Welcoming Home the Erotic

This is an excerpt from an article by Lara Catone.

Before reading on, I'd love to invite you to pause and jot down your answers to the following questions: What associations do you have with the word "erotic"? What does this word mean to you? What associations do you have with the word "eros"?

If you google "erotic", the links that come up either refer to adult films or erotic literature that focus on sex. "But isn't that what erotic is?" The answer is both yes and no.

In its most true essence, eros is our life force energy. It is the energy of creation and the very pulse of our being. It’s what makes us feel ALIVE. Eros is the spark of inspiration and the magnetism that draws us into communion with our dreams and desires. When we are in the energy of the erotic we are at home in our bodies and in intimate relationship with the world around us.

Yes, eros is inherently sexual.  Sexual in the way that a ripe flower opens in spring. Sexual in the way that the cells of our bodies divide. Sexual in the way that there is something you are so committed to that it propels you to act with great passion. It is the great force behind co-creation. 

Eros, or sexual energy, is the electric source of our power. Coming into relationship with the erotic offers up a profound expansion in the way that we think about and experience our own sexuality.   

What we know of sex and how we enact it is small and incomplete. As a culture, we have settled for the most minuscule crumbs of sexual expression. 

Our severance from the erotic has been so complete that we can’t even perceive what’s possible from where we are currently standing. 

The erotic current lives whether we look at it or not, whether we engage it or not. It’s a living current—persistent and undeniable. When we attempt to push down and bury eros it will emerge sideways and twisted. The pandemics of internet pornography and rape culture are a direct result of the exiling of eros.

The irony of trying to protect children from the erotic is that before culture domesticates them, children are the living, breathing full expression of eros. Young children learn through their sensual experience with the world, they are at home and liberated in all of the natural ways their bodies move, they freely express the full spectrum of emotion. This is eros in pure form and action.

NONE OF US CAN FULLY THRIVE UNTIL WE RECONNECT TO AND EXPRESS WITH EROS. 

Read full article here.