A Sideways Glance: On love's peek-a-boo nature

By RICHARD S. BOGARTZ

Published on July 03, 2009

Recently, within the space of a few days, two men who used to know me some 20 years ago happened to meet me on the streets of Amherst. Each greeted me and remarked on how much they appreciated the spiritual elements of my essay "Huckabee helps the liberation" (Bulletin, Feb. 6).

In the article, I had cast Huckabee's drag and inertia on the transformation of attitudes toward homosexual marriage as a natural part of the process of change. I was surprised that anyone read my words, much less remembered them. (It reminded me of the time when, as a young professor, I had walked by the desks of some students, glanced in their notebooks, and was almost shocked to find that they were actually writing down what I had said.)

What interested me was that it was the spiritual aspect that had stayed with these two. This emboldened me to offer a little more.

I used to live on Middle Street in the late 1980s. One evening as I went for a walk the following poured into my mind, all but prewritten. In editing it today I have added only one word.

'On Love'

Love is the feeling of the reality of unity made possible by the illusion of duality. The pretense of lover and beloved gives rise to the feeling of love because the truth of unity, which can not be totally concealed, arises and reveals itself in the attraction that the apparent part feels for the illusory other part. While the lover pretends that the beloved is other, the ground of their being, which is one, insists at the level of the emotions, and the thought arises that we are one.

Fear is the temporary condition in which the illusion of separation becomes so strong that the feeling of unity is completely suppressed. Other seems to threaten self and the realization of the truth lies submerged. Self appears to behold not-self and the risk that not-self will annihilate self looms, blocking the light of reality.

Ego is our vulnerability. The threat that other appears to present is the struggle of ego to maintain its illusion of separate existence. The reality is that we are fundamentally invulnerable while at the same time we constantly die again and again, arising anew as another. From moment to moment the ground of our being is unchanged and outside those moments: eternal. The apparent separate self is continually subject to modification while pretending to remain unchanged behind the name "I."

We are love because love is the self-realization of our fundamental unity and that self-realization is what we are. Consciousness aware of itself. Love is like peek-a-boo. The parent hides behind the hands, but the hiding is a public display that says "I am here." while it pretends to conceal. Love pretends that unity is not here and then parts its hands to reveal that unity was hiding here all along. The self plays peek-a-boo with itself.

What is fear of love? Fear of love is the memory of the temporary ascendance of the sense of separation and an accompanying pain that ego suffered. But love removes the fear of love. Love reveals the truth and self is the innocent victim that dies the death of purification. Fear burns in love. But love cannot be burned by fear because love is the truth and fear is an error. Fear can conceal love for a time but love remains the fundament of our existence. We are love. We are one.

Trust is the hand extended toward the truth before the truth is in hand. Trust is the germ of the truth that makes itself known in secret. Trust is John the Baptist preceding Jesus. Trust points to the truth before the truth has arrived. Trust knows before knowing can be. Simply trust. Trust in yourself. Trust in life. Trust in the reality that is our life and being.

Richard Bogartz is a professor of psychology at the University of Massachusetts.