The Power of Divine Eros
Why do many people find it easier to open to the idea of love than they do to confronting their feelings of desire? In this video, Diamond Approach co-founders A. H. Almaas and Karen Johnson explain that love and desire are fundamentally the same divine energy (divine eros). Yet the embrace of one and the trepidation about – or outright rejection of – the other has to do with the way the West has decoupled this essential truth. Scroll down to view the video in which Almaas and Johnson discuss their book Divine Eros and the inseparable union of desire and divinity.
Summary
In Greek cosmology, Eros was the God of Love. Implicit in the “erotic”, then, was the understanding that love and the energy of life were one in the same. Yet in the West, desire came to be associated with our animal instincts and, as such, something wild and ungovernable that needed to be controlled and contained. Johnson and Almaas tell us that what divinizes the instincts of the animal is the inclusion of the heart, which is a force that needs to be combined with the animal instincts to open to its original meaning and potential for transformation.
In order for this to happen, we must actually feel our desire and work with the discomforts we may associate with it – need, fear, emotion, vulnerability – which come from the distortion of that essential energy. For some, particularly those who have been abused or misused, the distortions can shut down access to the divine nature of eros to the point where they cannot even approach the concept of desire.
Inquiry is one vital way to begin comprehending the nature of those distortions so we can see how they have stunted us, limited us, blocked us off from our divine nature. Breath work helps with embodiment, which can help us open our lower chakras and bring us into contact with the complexity of sensations and emotions we feel around desire. It also opens us to presence, which is the container through which those energies can be liberated.
This process helps us see that divine love and physical love are the same presence, and that the energy of desire is a pure energy, the energy of the universe being channeled in a certain way. The primitive instinctual distortion of this energy is attachment, the hunger to possess something for ourselves. But in its pure state, divine eros does not differentiate between giving and taking, experiencing and possessing, or desire and love. There is no attachment. This offers us the opportunity to inquire into why we may be feeling the separation between our love and our desire—to ask what’s happening in our heart when we are feeling the sensation of intense desire, or to sense into what is stirring in our pelvis when we feel deep love.
The more we can experience the purity of the energy, the more we mature. Where before we restrained divine eros out of fear it could express itself inappropriately, the maturity develops its own natural discernment and containment. We can hold more and more of the energy without it spilling over. We are less impulsive and inappropriate. But this maturity only comes from working through our fears and blocks around desire. They do not dissolve simply through spiritual illumination. In fact, spiritual illumination can trigger and highlight other, deeper issues with which we must grapple. It is a long, but fruitful journey.
The effects of our newfound maturity and discernment are not limited to a romantic partner either, but can be applied to any relationship. We can begin to feel like being together with friends, siblings, lovers and so on is not only a pleasure, but also a pleasurable practice.