The Erotic speaks to us in the various dialects of hunger: yearning, longing, desire. The path is simple—to let it draw us into that which we most deeply desire, to give this life, just as it is, with all of the component parts—body, mind, heart, spirit, soul—equal, simultaneous attention and respect. In truth, how we engage with our hunger most profoundly determines the nature of our lives. Do we overindulge it? Repress it? Control it? Honor it?
Power lies in true hunger. It is here to keep us alive. Our hunger is a friend that, even when restricted, deprived, or stuffed with what is not real, will override our attempts to manipulate its rules in order to see us both full and nourished.
True engagement with our hunger—not consuming to kill hunger but to nourish life—asks us to adhere to a deeper consciousness where we must acknowledge our impact, the impact of our consumption, and the interrelationship with what we are consuming. We need to investigate and test for ourselves the complex reciprocal relationship between the human will and the natural path, between how life operates and our role in its operation.
The laws of Eros always point us toward mutuality, staying present, engaging, allowing novelty and the unusual, to see and be seen, to change and be changed, and to act and be acted upon. It may sound tedious to not merely consume the material world or restrict it in order to access the spiritual world, but to instead listen to the conversation that happens between our deepest yearnings and our natural environment.
Eros asks us to shy away from nothing and to realize the full range of our possibilities. Only then is unconditional intimacy with life attainable. Only then will we begin to truly know the meaning of respect.
