The Erotic state of drive is pure, unadulterated expression, truth, spontaneity, joy, and resilience. The sensation conferred is power. There is a neutrality that permits fearless penetration of consciousness and the ability to translate energy to intuition and liberation.
In its tumescent state, drive occurs as hypervolatility, reactivity, violation, lack of discrimination, and impulsiveness—the result of drive disconnected from eroticized pressure and the intimacy, empathy, and compassion that guides it. The tumescent state of drive is a root response to both constriction of tumescent pressure and vacillation of tumescent hovering in an effort to liberate consciousness from the bondage of either condition.
Hypervolatility is activated by feeling hurt and the anxiety of isolation. Because of this anxiety, as hypervolatiles, we are very attached and passionate. At an extreme range this can feel almost obsessive and compulsive or manic. The anxiety activates engagement because engagement beats back the force of isolation. The feeling of isolation is loneliness, which is distinct from solitude. Loneliness feels desolate, while solitude has a nourishing quality. This is often what draws most of our attention.
The anxiety of loneliness wakes up an energy that can be channeled skillfully or unskillfully. Unskillfully channeled, the anxiety gets forced outward, ignoring boundaries and creating chaos through transgressive behavior. Or, the anxiety gets forced inward as a kind of shame or self-abandonment. These feelings can alternate.
The result of this cycle is that it often creates the very hurt and isolated feelings that we as hypervolatiles try to avoid. This is how we get trapped in our own cycles. We panic to avoid loneliness, then feel such shame or anxiety that we believe no one can really understand us. In these places, we need to hear from ourselves or from others that we are not alone. This can drain some of the reactive energy.
With drive tumescence, there is a fundamental sense of over-reactive, disproportionate responses. Rather than being locked out or locked down, the mind is unguided, reacting against any attempt to restrict it. It can be expressed as “over”: overly emotional, overly gluttonous, overly withdrawn.
Neither shame nor pride stick here for long, but both can make an appearance. However, the moment either feeling state impedes motion, it is moved out of the way. Thus, punitive efforts rarely work with this mind, nor does any form of flattery. In its tumesced state, the drive consciousness is the reactive response, and in the Erotic state, it is the deliberate and aimed response. It is connected to both pressure and hovering consciousness. Without these, the raw power of the drive consciousness will just sweep through, but when combined with them, its power can change the world.
Drive consciousness finds refuge in the spot. When it is off the spot, there is no safety, so we are driven crazy when other people are off the spot too. It is the pressure and hovering consciousness’s jobs to correct off the spotness in the world, and if drive consciousness is connected with these, then they can bring the group back onto the spot.
The things that move hovering and pressure consciousness do not move drive consciousness. Drive consciousness’s system is one that is autotelic and only interested in getting on the spot. If we cannot get on the spot with what we are working with in drive consciousness, we will roll over everything until we do.