Wild Horses and Starlight//Reclaiming Eros
Tracking a Wild Horse.
Eros is a wild horse that runs through our psyches on a moonless night, its mane and tail streaming a trail of starlight in its wake. Thundering hooves turn the soil on uncrossed terrain. Heart pounding, all we can do is follow.
We travel on foot, with a wild patience and a grounded devotion unmatched and unwilling to be diverted. We listen and we track, following small signs, quiet signals and watching weather patterns, day after day. Our senses unite in a singular purpose; we are not seeking the gilded treasure of some imagined other, but the true reflection of the starlight in our own souls.
If Love is a Forest, Eros is the Breeze that tickles the underside of the leaves. Eros is an assertion of life force, joy, passion and potential. Eros infuses us with life worth living, because it is the quality of attention that we apply to the circumstances of our life. It is the kiss of spirit on matter; the sacred swirling through the mundane.
Eros personifies power and harmony. Because of its power, it is often misnamed, misused, distorted and confused with the pornographic–which is its opposite—sensation without feeling. But the erotic is life affirming creative energy that infuses meaning and matter into every cell of your being.
The Erotic has been feared and suppressed because it is a reclaiming of our agency and our will, our creative life force. When we are inspired from this deep ground of knowing and connection with our primal life force, this is a power that knows and measures the truth of things in embodied ways, and cannot be manipulated, controlled or contained. This is primal Earth energy, Dragon energy.
As we reclaim eros, we learn to see life not as what we do, but how we do it. We have decided that our inner sensations matter. New landscapes of joy, choice, and freedom create a capacity for feeling wider than we had known before. It does not need to be defined or defended, it is thoroughly known from the inside.
Love is born from chaos. Eros is the way we wrestle with the unruly vastness of the cosmos and make meaning of our lives. It asks us to define what we love, and to devote ourselves to this one real, wild and messy life. Eros is always happening now. Its prerequisite is presence and its mastery is courage.
When we first drop into this layer of ourselves, it can feel chaotic and overwhelming, but in time and with care we notice there is a rhythm to it. The seasons mirror this internal rhythm and teach us from the ground up about ourselves from the inside out. We feel in accord with the natural forces underneath and inside us that move life through us.
Reclaiming Eros is a path of refusal that embraces desire. It is a brave “no” that trusts the yes is coming–even if the night is long and dark and the color of the dawn is unknown. Our desires connect us with our destiny (etymologically, of the stars). Walking this path, the way of love, is a calling forward of what is not yet. It is a choice of path that is at present invisible. It requires listening, tracking and inner resourcing that asks us to show up fully every day and in every moment. It is a feeling of one’s own unique way across a foreign landscape, taking those first steps as the path emerges from its camouflage.
In time, with this continued trust and courage, the whispers of our hearts become the sound of thundering hooves. The tracking becomes easier, the signs and symbols grow more clear. And we follow. We choose life. We choose joy, we choose love. We ride the wild horse of our soul across the vastness of our psyches. We touch life, and life touches us. We choose peace and passion, humility, curiosity, and falling down and trying again. Again and again. Forever.