The path of Eros is a path of power.
Power in Eros is garnered by experience. It is not conferred by an authority or through a text. In Eros, we find mastery is accessed in a most inconvenient way.
We yearn for mastery to be something ascendant, something that sets us apart from the difficulties and dross of everyday life. Instead, mastery in Eros brings us down. Deep down into the confounding and difficult, and most specifically, the relational. This kind of mastery occurs not in spite of, but because of—and through—relationship.
In Eros, relationship is a tool for awakening deeper aspects of the self rather than finding sanctuary from the entanglements of self and the rest of the world. For the most part, this is uncharted territory.
In the conventional spiritual world, the more we can hold ourselves out or away from—which in reality means the less experience we have—the more authority we get. Were this effective, Eros would abide.
The reckoning happens when people without the gravity of experience come into contact with the force of real life. Values, concepts, and ideals disintegrate in the process of falling to Earth from the world of numinous theory.
The highest “credential” we can have in Eros is experience, particularly, experience outside of well-charted territory. Because it is a relational path, there is no external intermediary authority to direct it. There are only friends along the path with us. Friends who know what it means to fall into the hole and who have maneuvered for themselves how to get out.
These friends will jump into the hole with us, and rather than both of us being stuck or begging some force to get us out, they will make the journey alongside us, simply because that’s what we do as friends on this path. In return, we owe them nothing except to receive their presence, acknowledge it, and vow the next time we see someone fall into that hole, we do the same.
This is the path of shared power. In this realm, the willingness to venture into unknown terrains, to return, and to share the information found there is what has us wield true power. The path of building true power has a built-in humbling mechanism because venturing outside the bounds of the known means there’s nothing to rest on—no laurels, no canons, no past successes.
The good news is that in an experience-based practice, mistakes and successes are equally valuable. The bad news is, the road to mastery is paved with far more mistakes than success— mistakes that rob us of everything we are conditioned to strive for. Any kind of superiority, any kind of ground, any kind of self-reliance.
What remains when we are stripped down is something inside of us that loves to know, that must know.
The last test and proof, the only judge we will stand before is this moment, right here and right now, and this question: Can we love even this experience no matter how difficult it may be?
Have we stripped ourselves naked enough to be known by this life?
Our answer will come in whether or not we feel ourselves living in a life that’s revealing itself to us.
And lastly, do we feel and do our peers feel like we all got the better end of the deal for being in each other’s lives?