This is a good time to employ humor, which is the last thing we will want to do. We often say, “I will laugh about this someday.” Make that someday right now in the middle of it. Black humor. Gallows humor. Employ all of it. This is not trivial. This is lifesaving. We are activating the involuntary system inside, the system that has enough wisdom to keep our blood circulating and the first system to shut down in fear. We are not making light of a bad situation, we are revealing the light inside of every situation. Take special care that in our humor we practice sensitivity and love. Good humor reveals truths that could not be released any other way. It is not used to cover fear; it is used to open a gateway for it to be released. And yet, remember we are stroking and the desire is not to get anywhere; it is to get the spot open. We can say the thing that we or everyone else is already thinking but travel that thin line between laughter and pain, humor and hurt. Opening that line is like getting fresh air on a wound.
Next, move in some way. A blow can be such a striking occurrence that all outward-moving energy pulls inward in a progressive contraction. Keep life moving through. One thing that undoubtedly happens in high-intensity hits is that we get another piece of Erotic gold: the world gets very black and white. We see people and experiences in a way we could not when we still had enough energy to feed them. What happens when we are not feeding certain people and experiences? Are they able to show up for us there? Are certain characteristics we have had detrimental here? We see the stark, sometimes devastating truth. And yet, in Eros, this is a great opportunity to cut away what has not been real and has only been around for what it could get from us as a non-mutual exchange. Cut it then and there. We may or may not come back to it when we again have the resources, but what a wonderful gift to see who people really are. Who shows up and who does not. Everyone talks about trust. These moments are the last test and proof. It does not matter what someone says or how they have performed. These are the moments that cannot be faked. So, we let go of those who do not show up, draw closer to those who do, and honor them.
The tumescent mind will see this opportunity as one to reassert control with the suggestion that we must radically restrict behavior, that had we done that in the first place, this would not have happened, and now we must live in perpetual atonement. Don’t buy it. Stay dynamic. Perhaps, yes, conserve some of the indulgence, but keep your system dynamic and alive. Keep enough pleasure to want to inhabit the body. Do not let the tumescent mind take the opportunity to punish. Use that fighting spirit as a way to keep your spirit alive. If we are on an Erotic path, we do not want to lose; that is not our nature.
Take the hideous circumstance we clench against, that we block at any cost. Turn toward it. Turn toward it and open to it as if it were a lover. Take it in. Take the energy that feels like an assault or violation of our very soul and draw it in so deeply that it is as if we had chosen it from the best of options. Say yes. No one and no thing can tyrannize us when we truly say yes. Whatever it takes, own it, absorb it, and find out how to not merely accept it but to turn on to it, to feel how this will be the crowning glory of our purpose.
Let us feel this experience inside ourselves, from a bigger view. As if there is an “I” throughout time beneath every circumstance and it is presenting itself as a potential—a necessary—experience for us to evolve into the deeper essence of ourselves. Feel the possibility that this experience was chosen for us particularly because it is the most precise and clean way to grow us into who we need to be to fulfill the yearnings in our heart; the resilience to face any possibility, the willingness to love even this: what we discover in ourselves in the places that feel bereft of Eros. Get inside of it; dream about it the way we have let ourselves dream about the most desirable things in the past. Inhabit it. Let whatever it is be the source of our greatness. Research it. Get creative. Even if we have received a prognosis, make the time we have and the compression of it be what makes the diamond.
Make the process of getting close in with the pain, Erotic. The insanity of a potential and uncertain outcome lies in the fact that we are projecting disaster. Go into that worst-case scenario, and instead of envisioning ourselves meekly getting beaten by the environment, stand up inside of it. If we had limitless power, if we had abundant courage, if we had vision, who would we be inside of this circumstance and how would it be different? How would it be for us? It will not be easy. It is not supposed to be! We are standing, turning toward every potential, stopping at one, getting stuck, refusing to go, and because of this hesitance, not because of the circumstances, we feel stuck.
In that scenario, external conditions have control over us. And if we are in Eros, that is unacceptable. Eros does not like being controlled. It knows just how to slip out of the grip of malicious intent, to turn into and own the very thing being cursed upon us. People will say it is insane; that we should rail against or accept. Eros says until we can fully turn into the direction of the skid, our vehicle is out of control, and as long as it is out of control, our outcome is uncertain. Later, we may fight or bow as it is the best choice, but only after we have regained full volition. All we care about is our capacity to have full contact with the Creator, to have every channel open. Any angle that we cannot see or touch is the greatest torture there is. And anything we are a no to blocks contact. There is nothing else. So, the world can condemn us or dethrone us or oppress us, but it cannot move us. And this is how we turn the lead into gold.
We absorb it all—the ill wishes, the anger, the malice, the loss, the fear—and we convert it to potential, to love, and most importantly, to unconditionality. It is just another condition that we get to find out how to love, how to accept, how to inhabit, and how to thrive inside of. But we do not wait for it to chase us down and beat us into the lessons it has to offer. We steer right into it the moment we realize it is a possibility. We do not want to live with this fear looming in our future. We do not want to look up in our mind and have something we wince at and hope will go away. We want an open, clear terrain in our mind where our thoughts could fall anywhere and there would be peace. We only get this when we enter every pocket and claim it, and turn it on.
Obviously, some terrains are more challenging than others. Gethsemane was likely more challenging than the Mount. It is rockier to go into the hospital to give birth than it is to die. But there are those who look for the highest mountain and the most desolate areas to find spiritual truth. The terrain is inconsequential or even beneficial because something wakes up in the face of that danger, that challenge, that difficulty. As we come to the spot of dread, what we sense is not the circumstance itself but our closure. Some circumstances seem to have built-in closure, but Eros guarantees us this is not so. Anything can be opened to. Anything. So, it likely burns and grips at our throat or solar plexus. And there is likely a prickly feeling. It will feel airless. It is no different in terms of sensation than what we feel when there is a closed spot on the clitoris in an OM. We stroke it with our attention in the same precise way: a good, solid, bread-and-butter warm attention. We will feel shudders and maybe a contraction. Eventually, it will open.
If we are waiting for news of our scenario, we open to the worst-case scenario. And now that it is open, we sit inside receiving the news. We feel the impact of it. We feel the blow. And we remain steady and still. We allow it to come in and change us inside. This is key. The mind we were looking at from closure is not the mind that can see alternative responses. It lacks power and resourcefulness. So, we absorb the impact and allow it to shift inside us and then we can sense it has spread evenly throughout. We ask to see a vision or hear a voice that will show us how Eros might respond.
Perhaps the bad news comes and what we see in us is relief, that what was considered bad from the former perspective is actually losing something that will benefit us in the depths of who we are. Or we see this resilience rise up in us and how we have spent so much of our lives in fear, but in this vision, this circumstance becomes our training ground for resilience and power. It will show us the highest-potential gain we can access through this situation, so we aim in that direction in our vision. Something is made available in a way it otherwise is not. We use that to drive into the worst-imagined outcome and make ourselves at home. We feel ourselves and love there. We feel how the environment might be different and our body may be in a different state and the mood or atmosphere could be more challenging to find the beauty in, but we find it.
Who could we become with those obstacles that would be more challenging to become without them? What might we be able to do or express or open that we could not in a more comfortable environment? We don’t enter it hard and brash, but with real inquiry. We live out the simulation so that whether it happens or not, our mind and heart are free in the possibility. This does not mean we want it. It means if it happens, we are prepared to meet it and as a result, it does not control us. We can do it. Know this. This has been done by someone, somewhere. Someone has found grace in this place with the appearance of forsaken-ness. The moment we can genuinely open to the possibility of what we fight against most, we convert pain to power. What worked against us is now working for us. It becomes a possibility equal among possibilities, and when this happens, the most beneficial possibility can open. As we are turned in the 360-degrees direction, we can be moved anywhere the deeper truth aims to move us. And with this we can stay in the flow of life.
