.
In OM, the phases of opening and turning on often involve some hurt. The process of life entering into something that has become numb or deadened is inherently uncomfortable. Ideas about ourselves that could only adhere to our identities in a state of low power have adhered nonetheless and must now be shed. This kind of pain is a touchstone when it comes to growing our power. We need to build a relationship with this kind of pain. If we don’t, we will never open up and will consequently fail to grow. We will instead spend our lives attempting to shelter ourselves from the discomforts of life, hunkered within our own bodies, demanding different circumstances and comforts.
We will invariably be restricted to the bounds of a child’s consciousness, as those who must be attended to and who require attention, rather than moving into an adulthood where we are the ones who can attend to and care for the uncomfortable. As Erotic adults, we can reverse the child’s mind of rights and entitlements that aims to be seen or understood, loved or consoled, and instead be the vessel that offers such. Erotic adulthood is the result of the inflowing of Erotic power that first fills us with love, understanding, and consolation. Erotic power doesn’t come from the outside; it flows from within, giving us the resilience to face the pain of the world. When we are with others, we are able to carry out actions that cut through this pain. These actions are rooted in true power.
We are not merely enabling or catering to the demands of another’s pain; instead we are able to face the tumescence that holds the other person in its grip. We are able to operate with the courage that is required, a courage that demands power come through. Power, with its inherent magnetism, is baffling to the rational mind because it does not understand that denial, ignorance, or saying that things are other than they are has no effect on power. Power is incorruptible. Power will continue to pull into its sphere what it hungers for, with or without the guiding assistance of the mind.
The juncture of power and words has other implications. When we are under the influence of our tumescence, we will act in opposition to power. We seek comfort and control in our attempt to craft reality around our tumescent expression, whatever it is. To the degree a strokee has realized her power, she can allow it to guide her through the OM and, by proxy, guide her partner. This is the true spirit of guidance in OM. When she allows her tumescence to guide, she is acting in opposition to power and will rely on the rational mind’s sense of what treatment it can demand from reality, and again, by proxy, her stroker’s body.
This presents the stroker with an Erotic conundrum: if the stroker can sense that the guidance being received is veering the OM further into tumescence territory, any attempt to adjust the direction will fly in the face of that rational demand as essence will have been touched in spite of a rational rule. If the stroker does nothing, they will end up at the mercy of their partner’s tumescence, which occurs in the reverse fashion: the rational mind of the strokee running over the Erotic sense of the stroker. The neurosis women feel is the neurosis of tumescence when it is left undisturbed. The smog, confusion, pressure, and irritation a woman feels is the result of a buildup of tumescence. Tumescence makes others its enemy, which keeps her from the kind of contact that would switch on her power.
This is why, in OM, a woman learns to use every ounce of her power to empower her stroker, making them powerful and strong as she sends them in to contend with her tumescence. She must look at what inside of her is making her feel disdain, disgust, and terror, and recognize it as the lens she sees life through. When we dissolve our own tumescence, a miracle occurs. Much of what we consider outside of our preferences is often not only tolerable, but desirable. The strokee can respond to a variety of pressures, speeds, and directions without feeling harmed because they find within themselves the capacity to meet the stroke.
It is possible to entertain all the grievances tumescence might manufacture when threatened, allowing it every inch of its protest, while also remaining tethered to tumescence’s deeper desire: to exhaust its various machinations and threats, and then be reabsorbed by the Erotic body. This process is clearly not for the faint of heart. This is why at every point we need to have an escape hatch. One tool we can employ in the process of converting tumescence to power is a safe word. Pick a benign word such as “book,” using it as a signal to stop or slow down. This enables the honest vocalization of tumescence to run itself out regardless of the form it takes.
Tumescence is wholly concerned with self-preservation, whatever the cost. Consequently, it tends to use words that would normally stop action. By using a safe word, our partner can be sure it is the tumescence and not us that is speaking. If we, the stroker or strokee, are truly in too much pain or need to stop, the agreed upon safe word is employed. Each OM partner is instructed to remain rooted in the practices that keep them steeped in power. No matter what comes up during our experience, we then take the appropriate action. Instead of falling into reactivity, we allow the energy to run out by making decisions rooted in power.
These rise up from our deep-seated sense that we are connected within a seamless whole. The world looks very different from this position. Power, for the strokee, is the determination that there is absolutely nothing that would justify ejecting consciousness from the body. This is the secret. True power is the capacity to allow ourselves no excuse to leave the source of power, the capacity to say there is no possible version of ourselves that will make us leave our home under any condition. More importantly and more commonly, we stop seeking justifiable reasons to do so.
Justification is how we build a rational case against reality, and nothing could be more dangerous to the Erotic self that wants to know reality in its true form. Nothing is heinous enough or attractive enough that we are willing to leave this body for, or that we need to avoid. Every individual has the power to stay with the body. When it is employed, the experience of harm, real or imagined, is greatly diminished. To exercise our birthright of Erotic power is to determine that under no circumstances will we abandon ourselves. Whatever the culture says, there is never a justifiable reason. We determine not to opt out of our incarnated experience.
This is a key characteristic of Erotic adulthood, the state of adulthood we may not have been able to touch until now. Hampered by the repressed Eros in the culture surrounding us, we were not aware of a power to work with. A culture with no power is rife with ideas that never make it out of the realm of the theoretical, as there is a lack of power to carry them out in the material. Everything must be handled with kid gloves and legalism because, in a culture without Eros, we must prevent the spontaneity of truth that is in itself powerful and could “harm” those without power.
The human truth of hungers and drives and the impulse to feel our impact in the world are truths of an integrated humanity that cannot be permitted to come into plain view if people lack the power to face these truths. Consequently, they are driven underground, where they gain in power as we decrease in our capacity to meet them, until they explode, and our lives are shattered. At this point we can either wake up or be traumatized further as they eat us alive from the inside in the form of stress and tension. Another reason we have issues with power is that we do not acknowledge the inward-facing form of power, the feminine form that draws in from the world like a magnet.
Not acknowledging this form has made this kind of power dangerous. It is equivalent to determining that nuclear power is too much for humans to confront. Rather than learning more about this feminine form (how to use, direct, steer, and connect it to consciousness), we prefer to deny its existence in what amounts to massive cultural collusion. This feminine form of power is the same force that turns birds in unison. When a child is pressed against an adult’s chest, this power also causes the child’s heartbeat to regulate itself with the adult’s heartbeat. The same power draws a monkey two hundred miles when another is in estrus.
The beauty of this feminine form of power is that it can be made conscious and volitional. When it isn’t conscious and volitional, this power can cause damage. When that happens, it seems like our lives are mysteriously happening to us. We cannot see, or won’t admit, we have drawn to us precisely what our body was hungering for. This baffles the rational mind, which responds by ignoring it, believing this denial will stop the body from relentlessly pulling our hunger into the light of day.
This is why it’s crucial to understand that no amount of ignorance or denial is able to affect the pull of this incorruptible feminine power. With or without the guiding assistance of the mind, it will continue to pull whatever it hungers for into its sphere. The mind believes if it can disconnect from its hunger, the hunger will go away. It will not; it simply continues to influence the world around the body without the cooperation of the mind. Peace occurs only when the two (mind and body) operate in concert. Otherwise, the mind tends to feel the body is sneaky, or even dangerous. It’s up to the mind to determine the body is neither.
But either way, the body will not be stopped or ignored. The body contains a supernal calling within itself that it must follow with or without our permission. This is the truth we become progressively more cognizant of on the path of Eros. Our ability to perceive the invisible activity of the body is the difference between heaven and hell, or the difference between having superpowers or being controlled and manipulated by circumstance. This power cannot be corrupted, but with great love, care, and attention it can be guided into greater and greater efficacy of expression.
When this expression of power is cultivated, it occurs as brilliance. When it lacks cultivation, it expresses as reactivity. Each of us bears our own legacy of personal power. We cannot alter this. An inborn level of personal influence exists in each of us that is in accord with the calling on our heart. We can, in this lifetime, increase this sphere of power through OM and the careful and courageous unleashing of Eros into our systems. To the extent we do this in accord with the mind, it will manifest as the empowerment we have sought.
All empowerment is for one purpose: to share power. It may not be in a form others appreciate (we all have our own unique blueprint as to how it wants to be expressed), but it is always in connection and for the benefit of all, even if that means it hurts sometimes. If, however, we increase power beyond where we have cultivated the submission of the mind to the body, we will experience chaos and wreckage. We will be in overdrive without a steering wheel or brakes.
Three kinds of power exist: active, receptive, and transceiving. The latter allows us to live off the surplus power generated through connection. There is power in play. This expression of power is Eros-specific. It is power, and the expression of power. As it is liberated from need, power in play is rooted in optionality. It can go anywhere. Just as we come to delight in our ability to hit the felt tone of a particular spot, especially when it was a spot that seemed out of range or unattractive, we become able to see how that note fits into the whole of the sensory music.
We come to delight in our capacity to play in all of the dimensions of power with equal and simultaneous expression. When a person who shuns expression can operate with equal facility in the overt as they do under the radar, this is true power. When a person who usually thrives in dominant or penetrating expression can learn to receive with a matched openness, this too is true power. When partners exist in perfect, complementary harmony across from each other atop a spinning ball and can take their respective power positions with equal skill, keeping the connection unbroken, this also is true power.
Power is also the ability to eroticize any position we might find ourselves in, experiencing it as charged and alive. Even the position of powerlessness can bring with it tremendous and desirable arousal. It is a law of power that the above is not truly above until it knows below equally well and can see, learn, and honor the power of pull. The converse is also true: the power of pull is of little use unless it can see, learn, and access the agency that can wield that power from within with precision, skill, and acumen. When both powers come to know what it means to be the other, the age of Eros has arrived and the divine is awakened.
