I recently participated in a course led by Kasia Urbaniak called “The Keys to Erotic Power.”
While a short course, I was impressed by how the elegantly framed ideas and simple exercises created powerful outcomes in a short amount of time.
I’d like to share here some of what I learned and experienced as a result of the course. If you find it interesting and think it would be useful, you can check out more of Urbaniak’s work here.
The course began by asking us to check in with ourselves first. Here are some of the first questions asked and my own responses to them.
What brought you here?
I want to feel more alive, and I know I can.
I want to let go of the shame that is holding me back and step into my radiance and power.
What do you want to feel?
Fully alive. Magnetic.
Pure magic.
Powerful, sexy, beautiful.
Loved and loving.
In control of and capable of directing my own experience.
The next step in the course was defining exactly what erotic power is. According to Urbaniak, “erotic power is the control over access to ecstasy.” Key elements of this involved the use of our attention and an ability to sense our own aliveness, an awareness of the life force as it moves through us.
The Politics of Ecstasy
Before beginning the next model, Urbaniak asked us to write on several questions, the first of which was: “What is your definition of ecstasy?” I wrote the following:
Ecstasy: a state outside of self
Being transported beyond the realm of normal, everyday experience
into the transcendent
Where you feel at one with the object of perception and sensation
In union with the other or the world around you.
It is bliss, joy, aliveness: magic.
It is what makes life worth living.
In the next section, Urbaniak defined ecstasy in this way: “The Greek word ekstasis means to move out of yourself, and in the energetic state of ecstasy, your life force moves beyond the boundaries of your physical form.”
She continues by reading a passage from Robert A. Johnson’s book Ecstasy, where he tells of the long human history of seeking ecstatic states, noting that it has been a perennial human concern since the beginning of recorded history.
Johnson also speaks of the current state of Western civilization, in which there appears to be no room for the seeking of ecstatic states, and the youth of our society are left unguided and resort to street drugs and other apparently deviant types of behavior.
I thought this was an interesting idea, and while I certainly agree that there is little room in our society for the sanctioned seeking of ecstatic states, I have to wonder if there ever really was.
Johnson cites as an example of previous human pleasure seeking the ancient Greek civilization, but even then, the cults of ecstasy (for example, of Dionysus or Bacchus) were not exactly fully sanctioned by the state or the mainstream of society.
While in later classical Greece the cult of Bacchus became more popular and widely accepted, it was never the most popular, and there were still many ways in which its devotees existed outside of respected norms.
For example, according to the blog Wonderkat Studies, Bacchants wore fawn skins and ivy crowns as they drank wine to excess, caught and ate wild animals raw, and participated in orgies.
As might be imagined, this type of behavior was not exactly celebrated by the local authorities of the time. In his work The Bacchae, Euripides has Pentheus, the king, describe the bacchants in this way:
“I hear of the Evils have just broken out in the city – our women have abandoned their homes in fake Bacchic revels, and are roaming around the mountains, honouring the new-made god of Dionysos, whoever he is; that wine-bowls are set among sacred companies full to the brim, and that one by one the women slink off into lonely places, to serve the lust of men – they profess to be Maenads making sacrifice, but actually they put Aphrodite before the Bacchic god.”
This description supports my suspicion that perhaps there never was an established or sanctioned place in Western civilization to begin with and perhaps there never will be.
After all, ecstasy is an experience which takes you outside of yourself.
As a transcendent experience, it is also often a transgressive experience.
Ecstasy expands the boundaries of consciousness, bringing into your field of awareness ever greater levels of energy and experience.
An ecstatic state is by definition uncontainable, uncontrollable, unable to be forced within limits of the established.
As such, it doesn’t seem likely that the institutions of Western civilization (or any civilization, for that matter) would be likely to encourage it.
According to Timothy Leary, ecstasy can be defined as: “The experience of attaining freedom from limitations, either self-imposed or external; a state of exalted delight in which normal understanding is felt to be surpassed. From the Greek ‘ex-stasis.’
By definition, ecstasy is an ongoing on/off process. It requires a continual sequence of “dropping out.” On those occasions when many individuals share the ecstatic experience at the same time, they create a brief-lived counter-culture.’”
Urbaniak herself briefly addresses this in the next section when she says that “society does not allow our alive, erotic energy to flow freely.”
She also links the repression of the erotic with the oppression of women in general: “Our estrangement [as women] from our erotic power is wound up with the story of women decentered.”
The Erotic as a Revolutionary Act
How can we begin to free ourselves and become more alive?
According to Urbaniak, we must first recognize and resist two big lies our society tells us about ecstasy:
- That it comes from outside of yourself.
- It can exist only between you and another person.
In reflecting on this further, I see that I have fallen for the lies I’ve been told, and let myself be bound by them.
The truth is that I have often gotten stuck in what Urbaniak calls “the Sleeping Beauty Trap.” I find myself waiting for someone to save me, or for something outside of me to happen, before I can let myself feel pleasure, let myself enjoy the moment, or even let myself feel the full, vibrant aliveness of which I am capable of.
This trap also gets me in other areas of my life; for example, my self-esteem. I find myself believing that I can’t feel good about myself until someone or something good validates me and signs off on my right to be here.
It’s like I can’t feel good about myself or be fully confident unless I have been given permission.
What I started to learn through my experiences during this course was that none of this is actually necessary.
The key to erotic power is to remember that you are always in control, you always have the ability to shift your attention towards pleasure and what’s most alive in you.
In accessing that aliveness, I get in touch with not only pleasure but also the source of my own power, both of which are always within reach.
There are many reasons why the erotic has been repressed and denied, especially in women for whom it comes most naturally.
Audre Lorde writes in her famous essay The Uses of the Erotic, “The erotic is a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings. It is an internal sense of satisfaction to which, once we have experienced it, we know we can aspire. For having experienced the fullness of this depth of feeling and recognizing its power, in honour and self-respect we can require no less of ourselves.”
Tuning into the erotic and the sense of aliveness in our bodies gets us in touch with what is true and real for us. There are many lies which can be told and ideas which can be distorted in our minds, but when we feel the truth of what we love deep down in our bones, we can gain the confidence to act in ways that honor that knowing.
According to Kasia Urbaniak, the practice of embodiment and cultivating erotic aliveness will only become more important as time goes on. The technological advances of the future seem geared towards disconnecting us even further from our bodies and our innate, intuitive wisdom.
As even greater advances are made in computational speed and artificial intelligence grows more pervasive, this need for embodied wisdom will only become ever greater.
According to Urbaniak, “The problem of our times is the disconnection from ourselves, each other and the Earth. By reclaiming your erotic power, you are also saving the world.”
Engaging the erotic is a practice of returning to ourselves. In the process of reclaiming ourselves, we create the potential to reclaim our world and guide our community towards a future filled with greater hope.
“When we live outside ourselves … then our lives are limited by external and alien forms, and we conform to the needs of a structure that is not based on human need, let alone an individual’s.
But when we begin to live from within outward, in touch with the power of the erotic within ourselves, and allowing that power to inform and illuminate our actions upon the world around us, then we begin to be responsible to ourselves in the deepest sense.
For as we begin to recognize our deepest feelings, we begin to give up, of necessity, being satisfied with suffering and self-negation, and with the numbness which so often seems like their only alternative in our society. Our acts against oppression become integral with self, motivated and empowered from within.”
Audre Lorde
