The erotics of yoga

the way of being more alive

Yoga. The word seems to have lost meaning in the common dialect, though you’ve likely heard it stems from the idea of “union” or “yoking.” Sanskrit words, though, are more like tapestries weaving themselves than finished products. So perhaps yoga is better defined as a process of erotic remembrance; a coalescence of mind and body; you, a channel, opening to the state of change that you innately are; a return to awareness of divine inheritance, to the visceral knowing that every atom is thrumming with the luminous aliveness of erotic cosmic intelligence.

We often conceptualize body and mind as separate things, and understand yoga as a way to coerce these concepts into relating with each other; our dualistic language and subsequent vision of reality urges this disembodied way of thinking. Language creates the illusion of separation, which Alan Watts speaks of in his lecture The Limits of Language:

So you want to know what is it? I mean this happening, this thing called existence. What is it? You ask that question long enough and it suddenly hits you that if you could answer it, you wouldn’t know what terms to put the answer in.

I mean, when we investigate the properties of nature, and we do get some answers, all the answers are in terms of particular structures, forms, patterns. And these can be measured, and their behavior can be predicted. But when I want to ask the question what are the forms made of; I mean, what is it really?—we can’t think of any way in which we could answer the question. Because we would have to have a class of all classes. When you ask the question what?—it’s like saying “is you is or is you ain’t?” “Is you animal? Is you vegetable? Is you mineral? Are you a Republican or a Democrat? Are you male or female? Are you a Christian, or a Jew, or a Hindu, or what have you?” We classify, always, to give an answer to the question what is it? And when you classify, you distinguish an inside group from an outside group.

Alright, so what we want to know is, what is the group of all groups? Well, we can’t imagine what the outside would be. So we can’t answer the question what is it? So the physicist finally abandoned the quest for stuff. And they gave us a description of the universe entirely in terms of form. The pattern, not the stuff.

So here we are, left with pattern, form, the structure of the universe, of nature, of bodymind. And this is the fundamental thing we need to embrace in order to experience reality in a more nuanced, erotic, loving way: we are bodymind systems (or body-as-mind as Élodi Vedha says and I love). Our beliefs exert power over how we envision ourselves and allow ourselves to express life and relate with life. But our mental scope is limited; the mind cannot grasp the infinite mystery of the somatic process that it is woven through, and vice versa, therefore the mental constructions we exert upon ourselves are most often guided by false premises. Premises based on sensational associations we made, often when we were very young, that we are not safe, not welcome, not enough. You know the stories that run through your mind every time you’re on the edge of something delicious. It’s obvious that the danger is no longer present, yet the long outdated mental construct dictates our understanding of reality. Our sensational understandings are distorted because we are stuck in time. concentrating all our energy into pulling threads of the past or projecting ourselves into imagined futures that serve the beliefs of our past selves rather than our desired present selves.

The erotic way of being releases you from the past and the future. The yoga of eros is, effectively, time travel. But we won’t go there today. Let’s get back to the plot…

What’s important to understand for now is that when we sense danger, we tend to eject from the body — this is the fundamental reason that we believe (loop in stories and repeat habits based on sensations) that we are separate from ourselves and separate from our lives; we cannot feel the erotic connection, and therefore we cannot feel, or experience reality. In other words, it is tension against confronting danger — danger which is most often not real, and based in the past or a projected future — that creates our belief and subsequent sense of disconnection from the natural state of erotic bodymind union. Further, even though we may know the danger is not real, deep within our nervous systems, danger can feel like death. And we are terrified of death.

So yoga points to a return to the natural state of erotic connectedness; to the marriage of the vessel of experience and its observer — of shakti and shiva — of love and consciousness, of life and death. Yoga is the weaving of Eros and Mythos. Yoga is a throughway of change into the truth of being — a process of coming into awareness not only of the truth of luminous reality, but as this truth.

As I experience it, the essence of yoga is life as an infinite game of change. Change is the foundation of erotic nature. Change happens when you pay attention to what you can affect and act with sensitivity.

What we tend to forget is that the deepening sense of erotic connection we (often unconsciously) long for will not happen in one dramatic transformation, but through a million little moments of sense and response. Through becoming aware of the endless stream of micro-shifts that compose life/death/life. Through this cyclical awareness, we allow for the ever undulating alignment of intention and action necessary to the growth of the erotic organism — the organism of you as connected to the greater organism of life — one body, always connected, even when it seems not to be. One body, always breathing, buzzing, humming with ecstasy just beneath the layer of thought. One body, endless facets of connection. Connections which are enlivened and opened and deepened and widened through devotion to stretching, leaning into, allowing things to be a little bit different. Connections which long to be drenched with breath and love and nourishment and fuck, and which give back all that is poured in. Connections rooted in reciprocity The way a flower blooms, dies, returns to the soil to create new life. The way lovers come together to forget what they think they know and return with more than they began with.

So we know that yoga, change, transformation, is a process of connection. Yet we disconnect. We cast spells of forgetfulness. We submit to lifelessness, yet we turn away from death. We think death is the end.

Death is just the middle of change — the middle of creation. But we turn away from the perceived ending and thereby never touch the infinite beginning of the life/death/life cycle.

It’s easy to turn away. Easier than it ever has been. There are millions of ways to distract yourself from the truth that you are a force of erotic creation. There are endless ideas and relationships to whip yourself around with to avoid confronting the reality of who you really are. It is overwhelmingly easy to avoid the infinite possibility of your being, and even easier to turn away from the choice to become a concentrated essence of divine erotic nature. But closing your eyes doesn’t destroy the fact of who you are, and contrary to the popular excuse of the closed heart, closing your heart isn’t a real possibility.

Your heart is always open. Do you feel that? Maybe there is debris in the way of your access. No doubt your mental constraints are squeezing in on the root of that holiest of muscles which, no matter what, pumps the blood through your sinuous, glowing body. The body of life that is waiting, always, to be unraveled into the light.

Imagine.

In the morning a swatch of sun stretches though you as you sit and breathe through the center of your body, and the center of your atoms sing harmonies and you stay, noticing the difference a bit of warmth makes. Noticing the effects of slowing the system; you’ve been hurtling through space and now you pause and notice and time dilates; eternity arises through your presence. That sunshine. The way your lips fall apart and your breath breathes you more open and your bones align themselves. As if by magic, your skull is not so heavy as it was two minutes ago.

You peer into your own eyes and see the glimmer you’ve been missing. You remember the light through the darkness. It always happens, yet it never ceases to amaze you. Awe makes way for reverence. Reverence. A certainty. The reverend of your body. None of this to preach a solitary existence — but to awaken. Your body. Body of breath. Body of the earth. Cosmic nature. The galaxies of your eyes and the spiderwebs of your fingertips drawing nearly invisible threads of ether together. This gossamer reality; not as solid as we’d like to believe. Swaying. Trembling. Tenderized by your touch and your sweetness. Love. Love unraveling the messages. Love in the east wing of your heart, the west. A river flowing south to north and north to south washing the center of you open and open and open. And open. Yes, more. More opening. You do know the opening. You remember it. You always remember.

Imagine.

A volcanic eruption in the living room. Two lovers quarrel for a moment; one moves the cosmic web so fast the other cannot see it; a river flows, sunlight warms the red soil of your seat, words pour, breath returns, love pulsates. Belly, heart, lips that kiss and flush with blood. Eyes. Ocean blue peers into mossy amber forest. You dance. You dance more. Words spill into song. Flushed cheeks. Laughter. Beautiful things. Hearts remember. Hearts soothe minds that overheat. the spill over with force. Hearts bathe minds that concentrate and constrict and focus up and up and up and forget to open down through the throat and to breathe awareness through the pathway of the heart and through the swell through the body that longs for the wave to roll all the way through to the soil and the root and the nourishment of the darkness. Through the love at the center of every atom. The breath of opening; this luminous reality of me and you intertwining — me and you, light soaked tendrils of this eternal moment.

Thank you for reading melli•fluent… I’m delighted to have you here. Make sure to subscribe for more eros-drenched writings.

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