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This episode of Living Myth is about living through this dark time on earth by finding and making more medicines from eros, love and soul. Michael Meade weaves together the myth of Eros emerging from primal darkness with poems of Rumi and Hafiz that reveal the initiatory nature of love.
“When we refer to how everything seems divided and people are turned against each other, we are also saying there is a lack of Eros, a lack of love, a loss of the bestowing soul that otherwise would remind us that we are in this together.”
In Greek myth, Eros was a divine figure born out of the darkness and chaos before creation began. Eros or love had to be born first, for without it the created world could not come together or hold together. The same is true when everything seems about to fall apart. In terms of ongoing creation, the amount of eros and love present in each of our lives determines the state of our individual souls, but also affects collective life on earth.
When life becomes chaotic, it is hard not to feel fear and anger, even despair. It also makes sense to let those emotions run through us. After they have passed through, it turns out that we are not left empty or simply in dark despair. If we are true to our own souls, we arrive at the gates of surrender where eros, love and inspiration wait to open the way forward.
Each person is but a frail being compared to the immense crises facing the world. Yet, each is also a living link in the great chain of being that sustains collective life on earth. If we do not risk opening the gates of surrender and finding our intended personality, if we forget that we are also the agents of Eros come here to keep creation ongoing, then consciousness falters and the genuine paths of knowledge and devotion become weakened.
Eros was there at the very beginning, hidden in the darkness and Eros is waiting to be found now in the chaos of the troubled world in which we live. What we love is where we make medicine and can find cures. Loving becomes a kind of initiation in which we become our self in a deeper way, while also giving ourselves away in service to something greater.
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