Living on the Inside: Marc Gafni
The First Face of Eros: Being on the Inside: Interiority
Being on the inside means not on the inside of your sexual partner, for that is limited to the masculine sexual experience — rather it is about being on the inside of the experience itself. Yearning is of the essence of the sexual. So much so that it is often thought by poets and psychologists to be more pleasurable and intense than the fulfillment itself. Interconnectivity is nowhere more clearly manifested than in the sexual drive. We are born with an urge to merge. Finally it is in the sexual where – in its ideal expression- we are most fully present to each other. Every gesture, fragrance, sigh and whisper ripples through us as we listen deeply to the erotic instruction that well up from the depth of our soul’s body.
All four of the primary faces of eros are modeled in the sexual, however, and this is the key, they are not exhausted by the sexual. It would be a great tragedy of the spirit if the only place where we experienced full presence, interiority, yearning and primal interconnectivity, were in the sexual. That would be to confine eros to the narrow confines of the bedroom, when it needs to soar through our kitchens, our offices, our carpools, our classrooms!
In erotic living, we seek the realization of these qualities in every dimension of our existence. From work, to play, to politics, to intellectual pursuit — in all of these we seek erotic experience. Erotic engagement could become a daily fare if we just freed our Eros from its old casing. These hand-me-downs ideas of an eros that is only about sex have become threadbare upon our very backs. We must reweave the fabric.
The full pleasure of living, the joy of fullness and creativity, can only come when we re-eroticize our lives. Until then, human beings will turn to the shadows of eros – rage, abuse and violence to remind themselves through the intensity of experience that they exist.
marc gafni
posted on marcgafni.com
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