If we listen to the call of desire, we are faced with a humbling realization: virtually every skill we developed prior to this point—every smidgen of intelligence; our vaunted ability to rationally order our lives; the strategies we’ve developed to get what we want—is not only useless but best discarded as quickly as possible.
We enter the path of Eros lacking the vital skills we need to free ourselves from the known map and venture into the uncharted territory of the soul: the art of surrender, of being taken over, of intelligent syncopation, of feeling over thinking, of responding to the impulse, of not requiring the facts to support what we know, of connecting with the feeling states of other human beings, and of quietly allowing ourselves to be in love with the invisible.
These skills, normally seen as frivolous, indulgent, and generally for the ignorant, reveal themselves to be the most exalted and rarefied tools of the Erotic path. Their reach extends below the cortex of discrimination, down into the Erotic heart that can marry opposites in accord with the deeper truths of life. When we build a life from desire, we are building a life of art.