Creativity is Erotic
A recent writer's block helped me better understand the intimate relationship between our creative power and erotic energy.
To create is to bring something new into existence.
Whether we procreate or create, the same underlying erotic energy fertilizes all acts of creation and brings them to fruition. A recent writer’s block led me to explore the relationship between Eros and creativity. Since this led to an insight that got me writing again, I thoughted I’d share it with you who surely feels blocked at times too.
To be clear, by creativity, I am not limiting the term to artistic endeavors. Every day, we create the conditions of our very lives through the choices that we make, whether consciously or not. Erotic energy has everything to do with that. Being creative is to bring genius to every mundane part of our life in a way that disrupts the status quo. Opening to Eros is to merrily jump back into the flow of Life and to surrender to its transformative power.
What is Eros?
I understand Eros as embodied vital energy; the electrical current that drives evolution ever onward.
However, we can turn to the Merriam-Webster dictionary for a more authoritative definition: Eros is “the sum of life-preserving instincts that are manifested as impulses to gratify basic needs, as sublimated impulses, and as impulses to protect and preserve the body and mind”. Let’s unpack that.
Ensuring survival implies gratifying our basic needs which are wired into us through the evolutionary mechanism of avoiding pain (the inner no) and moving towards pleasure (the inner yes). Therefore, Eros speaks to us in the embodied language of pleasure. This “life-preserving instinct” is not merely limited to survival but is the force that guides all living things to thrive and flourish. It’s the Universe’s creative juice.
So, Eros is not sexual per se; it is embodied life-force energy that’s born out of pleasure and that compels us to gratify all our needs and thus, to actualize our full potential—from physiological to love and belonging, to esteem, to self-realization, to enlightenment.
What shuts down Eros?
The tendency to separate and elevate certain forms of creativity from sex and reproduction, the need to put them in different boxes as it were, reveals one of the main ways we consistently shut down Eros in our lives: our fear, shame, and guilt programming.
Early in life, we ideally learn to sublimate our “socially unacceptable impulses” into more acceptable behaviours. Yet, considering the amount of depression, anxiety disorders, addictions, etc. that’s rampant in our society, the reality is that most of us have learned to repress our erotic energy instead of sublimating it in a constructive, life-affirming way.
Young children are great examples of unrestrained Eros. They are unapologetically fuelled by their raw desires and exuberant enjoyment of life. They don’t even need to be shown how: they naturally imagine, play, and create simply by following the compass of their innate curiosity.
However, most of us quickly learned to control and contain this wild energy to earn our caregivers’ love and approval. As social creatures, the downside of our need for safety, love, and belonging is that we have learned to self-betray to avoid the potential pain of being rejected by our family, peers, and the larger institutional and cultural systems we depend on.
For instance, most of us got the message that if it feels good, DO NOT TRUST IT! Never follow good feelings or you’ll get addicted, out of control, lazy, and waste your life away. Never speak your mind unless you have strong evidence to back up your claims—you don’t want to look stupid right!? Oh, and please raise your hand first because self-expression is a privilege that’s granted by an authority figure. Stay in your lane. Don’t offend people with your wild opinions. Don’t be loud and hysterical. Do your homework. No gain without pain. Strive for efficiency, productivity, discipline, and status, so that you can earn your right to exist. If you do a decent enough job, maybe you’ll get a cookie but be sure to work it off because you don’t want to get fat, do you!? Fat people go to hell!
Obviously, unless you are a masochist, this kind of internalized tyrannical monologue is a huge turn-off for the erotic energy within you that simply wants to come out, make stuff, and play.
Following our turn-ons
Because Eros is embodied vital energy, I believe that the key to overcoming creative blocks (artistic and existential) is found in our reconnecting with our bodies. Releasing our fear, shame, and guilt programming requires more than telling ourselves new, positive stories. In a sense, healing trauma and reconnecting to Eros go hand in hand. Both begin with learning to feel safe and to feel good in our bodies.
Ultimately, through embodiment practices, we can become reacquainted with the physiological language of pleasure so that we can notice when an idea sparks us up (our inner yes), learn to shamelessly trust our genuine desires and turn-ons, and nurture our projects to completion by harnessing the vitalizing power of Eros.
I’ll use my recent writer’s block as an example. My childlike, playful, and unpretentious desire to write was being turned off by my inner tyrant and I began to take this whole writing thing way too seriously. I soon began to care much more about being validated by you, dear reader, than by following what genuinely lights me up.
How did that feel in my body? Tight chest and shoulders, constricted throat, shallow breathing, fatigue, lethargy, depression even. I was utterly unable to concentrate anytime I sat down to write. Still, I have a strong work ethic and I used self-discipline to push through it. Clearly, nothing good or even slightly interesting came out of it. How could it? Eros had abandoned the ship.
Strangely, something in me felt alive again as I was reflecting on the relationship between erotic energy and creativity. I felt titillated by the topic and chose to embrace that without an agenda until a pleasurable burst of insight led to writing this piece.
How did that feel in my body? Like a jolt of electricity, like butterflies in my belly. My mind was active and churning ideas on its own. Little flashes of inspiration would arouse my whole being and keep me focused for hours on end. I didn’t have to force anything but listen to and intuitively follow this mysterious process until fruition. Yes, kinda like sex. As a result, I felt enlivened, in the flow, and uplifted. That, for me, is a good enough reason to create.
In closing, creativity is erotic and by that, I mean that engaging with the creative process naturally feels good and pleasurable in our whole body. It makes us feel alive and fulfilled. When we’re in a rut, it’s a sign that Eros is shut down and repressed. It’s a sign that we need to reconnect to the raw vitality that courses through every cell of our being through embodiment practices. That way, we practice letting go of deadening judgments and instead follow the sexy ideas that bring us sheer joy and excitement. That’s how Life breeds new life through us.
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I love this! you are a wonderful writer. PhD studies burnt me out, and I look forward to more creative flow with my writing