“Eroticism isn’t just the life force that makes sex great. Eroticism is what makes life itself worth living. When times are good, Eroticism is what converts the mundane into magic. When times are tough, Eroticism is what inspires us to survive—and even to thrive—despite all odds”.

Esther Perel

Still such a taboo phenomenon, the word itself gives off images of dirty dungeons and forbidden back alleys of our secluded human experience. And yet to reduce eroticism to merely the bedroom or the sexual is a sign of the lostness of our current human condition. The erotic is what we experience when we are in touch with the totality of reality. Which is to say fully alive, vibrant in our senses, allowing the full range of our feelings and the depth of imagination to explore the bounty of what is means to be a fully ensouled human.

When we are alive in such a way it’s impossible not to notice how everything around us is also alive. That the world is, in fact, an animate affair. The way that the seasons have their own vibrational scent. How the whole ecosystem is inherently thriving within it’s own aliveness, some might say intelligence. How everything is interwoven, everything has a way of communicating and being in rhythm.

To comprehend how the shape of the moon pulls the ocean’s tides and a woman’s blood and how that determines the arrival of our babies is to fathom the great mystery we are a part of. The invisible threads that, to the naked eye, are not seen, but to the felt knowing, the deep sensing and our more primal orientation to the world, through the body can be understand as our interconnectedness.

When we are turned on to the great mystery of the the living world, it’s hard not to notice that everything is born from the erotic, which is to say the relational principle. The way that squirrels cannot survive without berries, the way the moon, all those miles away is dependent on the sun and how the shaping of the moon shapes the waters of the land we are a part of.

This relationality derives the erotic experience. Eroticism is connection to life itself in full abundance. As I write I I feel the expansion in my full body and an invitation to the ecstatic, where we might one again taste the divine. I feel full, I feel a sense of capacity to love deeply, to know that I am a part of this great mystery. 

Only us humans have reduced eroticism to a dirty act, that only aliveness in the hidden space. And yet to be in touch with our inherently erotic condition is to deny the dominant world order that denotes a deadening of the very things that make life worth living. To be fully claimed in our erotic self is to weave ourselves back to our inherent belonging within the great web of life itself. It’s a revolution that can only happen on the inside, to ignite every cell of our being to the great turn on to life, is our birthright.

Acts of pleasure break us from the conformity of too-tight restrictions and invite us into the another world that’s here, right here. If we are to survive our dance as a human race on this earth, then it’s imperative that we attune ourselves to receive the bounty of life that is vibrating all around us, in every second, in every breath. Beyond the confines of our rigid cultural definition of what constitutes a life.

When we allow ourselves to experience the great gift of living, life takes on a magical tone. The synchronicities, the ways in which we are woven become an intimate awareness of how life is shaping us in every moment if we allow it. We become indigenous once again to the ways of the wild world, its language and its intelligence. All it asks for is our participation.

When attuned to the erotic principle of life, we open ourselves to feel the pulse of earth, to taste the sweetness of water, to feed from the fruits of the seasons, to heal from the nectars of berries, to be moved by the invisible rays of moon light. Tell me that just the sheer miracle of existence is nothing but a great act of magic created out of the enormous desire to give of itself and out of that huge generosity there is nothing else to do but to give oneself to to great act of love.