The Erotic Impulse: Honoring the Sensual Self

What happens when you follow the erotic muse wherever it may lead, follow with eyes open, but with complete trust, lust, love, and wonder? What happens when you fully open yourself to the erotic life force, even when it leads you into territory that is as unpredictable as it is delightful, as unsettling as it is exciting? What if you give the erotic impulse the right-of-way, only defining as perverted whatever blocks its flow? What if you reject the pervasive notion that there is something wrong with your erotic feelings and desires — something wrong with being interested in erotic matters at all or being fascinated by the erotic too much, too strangely, or too differently from what other people consider proper?

What if you make erotic existence your art, your path, an organizing principle for your life, and refuse to apologize for the consequences? What if — at certain times, in certain places, with certain partners — you surrender yourself completely to the erotic waterworld, surrender deliberately, with innocence, wisdom, and open-ended expectancy, and let yourself discover the depth and complexity of what this essential life force is trying to say to you and through you?

We are told that if we surrender to the erotic impulse, if we indulge our erotic desires, if we engage the erotic world in any but the most carefully controlled and perfunctory ways, terrible things will happen to us. We are told, and we come to believe, that welcoming the full strength of erotic existence will make us crazy. We imagine that if we open this Pandora’s box we will run amok, find ourselves doing bizarre, disgusting things to ourselves and to others. We imagine that relaxing the reins of erotic control is the same as relinquishing all influence over our behavior. We fear that if we listen and respond to our erotic impulses our lives will disintegrate; we will no longer be productive members of society; we will lose our jobs and shatter our primary relationships. We imagine that we will be dismissed by our friends as foolish and childish, or weird and disreputable. Webelieve that we will become degenerates: morally unworthy, unlovable, and unloved.

We are told repeatedly, and we come to believe (so deeply that we don’t even recognize it as a belief system), that if we acknowledge, honor, and embrace the erotic impulses of our sensual selves we will destroy the order in our world and be cast into chaos. This terrifies us. We turn against desire itself, against our erotic impulses and feelings, as well as the erotic expressions of others. We set ourselves the task of keeping the erotic down at all cost.

Keeping erotic desire under control, keeping it within the narrow boundaries acceptable to our reason-loving, puritanical culture, is a continuous, life-denying endeavor which, in the end, is emotionally deadening and exhausting. We are, after all, setting ourselves at war with one of the most powerful and fundamental aspects of who we are. Eventually, we become angry at the impossible task we have taken on, usually turning that anger on erotic existence itself for threatening our stability, our security, our very sanity.

If we understood this issue more clearly we would focus our resentment where it belongs: on those forces that try to deprive us of this wonderful aspect of being fully alive human beings. But because we so have so internalized the anti-erotic premises that surround us, we come instead to despise the objects of desire that inspire the erotic feelings we are desperately trying to deny and ignore. The more powerful the repression — the tighter the lid on the cauldron — the stronger the denial, fear, confusion, and anger we feel toward anything that threatens to stimulate our repressed erotic natures.

This is the erotic shadow, the price of erotic denial. In its more extreme forms it operates as a dangerous cultural and political force, threatening our most fundamental values of freedom and diversity. Those who most misunderstand and fear the power of the erotic impulse label eros the work of the devil, a satanic force to be resisted, subdued, and transformed. The task of suppressing or eliminating sexual expression in all but a few sanctioned forms becomes, for them, a holy war.

Despite the well-publicized preaching of terrified censors and moralists, the erotic world is hardly an invitation to chaos. It is a world as thoroughly ordered, sane, consistent,wholesome, and subject to reflection and understanding as the worlds of science,logic, and reason. To be sure, the erotic realm is neither scientific, norlogical, nor rational. But the rational/scientific paradigm is but one way of ordering the universe. It is only because we have so lost touch with our erotic natures, because we have become so alienated from experiencing ourselves and the world around us in erotic terms, that we feel the need to impose rational order.

The process is cyclical: The more we assert the hegemony of reason, the more we dissociate from and fear the erotic. The more we become divorced from eros, the more ferociously we turn to reason for meaning and stability.

There is a non-rational, yet profound and primary system of order that is inherent to the world of eros. Only when we see how differently the erotic world is organized from the worlds of physics, biology, business, or production — only when we stop oversimplifying the erotic by trying to make it fit the premises of the rational mind — only then can we begin to understand, trust, and honor the erotic universe on its own terms. When we see that embracing our erotic feelings involves moving from one form of order to another, rather than throwing ourselves into chaotic self-destruction, then we can begin to appreciate eroticism and sexuality as expansive, powerful, creative expressions of the best of who we are.

We live in a culture that idolizes control. We are taught, almost from birth, how to control ourselves, the material world, and the people around us. Men are taught theimportance of controlling both their inner emotions and the world around them.Women are given more room than men for emotional expression and loss of control, but the woman who loses control of her erotic desires is subject to vilification unique to her gender. Women who allow themselves the range of sexual expression taken for granted by men are likely to be seen, metaphorically, as witches, whores, and sex-demons, and will (again metaphorically) be burned at the stake.

The converse of our cultural infatuation with control is that we are woefully ignorant about the emotional and spiritual significance of control — of surrender, abandon, turning yourself over to the power of the unknown and unknowable. Because loss of control is seen only in negative terms we do not learn how to lose control skillfully, intentionally, or artfully, as a means of personal growth and self-discovery. We do not develop discipline, consciousness, or grace in loosening our habitual restraints. We do not learn how to create circumstances in which personal surrender can be safe and enlightening, or how to distinguish safe contexts from those in which surrender would be reckless and dangerous. When we do go out of control, we often do so unconsciously or rebelliously. If we get hurt in these times of blind release, it only reinforces the moralism that condemns personal surrender in the first place.

In our obsessively rational culture, erotic feeling, erotic desire, and sexual arousal are inherently heretical. The experience of surrendering to desire, which could be welcomed as the sweetest of meltings, becomes intrinsically suspect. Ecstasy, indeed any feeling of uncontrolled and intense wonder and amazement, is condemned as dark and dangerous. Loss of ego boundaries, dissolution of the
discrete, discernible self — a core component of deep sexual experience — is perceived not as an emotional, spiritual, or even religious opportunity, but as something to be feared and resisted.

These attitudes are applied to all forms of erotic experience, but they come into particular significance when we look at the experience of orgasm. Orgasm requires precisely the ability to let yourself go out of control, to let go of the need to limit and direct, to lose your mind, both figuratively and literally. In orgasm, we relinquish for a moment the reins of control and order, trusting that we can enter this transient state of abandoned ego-dissolution because orderly existence will recollect itself, spontaneously and without need of our conscious intervention, once the wave of release passes.

People obsessed with control often have difficulty being fully orgasmic, and this is not just an issue for women. A half-century ago, Wilhelm Reich discovered that almost as many men as women among his patients were nonorgasmic, once he distinguished between male ejaculation and the deeper experience of full-body orgasm.

The same issues of order and control that make the erotic world frightening to some people are, for others, the basis of erotic intensity, excitement, and fascination. What some fear as chaotic, others welcome as an opportunity to move beyond the restrictions of our overcivilized society, to explore facets of ourselves that are more unruly, spontaneous, and closer to the primal forces of nature.

As a society, we have taken on the technological mission of overcoming and subduing nature. As a result, our lives are consequently safer in many ways; we are less subject to the ravages of weather and disease; w e are surrounded by creature comforts beyond the imagination of anyone a mere century ago. But we also tend to be profoundly bored with the routines of our lives, the predictability of our existence, the blandness of our emotions. We wonder where the fire has gone, the engagement, the passion, the intensity — if, indeed, we ever had any real fire at all.

Somewhere in us there remains an erotic yearning for wildness, an intrigue with unpredictability, an infatuation with spontaneity and uncertainty. If we are afraid to include these energies in our actual lives, we may well sublimate these erotic desires into worlds of fantasy — film, pornography, or romance novels. We may find ourselves powerfully drawn to romantic flings or extra-marital affairs — erotic
firestorms that often break down under the heavy collective burdens of guilt, inflated expectation, and rebellious anger.

The desire to breach conventional limits of order and civility are apparent in the contemporary widespread appeal of the image of the wild man and, increasingly, the image of the wild woman. The innocent, pristine image of the ideal woman — once the very mainstay of socially-defined femininity — seems to be losing its appeal for both men and women, replaced by a more unapologetically powerful, unpredictable, and openly sexual female figure who is attractive not only as a sexual partner, but as a dynamic life force as well. The increasing popularity of fierce sexual play, and of sadomasochism, body piercing, and tattooing — once-fringe subcultures that are already becoming part of the cultural mainstream — also speaks to a rising urge to reconnect with the primitive, animal, passionate aspects of our natures. It is as if we are looking for ways to bring some of our lost erotic wildness back from exile.

Bringing eroticism more centrally into our lives, however, is as tumultuous and difficult a process as any other form of personal, social, or political revolution. Overturning deeply entrenched patterns of thought and behavior involves more than simply seeing the light and moving forward in a blissful state of enlightened liberation. The partisans of the French Revolution learned this as they watched their noble
principles disintegrate into the Reign of Terror. Russian Marxists saw their vision of the “society of the new man” deteriorate into brutal Stalinism. Gandhi watched heartbroken as his principles of nonviolence were washed away in the bloody rivers of nationalism and religious intolerance.

Forces that have been confined under intense pressure for generations cannot be released suddenly without explosive consequences. Our erotic desires and feelings have been pushed and shoved, condemned and distorted for decades, indeed for hundreds of years. All our lives we have been suffering from the conflict between our erotic natures and the pervasive systems of morality, judgment, and condemnation that strive to keep all erotic feeling under control. Inevitably, we have become deeply invested in the very systems of control we also want to overturn. There is much we have internalized that we need to question and restructure.

For example, we generally think of erotic and sexual matters automatically and almost exclusively in terms of what is and what is.Most o us judge our erotic urges in moralistic terms before we even take the time to fully experience what we feel or to define what we want. Most of us are inclined, automatically and unconsciously, to find objectionable any but the most narrow range of erotic and sexual desires and thoughts. If we find ourselves aroused by an image, person, or circumstance that surprises us, we usually challenge not our system of judgment, but the feeling itself. “I shouldn’t be turned on by that,” we say guiltily. “I shouldn’t want to behave in that way. There must be something wrong with me.”

Similarly, if another person’s sexual feelings or practices are substantially different from our own, most of us think there must be something terribly wrong with that person — as if we should all have more or less the same feelings and desires when it comes to sex. Most of us still feel that there is some objective way to determine what is normal and abnormal, and when it comes to erotic or sexual matters, most of us see the range of what we consider tends to be extremely narrow. becomes everything else.

Thus, someone who wants or thinks about sex often is considered oversexed, obsessive, or now, all too commonly, sexually addicted. (A person who spends his time running marathons, painting, or playing classical music, on the other hand, is simply called passionate.) Enjoying oral sex is dubious to some; anal sex is disgusting to many. Homosexuality and bisexuality are regarded nervously by most, and thought positively vile by more than a few. Sadomasochism, regardless how consensual, is still almost universally condemned as downright perverted. Even a person who has unusual desires or fantasies with no intention of acting on them often battles powerful internal demons of self-doubt, confusion, and
shame.

When we ask ourselves, “Is it right to feel this way?” before we even ask, “What is this feeling?” we become unable to know with any clarity who we are as erotic beings. Yet developing erotic self-awareness, acknowledging the reality and complexity of our true erotic yearnings is where we must begin if we want to substitute an understanding of erotic order for our habitual fear of erotic chaos. When we
know what we really want erotically (as opposed to what we want, or fear we (want), the world of erotic engagement can be transformed from a frightening territory of demons to an exciting realm of personal exploration and fulfillment.

While the erotic isnot essentially a demonic world, it is important to acknowledge that we do have real erotic conflict within us. We have long-simmering resentments, emotional wounds, memories of painful humiliations, confusions, fears of inadequacy and rejection — all of which must be dealt with when we enter the world of eros. As we open to our erotic natures, we will find that we are often divided against
ourselves — our feelings versus our judgments, our desires versus our fears, culturally designated icons versus our individual imaginations — no matter how diligently we try to keep ourselves whole. It takes time to develop clear vision when we have been blinded and misdirected for so long. It takes time to develop the confidence to believe in our erotic individuality when that individuality so often conflicts with who we have been taught we are supposed to be. As we expand our erotic consciousness, we may well allow ourselves new forms of erotic exploration only to be tortured by guilt and shame afterwards. We may puruse a form of erotic expression we have always fantasized about, only to discover that
what was delightful in fantasy is unappealing or even unpleasant in practice.

Given all the uncertainties and ambiguities, the best compass to guide us through the turbulent sea of erotic emergence is the simple ability to recognize honestly and acknowledge openly who we are and what we truly want — situation by situation, moment by moment. What we experience during these times of erotic expansion is almost certain to surprise us. This is why erotic self-awareness requires the ability to suspend judgment, preconception, and even logical definition, long enough to experience the intensity and the nuance of what is really going on.