No one can know the depths of another person’s heart or another person’s mind, but it is possible to connect deeply enough to have a sense of the depths of another being if they want to be known. The inner life is sometimes so secret that it is the only safety a person has, but the truth is that other people can be safe too. If one dares to be real, others dare to be real too. And then one deep heart finds another deep heart and then there is the possibility for real love to blossom. And then there is also the possibility to know the depths of another being and to reveal your own.
By one account, Eros is the son of Aphrodite, the goddess of love. Eros is frequently represented as the young, devilish Cupid who pierces his target with the arrow of desire. When Eros strikes, his victim is overcome with attraction and longing for a specific person.
This longing is frequently portrayed in images of blissful sexual union and ecstasy, a supreme state of wholeness and fulfillment. However, real union far transcends sexual intercourse. In fact, for sexual intercourse itself to result in complete union a meeting of spiritual nakedness must also take place, and this requires relatedness. Eros is really relatedness.
Relatedness means connection at a feeling level. To meet another at that level we must be willing to reveal who we really are behind the mask of our attractive persona. As well, we must be able to meet, accept, and value who our partner really is.
If we impose our needs, expectations, and appetites upon our partner we are not related, we are entitled, and our partner generally feels burdened, pressured, and not met. Entitlement breeds alienation, the opposite of Eros, which seeks deep connection.
When we share our fears, vulnerabilities, and weaknesses with our partner, as well as the pain and humor of our human cluelessness, Eros is activated. When we tune in with attention and sensitivity to our partner’s revelations of their felt flaws and guarded secrets, Eros draws us closer, deepening our connection.
When we acknowledge our carnal lust and desire but temper it to meet where it is truly possible to meet at this time, Eros rewards our restraint and sensitivity with deepening soul contact. This is the pathway to relatedness and genuine love.
It’s always been possible to overpower and take what one wants. This kind of exchange will never result in love. Love requires respect. Without respect the soul retreats, Eros flies out the window, and love dies.
Important in these times—when the ruling leaders of the world are of the entitled, grabbing what you want ilk—that the true tenets of love be reinforced. Eros is not sex. Eros is relatedness. Relatedness is the pathway to love, and that love might indeed open to blissful sexual communion. But blissful sexual union can never happen without Eros, the god of true relationship.
In the chakra system there is a division between the first three lower chakras and the four higher chakras located above the level of the solar plexus. The lower three chakras are associated with the human animal, which is controlled by the powerful instincts of human nature: survival, food, sex and power. The first half of life is generally dominated by the needs, demands, and passions associated with these lower chakras as we attempt to plant ourselves, find our way to survival, security, pleasure, and power in relation to ourselves, others, and the outer world at large.
In the golden stage of life… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
By midlife, time, the ultimate devourer of all life, awakens us to the fact that we are at least halfway through our life’s journey on earth. We become increasingly confronted with the transitoriness of all material things, as well as with human relations, as those we have loved begin to end their sojourns in this world.
Our questions about the meaning of life and of life beyond physical life become paramount. This is the stage in India where the old yogi would leave the home and life with family to begin the spiritual journey, unattached to former material life and human relations.
In chakra terms, the kundalini energy that once innervated the lower chakras becomes more subtle as it awakens the heart chakra, the birthplace of the spiritual Self. The lower chakras were all about the birth, refinement, and fulfillment of the ego self, but with midlife the values and attachments that once satisfied life lose their compulsive hold as the search for greater meaning is initiated.
The four upper chakras depict an increasingly subtle energy progression, which ultimately results in the separation of soul, or energy body, through the crown chakra at the time of death. Thus, the second half of life is often initiated by a great depression, where one is confronted with the meaninglessness and transitoriness of all that one previously clung to and was passionately motivated by, and instead must go inward to find and cultivate the often hidden ethereal self with a whole new set of rules and intentions.
Of course, many seek rebirths and the fountain of youth in a younger mate or new career at midlife, but often life energy and the lower chakras refuse to fund these quests. So what happens to relationship at midlife if we choose to stay in it versus retreat into the monastery?
For relationship to remain vibrant and meaningful in midlife, we must first surrender our attachment to the roles and expectations that may have neatly served the first half of life. Time to stop mothering and fathering each other. Time to become peers with children and family. All become seekers, equally responsible for their own spiritual journeys, which no one can take for oneself, except oneself: only I can leave my physical body in my energy body when I die; that is a solo journey.
Food and sex continue to have relevance after midlife, but all must conform to energetic limitation. The Shamans of Ancient Mexico were careful to guide that energy was the only criteria for spiritual and sexual life. If one is modest in the expenditure of energy and maintains a sufficient reserve, one could pursue sex and spirit to the end of earthly life.
The key to enjoying fulfilling sex after midlife is dropping the performance expectations of the first half of life. This begins with a deepening spiritual connection that is no longer controlled by the powers of nature and ego that once ruled the lower chakras. The focus of union at the level of the upper chakras is energetic union at a deeply subtle level, which invites the body and lower chakras into complete spiritual/physical union. This is total union in human form, the merger of subtle and physical energy into pure energetic oneness. This is conscious spiritual/physical union.
Kindling the spiritual… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
Ironically, this kind of union may not ever require actual physical union with another, as union at subtle energy levels can happen and be experienced physically in a dream. Many dreamers have reported that their deepest sexual/spiritual experiences have occurred in dreams, as energy is freed to join at the most subtle level.
The sole criterion for true love in the afternoon of life is a shared quest for spiritual evolution between partners. And spiritual evolution requires that we detach from all the rules, roles, obligations, and demands of the lower chakra system that consumes the first half of life. And with that, we find ourselves free to love with abandon, an experience that transcends the ego’s ideal of love in the first half of life.
Love never ends, but physical life does. To refine love and take it forward, unattached, is a worthy journey for the second half of life, as it prepares us for our definitive journey in infinity. The maturing of love in the afternoon is one way to take the journey on the one-way journey we’re all taking together.
Even as the sun rises over Mother Earth each day so are we, her children, charged with raising our consciousness… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
Freud rightly identified early childhood as the stage of Primary Narcissism. We are born into this life with but the seed of an individual personality planted in the fertile soil of this world, what the Hindus identified as the first chakra, Muladhara, at the location of the perineum at the base of the spine. The spark of awareness at this stage, amidst the vast unknown dark soil of this world, is simply the needs of the body and the relief of those needs from somewhere. The infant can hardly differentiate itself and its needs from the world and from who attends to its needs. All is experienced as one narcissistic Me.
For Freud, this need state evolves into the Pleasure Principle, the prime mover of all stages of life through its myriad of mature civilized permutations, what Freud came to understand as civilization and it discontents, ultimately a variety of sublimations under which lies the libido of narcissism.
Jung introduced the two primary trends in nature, introversion and extroversion. In human nature the introvert looks to the inner self as the final arbiter of truth and rightness. By contrast, the extrovert is open more to the greater external reality and adapting to it as the basis for survival. From this perspective, the introvert, though perhaps more self-reliant, can also be seen as more self-involved or narcissistic. The extrovert, more keenly in tune with the needs of others, can on the one hand be seen as more related to the other yet on the other hand self-negating or codependent. The truth is, however, that both natural introverts and extroverts are likely to be equally driven by narcissism as long as their maturity is limited to the first three chakras: Muladhara, Svadhishthana, and Manipura.
These first chakras, in fact, all exist in the realm of narcissism. Despite outer appearances these three chakras are extremely self-involved, essentially in establishing the ego in the areas of basic security, sexuality, and individual power. These three chakras are bathed in narcissism at their core, simply a fact of development at those stages. These are necessary chakras in the foundation of the ego/body self, which then serve as the ultimate launching pad for the discovery of the spirit self in the fourth chakra, Anahata, located in the region of the heart.
It is only at the level of the flame of consciousness at the heart where an individual is truly freed from the dominance of the pleasure principle, the primary motivator of the animal part of the self, which dominates the first three chakras. It is only at the level of the heart that an individual can grant another autonomy and independent value, separate from their value as a need-fulfilling object, which is the perspective of the world at the first three chakras. At the lower levels, whether introverted or extroverted, the outside world is colored through the lens of what’s in it for Me, whether that be in the form of food, sex, or power and control.
Rising to higher consciousness… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
However, once kundalini energy rises to the level of the heart, narcissism undergoes a mighty transformation, as one becomes truly capable of love for another. While narcissism once narrowed the energy of love to the self and how the world could support it, true love at the heart level grants the other and their needs a place in one’s own heart. Thus, at the heart center the way of narcissism becomes the way of love. Of course, the body is included in this new mix, but it must acquiesce to the greater objective need the heart accesses, beyond the narcissistic orbit of Me only.
The journey from the lower chakras to the heart center is many-faceted, involving many explosions and implosions as the world increasingly refuses to gratify the entitled expectations of the narcissistic self. This may result in repeated cycles of failed relationships, but over time, with knowledge accrued, it eventually becomes clear that the main culprit behind the failures is the compulsive drives of the narcissistic self.
With this point of self awareness one learns to contain the leaking of emotional frustration in the form of blame and develop an introspective posture that reveals the prejudices of the narcissistic worldview and begins to mold the objectivity of the heart center that acts from the place of truth vs blind need. And with this accomplishment, narcissism transforms and finds its way to true love.
We arrive in this world fully programed to receive the love, attention, and nurturance that will support the unfolding and maturation of our human selves. We are preprogrammed to bond with our primary caretakers, the parents entrusted and programmed to respond with loving nurturance to our deepest needs for safety, food, and emotional affirmations.
Those archetypes… about as solid as stone… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
These preexistent programs are what Jung called archetypes, nature’s tried and true wisdom encoded in instinctual patterns to ensure the survival and thriving of a human life. Despite the robustness of nature’s guiding archetypal programs, something has to happen to turn them on. With infants, a simply smile is often sufficient enough to trigger deep emotional bonding with adults. Humans, however, are fallible. We left the archetypal Garden long ago and often find ourselves deeply estranged from reading the environmental clues that activate nature’s bonding program. Winnicott, the English psychiatrist/pediatrician, softened the blow of this reality by stating that parents only had to be “good enough” for these innate growth programs to be activated in children.
The important detail to be gleaned from this powerful interaction between parents and children is its impersonal nature. Innate programs are not personal, they are the same for our entire species. We are all born with them. When caretakers respond to our archetypal programs we attach and love them. This has nothing to do with who personally our parents are, it has to do with how well our programs line up with each other.
When they align we experience deep love, but again, that love is impersonal. It’s the running of nature’s program and the powerful energetic and emotional response we have to it. Again, this powerful emotional response is not because of who the parent is, but only because of their ability to engage in an archetypal drama being activated between child and parent, a drama in which they both have starring roles.
The same kind of impersonal archetypal “love” ignites in adult romantic relationships. Nowadays, with the advent of instant connection between romantically inclined adults through internet dating sites, we can observe the rapid activation of innate mating programs running full cycle over the course of just one day.
Saying the right words, paying attention at the right moment can activate the most powerful feelings of ultimate soulmate through cyberspace. A hit on a dating site in the morning could result in a phone call at noon, a shared evening dinner, and a night of ecstasy. Of course, by the next morning, the personal reality of who this other being is begins to appear under the brightening light of the rising sun. One begins to face the power of having been swept away by an instinctual archetypal pattern to merge and mate. The being before us is truly a personal mystery, the depth of our emotional and ecstatic experience the result of having performed in an archetypal drama, of having participated in a deep mystery of nature, summoned from the hidden depths of our being.
However, if we are completely honest with ourselves, there is nothing personal in the relationship. In fact, we’d be hard pressed to call it a relationship at all if we define relationship as being truly consciously related to another. To be truly connected to another we must truly know them as people beyond the archetypal projections that ruled the night. However instinctually satisfying the encounter may have been, we can hardly call it a real relationship.
Conscious relationships require time and true knowing and acceptance of another as they truly are. Though our archetypal blueprint predisposes and pressures us to partake in powerful dramas to truly feel alive, needed, and loved, the paradox remains: deep, instinctual bonding and love is not in the least bit personal love.
It is our human challenge to reconcile instinctual and personal love. Our evolutionary trajectory is pressuring us to find instinctual satisfaction in a consciously related personal relationship.
All too frequently, that which draws us instinctively is completely opposite to what we feel consciously companionable to. That is our current cross to bear as a species. At present, we are a civilization struggling with the old archetypal patterns of blind tribalism and loyalty of blood and action vs a consciously related world that puts the true needs of the world over the self interest of the archetypally bound tribe.
In our most basic relationships, where impersonal love and obligation bind us, we must ask ourselves whether the actual relationships we are in, even with our most intimates, are in fact personal relationships at all. Sometimes primal relationships must end. They may have served their primal need, nature’s imperative, but they may never have taken root in a personal way, which is the only way we can grow and fulfill our modern evolutionary imperative: the reconciliation of nature and consciousness, animal and spirit, the full truth of who we are.
We are programmed for love, but are we truly able to advance that program with consciousness?
