Allurement and Autonomy
This is part 4 of a longer excerpt of the groundbreaking new book A Return to Eros that you can buy here. Read part 1 here, part 2 here and part 3 here.
What is essential to understand about Eros is that it is not only a force of allurement. Eros is no less than the assertion of independence and autonomy. Desire is both an expression of allurement and a unique presence. When you are filled with desire, you feel wildly attracted to make contact, but not to disappear. Desire is presence. In desire you potently incarnate the unique quality and force of your radical beingness. Eros therefore is both the urge to merge as well as the urge to emerge.
Early electromagnetic allurement is a physical illustration of these two qualities of Eros. What science terms “the forces of attraction and repulsion”[1] express precisely the dance between merger and emergence. Eros is not fusion but merger, which catalyzes new emergence. For example, when human beings come together in Eros and love, we both merge and emerge, disappear and appear at the same time. A larger whole is formed without losing the integrity of the separate parts.
The force of Eros is the force of desire itself, built into the very fabric of reality. Desire, or what cosmologists call “allurement,” is the essence of reality itself. Quantum physics shows us that every particle that comes into existence is paired with another particle. Each has both a point and a wave, called a wavicle. The creation of all life–sexual reproduction, in almost all instances–involves two coming together. Our DNA splits into two, generating the missing half. Our cells divide into two during the mystery of mitosis and meiosis. Similarly, most primal creation myths portray human beings as coupled, not as separate individuals. Our brains have two parts: right and left hemispheres. Our spoken language is binary, as are our computers. Our blood circulates in an oscillated dance between the right and left sides of our bodies. Stars, we now know, have companion stars, and they are wildly attracted to each other by this potent force. It is Eros that both allures the stars to each other as well as keeps them from collapsing and disappearing into one another.
When we say God is Eros, we are describing an evolving reality that births new love, new tears, new creativity, and new ideas in every moment. Reality as Eros is the only force that can give birth to the next great stage of our evolutionary awakening. Let’s take another look at the origins of Eros in order to understand this point. At the inception of the big bang, the elementary particles called quarks and leptons merged, and within microseconds birthed protons and electrons, which then birthed the first atoms. Reality is Eros all the way up and all the way down the chain of being. Atoms, through their oppositely charged particles, were allured to each other. In their meeting, they created an electromagnetic field, producing an interaction that formed new helium and hydrogen atoms. These elementary particles bonded together, and then formed increasingly complex elementary particles. They were required to relinquish part of their identity in order to merge. Such is the nature of all erotic relationship. The first seconds of creation necessitated a sacrifice and a bonding in order to allow the great genesis of existence to begin.
These intimate relationships led to a complex relational process that continued to deepen, ultimately allowing photosynthesis to appear. Some three hundred million years later, sexual reproduction through vertebrate genitalia emerged, creating an even deeper intimacy. We live in an intimate universe–a universe that is not just radically committed to life, but to ever deeper levels of intimate connection in life! This awareness explodes our identity as limited separate selves. We are allured to see ourselves in a larger context, where our interconnectedness and intimacy become undeniably self-evident.
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[1] Repulsion means the establishments of a boundary, the refusal to fuse, the assertion of independent integrity and autonomy.
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 <<<
