The body speaks to us in a tapestry of hungers. At the most fundamental level is the hunger for food, sleep, and security. These survival-based hungers operate on the physical plane. Beyond them lie fulfillment-based hungers of the Erotic mind. These operate on the energetic plane. In both cases, when our attention is attuned, it can discern what the true source hunger is and respond by feeding it, resulting in gratification. When attention is not attuned or is mis-attuned, or when it ignores or attempts to enforce artificial controls that are disconnected from the actual source hunger,
In the body, they create a separation and dysregulation that leads to a whole variety of issues we refer to as the tumescent mind. It is difficult for a classically trained or untrained mind—as opposed to an erotically trained mind—to understand that hungers do not need to be controlled, they need to be attended to. Erotic training of the mind is required to tune into, distinguish at the level of nuance, and respond to hunger, priming the mind for the dynamic and moment-to-moment experience of unconditional liberation: intimacy with the whole of life.
In order to hear and respond to these hungers, the totality of our being must be awakened, not merely the upper registers. We must have equal capacity to venture into the pressure, density, and darkness of the lower regions of consciousness, as well as the higher, more spacious and quiet regions, and then to know how to bridge and unite them. This union, which we call the Erotic heart, is not a mere physical location. It is not even a thing unto itself, but a result: The energies coming together from above and below permit coherence and clarity of perception in the world.
We learn to listen both to and for our hunger. We begin to notice where we sense an impulse of craving or yearning and how we respond. Do we feed it with the same or similar experiences every time? Do we instantly dismiss it and attempt to override it?
Do we withdraw consciousness or have a consciousness too weak to remain connected and consume without attention? This inquiry becomes a footpath of exploration. We gently notice, without agenda, where and how we show up or do not show up for our hunger.
A deep-seated yearning exists in each of us for the dynamic spot. Some call it truth, some call it divinity. There is a sense it is seeking for itself, that an internal sensing organ recognizes itself in the mind as thoughts, in the world as frequencies, and with others as feelings. It does not stop seeking.
This hunger trains the mind in deliberateness, patience, attunement, thoroughness, discrimination, and most importantly, perseverance.
An incontrovertible sensation occurs when we land on the spot or in truth. It is binary, not a gradient. We know it as a moment of illumination—insight marked by a very distinct sense of landing on solid ground. The erotically trained mind will pull the body through circumstances and time unceasingly until it is met with this feeling. The hunger has been liberated from notions of propriety. We must know, and until we do there is no rest, only agitation and compensation for the agitation. Once we know, there is a clear sense we have arrived, and this dynamic truth is all there is.
Our nervous systems, being neither separate nor self-contained, seek stability and regulation both inside and outside of ourselves. We therefore hunger for the connection that will “complete” the loop with other human beings and without which we cannot regulate or stabilize. We seek an optimal exchange of energy flowing between us that is stable, mutual, and generative: where we both have developed enough stability and strength that there is neither a short-circuiting from one of us outputting too much or in an unsteady way, nor a draining that comes from a system that only draws energy.
At the same time, it is in the relationship between consciousness and the body that we learn a profound lesson in relation to connection that can play out at every level of abstraction. When hurt exists in the body—physical, emotional, psychic—an untrained consciousness will attempt a whole series of things to escape the connection where the pain is experienced. It may try to “cut” by burning bridges, demonizing the body, neglecting it, or smothering the pleas and requests the body sends.
What we discover is, while the body does not retaliate and in fact opens to consciousness, that connection can never be severed, only deeply damaged.
We discover that the connection will remain no matter what, and consciousness can either add to pain when there is pain or it can enter and be beneficial; both body and consciousness share experience regardless. This in turn trains consciousness in connection with others, because when pain exists in relationship, often the desire to harm, sever, or burn bridges occurs. The connection between people can never actually be severed; it continues, only now with a wound in it. This hunger trains the attention to see the unbroken nature of all connection and that there is no way to sever connection.
Any attempt to sever connection only harms the link between the two systems, and both in turn feel the pain as the connection continues, but now painfully rather than pleasurably. This hunger also trains the attention in intuition by sensing who will regulate us well. We develop the perseverance to remain with those who do, the sense of how and when to create distance from a system that does not regulate us well, as well as empathy and an equally balanced capacity to send and receive in connection. Through these mechanisms, the mind experientially discovers the laws of mutuality.
The body naturally craves attention, both internal and external. A warmth nourishes the body when it receives equal, balanced, and simultaneous attention—an attention that is open—that grabs for nothing and looks away from nothing. The body, under this “sunlight” of attention, naturally relaxes, opens, and goes soft. It may at first tense up for fear of judgment or attempts at coercion.
This hunger draws forth our attention and trains it in approval, steadiness, intimacy, and the ability to be with all that transpires within the body.
Attention trains us to be aware of pressure. If the attention applied is too firm, the body on the receiving end will tighten; too soft and it will withdraw. It also trains us in what would translate as the “aperture of stroke,” meaning whether attention should be held in a more expansive or more focused way.
In this state, the body circulates and transmits sensation effortlessly in pitch-perfect response; the unfolding experience is easeful and intuitive in both consciousness and body. The Hunger for Unconditional Love Just as the body craves the sublime experience of truth and light, it craves the healing and nourishing experience of darkness, of opening the mind to what we keep hidden from ourselves. We want to feel the power that lies within what we have deemed craven or illicit.
The body wants the sensation of touching what will shake it of its tightness and bring us out of control. It wants to feel impact—both its own and that of others. It wants to feel the wild places of abandon into the Mystery, the part of the self that is not cultivated and proper. In order to be willing to hear and respond to this hunger, the attention must develop a deep-seated sense of its own perfection and the perfection of this life.
Approval is essential to working with desire, as desire is sensitive to judgment, especially those collectively judged yearnings and desires. A strong mind is also required here in order to be able to remain with and love what is deemed unlovable in ourselves.
This, in turn, enables us to know who we are beneath a blanket of cultural shame. This sense of self has us access a kind of undifferentiated, impersonal power that rises from the ground of being itself—a primal force of nature—and then learn how to connect it to our attention. In this way, we learn to work with powered attention as opposed to mere passive attention. We need this powered attention to enter our darker aspects because we are working with much more intense material. For attention to be able to remain with the dark and not merely renounce it, requires power. At its root, this hunger is the hunger for unconditional love, a love that begins between attention and body. What we discover at the advanced level of practice is that the deepest healing and relaxation—a fundamental reconciliation with self—resolves from this hunger.
The body yearns for touch in both the direct physical sense, through the movements of life, and by another’s actions. Being touched melts the body that desires most to be liquid, dynamic, open to receiving and being moved. It wants to be known tactilely, to experience the Earth element, the ground, the self as physical being. It needs to massage through—literally and figuratively—the material of experience. It needs the transference of heat and senses between bodies and to experience the gentleness and vulnerability of both skin and the human heart. When the body is touched, it is pulled back into the sense of belonging in the world; attention is drawn into deeper and deeper interior regions. Attention, so often hovering above these recesses, finally fully descends.
Touch teaches extension of consciousness through the whole body in both sending and receiving.
It trains attention to soften in order to receive. The mind can learn to be adaptive most directly through touch because it cannot control it, and it learns that to adapt and allow can make any experience of touch pleasurable, whereas rigidly held attention makes all touch displeasurable. To soften, absorb, and receive is how you subdue any force or touch that would otherwise register as coarse or unwanted.
The body hungers to express love; not merely to feel it or receive it, but express it. It longs to do so in myriad ways, from creating, to movement, to physical connection. It longs to express love at the level of art, to be utilized/in service to the expression of love, and to develop the physical and attention-based sophistication and refinement
The body longs to develop the means to communicate the sublime and seemingly ineffable experience of love with the greatest precision. It yearns to receive another as an act or expression of love.
This hunger trains consciousness to be energized, flexible, and open. To live as an expression of love and to be our best as a result of this hunger requires stability of mind and consistency in action, but it also draws forth a great courage.
These frequencies are challenging for attention to attune to because attention aims to minimize and reduce connection in its drive toward freedom. The body, on the other hand, wants to demonstrate a more holistic form of freedom through interconnection and interdependency.
The sensation of love may guide, but the body requires a steady attention as it develops the sophistication necessary to express. The desire to express love also trains the mind in a different kind of openness that expresses the generosity of attention for no apparent reason other than the joy it brings. It is the connection itself that provides an opportunity to experience receptivity mirrored simultaneously through the act of giving.
This releases the rational mind’s tendency to calculate and account for all energy expenditures. Instead, attention is retrained, demonstrating that the energy involved in expressing love cultivates even more attention and is in no way a “waste”; in fact, it adds an element of refinement to our attention
The body yearns for the hunt. An alive, devouring energy—our cellular memory of being both predator and prey—awakens inside of us. This hunger yearns to wake up in a way that is more than simply not being asleep. It wants to feel its animal self, to devour, to experience hairs standing on end, saliva in the mouth. It wants that sense of wanting to seize or be seized, to bring down or be brought down, and then to rest with it. That whole cycle exists inside of our cells. At our human foundation we are animal; the body remembers and it does so without judgment.
Fundamentally, we yearn to be handled, to be taken into the maw of another so we can let go beyond our own ability to control, and to handle another in the same way. This hunger trains the attention to be radically energized, to work with power, and to experience a deep intimacy.
Our bodies crave having our senses stroked with beauty, with scent, with saturation and tactile pleasures, and with sounds that can play through us like resonance chambers.
When the surroundings are of an aesthetic that showcases the coherence and processes of nature, the mind and body can both meld with the environment and, within it, open as one. An aesthetic of care—where gentle softness enfolds us—draws the senses and the attention out of discursive thought.
An aesthetic of care—where gentle softness enfolds us—draws the senses and the attention out of discursive thought. They meet inside of the beauty that strokes the senses open, enabling us to drink in even more. The hunger for this opening of the senses trains the attention toward the flexibility, suppleness, softness, and vulnerability required for us to be moved. There is a fundamental intimacy to it, a coming together of the environment, the body, the senses, and the attention so consciousness can reset and then expand to a new level of openness. As we saturate ourselves in this intimacy,
which trains the mind to track and trust desire at a new level.
The body yearns for spiritual union through others. It feels like two magnets drawn together, but without the typical experiences of “attraction.” In these moments, our spirit is often seeking something in another that only seems to make sense in retrospect. That is spiritual reasoning; our mind only understands “why” after it receives what we have been drawn toward.
When we meet our spiritual reasoning, the moment is like this: It tries to tell us something but it is speaking to us without words, logic, or any other conventional means. Our normal, everyday process of reasoning and its methods of reasoning are at odds. Its message comes in subtly, at the layer before sensory, cognitive, or emotional perception.
It is like a perfume, only softer; a halo, only lighter; a soft piano note, only quieter. The intuitive thoughts begin to tickle us: Is there something ineffable pulling us toward this other person? Do we have a feeling of curiosity and maybe even a kind of wonder? Maybe the clearest way we can describe it is an underlying feeling that we could both lose and find ourselves at the same time.
If we do lose ourselves, we start to feel that we—the concept of ourselves—is not so solid; that we and this other are not so different. If we find ourselves, we may find it means something that we are together, that we are meant to be here. Time might stop or warp, and maybe we perceive past or future lives. All of these are just words; the real experience is communication that happens without words, even without images. Words and images are an aftereffect of the mind’s perception of a spiritual reality.
One way we will know it is by a sense of being magnetized toward something that or someone who may or may not be in our conventional range of what we find attractive. The attention is trained by this hunger to submit to the power and magnetism of the body, to be used in service to the deep truth that resides within the body. In the process, the body is trained in intuition to follow what it cannot yet see.
The final yearnings of the body come in the form of digestion. The body desires a conversation about exchange with consciousness. While it will accommodate, and while it is amenable to following orders, we can never know the world of the body until attention is directed toward listening to what will bring flow.
The body is concerned first and foremost with emptying what is full and filling what is empty so that this dynamic flow is happening continuously.
