The Flowering Spirituality of Love

From the love of Kamadeva and Rati, to the lovers in Solomon’s Song, stories of sacred love have inspired the love, imagination and spiritual yearning of couples for millennia.

There is something hidden and transcendent in truly satisfying love. Not that all sex is spiritual – It  can be pure animal passion. Nor is all spirituality sexual.

Its spirituality is akin to the hidden order in art.

As Michael Newberry pointed out in his excellent tutorial on artistic symbolism:

“Representational painting, such as  landscapes, people, and  furniture, is normally  viewed at face value. A flower is just a flower; a chair a chair. But the manner in which an artist uses shapes can convey more than the literal content of the painting.

Once you grasp how an artist plays with shapes to convey another layer of meaning  it can open up a universe of deeper insight and, sometimes, powerfully erotic subtexts. You may never see art again in the same way.”

I, however, prefer to see love as a flower – delicate, yet blushing delicately and full blooded with passion and delicacy.

The floral illusion of love is not without precedent.

As can be seen in the 1923 painting by Georgia O’Keefe is an excellent “detail of a flower but it is also an excellent visual symbol of an open and flushed vulva”

Then there is the Latin word orchid – used in medicine for the testicles. It is so much more delicate than the military Penis and Vagina – meaning sword and sheath.

Art has for millennia cleverly realized that we see our world with more than one form of attention.

As Rubins double profiles attest, we have no choice but to see one reality at a time. An artist may highlight the positive or negative shape of form.and leave us to decide which way we see its reality.

So it is also with flowers.

There sensuous beauty mazes and transfixes us. The majesty of a landscape and the delicacy of a flower, releasing its delicate perfume at the rising of the sun can both amaze and subdue us.

It can be, all at once, full flushed and passionate, and yet intimately personal and sensuous.

But stop and take a closer look. Look beyond the powerful lavender hue or the French gray, or an egg yolk center flush is a circle of daisy petals.

There is great comfort in the earthy mulch of a forest floor. Its fresh broken smell reminds us of something homey and secure.

However, that is only part of the picture. In some ways it is even opposite to the divine reality that the flower offers to the greater world.

There is the bluntly, and well less romantic view. After all, what we see is the light that is not kept by an object. In other words, the object looks more like a far from romantic photographic negative.

However, even the beauty that joyously blesses the world is far greater than our primary senses allow us.

The flower is interested in attracting the pollinating agency of the bee and pesky mosquito. It’s range of colour and the delicacy of its hues reaches far beyond our visual perception into the ultraviolet.

Chlorophyll absorbs wavelengths of violet-blue and and orange-red. Because ancient plants evolved deep in the low light ocean under aquatic bacteria claim some evolutionists.

They did not need to need to use the light frequencies available on land, leaving these colours to be enjoyed above the oceans.

So the 25,000 species of bees , big, small, stingless, aggressive, social,even solitary  are known for their ability to remember, and to  see at much shorter wavelengths

Wavelengths that allow plants sensually lure the bee with the intoxications pollinations in the dance of love.

There is a greater hidden reality that we are only beginning to appreciate.

However, according to Sharman Apt Russell a bee experiences ultraviolet, “reflected back from an object, the bee sees “bee-white,” a color we might not recognize. To a bee, most human-white flowers look blue-green, while the green leaves of this daisy probably look gray‘

For us the bees world would is beyond comprehension – its is byond our understanding like flying blindly in an imperceptible light.

In amany ways, being beyond our range of experience, it may as well be in the dark – a frightening and dark reality that is beyond our comfort.

But then should we be surprised that the dance of pollination be experienced differently by a bee when we as men and women differ in the most intimate merging of souls?

Few of us like to go beyond what we know.

Perhaps it is from the bee and flower that we can learn the lesson of what is truly sacred in sexuality.

The juncture where two can share in a reality that is greater than the sum of the two celibate parts.

Sensual experience so much depends on our ability to access our body and how we are able to view the world.

Yet we have narrowed our focus – especially men, whose experience is highly genital and focused.

We so easily reduce our ability to feel by habitual sexual experience.

The delicate face of a Russian woman, her only feature revealed under  her heavy garb was one of most intensely erotic scenes I have ever witnessed. Her cheek offered to a  gentleman was almost embarrassingly titillating that I had to look away.

I hope we can begin to again balance the freedom of sexual expression with like intimate sensitivity.

Then there are the ritual purity laws found in Islam and Judaism, seen by many as repressive, to others they are a chance for a couple to reconnect on an intimate, non sexual level. To communicate as whole beings and to again reawaken a passion as like a on wedding night the first time each month.

True love forces us to go beyond ourselves, we are at once responsible for our own experience and yet use our experience to help another grow.

For a man women kind are a bit like the divinity Kali  “Kali-Ma, the Dark Mother, holds the two edge sword; she has the power to slay the demons as well as the ability to be compassionate” wrote Starck and Stern.

They then add “At a certain point it becomes necessary to take Kali’s sword and cut through the illusions that protect us from seeing and acting on the truth.”

Yes, emotional sensitivity can bewilder, confuse, delight and fascinate men. Just as the single minded male focus seems one dimensional to women.

However, it must be cut through.

Yet it is rarely cut through alone.

It s all too easy to hold on to what we know – what we are good at. We fear that if we let go we will lose that too.

But that is the lie – we do not lose ourselves. Rather our insecurities die in the mulch of renewed compassion from which springs new life.

The mad professor insecurelyhordes knowledge, never publishing for fear of being wrong. Yet his greatest success comes from sharing ideas – and being corrected, readjusting, refining and growing.

A woman who seeks the delicacy of her inner world empowers it when she finds a companion with whom she can find her soul reflected in love.

Each must accept the mirror of the other in themselves. The shadow we deny in our self is the very thing that fascinated us in our lover.

So in her or him we find completeness, allowing us to recognize a hidden part of ourselves.

A flower is still a flower – but as O’Keefes are demonstrates, you can style the reality of life with new meaning.

If men are strong and women sensitive, then cannot he be sensitively strong and she strongly compassionate?

I recently enjoyed the majestic beauty of a bougainvillea arched pathway – blooming in a throbbing intensity.

Yet, I remember, half a life time ago, bewildered by the ugly metal frames, holding a few growing stands newly planted for queen Elizabeth.

I remember wondering if she ever enjoyed seeing the finished product ogf the many gardens she opens.

Then I remembered how the Lords and ladies planted estates that were still young a generation after the landscaper’s death.

There is something beautiful in seeing that far beyond what is known in the present.

Yet like the busy bee in the flower real work requires that we get on with gritty skeletal frame work of now.

The delicate flower and harsh metal frame merged opposite natures to become one beautiful decoration.

So it is with us when we seek to find the beauty in our lover opposite us. This renewed sensitivity allows us to find the beauty in ourselves.

Doubt becomes surrender, Impatience endurance, blame becomes self responsibility, shame becomes  honour, Guilt forgiveness.

And as we stand and accept the truth of ourselves, love meets judgment and becomes compassion. In this transformation we mirror a reality that is greater than ourselves.

The synergistic care of bee and flower is shared in our own love life and in the greater realm of spiritual divine truths that stand up and apart from us.

Or is the division of heaven and earth just another illusion?

The frequencies of light enjoyed by a bee are part of the same electromagnetic spectrum enjoyed by us. It is part of a greater unified whole.

Our viewpoint compartmentalizes reality. True, science is broadening our ability to understand and giving us new metaphors to expand our knowledge.

Yet like religion, science is rooted in its own traditions, However, these traditions will expand and grow.

In that sense, I see spirituality like science – it grows and develops as we have more experiences to understand the world of another.

But like a religious tradition, we must look into our past to learn the lessons that will fuel our future.

We need to approach our r spirituality scientifically and our science spiritually – or at least with sensitivity and moral rectitude .

In microcosm, the world of our lover allows us  become increasingly sensitive and altruistic. We can in turn transmute that sensual refinement to empower our world and discover even greater realities.

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