The Power of Divine Eros

Two innovative spiritual teachers show how to use desire and passion—eros—as a gateway to realizing our fullest potential
 
What do desire and passion have to do with our spiritual journey? According to A. H. Almaas and Karen Johnson, they are an essential part of it.
Conventional wisdom cautions that desire and passion are opposed to the spiritual path—that engaging in desire will take you more into the world, into egoic life. And for most people, that is exactly what happens. We naturally tend to experience wanting in a self-centered way. The Power of Divine Eros challenges the view that the divine and the erotic are separate. When we open to the energy, aliveness, spontaneity, and zest of erotic love, we will find it inseparable from the realm of the holy and sacred. When this is understood, desire and passion become a gateway to wholeness and to realizing our full potential.
Through guided exercises, the authors reveal how our relationships become opportunities on the spiritual journey to express ourselves authentically, to relate with openness, and to discover dynamic inner realms with another person. Through embodying the energy of eros, each of us can learn to be fully real and alive in all of our interactions.

A. H. ALMAAS is the pen name of A. Hameed Ali, the Kuwaiti-born originator of the Diamond Approach to the realization of our true nature—a spiritual path that integrates modern psychology with the insights of Sufism, Buddhism, Gurdjieff, and other wisdom traditions. Since 1976 he has guided individuals and groups through his school of inner work, the Ridhwan School, which has branches in California, Colorado, and Europe.
KAREN JOHNSON is a longtime colleague of A. H. Almaas, with whom he cofounded the Diamond Approach. They have been teaching together for many years. Karen Johnson was educated as an artist and then received an MA in psychology.