Erotic Timepieces

Erotic journeys begin with desire, the longing to understand and experience what desire is, what love and eroticism equate to and how those shape a life lived. My personal and academic answers to the above have led me to orgasmic peaks but at some point everything boomerangs. I’m back at facing an odd sense of confusion even though I know this is prep work for the next climatic stage in living an erotic life. Perhaps you’ve experienced the level of cloudiness I’m feeling now or perhaps your time has not yet come. It’s a feeling surrounded by personal praise for accomplishments but at the same time an indescribable emptiness that comes from the transitional stage of one leaving one state and continuing into another, or coming in touch with what is yet unknown. I can guarantee that if you choose a path of passion, you will end up on the similar fork in the erotic road. And, since I’ve established that living erotically does not equal living purely through sexuality, what is an erotic life all about?

Before I answer that, another important question that should be answered is, what is the ultimate goal of one’s life? Everyone has goals but I’m looking further out into distance to define the ultimate goal. I’m not merely seeking answers through the “I” pronoun because I’m looking for a more collective answer. I have argued with my philosophy professor that the ultimate goal is not happiness and pleasure as Utilitarianism suggests, but rather creation itself, with experience as a means to the end; pleasure is only one extension of experience. I used quotes from the principles of utility based on the texts we learned in class to help define my position, stating that happiness and pleasure and fulfillment along with the essence of virtue, the very idea Aristotle’s Eudaimonia, are not particularly the cornerstones of mankind’s need.

The very act of experience is that which helps man and woman re-create the paths toward something greater, a more meaningful existence than mere happiness and pleasure and ultimate ‘good’. It may seem awkward to hold this philosophy because all in all, it’s logical to presume that happiness and pleasure are the ultimate goals of human beings especially when venturing out to experience erotic living. After all, we all perform actions for the purpose of feeling good, whether that feel good is in the form of superficial highs or genuine virtues.

I haven’t the knowledge of philosophy or erotic literature or history or any of those things that can help prove my theory, one that would simply state that we are not out to manifest happiness or pleasure while avoiding suffering and pain. I believe we are out to experience all the emotions that exist within our human potential and we should play with the idea that there are un-manifested emotions the mind is unable to grasp through our consciousness simply for the reason that one must learn to crawl before one can run; one must move up the spiritual latter toward (erotic) enlightenment. So how far has humankind come in its journey as we face yet another year of hope and promise? Where do you stand as you look out in the distance, making lists for all that you hope to accomplish, personally, professionally and/or passionately?

If I step out of the box and look down as an outsider from a perspective of a universal consciousness, a mind that wouldn’t judge human endeavors and evolution, stagnation and immorality but would simply watch like a curious passerby, purely observing the reality that exists in the 3D realm, I would say that mankind is an adolescent, stuck in the “I know best, me, me, me” consciousness. We’re living in a world that revolves around the limitations mankind fashioned, no matter how science has progressed knowledge. (I use man to generalize mankind, men and women)

There must be something greater than the general absolutes humans have created for themselves. We face issues of morality and purpose yet through the various beliefs and viewpoints, either through religion, science or cultural means, we are stuck in a quicksand of a liner superposition – a liner, narrow thought and action process. To escape from this hole it is necessary to pull the body out from the depths of such gravity but without a branch or other external source to help us out, how do we survive and continue to progress? What if we use the mind to think and venture out of the box we’re so used to viewing the world through?

Sometimes I feel as small as a ant – puny and insignificant within a universe so vast, with so much is unknown and undiscovered that to assume human beings are so clever to say they know anything at all from their adolescent standpoint is as presumptuous as a teen telling his or her parents, “you just don’t understand!” A wise elder would respond with a slow headshake and a gentle caress across the cheek while smiling inside, perhaps even saying, “You have so much to learn. You’ll see”.

I stood at the edge of this “I know” stepping stone and have since walked through the door of knowledge but I am blinded by the brightness beyond it. So much information is pouring in that I can’t see nor think and I’m stuck in a time warp of some kind, some purgatory between a life I had, knew, accepted and took comfort in to a new life I’m about to learn and discover. I’ve gone from adolescent into a new world where I find that I’m only an infant learning to crawl once again. No one told me this was part of an erotic voyage. Maybe deep inside I knew this. I must have known that this evolutionary journey would challenge everything I have learned and would eventually laugh in my face with empathy: “Oh, poor dear. You have so much to learn. It’s wonderful you’ve gotten this far and you’re respected for that but your cockiness is your vulnerability in this new world of thought”.

So as I attempt to piece together the knowledge I’ve gained and unionize it with the new knowledge I’m gaining, I’m realizing that there is so much I don’t know that I’m totally embarrassed to even say I know anything at all. Concentrating on my theory that states experience is a means to the end, of which the end is actually the manifestation of whatever is created through that experience, then I’m lead to ask, what actually matters?

In the world where love and sex dangles seduction and eroticism, trust and understanding, submission and dominance, right and wrong, religion and science, morality and immorality, it is my belief that our passionate spirits are simply erotic in nature and that eroticism and its passionate search for pleasure, happiness, love and all those other ‘good’ things we humans define under that general term is the essence of who we are. And, if that is what and who we essentially are, then all we are trying to do is find the essence of ourselves. But, doesn’t this then contradict my theory that our ultimate goal is not one of pleasure and happiness?

Unfortunately, I’m finding conflicts in my theory but I’m convinced it’s because I’m still missing a vital link to close the chain. Aristotle’s Eudaimonia seems very virtuous, powerful and quite frankly, obvious. As my philosophy professor put it: it is human excellence that we must attain to if we follow Aristotle’s view. So what defines excellence if there is such subjectivism in anything humans define? Is there really a world of objectification? I’ve learned there is but I question its full implication and think perhaps not and if this is the case, then the theory of collapsed superposition, that of manifestation and creation as the one ultimate goal would show that nothing matters except the experience that creates it in the first place because what is real is only as real as we perceive as real and it serves as the means to an end, our individual yet collective end; what you do to yourself somehow you do to others even if only in a most tiny way.

Certainly many cases and studies in psychology have shown that our human brain may be no more than an organic ‘computer’ projecting an ‘illusionary’ holographic image of the world. But it all feels so real. The pain and suffering, the love and joy, the trauma and orgasms, even the dreams we set out to achieve feel real. But that realness has to stem from somewhere, some deep-rooted fundamental point and purpose. If the very act of manifestation is the ultimate destination created by the a need to experience - to then further evolve and create and experience more unknowns - then aren’t we all taking life too darn seriously? Aren’t we placing a heck of a lot of emphasis on what we’ve created and perceived as real in the past and thus limited our creation potential, minimizing experience to what has become rather than what else could it be?

I hope this New Year brings you not only the beginnings of possibility but also resolutions. More importantly, I hope that you live in the moment of experience each minute brings, as those serve as the cornerstones of everything you are. Minutes become memories and without those, we can only reduce human potential the mechanical clockwork of time rather than the aesthetical interpretations that come to the bearer of a timepiece. It’s the latter that defines an erotically spirited life.

Namaste,
Tatiana von Tauber
www.vontauber.com