If You Can’t Come Back, You Weren’t Initiated Subscribe to Substack Sign-up for the newsletter “Eroticism, may be said, is assenting to life up to the point of death.” — Georges Bataille I am reading Georges Bataille’s English translation of Erotism: Death and Sensuality, in which erotic desire is revealed not simply as pleasure or indulgence, but as a willingness to engage life with passion and risk, where the self loosens, taboos give way, and we skim the edge of death. Erotic authority is knowing how close to the edge you can go and having the Somatic intelligence to find your way back. There is a part of you that is not interested in being well-adjusted.It doesn’t want balance.It doesn’t want approval.It wants to feel more—even if that means flirting with the edge of annihilation. That part knows the truth most people spend their lives avoiding: the erotic isn’t polite. It isn’t safe. It doesn’t care about your spiritual vocabulary or your relationship agreements. It presses. It pulls. It asks whether you’re willing to loosen your grip on who you think you are. This is why people keep throwing themselves at peak experiences. Psychedelics. Tantra weekends. Kink and BDSM scenes that promise transformation. Religious devotion dressed up as transcendence. Extreme sports. Relationships that swear they’re about freedom. All of them whisper: Come here. Come closer. Dissolve. And, it works. You disappear just enough to feel alive. Then it’s over. The room empties. The drug wears off. The rope comes off. The altar is dismantled. And you’re back in your body, alone with a nervous system that has no idea what to do with what just happened. So you chase it again. This is where the erotic gets misunderstood. Not as sex, but as escape. Not as intimacy, but as transcendence without consequence. Without preparation. Without return.