Arousal Is Your Salvation

Salvation happens in arousal—the mind taking flight, escaping the relentless torrents of karma that yank and push us endlessly, leaving us exhausted and neurotic. Rumi says, “Out beyond right-doing and wrongdoing, I will meet you there.” There—a place one can only reach in flight, in the mystical state of flow known to artists and cosmonauts, extreme athletes and Tibetan monks, but known best by the secret order of erotic players. They see differently. They are in the world, but not of it. Clear-eyed awareness of the world, untouched by its turbulence. Feet on the ground, minds in the sky.

They have broken through the barrier of sound and light—the membrane that, from this side, offers only recycled, canned, scripted, problem-oriented interpretations of all phenomena. The perspective of the imprisoned will always be seen through bars. You recognize their narrative by the way it is broken into pieces: me/you, us/them, heaven/hell. Reality, seamless in itself, is experienced as divided when viewed through their eyes, looking out from the cage.

But the arousal brigade, carried in the airstream of flight, in the slipstream of delight, looks down and sees—ghetto and cathedral alike, marshland and desert, Middle East and Middle America—a kaleidoscope of jeweled light. A great spectrum of light.

This is the secret wealth of the few—those who know the way and are willing to do anything to live it. Those who make their set point the rising of blood, the pulsing of extremities, the swelling of all things erogenous. Hidden knowers of the path, dressed not in religious garb, not in the signifiers of the learned. Unidentifiable, often scorned, outcast. They don’t care—just as the artist, entranced by what lies behind the canvas, does not care to conform to the edicts of the day. They know a reality more real than the manufactured problems and dramas of this world could ever generate.

But there is a price. It is best to stay in flight, because there, where all is equal and simultaneous, you do things you would regret, turn red at, deny—if you were to fall. If you were brought down to the ground of ordinary, earthbound judgment. You’d want to be Peter. You’d want to deny that you wanted it, that you yearned for it, craved it, begged for it. You’d find yourself in the mind that bifurcates reality, desperate to fall on the “good person” side. You could not expand—could not open, take it all in. You’d have tight hips and pursed lips. In the land of scorn, you’d want to be the one scorning. You would foist the half of your desire that does not fit into the neat narrative of puritanical virtue—the one that earns you cachet in this world. Be it as a “fierce protector of women” or an “advocate for peace,” you’d want your badges, so you could pull the trigger on your wagging finger, so everyone would know: Not you. You’re not like them.

But the sky dancer knows—flight is accessed only on the wings of yes. As, I might add, is courage. Yes. That. I did that. I wanted that. I pleaded for that. To own it all—all of it—that is the skeleton key to the secret world.

Many will try. Few will fly. But those who know will be identifiable by the delight they take in even the most unsavory and the peace they hold in the greatest passions.