Erotic Justice: Attraction vs Demand

If we have not felt, heard or been able to have a dialog that gets the deeper results that Eros is aiming to realize in us, we might try an erotic approach to social justice communication. This is rooted in taking responsibility and approaching the experience as our initiation rather than an attempt to get a result, to have a long game approach to the process despite the fact that the pain we are feeling may create either a reactive urgency or a paralysis.

Things to potentially look at in ourselves or our collective are:

We have not listened. We have activated something in the other that says that we are dangerous or unworthy of hearing. If we are a marginalized group often we have applied pressure — due to outrage — rather than attention. We have not taken into account how our actions threaten our listener, what in them we have activated and have promoted rather than attracted. We have not dismantled their view of us as dangerous or child-like. They will withhold dialog until they see us as a safe adult. We can get upset that there is a stone wall and say that we are entitled to their return conversation, that they owe it to us, that it is a right, that they are the one in power so they owe it to us to listen, that we will yell if we are not heard (blackmail), that it is their responsibility to learn our language, that we will not do the emotional labor. That we do not have a “voice” in the culture, that we are invisible. That we are misunderstood.

We can say all of these things but they will only confirm that we are not worthy to be listened to in the ear of the listener. This is what happens from a political child who tries to use “rights” to get connection — they place the onus of responsibility on the perceived person in power. Here is what is important to understand. We reify, we strengthen the notion that they have power and we do not when we use any appeal to authority. In this scenario, we are using “rights” as the authority. We are subtly threatening someone with a backlash for social violation of rights, demanding that they hear us rather than making it attractive to listen to us. It is the equivalent of saying that we are worthy of being listened to and then saying we will tell our parents if we aren’t. At best, we will get their compliance. We will not get engagement. We will not be heard. Not because the other person cannot hear but because we are essentially tying them down and demanding they listen. They might suffer listening to our rights-based complaints to get out of the conversation but we most certainly will not inspire the intimacy that would have them take a genuine interest or become an ally.

We can get mad that we are not being listened to but it is still a child’s political mind that will not take responsibility for being heard, for making it attractive to the listener. Human nature does not respond to threats with openness. We may climax out our feelings, we may get the hit of having said what we wanted to say, but do not be surprised when they are neither changing nor interested in what we want them to hear.

The key to understand it is human nature. We can get angry that gravity exists or we can learn to work with it. What we can do in Eros is use the experience of not being heard as our path to purify out where our communication is steeped in victimhood. To understand that this necessarily triggers in the listener the notion that we are incapable of being in adult interactions. Different listeners will employ different responses; they will avoid us, placate us, rescue us, tolerate us but they will never engage with us as an equal because we are not presenting as such. We are presenting as needing special care, keeping the gloves on. We can say it does not matter, that we just want our rights, or that we just want to say what we want to say. But we must ask ourselves if this is true. Will we truly be gratified and fulfilled or again, is this mere climax? We may say, “It is just important that I speak this piece and that I will know that I did my part.” Did we? Is our part to dump our feelings on another, even a perceived oppressor, and be done with it? In the mind of Eros that is an exchange in the child’s political arena. In the adult arena, we are here to evolve into someone who can be heard.

A person who is merely listened to, who even gets their rights when garnered either with an appeal to authority or a kind of oppositional force may get their rights but they are hated. We may say, “I don’t care, I just want my …” equal pay, equal rights, equal status. “I just want to be heard.” We can most assuredly eventually get that. But Eros would suggest that this method might not be gratifying. Equal rights are not equal fulfillment. They are empty. A world where we forced another to give us our rights keeps us as a child. And more importantly, and of the utmost importance, it took a shortcut on the Erotic path that wanted to evolve us into our power.

People who are in their power are heard period. Everyone can envision a group who was not being heard within which someone, without force, found a way. They used attraction. They had it feel that they were not threatening but using a gravitational force of power to draw in the listener. It was long slow work rather than a sprint. In Eros the work is not for the result but who we become in getting it. The invitation in not being heard is to develop the power to be heard. Most people do not like this because it involves changing themselves rather than changing the other person.

First and foremost, it involves converting our resentment into power. No one can hear us through resentment, period. It is like entering a room behind a shield and yelling. No matter how true, how eloquent what we are saying is, it will feel like blackmail on the other end. We will activate a threat response in the other person. We will not inspire the deep open listening of the involuntary but instead fight or flight. They will either want to escape us or block us. Blocking may look like listening but remember listening is demonstrated by change. If we are not getting change, we are merely being tolerated.

This is a dance for which there are complementary steps. The step of resentment has the complementary step of blocking. One of the most misunderstood elements of “not having a voice” is where the blame is placed. We are trained to perceive that someone, somewhere, somehow is blocking it when in fact it is our own resentment strangling it. And then when it does come out, it is so poisoned with resentment that, honestly, why would anyone want to receive it? Our culture has so enabled this with the notion that people are incapable of taking responsibility for themselves that we make it that a political adult is responsible for enduring the energetic tantrums. No matter the tone resentment is spoken in, no matter how measured and tolerant of the perceived inability of the other person to hear us, it occurs on the other person’s nervous system as a tantrum, one that requires them to get parental with us.

Resentment demonstrates that we have not developed the adult capacity to work with pain in a way that we will not throw it on another. And be clear, if our communication is laced in any way with resentment, it is felt. It is our work as an individual and a collective to work through resentment.

If the work we are doing is meaningful there will necessarily be frustration. Of course we will not be heard. We are bringing in new ideas. Even if what we are bringing is of benefit — the beauty of our facet of culture — new is invariably met with caution and skepticism. There is a cultural gauntlet we will have to make it through of being met only with opposition. This is part of the initiation. It is our gift. We can see in stark relief where we have not developed power, where we may have internalized shame that we have not worked through but are expecting others to work through for us, where we are expecting to be listened to without listening, where we are victimized by our calling and not owning that the path is hard, where we have not owned our end of the disconnection, where we have not dismantled the projections of how we are seen and done the work to “see.” Rational people for example, can only see the rational and we can speak in the most accurate, most wisdom-based voice of the body until we are blue in the face and they will continue to only think we are crazy. We can get mad or we can drive that anger into learning what their viewpoints are and how we can translate what we are saying in such a way that through those viewpoints we can be heard. We can let go of our need to be right in service to being connected and start there.

The most difficult part, most courageous and most adult, is to lay ourselves bare, be vulnerable with and open to the perceived enemy. And here we can go on about their infractions or the likelihood that we will be killed or the need for armoring. The truth is, we may very well be right. That is the truth. But the only potential of ever really being heard is to both lay down the sword and the rational and speak and hear from the heart. We will know that we have done this when something very uncomfortable happens: we genuinely care about our opponent or the person who would not hear us. We have to step into someone’s shoes to understand why they are not hearing us. We can be mad about prejudice but that does nothing. When we understand how it automatically blocks another’s hearing, that we are not talking to a person, we are talking to a shield and more importantly, when we truly want what will heal rather than our right to be heard, we will feel the impact our mere presence is having on them.

We have an idea that the person on the bottom is powerless, but they are the one in control. The conversation can only go as far as they are willing to stand up as an adult. And we must hear it from the perspective of the person “on top.” So often the person who wants to be heard sees themselves as “not saying their truth” when in fact they are doing most of the talking, most of the arguing and most of the complaining. They do not have the adult presence of mind to have self-reflection.

A simple question to ask ourselves is “would I want to listen to me?” And be honest. A rush of rights will likely enter but truly, if we were in another person’s shoes, would we inspire an organic desire to listen to us? Have we proven to be someone who will add to their life if they listen or have we merely presented as someone with a resentment, who used overt or covert threats to get our way. Do we transmit a feeling of rightness that is marked by openness and joy that would carry a message in. Again we can say, “They should listen to me, I’ve been nice long enough.” But if we are saying that, we have pretended over our resentment long enough and that is not nice, that is lying. Are we offering something new that will benefit others in the field of adulthood or are we looking to change who they are by making sure they are doing what we perceive to be right?

Now, we may be perceiving them as prejudiced. Are we looking at our prejudice of them? Do we secretly harbor a notion that they are ignorant? That they are blind? That they do not understand the truth (as we see it)? Do we see them as part of a “them” and not as a flesh and blood individual that we can meet as a human? Are we justifying hate by our perception of their hate? Have we done the internal work to sink below these viewpoints and feel them as a human the way we want them to do with us? A very simple question here is, “Who do we want them to be with us?” Really. At the depths. Then be that. The next question is “What are we doing or might we have done to prevent them from being that with us?”

Remember this is Erotic social justice, meaning it is for the deeper result of us getting unconditional freedom. That ultimately is the ability to be who we are in our depths regardless of circumstances. In this scenario it is not using another person’s behavior as justification to act with resentment.

Another element of political adulthood is — if we want to be heard — to take responsibility for our desire and not wait for the other to start the dialog. Are we expecting them to sense our skunk — the passive seething of anger that emanates from us — and be more responsible for us than we are being for ourselves? If we are upset, it is our responsibility to handle that upset. People are just being who they are and if it happens to rub us the wrong way, it is on us, in the moment to first see how we set the ball rolling and then to open the dialog. The assertion of “inability to speak” in the face of “violation” can and is often used. But again, in terms of how it is received, is that we have not done the work to develop the resilience that gives us the power to speak, not that anyone did anything to us. In the tumescent world this is a perfectly acceptable viewpoint but in Eros, it will not get us what we most deeply want; the capacity to respond in every situation. Relying on “can’t” rather than developing the capacity that can keeps us as a child. It may inspire others to do the work for us but it will never inspire them to experience us as an equal that they naturally desire to be around. We will always be someone they are exhausted by having to hold back with. We can demand our way into the party but no one will be happy we are there. Or, we can come to the party and bring something thoughtful and unique and have people thrilled that we came.

Of course there will always be those who do not like us. Our work is to not harden in the face of this. We are not trying to be liked, we are trying to be true to the deeper edicts of power. The political child responds with, “I am not liked, that is just my place in this life, I am a provocateur, forget them”. The political adult says I may not be liked but that is still because for me to come out more, to love more, to shine more.” Not in opposition to those who would hate us, but as a beacon to, the promise that they can hate and that love can prevail. Every human being in their heart wants to believe this is true, that they can throw their most hateful and ugly selves at the world at another, and that they cannot ever take love down. Eros invites us, for us and no one else, to be that courageous love.

We want to understand what is important to our listener and ask how us being who we are can contribute that, beneath our judgement of what they want. If they are a nationalist, they likely want safety and security. If they are a liberalist, they likely want connection and care. If they are a sexist, they likely want to know that they will not lose if another gains. To go deeper and understand the universal human desires that lie beneath all behaviors. We can be that. An adult can be that without sacrificing any truth whatsoever. And does this person want to talk to me? Genuinely. And have I had the courage to really feel into it and taken it upon myself to inspire their enthusiasm to talk to me? Or have I remained behind a protective veil of propriety on my part, or having them feel obligated?

If we really want to be heard, we will do the part of both people. This is if we want to be heard in order to build the power in ourselves and the intimacy with the other person that heals. Learning to be heard without demanding it only benefits us. If someone is hesitant to talk to us, it is likely because we stayed behind the gate in our invitation, we did not show them why they would feel better if they did so. They likely see it as another task or chore, to work with our upset rather than a potential collaborative experience to make great headway in the core things that matter to human beings.

We can ask ourselves:

Have I worked through my resentments such that I am entering with a clear desire to connect and create?

Is there anything I have done in the past, even what I consider justified or misunderstood, that would have someone reticent to speak to me? Have I first and fully addressed that in myself and with them.

Do I understand their perspective as them? Can I hear how they are hearing me and where I am merely yelling louder in a foreign language? If for example, they see me as child-like or crazy, where do I contribute to that perspective and expect them to “deal” with it. Have I been willing to present evidence in terms that they will understand that I am a sane adult — meaning someone who is responsible for their experiences and their lives in such a way that they are here to contribute to a grid of connection.

What prejudice or preconceptions am I entering with?

Am I using my “lower” position as an excuse to have them have to take the lead on my desire for openness or resolution, to mind read, to have to speak to me in a way that is not natural for them.

Do they feel that they have to walk on eggshells or handle me with kid gloves? Do I get triggered easily?

Do I speak the truth in the moment before there is charge built up?

Do I make them responsible for finding the point of connection?

Have I been so fixed on my own ideas of how things and people should be that I am actually more interested in imposing my will and my ideas, no matter how right they are, that I become my perceived opposition?

Have I placed my relationship in Eros where my focus is developing myself and my accountability to Eros rather than trying to “get mine” from others?

Did I play the role of victim-as-persecutor and now not understand why people are scared of me?

Did I use the excuse that I did not speak for fear of “getting in trouble?” If so, do I see how this is living in a child’s mind rather than focusing on evolving power?

Do others see and feel me as someone who adds and contributes in a way that is irreplaceable or do I demand that others see my worth without being of benefit.

Am I willing to open the conversation with my own open vulnerability or do I expect another person to penetrate my shield?

Do others feel like they have listened and listened and that I will not be gratified? Have I taken responsibility for my own happiness both so that others will feel that there is a possibility to “win” with mean, meaning not always trying to dam up a hole but experience me as happy? Am I willing to offer joy to others?

Can others trust me to know and speak with honesty? To know my yes, my no, and the difference. To not come back later with upset and blame.

If I am met with anger and hatred and resentment, do I use that to be more open and more in love, not people pleasing or accommodating but to stand in this power?

Do I attract rather than demand, offer rather than take, hold rather than expect, show up rather than wait, to be held and not for a “them” but for the way it develops my power?

Am I consistently in an argument with this person or the world under the radar? Have I examined any againstness I would approach the world with that puts another on energetic defense? Do I often enter conversations with an underlying point I feel I need to make rather than being genuinely open so being changed and seeing what transpires? Do the people I am in dialog with genuinely feel that I am for them? Do I have the power to be for someone, even someone I have challenges with, and be for myself or do I see it as one or another? Do I use the right language to sound measured when in reality there is a screech of defense and accusation to what I am saying?

Am I telling myself I are doing something noble and helping someone to see when really I am trying to coerce them into being more of who I want them to be? Am I making suggestions from the position of a participating adult or saying that I can’t participate because “they” won’t let me? Are my suggestions adult suggestions or are they adolescent demands to make adolescents more comfortable?

A simple question is, do people look forward to talking to me?

This is what the initiation of speaking as someone with a position in Eros will have us grow through. Just like in OM, the reward is that we will find the spot where we can express in a way that is in resonance. If we feel more in love, more open, more rooted in genuine power, we will know that we have found the Erotic mind of purpose-based communication.

Simply, if we want to speak to be heard: Be the field of love. Draw out their genius from this position even when we see them as opposition. Have it be not that we tell them why we should have rights or be listened to, demonstrate in terms that they understand and value how we are irreplaceable, how we add to their lives by being who we are. This does not mean do not have a viewpoint or a position, quite the opposite. We can be a benevolent adversary, we can introduce an opposing idea that turns them on and ignites them rather than the child’s position of mere adversary, someone who will harm them if they do not listen or comply. Anyone who feels like when we are being ourselves we will add to their world, will want for us to be ourselves.