Aspects of rapture.
-by The Lover
The sexual models the erotic. It does not exhaust the erotic. This is the mantra of the esoteric wisdom of the spiritually incorrect.
In learning to live fully -in radical eros-in every arena of your life, sex is your teacher and guide, teaching you how to live erotically in all of the nonsexual arenasof your life.
The last column explored two aspects of erotic being modeled by the sexual in its broadest expression: interiority and presence.
Now we dance deeper and reveal seven more faces of Eros, each of which must be unmasked to grant the aliveness that is our most basic need and precious birthright.
Wholeness
In the erotic sexual, we realize that we are so much more than egos encapsulated in bodies which will one day rot under the earth. Invisible lines of connection weave an awesome and gorgeous tapestry of wholeness – holiness. The wholeness of reality, expressed through interconnected beings, glimmers in the fabric of our sensual couplings with each other and with the world at large. Taken to its fullest, this glimmer expands into knowledge of the oneness of reality. We are no longer "I" alienated from "the rest of the world."
Yearning
Through yearning, the erotic sexual invites, even drives us to taste the sweet nectar of wholeness. We yearn to merge with another knowing that in union rapture and ecstasy wait. Yearning is being seeking to realize itself for the sake of itself.
Pleasure
The erotic sexual invites us to pleasure. It invites us to realize that the world is not indifferent to us but actively and even desperately seeks our deepest pleasure. The erotic sexual reminds us of the infinite pleasure in the truth of all that is.
Pleasure is not comfort. Comfort is pseudo-eros – the houses we hide in and the castles we build on the shifting sands of pain and betrayal. Comfort-seeking arises from fear. We seek comfortable numbness so we can forget our death. The only way to realize pleasure is to let go of comfort and forget fear until you know in your heart that your pleasure is so much larger then your fear. The Buddhists call it Big Mind and Big Heart. The Kabbalists call it Big Pleasure, so big that you cannot even feel where it stops. You need to feel farther then your small pleasure to enter large pleasure. Infinite bliss and grace are already here. The sensual opens us to die in that bliss and live in that grace.
Aimlessness
We need no reason or rationale to reach for the summit of fulfillment. Acting through the erotic sexual, we reach for no prize or goal. An orgasm is for the sake of the orgasm. Means and ends collapse into one when we realize they were actually never distinct at all.
Giving and receiving
Giving and receiving are revealed in all their wondrous glory to be one and the same. The mystics sometimes called this the secret of the kiss, for in the kiss the false dichotomy between giving and receiving, indeed between giver and receiver, is exploded in the rapture of ecstatic union. We kiss too soon and too fast. The slow languorous kiss is heaven's gate, the realization of unity between giver and receiver. The upper lips and lower lips each hold their teaching.
Giving experiences no loss. One candle lights another without losing any of its own light. For the candle of God is the light of Man.
Giving
We learn that love is giving and that flames of passion emerge from the depths of giving. In the original Hebrew the word for love, ahavah, is also the word for ecstatic passion and giving. To be a lover is to be a giver. And being givers turns us into lovers. The great lover is not only one who knows how to receive pleasure but the one who gives radically to the full pleasure and opening of his sexual partner. The gift of the lover-the gift of making love-is to ravish your partner open to God even as your partner does the same to you.
Surrender
In the erotic sexual we not only are aflame and alive with love, but we also understand that to give is to surrender control. We loosen the reins which we once thought would fix everything so painfully broken. We realize that everything is already fixed, that grace is always alive and available and that everyone is doing what they need to do.
You must be willing to open your entire being, to surrender your heart as your entire soul is given over to be ravished by God.
Love is the only way to live that is not insane. It is not enough to be loved by God. God's love still leaves us lonely. Only being lived by God can solve our identity crisis. No place is devoid of the divine. God is this world appearing as all and in all and through all. Anything less then total surrender to it is a painful denial of reality. Refusing to surrender is not only brutally painful, it is insane.
Only if we are willing to open to bliss and infinite pleasure do we find ourselves in the ultimate surrender modeled by the erotic sexual. It is only when you surrender everything that you receive anything. To give it all up to God is to receive it all in return. In Hebrew the word for "intimate" and "sacrifice" are the same. Intimacy, modeled by the sexual, is only realized when you sacrifice yourself to the unlimited, unbounded and infinite. You find personal love only when you give yourself up to the largest of loves.
Are you willing to "die wide open as love"? If you are, then you will be born again and again and again. How do you feel when you die into love? You are alive, shivering and shimmering with pleasure, pulsating with God's heart beating wildly in your breast. You scream to God – take me, take me, take me now.