Relationship is not on the path of Eros; relationship is the path of Eros. In the mutual reciprocity between friends and true friends, there is an agreement to make the inner workings of life overt. A fundamental tenet of the Erotic path is prioritizing the primary communication of mutual influence that is always happening under the radar.
This agreement requires everything of us, because we are now responsible for what most people scarcely recognize even exists. We are responsible at the level of the unspoken, the unheard, and the unexpressed. We are responsible for bringing ourselves to those depths, gaining fluency there, and then operating with pitch-perfect response in accord with these directives.
This path is about neither union nor separation, but the dynamic life force that lies between called intimacy. Exquisite care must be taken to ensure the well-being of this fragile force. A relinquishing of all else for what is in between is needed. Our life efforts must be dedicated to the hyper-focus required to maintain attention there, when either the force of other or self threatens to pull our attention to either side.
There are four primary obstacles to the hyper-focus the path of Eros requires, not giving ourselves over to the third in the relationship, with- holding and withdrawal, avoidance and escape, and comparison. While they may matter in the everyday world, they are more extreme when living at this level of nuance.
On the path of Eros, the question is not, What does this person need, or how can I make this person happy? The living question—referring simultaneously to a relationship to self and a relationship to other—is, What is this relationship asking of me? When we are in relationship from this both/and existence, we are offering ourselves over to the third in the relationship— that which arises between two people.
To give ourselves over to the third, we must live generously without an accounting of who is owed what, with the full offering of our self—the self who practices every day to cultivate the capacities necessary for offering in this way. We live in a reality of shared resources and shared suffering, without withdrawing from the call to share these. We notice what resources the other may need to meet and maintain the connection that would keep this resonance alive.
In the world of appearances, more often than not, an action precedes what is commonly viewed as a transgression. In the world of Eros, it is recognized that the root cause of gratuitous suffering is disconnection. The greatest culprit of transgression, by the time it makes it to the world of appearances, is this disconnection that is most often rooted in withholding and withdrawal.
We go against our very nature when we withhold and withdraw. We are born to know and share. Withholding love, truth, resources, attention, connection, and self violates natural law and naturally erupts at some point on the surface as harm. The only thing that activates shared inner seeing is wholly offering oneself. Once this is done, we see through the lens of the connection.
It could be that we escape through things that separate us, like addiction, or things that separate us through like-minded union, like politics and spirituality. Avoiding the middle world where we all meet as humans is an obstacle to knowing unconditional liberation. This avoidance also permits us to live in a false identity of one who knows, when we do not. It negates the law that we can only know through experience.
Comparison is fundamentally an aggressive act whereby we size up another in order to determine our relative position and whether or not we can fulfill the edicts of the tumescent mind to win, be better than, or be right. Comparison is the consequence of not giving ourselves over fully to the third in the relationship. When we have given ourself over to the third, the other's assets are an extension of our own and a call to be even better to contribute in kind.
The full commitment of oneself to what arises between self and other in the relationship switches on the perception needed to see the line that usually separates them. This line extends assets and allows for the greatness of our individual assets to come out, balancing the other's liabilities.
