A Return to Eros by Marc Gafni

Author:Marc Gafni [Gafni, Marc and Kincaid, Kristina]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781944648190
Publisher: BenBella Books, Inc.

Eros cannot fill you if it is not in the context of your Unique Self’s story. Uniqueness itself is a core quality of Eros. It is the organizing principle for all of the other erotic expressions of your life. Said simply, your Unique Self is the essential key to living the erotic life.

Let’s look once again at the four faces of Eros we have discussed so far. The first face is interiority, or what we called living on the inside. In fact, uniqueness and interiority are indivisible. Being on the inside is radically unique. No two interior spaces are the same. Inside space always holds a unique quality of intimacy that is unlike any other. Intimacy is an inside quality, and all intimacy is unique. It is your interior castle. From that place you find the unique flow of your life. That is what it means to live an erotic life as your Unique Self.

The face, with its connotation of “inside,” is the clearest expression of a person’s Unique Self, and therefore the truest reflection of the erotic. Lucian Freud, the artist, was an erotic master who spent his life painting portraits, seeking to enter “the inside” of faces. Face is Eros. To lose face is to become de-eroticized. In the mystical tradition it is written that when the cherubs atop the Ark in the Holy of Holies are face-to-face, blessing flows in the world. We saw earlier that the Hebrew word for “face,” panim, means “inside,” “face,” and also “before.” We saw that the Hebrew mystical mantra, to be “before God,” lifnei Hashem, can more profoundly be translated as being “on the inside of God’s face.” The inside of God’s face is Eros. To be before God is to live in Eros as your Unique Self. It is through your Unique Self that you live the erotic life. It is through your Unique Self that you enter the inside of God.

The second face of Eros that we tasted was the fullness of presence. Presence is always unique. Sit silently with two different friends, and each time you will have a different experience of presence. The fullness of presence that is Shechinah, that is Eros, refers specifically to the fullness of your unique perspective and your unique quality of intimacy, which generate your unique presence.

The third face of Eros that we engaged was yearning, or desire. Yearning, however, is not neutral. Yearning is always unique. Your yearning, like your presence, is an expression of your unique perspective and your unique quality of intimacy. Your longing and desire are not peripheral to the holy. Rather, being utterly unique, they are vital strands in the textured fabric of Eros. The erotic and the holy are one. Remember, reality is allurement. Your Unique Self is your unique set of allurements.

Your allurement, your yearning, your desire is Eros. Your allurement and your desire are holy. Of course you must always clarify, as we saw earlier, between true desire and pseudo desire, true allurement and passing fancy, between depth and surface yearning.

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