The Relational breath of Union part 1. Eros in the realm of Hungry Ghosts.
- Sandra O Ortiz V
- 7 days ago
- 7 min read
The Story of Bluebeard (An Archetypal Map)
*As mentioned in the book "Women who run with wolves" by Clarissa Pinkola Estes.
Bluebeard is a man of immense charm and wealth. He is cultured, articulate, magnetic. There is only one thing about him that unsettles people: his beard is blue, an unnatural colour, a detail that does not quite belong. Still, many are drawn to him. He chooses a young woman and offers her a life of abundance: comfort, beauty, privilege.
She agrees to marry him.
Before leaving on a journey, he gives her the keys to every room in the house.
“You may go anywhere you wish,” he tells her.
“All of this is yours.”
Then he pauses.
“There is only one small room you must never enter.”
At first, the woman is content. She explores the house, room by room. Each space is richer than the last. But slowly, something stirs inside her — a quiet unease she cannot yet name. The forbidden key grows heavy in her hand.
It is not curiosity that moves her. It is instinct.
When she opens the door, she discovers the truth: the bodies of the women who came before her, those who accepted the gifts, the charm, the intimacy, but were never allowed full knowing.
The room reveals what Bluebeard truly represents: a force that invites closeness while demanding silence, secrecy, but most importantly, the surrender of intuition.
When Bluebeard returns and discovers she has entered the room, he becomes enraged. He does not explain. He does not negotiate. He prepares to destroy her.
At this moment, the woman does something crucial. She does not try to reason with him or soften him. She calls for help.
In some versions of the tale, her brothers arrive. Psychologically, they symbolise inner masculine allies, discernment, clarity, decisiveness, action. When she asks for help, she turns toward the parts of herself capable of protection and truth.
Bluebeard is destroyed.
The woman inherits the house, a symbol of restored sovereignty and instinctual authority.
Bluebeard as Wounded Eros
Although this tale can be seen from diverse angles, specially when it comes to our relationship with our Self and the way we try to deceive Soul, it is important to pause here and reflect in terms of the understanding of the Erotic we are trying to build.
Bluebeard is not simply a villain to be defeated. He is also a figure of impoverished eros.
He is wealthy, cultured, seductive, and profoundly cut off from tenderness.
He does not know how to remain in relationship when truth appears. He does not know how to tolerate reflection, slowness, or the presence of another’s instinct. He does not know how to be fully seen without controlling the terms of intimacy.
In this sense, Bluebeard lives in a state of inner starvation.
His violence does not come from strength, but from fragility. The hidden room are all of those parts of his soul in exile due to wounding or unlived life. They come from a psyche that cannot bear accountability, cannot bear limits, cannot bear the interruption of intensity.
This does not excuse the harm he causes. But it helps us understand the pattern more fully.
Shadow eros is not power. It is unmet need wearing the mask of intensity.
Bluebeard's women and the Eros that holds vulnerability
When the wife opens the forbidden room, it is the moment she decides to follow her instincts and her intuition, her soul's guidance (feminine here is soul and not gender). It is the moment in which she begins to understand that she is being shaped by the structure of Bluebeard's psyche, little by little loosing her sense of Self.
And when the brothers arrive, they do not destroy desire. They interrupt a pattern that has lost its capacity for care. What is destroyed is not eros. What is destroyed is the destructive dynamics of the erotic relational pull.
She represents the experience of the Eros that holds vulnerability where her life-force that is being seduced and controlled. When this happens, arousal that at first felt intense and captivating, may then be followed by anxiety. Desire is followed by depletion. Attraction is followed by loss of self.
Erotic interaction accelerates too quickly, bypassing emotional containment and consent at the level of pacing, not necessarily words. The nervous system enters a dissociative arousal state where boundaries blur, agency weakens, and shame follows. At times the experience of tenderness is suppressed. Responsibility is avoided. Intimacy collapses into sensation.
The heart cannot ride along. And grief follows with it. At times too, a addictive need of the person from whom the dysregulated eros comes from.
The eros that holds vulnerability does not mean that is weak, but it is an eros that longs for a home that does not yet exist inside her. Her wound is not being naïve, but the learned belief that love requires the sacrifice of instinct. Dysregulated eros often meets with an eros that holds a vulnerability and this dynamic is asymmetrical:
the vulnerable one bleeds
the shadow one feeds
Her wound is the wound of disconnection from instinct through longing for belonging. That is because she carries the wound of believing that safety, love, and meaning will be granted from outside, if she adapts enough.
Her shadow is not predation. Her shadow is self-abandonment in the name of love.
Her psyche holds a longing for containment, a hunger for meaning, beauty, and belonging, an unconscious belief that intensity equals depth, a learned tendency to override instinct in order to maintain connection.
Holding Both Sides of the Spell
In relational life, many of us will encounter this pattern from both sides. Some of us have been drawn toward intensity because it promised aliveness, belonging, or meaning. Some of us have, at times, used erotic charge to regulate emptiness, fear, or shame, without realising what we were asking of the other.
And some of us have known both positions at different moments in our lives.
This breath is not about condemnation. It is about restoring consciousness to eros.
The Realm of Hungry Ghosts
The wound of dysregulated eros is not too much desire, but desire that was never safely accompanied. It longs for union, but has lost trust in staying. Dysregulated eros arises when connection was once needed but not safely available, and intensity became a substitute for presence. Dysregulated eros is born from a fracture between desire and care.
At some point in the psyche’s history, the nervous system learned that closeness was dangerous, tenderness costs too much and moving slow was risk to being abandon.
So eros adapts.
It learns to:
move fast
move intensely
bypass reflection
avoid accountability
avoid stillness
avoid being seen too fully
Not because it wants to harm, but because staying once hurt too much.
The hunger is not sexual. Sex becomes the delivery system for something deeper that cannot yet be held. When intimacy cannot be lived openly, it seeks secrecy. When tenderness feels dangerous, eros hardens into urgency. When longing cannot be integrated into life, it becomes compulsive.
This form of eros often emerges under stress, emotional fragmentation, avoidance of responsibility because of carrying too much responsibility at times, or when sexuality is used to regulate anxiety or inner emptiness leading to erotic dissociation.
It may express as urgency, domination, intensity without presence, language that bypasses intimacy. It moves directly through the nervous system, dopamine-driven arousal without reflective awareness.
In Jungian terms, this is libido dissociated from the Self, meaning a life-force that has become orphaned.
This is how these two shapes of eros enters the realm of hungry ghosts. Bluebeard by holding the realm within, and the wife by entering it. For many of us, these patterns are often learned before we have the capacity to choose differently. If any of this feels familiar, you are not alone.
An Integrated Relational Spiral
In the relational spiral, this breath tests integrity.
Desire asks:
“Can you hold me without losing yourself?”
The soul must choose depth over intensity.
Eros in the light is warm, rhythmic, spacious, relational, nourishing. Eros in shadow is sharp, urgent, fragmenting, draining.
The difference is not morality. It is integration.
Eros cannot be learned cognitively. It is learned through encounter, rupture, repair, and discernment. Not all desire is sacred. But desire becomes sacred when it is held by intention, presence, care, and truth.
This is why the relational spiral pauses here, before union, before penetration, before merging.
Only when discernment is restored can eros be trusted to lead toward union rather than loss.
A Relational Practice
Ethical Eros — Discernment Within Contact
This practice is for moments when attraction or erotic intensity is present. It is done internally, while in relationship.
It is not about withdrawing. It is not about accusing. It is about restoring consciousness to desire.
1. Pause and Locate Yourself
As erotic charge or emotional pull arises, pause inwardly.
Notice:
your breath
your chest
your belly
Ask silently:
“Am I here?”
2. Name the Nervous System State
Without judgment, notice:
Do I feel grounded or accelerated?
Do I feel spacious or pressured?
Do I feel more myself, or less?
This is information, not a verdict.
3. Ask the Ethical Question
Gently ask inwardly:
“Is this desire asking for care, or asking to bypass care?”
Notice what the body does when you ask.
Instinct often answers quietly.
4. Hold Both Sides With Truth
If you feel pulled toward intensity:
ask, “What is this intensity trying to soothe?”
If you feel unsettled by the other:
ask, “What boundary is asking to be honoured?”
ask, "Is there any part of me that feels rushed into sexual intimacy?"
Neither question is an accusation.
Both are invitations to responsibility.
5. The Repair Check
Ask one final question:
“If this continues as it is, will it deepen trust or erode it?”
Repair begins when this question is allowed.
Closing
Say inwardly:
“Desire is not wrong.”
“Care is not optional.”
“I choose eros that can remain.”
Return to the moment.
Preparing for Part II
This breath brings us to the threshold of ethical eros.
Part II will explore:
repair and accountability
how eros can re-enter relationship safely
how desire learns to stay present without devouring
how union becomes possible again, not through intensity, but through truth
For now, this pause is essential.
Discernment is not the enemy of love.
It is what allows love to endure.
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