Disciplining and sanctifying desires related to the needs of the body
After Hercules faced the Nemean Lion—symbol of rage—and killed the Lernaean Hydra—image of uncontrolled desires—King Eurystheus ordered him to perform a new task: to capture alive the boar of Erymanthus, a powerful, wild, and destructive beast that descended from the mountains and ravaged villages, people, and crops.
This task carries a subtle but essential message: the beast was not to be killed but captured and controlled.
This work symbolizes the spiritual man’s relationship to his own material body and to the desires connected with its needs. If the first two tasks showed us how to deactivate the destructive impulses of anger and how to transform passionate desires, this task calls us to learn to live harmoniously in our bodies—without denying them, but also without letting them rule our lives.
The body has natural needs: to eat, sleep, drink, breathe, enjoy itself, and express itself through physical love and touch. These are not sins. They are the laws of biological life, ordained by Divine wisdom for the maintenance and development of the body as a vehicle for the spirit.
But these needs can be accompanied by desires, which, if not recognized, can turn into passions and chains:
- Eating becomes craving and gluttony.
- Drinking becomes attachment to taste, then addiction (alcohol, soft drinks, drugs).
- Breathing becomes shallow, unconscious, and blocked by emotions.
- Sleep turns into laziness, into escapism.
- Sexuality—the gift of communion—becomes obsession, consumption, compulsion, and escape from inner emptiness.
The desire for pleasure takes the place of balance. And the wild boar begins to run through our lives, shattering our will, our lucidity, and our path to truth.
But the body is not the enemy. It is the temple of the soul. That is why the seeker of Truth is not called to repress his bodily desires but to sanctify them. What does this mean?
Sanctifying desires means raising them from the instinctive plane to the plane of consciousness:
- Eat with gratitude, in moderation, understanding that food is living energy.
- Drink water as a blessing from the Earth and not as emotional compensation.
- Breathe deeply, sacredly, as an act of communion with Life itself.
- Sleep with discipline and respect for the rhythm of the body, but without escaping into sleep.
- Live sexuality as a sacred union between souls, not as a release of inner tension.
Every desire related to the body can be either a gateway to animality or a gateway to sacredness.
The boar of Erimanthus symbolizes precisely this biological force: cruel, real, instinctive, but domesticable. We must not kill it but capture it patiently and subject it to spiritual power. Hercules did not fight it brutally—he pursued it with perseverance, tired it out, and bound it.
The seeker of Truth must do the same: follow the movements of his body, observe the desires that arise from his physical instincts, and learn to control them. Not with fear. Not with hatred. But with will, with love, with wisdom.
This is one of the most subtle inner works. Because the boar is always with us. Any food, any glance, any smell, or any touch can awaken a desire in the body. The seeker must learn to witness these reactions, not to judge them, but also not to be carried away by them.
In visualization, he will see himself following the beast, crossing mountains and forests, growing tired but not giving up. He will see how the beast slips in the snow, how Hercules binds it with determination and dignity—not to hurt it, but to bring it under control.
This is the work. To bring the body into harmony with the spirit. To free yourself from the bondage of needs transformed into passions. To learn to say “yes” to the body when necessary and “no” when it is only a desire for comfort or pleasure without purpose.
Thus, this work is not a struggle with the body but a transfiguration of the relationship with it. An essential step for any being who wants to become free, present, lucid, and alive in truth.