Some moments in life can appear awful, even horrific, until a window opens in our narrowed vision and reveals the hidden offering of the experience: the unexpected building of a backbone in somebody who has always run when the going gets tough, but this time is forced by circumstance to remain; the moment life throws our deepest insecurity at us only to discover that this time we can meet it; when we are torn down only to find that the one who rises is who we were all along.
In a flash, we see what has led up to this point, and what will follow. We can see and feel it in a way we couldn’t before. It is then when we realize the very thing that has been keeping us from recognizing our own perfection is paradoxically also made of that perfection. Once we see it, we cannot see a place where it does not exist.
Perfection often surprises us, revealing itself in our lives most precisely when it confronts the difficulties we face. Until we’ve caught a glimpse of the real thing, we may only know how to perform the idea of perfection in order to cover up our deep disapproval of the pain we find ourselves in. We try to avoid it, to ascend above it, to bypass it. We utter the spiritual world incantation “everything happens for a reason” without actually having done the legwork that authentic perfection may require. The friction between perfection and so-called imperfection signals a desire to uncover a deeper love, to embrace our potential—for growth, of becoming, and of meaning and purpose. To bypass pain is to remove a vital catalyst from this process.
We want a perfection that can rail against the confusions of life in places where the bypass would fall apart.
When avoided, pain convinces us that were we without flaw, we would not be suffering. We find ourselves cut off from the life force of Eros, from the body, and pulled into the mind, into ideas of perfection and thus into perfectionism. We begin an endless attempt to re-create the conditions of perfection, which we can never capture, never grasp—to which we can only surrender.
Rooted in perfection, we are resilient to pain. We can go directly into the center of what hurts, confuses, and deludes us imbued with the felt truth that we know in our hearts and guts—and in every cell in our body—that all of life is real, true, valid, and important. Without the recognition of perfection, we stay confined to the known, well-mapped, predictable parts of ourselves. But if we are able to recognize our perfection, we become fortified.
We can afford to venture into the whole of ourselves, the places inside us that are still wild and that we fear will bring us pain if activated.
where there is still uncertainty and mystery. We will make mistakes and get lost, but we will learn the language of the parts of ourselves that have no other form of expression. We will find no lack of beauty as we explore this inner territory. One of Eros’s stunning endowments is to help us realize how beautiful life is.
The full texture of our physical existence is filled with presence—always evolving and growing, finding new forms. If we perceive lack, it is because the judging mind has contracted around the concepts we have created. We feel the draw, the pull, the call. We feel it in our bodies, in our bones. Perfection radiates effortlessly; it is our natural state. The only place to meet Eros is here, in our bodies. Until we meet Her in this private and intimate way, we will never know the secrets She brings: the beauty, the wisdom, the deep rest.
