CHAPTER 1 __________________________ INTRODUCING EVOLUTIONARY RELATIONSHIPS & UNIQUE GENDER REALITY IS RELATIONSHIP The essential quality of Reality is relationship. Being in relationship, being in connection, makes us feel alive, brings us to life.
THREE LEVELS OF RELATIONSHIP There are fundamentally three levels of relationship. First, there are Role Mates, where we play specific roles, like the breadwinner, who was usually the man. The woman is the homemaker.
Then we move to level two: Soul Mate relationships: We’re really loving each other. We’re trying to create space together. We’re going dancing together. We’re working on our wounds together. We’re accessing each other’s inner children.
Soul Mate relationships are insufficient to activate and sustain the love that truly enlivens us, the love that blows us open and makes us feel the pulsating, alive, awake Eros, which is self-evidently valuable and meaningful. After the early stage of falling in love, we often fall into a pattern. Our relationships may sustain themselves, or they may not; they may have more depth—but they’re not alive.
We look at the horizon together. When we share a vision, we have shared values, we have something we want to do together in the world, we want to awaken together and give our gifts together. As Whole Mates, we want to create a unique “we” which has unique gifts. A unique “we” in which we come together as evolutionary lovers, as love expressing itself, as evolution awakening in us, in person. We want to create not just ordinary intimacy, but outrageous or evolutionary intimacy. This fully emerges when we come together as a unique “we.”
We create a unique “we” together, in which we have unique gifts that together we give to the whole of Reality.
In an evolutionary, Whole Mate relationship, each individual is a distinct Unique Self, and each serves the other’s Unique Self emergence, so there’s a shared space where a unique “we” is created that infuses our separate gifts.
conscious. Because: Reality is lines and circles, all the way up and all the way down: The allurement of lines to circles begins at the very moment of the Big Bang.
Elementary particles are attracted and repulsed. There’s autonomy and there’s communion. Lines move forward, circles rest. The circle attracts, the line separates. There’s attraction and repulsion. Protons have positive charge; electrons have negative charge. It’s all actually happening at the very subatomic level of reality: Reality as lines and circles, attracting and repelling.
Reality Is An Evolutionary Love Story
In fact, all the way up and all the way down, Reality is lines and circles coming together, creating new wholes that are larger than the sum of their parts. Reality is Eros. Reality is a love story.
As Unique Self, I choose you out of a sense of being awake and alive. And because I’m awake, I can attract someone who can be my evolutionary partner. I’m attracting evolutionary intimacy.
Our audacious intention is to evolve the source code of what it means to be a relationship—and to do so we must stake our lives on an absolute commitment to that source code evolution and transformation. Believe me, I wouldn’t be publicly saying this, staking my life on this, if I wasn’t serious. These are not empty words.
In other words, Reality is not just eternal being—Reality is also becoming. So we must create an evolutionary relationship to life.
The universe isn’t just an eternal fact—it’s a story. It’s going somewhere—and we’re part of the story. I’m not just spaciousness; I’m also ecstatic urgency.
The Universe is a love story—not a light romance, not a love story without suffering. It’s an Outrageous Love Story, and each of us is a central actor in this love story. And the way this love story turns out is directly and absolutely dependent on our ability to awaken as Outrageous Love.
The Difference Between Ordinary Love And Outrageous Love
Ordinary love is a strategy of the separate self ego that seeks comfort and survival. And when I lose the emotional experience, I think I’ve lost (ordinary) love. All the love songs and almost all the books are about ordinary love. And crucially, ordinary love is way too small to hold outrageous pain.
The difference between ordinary love and Outrageous Love is the difference between a very high number and infinity. It’s everything. And you have to feel it. Hold hands with someone with ordinary love it. It’s nice. You feel like you belong for a second. Their hands get a little clammy, but you keep them there. You’re in ordinary love. But you feel like, “I kind of belong. It’s kind of okay.”
Hold someone’s hands with Outrageous Love and time stops still, and you enter the timeless time and the placeless place—eternity resides in that moment. You no longer have to ask the question about why life is meaningful because the entire meaning of life is totally self-evident right there. The questions disappear not because you have an answer, but because you’re in the fullness of Outrageous Love. When you’re feeling Outrageous Love, you don’t need answers—there are no questions. You’re in presence itself.
Skinner’s book Beyond Freedom and Dignity—which animates the deep structure of the internet, of the digital age, because the ideas in this book guide the influential MIT Media Lab—says that love is not real. Both Skinner and the MIT Media Lab argue that we can and should invisibly guide people toward what they should desire, what kind of person they should marry, what they should like, and what values they should hold. In this way, we’re completely dissociated from what we could call our own “scripts of desire.”
The only way to transmute shame is to realize that, in the depth of my being, my needs are filled with dignity. My needs are not shameful. When we love each other madly, we look into each other’s eyes, and we say, Your need is my allurement. Lovers look into each other’s eyes, and they say, Your need is my allurement. And the true act of sexing occurs when lovers say to the Beloved, Your need is my allurement. This is why true sexuality can powerfully heal shame, which is the original shame of being humiliated in having my basic needs met.
Love Is Not Hard To Find—Love Is Impossible To Avoid
Every single second we’re being showered with evolutionary, Outrageous Love. The universe feels, and the universe feels love. Ordinary love is much harder to find. You buy books to strategize ordinary love. Once you start to see it, you realize that Outrageous Love is everywhere—because it’s the nature of reality.
SPEECH THAT EMERGES FROM THE SILENCE The silence, like the ocean, is the circle. Why do we rest in the depth of the silence? Just because. Why do we look at the ocean? Just because. Later on, we’ll be going deep into each of the line qualities and circle qualities. Right now we’re in the circle—always already. We’re held—just because. We’re welcome in Cosmos, always already welcome.
When speech meets the silence—the line and circle—and Fuck each other open, then gorgeousness and Outrageous Love is born. It’s happening right now. So, in the silence of this moment, the line enters the circle and gives birth to dharma—it lives in us.
When the circle drops into gorgeousness, into depth, when it merges with the line moving forward, it becomes a spiral—and the line/circle births something new that never existed before.
Just being deeply present with each other is no longer enough. You need a shared vision or project that serves the whole field of Reality.
Love is driving this entire process, the Eros that drives all of Reality. This allurement drives quarks together to become sub-atomic particles; it drives electrons, neutrons, and protons to become atoms, which in turn leads to the creation of molecules, and then complex molecules, finally resulting in the Second Big Bang: the creation of life, the creation of cells.
CONTEMPLATION EXERCISE: SENTENCE COMPLETION, “AS AN OUTRAGEOUS LOVER…” We have to make this real in our bodies. I’m going to give you a series of sentence stems for you to complete. Just write whatever words come up. No judgment, no censoring—write a couple of words. It’s all you need. As ego self, my response to fear is… As ego self, my response to anger is… As ego self, my response to uncertainty is… As ego self, my response to pleasure is… Just record your immediate responses.
Now, change postures, shift in your seat so you can transform out of that mode of consciousness, and from the new embodied perspective, complete the following: As an Outrageous Lover, as the evolutionary impulse, my response to fear is… As an Outrageous Lover, as the evolutionary impulse, my response to anger is… As an Outrageous Lover, as the evolutionary impulse, my response to uncertainty… As an Outrageous Lover, as the evolutionary impulse, my response to pleasure is…
As we saw in the first two chapters, the only question is: Are you an Outrageous Lover? Are you committing outrageous acts of love? Are you giving your unique gifts to the Cosmos? That’s what makes you sexy. That’s what makes you erotic. That’s what makes you alive.
That’s the one standard that we’re invited to. That’s the one intention we’re setting.
That’s where love begins. To be fascinated, to be allured, to feel allurement is to step into the wild love affair that is the Universe: A Love Story.
Every proton, every neutron, every electron, every plant, every animal has a unique set of allurements—and Fuck is happening every second. This is the divine marriage, hieros gamos, talked about in the ancient traditions, which happens every second of Reality—from quarks, to protons, electrons, the electromagnetic field, all the way up and down.
Obligation is an expression of intimacy. Intimacy creates obligation.
Laughter lives at the edge.
The key distinction is: the real risk you must take is one where there’s major negative consequences if you don’t take it.
An enlightened person makes new mistakes all the time. Most of us are making old mistakes. We just keep going around and round doing the same mistakes. We’re not moving forward. I’m not suggesting perfection. I’m saying: wake up and make new mistakes.
Story Implies Telos
Telos is causation that comes from the future—a future with more value—and that desire lives in the present.
CIRCLE QUALITIES Intimacy and communion. Receptivity. The quality of receiving, of being a receiver. Being “for its own sake.” In Hebrew we say, lishma—for its own sake. Radiance, beauty. Depth, which has a quality of the light, and a quality of the shadow—think about quicksand, for example. (This doesn’t, however, mean the line is superficial.) The circle is circular. It goes round and round. The line is like a tangent, directed toward a goal, or trying to escape and get out of the circle. The circle can get stuck. But of course, in its light, it’s so beautiful and holy to stay, to rest in the rotation. Forgetting of the self. Inclusion. Everything has a place in the circle, which is beautiful. Of course, this can get confusing because it might be hard to create an appropriate hierarchy. Egalitarianism. All things are equal—this has both beautiful and destructive tendencies. Container. While a line protects from what’s on the outside, the container nurtures what’s
CIRCLE QUALITY TWO: RECEIVING All of these circle qualities, as you’ll see, are all one. In the line, the qualities are related, but distinct. Here, they’re distinct, but all part of the same flow. The second circle quality is the quality of receiving. This is the opposite of the line quality of penetration. As a circle, I want to talk softly. I want to attract. Let’s dance. It’s gentle. When he was conducting his orchestras, Beethoven was receiving—it was like electricity going through him. Of course, if there’s too much electricity, you get electrocuted. But when you’ve got just the right amount of electricity, what happens is that you begin to dance.
But if that’s true, then the world is a flatland, a surface world. And what’s the only thing to do in a surface world? Go and take what you can. The only available way to move forward is to create your own individual reality. The ultimate expression of that line quality in the world is Ayn Rand—she’s capturing the Eros of the line, not the Eros of the circle. Notice that no children ever appear in her books. This is because children are dependent and need nurturing, and vulnerable people in her books are mocked and caricatured in some way. But the characters who are strong—Hank Rearden, Dagny Taggart, John Galt, Dominique Francon—these are all line figures. They are entering the world and wresting meaning out of it—that is their dignity.
Jedi are not the old knights thrusting their swords and lances forward based on the strength of their separate self. No, it’s another vision. Jedi Knights train themselves also to become a circle—in order to receive the Force of the universe. And when I receive the Force of the universe, then the lightsaber goes shshshshsh and penetrates reality. I don’t need to be much more descriptive for you to understand that that’s a phallic image. [Laughter]
Who can you trust to transform you? Someone who radically, wildly, outrageously loves you by fully receiving you. When you actually create a radical space of Outrageous Love—when the Beauty says, “I’m committed to the Beast,” and when the princess says, “I’m going to kiss the frog,” then radical transformation happens.
However, if you have hieros gamos at play, then you’re going to birth something that’s undeniably new: a new emergent—and that new emergent is you. It’s the emergence of your Unique Self. And Unique Selves birth into existence other Unique Selves.
Look at The Lord of the Rings. For Goddess’ sake, what’s a ring? And what do we call the ring? My precious. What is everyone looking for? The circle. Those who have the ring become drunk and crazy because the circle is not balanced with the line, which undercuts and destroys Reality.
So the quality of lishma, which means “for its own sake,” non-instrumental—as in music, art, sexuality, play—is absolutely critical. The path and the destination are the same. Why do we want to have an orgasm? For its own sake. I don’t want to have an orgasm in order to get something else. I want it for its own sake. Beauty is also for its own sake.
The ring in fact represents anti-value. The ring stands against all value. The ring is the unadulterated, unapologetic drive for power denuded, stripped of all its polite disguises. The ring represents power for its own sake. It’s hard to fully understand this. The drive for power is so strong. We dress up the drive for power in so many distressing disguises. Remember, power is important.
We’re saying that the Mystery is the Infinity of Power together with the Infinity of Intimacy. We can no longer afford to split power from intimacy, or the result will be an ethical disaster.
HIEROS GAMOS ONE: LINE + CIRCLE = SPIRAL Line: geometric line Circle: geometric circle Hieros gamos: geometric spiral
Within every hieros gamos, the circular quality of Reality that is pure feeling and depth for its own sake comes together with the line quality of thrusting forward—to form a new synergy that we refer to as a spiral.
We don’t circle merely to repeat—we circle to deepen.
HIEROS GAMOS TWO: THE PENETRATING INSIGHT Line: penetrating insight Circle: mad love Hieros gamos: insight is fully received
HIEROS GAMOS THREE: LOVING THE MOMENT OPEN, BEING LOVED OPEN BY THE MOMENT Line: loving the moment open Circle: being loved open by the moment Hieros gamos: simultaneous loving open and being loved open
That’s not how it works. The rejection of all authority and attainment is a deep shadow of circle energy. The structure of Reality is built on a hierarchy between teacher and student. When we completely destroy that hierarchy, or when social media interrupts it, or when we say it’s all circle—“We’re all equal, and our opinions hold equal value”—that’s the shadow of the circle. One of the qualities of the circle—remember, the Hebrew word for circle is igul, relating to the word egalitarian—is that we’re all equidistant from the center, which is beautiful and holy and necessary. However, the shadow of this is real: Hierarchy is denied. No values are better than others. No teachings are better than others. No transmission is better than others. Wisdom is a matter of personal taste and personal preference. Quite frankly, we know that’s bullshit—utter nonsense. We need a hieros gamos between total respect for each Unique Self (circle) and proper respect for authority (line).
The holding is the circle, and the penetration is the line—and they must happen together: hieros gamos.
MIZMOR SHIR This is the chant called “Mizmor Shir,” which comes from the Solomonic lineage, which David gave to his son, Solomon, with his (archetypal, metaphoric) thousand wives. This means that Solomon was married to She in all Her forms. On his deathbed, the elder David says to Solomon, “Let me give you a gift, my final gift before I pass away.” This chant has been transmitted in the lineage from master to student for 3,200 years. He says, Mizmor shir leyom hashabbat, “let’s sing for a Sabbath day.” Sabbath doesn’t only mean one particular day. Sabbath is when we’re no longer in space—we’re building a palace in time. Sabbath is the palace where all is redeemed—we live for the timeless time when all is liberated.
When the circle loses its natural relationship to line, when there’s no hieros gamos, it cannot on its own birth beauty. It cannot birth elegance. It cannot birth goodness. It can only birth destruction and corruption for all who seek the ring.
HIEROS GAMOS NINE: FROM MEDIEVAL KNIGHT TO JEDI KNIGHT Line: thrusting of the sword Circle: field of Eros, the Force Hieros gamos: rising lightsaber
Looking deeply into another’s eyes is a necessary but insufficient basis for long-term relationship happiness. This goes against all the current relationship advice we have. You can know all the technologies. You can know all the love languages. You can memorize every relationship book on the market. And your relationship ultimately will collapse. I promise. Why? Because: You have a yearning and I have a yearning to play a larger game. We’re grand, not just grandiose. We want to participate in the evolution of love. We want to become heroes. We want to know that our lives matter and will transform all of Reality. We don’t want to be the small and contracted figure in the title of Wilhelm Reich’s book, Listen, Little Man!