When I Look at You… I See Only Roses!

5 minute read

The years in which I wrote nothing were scattered with many events, experiences and incidents. Some bordered on the impossible, others on the abnormal, and others... I know that many muffled voices in the background want to hear them, but stories are not true word for word. They are merely inspired by reality, so I will not tell them, not even as stories.

Some time ago, I described my view of this great day, and of other days dedicated to love. My opinion was not about the beauty of experiencing it, but about the fact that there should not be one particular day. Every day should be lived in the same way. You may say this is impossible, but if it were possible for everyone, where would the beauty and mystery remain? Some people do not receive even fragments of love, let alone experience it every day.

Some have lost it because of choices made in life. Others lost it because mistakes altered it or even caused it to disappear from the soul of the person who once surrendered to love.

I know I keep trying to speak about love as an existence in itself, but for now I must speak about what each of us knows, because everyone experiences it, or has experienced it, at some level. Yes... even an experience reached through sex can count if we extend love's expression to the border of what is considered abnormal. Many will say that this is not love. I did not say that sex is love. I said that even there we can see its reflection, because without some trace of love, however small, even the idea of sex would not exist.

It is similar to what many atheists or agnostics do with the idea of God. They disagree with the image supplied by certain religions, or with the word used to represent it, but agree with the idea of a force or energy that governs existence, or through which existence manifests. They say, for example, that it cannot be here or there, that it must be only here or only there. Yet just as God is Love, love is everywhere - here and there, in one form or another.

In my understanding, God ceased long ago to exist as anything other than Love. I prefer a feminine god, perhaps in the same way that a woman may prefer a masculine god. Following this thought, I could be sarcastic and say that the masculine character given to God by religions is the reason there are so many other orientations in the world...

When you dedicate your life to experiencing love, there will be moments that resemble routine. You become so blinded by its presence that you are no longer conscious of it, although you speak constantly about it and constantly try to remain aware of it. The same thing happens between lovers. Perhaps that is why days dedicated to love were invented, and perhaps that is also why trials and suffering appear within a loving couple. Married people do not count...

I am joking, of course.

This forgetfulness also appears in our relationship with the air we breathe, the flowers we see, the wind that touches our hair, the sun that warms our souls and the clouds that soothe our hearts. It appears in many other elements and apparent trivialities of ordinary existence that we can feel or perceive only when we enter a meditative state, or meditation itself. The meditative state begins the moment we become conscious - when we are awake.

You say that you are awake, but are you truly awake? Why, then, do you not perceive all these things? If you already perceive them, that is good news for both of us. None of this can be perceived unless you live within the heart, which means that you live love. Only loving for the sake of love, and for nothing else, can lead you towards this level of awareness. It will then be reflected around you, both in your relationship with the person you love and in everything that surrounds you.

When you become conscious of love, you will see its reflection even in things that everyone rejects or forbids while everyone practises them. This is hypocrisy. I am referring to controversial ideas about sex, especially the claim that sex has nothing to do with love.

Sex does not represent love. I agree. Yet in practice it can reflect love at different levels, according to how far each person's heart can lead and permit them to go. Certain religions caused great harm by distorting this phenomenon and directing humanity towards a false understanding of it. Not religion itself, in fact, but the people who wrote and reshaped that religion. You cannot pronounce judgement on something before you have practised it.

Without the guidance of the heart, this energy can indeed be distorted and can lead to mental deviations. Perhaps that is why sex was separated from the experience of love. Although humanity has progressed in understanding this phenomenon, shadows from the past still haunt civilisation because thousands of years of psychological programming instilled the idea that sex is a sin.

I will not continue further because many prudish readers will understand something entirely different from what I am trying to express. I am speaking to those with open minds, so that they may understand that what they experience is still a reflection of love, and perhaps accept its presence more fully in their lives.

When they become conscious of this, they will no longer see only the body of the person they desire. The lived experience of love will transform that person into a divinity. Desire will disappear as if by magic and, by surrendering completely to the lived experience of love and seeing the divine within that experience, they will see roses and feel the fragrance spread around them by living it.

This reminds me of an older saying: "Be sinful... but full of love!" It leads inevitably to another: "When I look at you... I see only roses!"

First published in Romanian on 14 February 2015. This English translation preserves the perspective of that period.

Original Romanian article: Când te privesc... văd doar trandafiri!.