Always Two Coming Together
This is part 3 of a longer excerpt of the groundbreaking new book A Return to Eros that you can buy here. Read part 1 here and part 2 here.
In the initiating orgiastic movement of the big bang, separate subatomic units, which physicists call quarks, are elemental forms of existence. Quarks, however, cannot live by themselves. Paraphrasing the Bible we might say, “It is not good for a quark to be alone.” Quarks live only in intimate relationship with other quarks. The inexorable force of Eros moves these elementary particles to transcend what might have otherwise been their merely separate existence and form a higher union with other quarks.
These higher and deeper units are called hadrons. The most stable of these hadrons are protons and neutrons, the components of atomic nuclei. Atoms are born because subatomic particles are attracted to and allured by each other. And so it is all the way up the evolutionary chain. This implicit allurement is the face of mystery itself, because it did not have to be this way. The mutually attracted and allured atoms recognize each other and embrace. Separate subatomic units are moved to form a single unit. A boundary drops around them. Whole atoms are formed. What moves them? The Eros of evolution, which is the Eros of love.
To live an erotic life is to know that sexual play between beloveds is part of the great love play of the universe. Updating the biblical verse we might say, “It is not good for either humans or quarks to be alone.” Lovers are electrons and neutrons who have consciously awakened to their own nature. The Persian poets of Eros from the Sufi lineage wrote much of their verse in ecstatic affirmation of this great identity between the personal and cosmic journeys of love. Hafiz, probably the most well-known of these poets, writes in “What Happens”:
What happens when your soul
Begins to awaken
Your eyes
And your heart
And the cells of your body
To the great Journey of Love?
First there is wonderful laughter
And probably precious tears
And a hundred sweet promises
And those heroic vows
No one can ever keep.
But still God is delighted and amused
You once tried to be a saint.
What happens when your soul
Begins to awake in this world
To our deep need to love
And serve the Friend?
O the Beloved
Will send you
One of His wonderful, wild companions
An excerpt from the newly published book A Return to Eros by Marc Gafni & Kristina Kincaid – one of the key think tank projects of the Center for Integral Wisdom.
>>> Buy A Return to Eros Here <<<
