expanding
“the more space you create inside yourself, the less anything controls you.”
— nicole daedone
the human experience oscillates between contraction and expansion. between the gripping fear of loss and the surrender to the vastness of life. between eros, pseudo-eros, and thanatos—forces that shape the way we move through love, desire, and existence itself.
we mistake intensity for meaning. we confuse grasping with devotion. but what if freedom isn’t about rejecting love or numbing passion, but about becoming vast enough to hold it all?
salt, water, and the spectrum of eros
imagine salt in water. a cup of salt in a glass makes it undrinkable. in a pool, you barely taste it. in a river, it disappears.
the salt doesn’t change—the space around it does.
the same is true for love, passion, and longing. when we live in a contracted state, every experience—every rush of love, every pang of loss—becomes overwhelming. but when we expand, we can hold the full spectrum of life without losing ourselves in it.
eros is intelligence in love. it moves, it breathes, it opens. it allows us to experience life as it is, without needing to possess or control it. pseudo-eros is the illusion of passion—the high mistaken for the source, the craving mistaken for love. it feeds on gripping, on drama, on the thrill of almost losing. and thanatos? it is the collapse, the contraction into nothingness, the fear that love is only safe when controlled or absent.
which force runs your life?
romance, obsession, and the trap of pseudo-eros
romance is like salt—small, potent, intoxicating. it makes you crave, makes you obsess, makes you grasp. pseudo-erosthrives on this energy, convincing you that if you don’t grip tightly, it will vanish. that if you let go, you will lose something essential.
but gripping doesn’t keep it—it kills it.
this is the trap of pseudo-eros. it keeps you chasing the next high, the next drama, the next moment of electric friction. until one day, the romance must get bigger, the sex wilder, the emotions more intense—until nothing moves you at all. the craving stays, but the electricity is gone.
the answer? expansion.
expanding beyond the high
most people mistake the high for the source. they think love is possession instead of liberation. they think if they let go, they will lose everything.
but love was never about the other. it was always about you.
how much space you can create, how much feeling you can hold, how much you can let move through you without clinging.
this is what leonard cohen meant when he said, “i lost the only thing i loved, and then i loved everything.” when you expand, you lose nothing. you gain the ability to hold more, to feel more, to experience more—without becoming trapped by any of it.
love is not possession, love is movement
we are conditioned to think that loving deeply means holding tightly. but real love is vast, not constricting. it moves, it breathes, it changes.
freedom isn’t about cutting things out—it’s about growing big enough to hold it all.
when you think you must reject something to be free, you’ve already lost. because true freedom is the ability to let life flow through you—without needing to grasp, without needing to own.
the false choice: control vs. losing yourself
people believe they have only two options:
dive in and risk losing themselves.
reject it and stay in control.
but this is a false choice.
the answer isn’t rejecting desire—it’s becoming vast enough that nothing takes you over.
so instead of rejecting, you expand.
instead of gripping, you soften.
instead of needing, you open.
this is the art of holding more. this is what it means to truly experience everything—without getting stuck.
and this is what it means to live.
questions that dissolve, that transcend
how much of your love is freedom, and how much is fear?
what would it feel like to let go, yet hold everything?
what if expansion is not about more—but about dissolving the need to grip?
what if eros is not desire, but the spaciousness that allows love to flow freely through you?
