So far, the two major qualities of the erotic lover have been perception and giving. We have seen how the sexual models the erotic, hinting to us how we can live a deeper, more profound existence in all areas of our lives. In order to give in the realm of the sexual, we must be great listeners – fully attentive to the subtlest nuances of our lover’s desire. Similarly, to be a giver in all arenas of being requires our mastering the lover’s art of attention.

Just as the sexual lover listens deeply to the needs of the beloved and thereby brings the beloved to satisfaction, so too must the erotic lover, in all facets of life, be deeply listening and attentive to the needs of the beloved.

The Erotic and the Holy
Marc Gafni
www.marcgafni.com

Love doesn’t just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new.

Ursula K. LeGuin, The Lathe of Heaven

Loving and giving are inextricably bound up. The great medieval philosopher Maimonides teaches that to love God is to know the divine in both world and self.  Maimonides understands well that to know and not to love is not to know. But he goes one step further; to love and not to do is not to love. Love is as love does.

So when Maimonides lists what it might mean to love God, he talks about a broad range of simple acts of goodness that we do for other people. Helping the poor, rejoicing with the bride and groom, escorting the dead at a funeral, and the list goes on and on.

Small deeds, simple acts of kindness – that is what makes me a lover of God. People are God incarnate in this world. Each person is a different face of God. To love people by being a giver is to love God. There is no great deed of loving God. There are only small deeds of giving to people – done with great love!

The Erotic and the Holy
Marc Gafni
www.marcgafni.com

To be a lover is to be a giver. It is through the consistent commitment to the growth of the other expressed through regular and spontaneous acts of giving that you become a lover. Slowly over time – in a gradual expanding of self – you are able to regain and surpass even the initial ecstasy of falling in love. The ego boundaries dissolve, self is expanded to include other, and the true intimacy of shared identity is achieved. This is the spiritual dynamic between lover and beloved. It is of course important to remember that the beloved could be a man or woman, a community, a child, a vocation, location, animal or cause. The principle remains the same. There is no loving without giving. Love always involves the willingness to transcend self for the sake of the growth of an other.

The Erotic and the Holy
Marc Gafni
www.marcgafni.com

As we have said, the model for being an erotic lover – in all facets of our existence – is the sexual. I see you and you are gorgeous, magnetically dazzling, to me. I yearn for you – all of me wants to break down and dissolve the barriers between us, to enter the inside, where the world stands still for a moment and  I am inside the chrysalis of all reality. You-nified.

Since being a lover is modeled on the sexual, we understand that love too is a perception. Moreover, love is a Perception-Identification Complex. I perceive the infinite specialness, the God point in you, and identify that highest point in you as the Real You.

In the understanding of the quantum spirit, I understand that my perception not only discloses a reality that exists, it actually brings this particular reality into existence. “I love you” means both “I perceive you in your beauty” and “You become even more beautiful under my gaze.” Remember, love is a verb. So just as when I shine shoes, they become shinier, when I love you, you become lovelier.

Built into our spiritual hardwiring is a great desire to realize the beauty and divinity that is our birthright. The experience of falling in love is a true perception of this. It allows us a glimpse of union; of what life might be when the thick walls of ego dissolve. We understand, nevertheless, that those walls will always be raised again.

Though but a poetic paradox, it is true that that which is razed, will be only raised again. Ego separation will, sooner or later, always snap back into place. It is precisely at this time, that the real work of loving begins. We seek, by doing the work, to reclaim the heights we glimpsed in the initial ecstasy. Those heights, and even greater ones.

The Erotic and the Holy
Marc Gafni
www.marcgafni.com

The perception of falling in love is but one expression, however of a broader kind, of perception. This higher way of seeing is  the path of Ecstasy. Ecstasy, from the Greek word ex-stasis, means “to move beyond stasis,” that is “beyond the apparently solid, into motion, movement, and life itself.”  Its Latin root ex-stare means to stand outside yourself. To say I’m ecstatic is to say “I am beside myself. I am overwhelmed by intense experience. The veils of my illusions have been pierced and something essential touched.

Ecstasy is the highest perception of love. Ecstasy is modeled in the raptures of  sexuality, but expresses itself in every facet of being as well. Ecstatic dance, music, exercise, study or work are all an essential part of what we need to be, both nurtured and wise in the world. The defining feature of ecstasy is that we touch a place of union where the walls have come down. In falling in love we touch it in the experience of intimacy. We have defined intimacy as shared identity. It is precisely this expansion of self  which is ecstatic. The move from I to We is the greatest joy of a human life.

The circle  expands however beyond the We of intimate relationship, beyond even the We of community. Ecstasy is the erotic place where we  touch most clearly what the Hindu Upanishads call tat tvam asi, “That art thou …and thou are that.” Hebrew mystics called it Hitpaalut- radical amazement at wonder of being. In Hitpaalut you  feel like you are enmeshed in the fabric of being – all loneliness and alienation are overcome – not the salve of relationship which can never fully ful-fill you, but a much more profound sense of being at home. A beautiful quote from the Chandogya Upanishad:

“This my spirit within my heart
is greater than the earth, greater than the sky,
greater than the heavens, greater than all worlds.
The all-working, all-wishing, all-smelling, all-tasting one,
that embraces the universe, that is silent, untroubled –
that is the spirit within my heart, that is Brahman.
There unto, when I go hence, shall I attain.
Who knoweth this, he… hath no more doubts.”

The Erotic and the Holy
Marc Gafni
www.marcgafni.com