In this series, I am going to write about and explore several different types of love in an effort to better understand the nature of love and what it is in the world. At the end of this post is a story and creative prompt to tap yourself deeper into it.
There is LanGUagE in this particular post. Watch out if that might offend you.
Let’s talk about sex…uhm, let’s talk about desire…oh, let’s talk about pleasure…wait, let’s talk about creativity.
Yes! Creativity.
I know that I always head directly towards creativity and play, y’all BUT how is that different from sexuality exactly?
(It isn’t!)
Imagine, if you will, a beautiful muse; a goddess of inspiration. She calls to us to paint or fuck or paint ourselves fucking. This is eros the bringer of desire. It is the wellspring of the libidinal energy that flows through our bodies.
More about libidinal energy here.
Now if we thought attachment got a bad wrap, libido is ALWAYS in the doghouse.
It is often subjugated as an immature, base, or sinful part of self. How many times have we gotten the message that to stay up all night having sex or writing our novel, or eating chocolate is gluttonous and will wreck our lives? (Many many times).
The reasons for this are more complex than I can properly reference here, but it has a lot to do with control.
Basically, we as humans learned long ago that if we could control someone’s urges or sexual desires we could control them. We can more easily fit them into our boxes of understanding when we remove desire entirely. This particularly applies to female sexuality and sexuality that is not hetero normative. Diverse sexual expressions have been manipulated and devalued repeatedly to subjugate those populations and control their ability to express themselves. This indicates that sexuality and libidinal energy is in fact our power source for creation and revolution.
Let me say that again; Eros is our power to create.
It pulls us towards playfulness and expression. It creates in us a craving for change. It opens us to potential. It taps us into the divine; the creator.
Wow.
I like this type of love.
In my work as a celebrant, I find myself at the intersection of libidinal energy a lot because it is the energy of revolution and change. Same to be said for psychotherapy (which It might be said was born out of an imbalance of libidinal energy created in the victorian era). In my practice I clearly see it in the romantic relationships I work with; erotic expression mirrors relational health. In grief, it is the desire to go forward even in the face of death (the relationship between death and eros is long established as one of the most important there is). And as an expressive arts therapist, I work with libido as I invite people to step into their creative selves and seek advice from their muses.
Truthfully, I am in the business of desire, y’all.
There is no time or space in this pandemic world for me to make a video for you. So, I am going to refer you to this TED video about the story or Eros (cupid) and Psyche.
The prompt is to write to a poem (obviously) about your own power of creation and what it feels like when you tap into it.
Feel free to tag me @passagewayarts if you post it somewhere.