The three modes of the tumescent mind are acquire, do, and crash. The sensations conferred are overwhelm, anxiety, and exhaustion. In the states of acquire and do, the idea of fully receiving and releasing an experience looks like a distraction. Change in our environment threatens focus because our actions are not coming from a naturally resourced love, but a feeling of obligation.
When a new phenomenon enters, we cannot afford to shift attention to meet it. Life lived from the tumescent mind requires tremendous negation. The tumescent mind is always looking at the world from outside of us, calculating the amount of effort life will require and how long until one can rest. This confers an urgent, frantic quality to all activity born from the tumescent mind.
Conversely, sinking into the Erotic mind, there is only this moment and we welcome whatever activity that occurs within it. Attention that is liberated from the need to lock on to any part of the moment or action within it, can be free to address all reality that enters. Leaving the tumescent mind and moving into the Erotic body, there is a freedom that becomes accessible to consciousness—allowing us to enter, immerse, and get out of any phenomena—because there is a dynamic and inexhaustible stream of resource in simply being. It is intimacy with life.
With the tumescent mind, life must be kept at a perfunctory level— at “do mode.” We cannot afford to dip into the renewing place of being. Thus, we only exist on fumes. There is no room for saturation of attention, to truly take life in, because consciousness must exist at a surface level. We are too over whelmed to stop and allow ourselves to be moved or touched—it is this feeling of being in the moment that allows us to be available to what is occurring, and provides us with an interior sense of abundance.
With limited attention, the task at hand is already overwhelming, and there is anxiety that we will run out of energy to complete it. Further, completion feels like our only source of relief. Again, this is in contrast to the timeless world of the Erotic body where, were the task to continue for ever, we wouldn’t feel any sense of restlessness or the need to escape. In the Erotic body, time and experience are seamless. There is never a sense of the need to withdraw in order to relax.
Relaxation and activity are one and the same in the Erotic body and are calibrated by an interior ecosystem rather than external activity. The saturation of peace ensures that activity and non-activity are equally enjoyable. In fact, the variety— caused by the dynamic internal calibration between relaxation and activity—keeps the mind fresh and renewed. The Erotic mind puts us in shape to let go, release, and rest in all that we do. Rather than acquiring, we are receiving our reality. It is effort without strain. It is rest without disengagement.