I’ve been hanging out with the Myth of Psyche and Eros recently as I’ve been studying at Martin Shaw’s school of myth.

The myth describes the journey to ecstasy. The inner marriage required to arrive at the heavenly descent onto earth.

Psyche, the soul, has to go through a number of ordeals laid out by Aphrodite, the goddess of love, in order to be reunited with Eros, her love.

Eros, the god of love, flees from the bed of unconscious relating, and Psyche, bereft, goes to the temple of love to see how she can win her love back.

Psyche completes the ordeals with the aid of the invisible force of nature but at the last minute she opens a box meant for Aphrodite and falls unconscious.

Eros sees her, kisses her, she awakens and they reunite, get it on and have a baby called Ecstasy.

So my musing here is why does Psyche become unconscious when she opens the box of enchantment? Why does she need Eros to awaken her?

We have to do our soul work to be able to let the spirit of love in. We have to descend all the way down to the underworld and go through the ordeals, strip away the layers to come to know ourselves as worthy of love. 

If we are enveloped within our own beauty and enchantment, the gift is futile and we become unconscious again. We need the kiss of spirit to make it an embodied affair.

We need to forge our vessels for the conscious embrace of love that goes beyond the merely personal and into the transpersonal. Without that we cannot know ecstasy.

Without the conscious embrace of spirit and the refinement of the soul, love is not truly possible.

One might call it codependency or toxic even.

Eating oneself.