Is An Erotic Life Selfish?
Lately I’ve been thinking about what to write in the face of a global pandemic, potential American dictatorship, Brexit, and racial injustice. I mean what importance does turn on, intimacy and the erotic have in the face of these and all the suffering of the planet? On the surface it can all seem superficial, selfish, inconsequential. But that is not the nature of erotic practice. At its deepest roots, being turned on is about having an internal ability to be with intensity, maintain consciousness and respond resonantly. It’s like when Zen Master Yunmen’s student asked him, “What is the goal of a lifetime of practice?”. And he replied, “An appropriate response.” This is where the erotic leads us.
And if there is anything we need these days, it’s that. That’s why we practice. Through the erotic, we cultivate a visceral electricity which powers us to come out, speak up, create and respond to life as its presenting itself. This power moves us beyond fear, doubt and hesitation, our habitual ways of being. It nourishes while it fuels. We can then come from overflow rather than grinding forward on depletion. It also stirs our shadows, as any engaged practice will. We want those to arise — they provide important information. And so we also cultivate awareness and insight through meditation, inventory, coaching and other inquiry practices. Then, when the energy flows, it doesn’t fuel our projections or reactivity, but our fierce love. We do the work to go in and undo our knots, one by one; to become as clear a channel as possible for the power to flow. This isn’t a perfectionist project — but a lifelong love affair with life moving through, in service to the world around us. This is how we practice.
So in the face of the world as it is right now, I know we need the erotic more rather than less. As Audre Lorde so clearly claimed, “the erotic offers a well of replenishing and provocative force to the woman (i would say ‘human’) who does not fear its revelation… In touch with the erotic, I become less willing to accept powerlessness, or those other supplied states of being which are not native to me, such as resignation, despair, self-effacement, depression, self-denial.”
