July 2005 Archives

How do I know I'm in love?

If her touch steals time  
and her breathing slows it  
but her absence makes it long.

If her thoughts of me  
are how I know myself,  
her lips blurring right and wrong.

If my heart is her creation:  
her smile saving me, he frown destroying me --  
a gate to both world in her eyes!

If faced by the road of self-destruction  
careless, I court my soul's demise.

This love letter is a composite of several letters written over a long period of time. There is really no reason to post it here other than to share the beauty of the sentiment. If you’ve had enough cheese today, you can pass it by. But I think it expresses an essential quality of relationship which I’ve begun to conceive of as universal and accessible by other means than just a single person. It’s about the soul longing for God, Who is seen wherever the eyes are capable.

A thousand hellos. If I could fold myself enough, and survive the journey, I would send you my hand to hold instead of this letter. But since paper and ink are like trusted friends, I gave them these words of affection and asked them to seek you out.

I think of you often here – where the wind and the sea are cold, and the chill probes me with its ghostly fingers. But the memory of you keeps me warm. It chases away the minutes and the hours until I forget where I am.

Recall me to myself, for I soon forget once thoughts of you have cast their net.

I teeter on the brink of falling headlong. A wave of insanity has risen to immerse me. Sometimes my pen and I sit here, in this cafe or around town, commiserating. He leaves a stream of black tears – which are here, dried on this paper. Our rapport is so strong, his weeping traces my thoughts; so I send you this record of our misery, showing as it does my feelings.

So many words clamor to express themselves. Patience, I tell them; not everything must be done at once. But can you sense the state of my being? Everything is in uproar. The signposts are uprooted – there is no more sense of left and right, up or down. The days are nights, and sleep finds me only as the sun rises. What is to come of my heart’s kingdom? You have conquered it without sword or arrow.

Where banners once flew in proud disdain a king now weeps for his kingdom’s bane.

The space between us is a great plain over which the steed of time only saunters. His insouciance drives me mad. I speak to him about you, and who we go to meet, but his ears only twitch as if to say, “My pace is set, my friend; even mortal love cannot change it.” But he is so wrong! Whether we go fast or slow, desire lengthens the distance with every step. If only I had wings, I would leap from this costive mare to find you.

Perhaps the folds of my letter have stuck together from the sweetness of the ink; or maybe this paper, bent to take its burden, has whispered something of its ardent master. At times I wonder if they will steal my words, and offer them to the sugar merchants for an easy exchange. But if my humble thoughts do not reach you for whatever reason, my prayers and love are certain to. What else can be said? Words, even if well-crafted, can only hold so much. “For the stream’s bed cannot hold the sea.”

When I think of you lately, a wash of light suffuses my being. I feel joy in places unrelated to my physical self. This is a new experience for me. What organ feels the bounty of love? It is a mystery of gladness that ruins my days and nights. You make me sigh. You make my eyelids flutter. In the mornings, I recall the music of your voice and can no longer stay in bed. This energy won’t let me alone. A deep pleasure runs through my muscles like a current. And my heart… sometimes, I think, were it susceptible to feinting, I would lose my mind.

I am so much in love with you. If you touched me now it would send me to heaven. Do you realize your power? Yet you are so kind. I want to curl up around the phone and let your sweet voice send me to oblivion… Now I feel constantly as if I have to write you, or write poems – or do something to relieve this pressure of light longing to shine out. You’ve made my days and nights a constant sunrise, each promising to begin the best day of my life.

To the poet in me you have been the most lovely muse. It isn’t hard at all to write when I think of you. My fingers seem to know the way and summon the words to follow. The pen feels light in my hand. The ink hungers for the paper. Your magic has awoken a magic within me – until I feel fey and mystical, ready to split the night of remoteness with a single stroke. Whatever you’ve done, it shakes me to the core and back again, filling my mind with sweet memories. I believe now that knowing you is one of God’s gifts to me.

What can I do, but write to stave off this insanity? Call me again some time, my sweetheart. Call me and let me hear your voice so I can survive another day. Whatever semblance of peace I once had is fled. Your memory chases away all other thoughts. Call me and resuscitate this poor creature, for whatever I might be doing when you read this, the rest of me longs to hear from you.

But how can I last in your presence? How can I keep from fading to a sigh and rejoining the vapors of pre-existence? If I could write, “I love you”, strong enough to mirror my heart, it would fly from this page and wrestle you to the ground, and show such devotion as to melt you away. Though words can only go so far. These have hardly conveyed my turmoil. I have to stop – or even my fingers will go insane! I love you. All the rest, only God and angels may know. Perhaps they will whisper it to your soul in the deep of night, or grant you the sweet dreams of loving reunion.

After all this things only grow more intense. Your smile is a luminous liquid, seeping inside to warm me everywhere. That water turns to fire, and then watching you is like a presence of flame: it cooks my heart over embers that won’t leave me alone! I write this after seeing you briefly and the burning will not cease. I’ve talked about it to one friend, but talking only makes the pain worse. Yet I can’t leave off thinking of you for the pain. Thinking or talking about it only makes the wounds bleed fresh. My spirit is trapped between sight and blindness: both are a torment. Remoteness is like sliding through time on the edge of a blade.

These have been profound days. I am reading right now the story of Majnun and Layli, by Nizami. How fine to see those expressions of madness and know a glimmer of their purity. I suppose every experience in life educates us – though the school of love mistreats its students. They prepare us for a greater understanding in time.

I think of you as a sign of God, revealing rays of the Immortal Beauty in your pretty eyes, your laugh, your amazing smile. It affects me deeply enough to realize: only God can touch my soul that way. Then I remember how He created the world to reveal His attributes – and there they are: the beauty of life, the joy of loving, manifested in the simple fact of your being.

Love answers to no one and makes no excuses; some things must be said whether wisdom confirms it or not. I write this in pain – but for the beauty of that pain. I love you. I shall always cherish your memory as one who gave me the gift of dwelling in the fires of rapture. From that experience I have been nurtured in the mystic’s way. It helped acquaint me with the nature of my Goal.

You are such a heart-slayer! You kill me. And now that I am gone, what remains must say goodbye.

A few times I’ve talked about God’s being invisible, and that we know Him is through His outward manifestations and attributes – in the way a poet is known by his words, or a lover by his actions, or a craftsman by his handiwork. However, I do not mean invisible or hidden in the sense of something beyond reach. A thing can be inaccessible to view, and yet be very present and always around us. That is, God is not the Hidden because He is obscure, but because He is too obvious to see. “Yea, the intensity of His revelation hath covered Him, and the fullness of His shining forth hath hidden Him.”

For example, a sphere is the simplest shape for an object in space, because it distributes its mass evenly. To we standing on the Earth’s surface, however, it appears flat because of the immensity of scale. What historically should have been the most straightforward deduction was beyond the scope of agreement for so long, exactly because our eyes could not take in the magnitude of the problem.

Another example is pure light. If a white light shines on a painting, we see color and shape in the artwork. That color, though, is not coming from the painting. The colors we’re seeing were actually “hidden” in the white light, until the pigments on the canvas caused a few of them to be absorbed, and others to be reflected to the eye. (A red object appears red because it absorbs every color but red, leaving only the red light to reach the viewer). The painting is not emitting its own light, but “sculpting” the complete, white light into a smattering of various frequencies: called red, green, blue, yellow, etc. It’s like a filter, revealing different parts of the light in different places, until the eye sees what was always potential in the light all along.

The same thing happens with sculpting stone: every possible sculpture is “hidden” in that stone, until the artist decides what to take away to reveal an image. It’s not that the substance making up the image was not there, but that the completeness of the original stone kept it from being seen. If our eyes were unlimited perhaps we could see in an untouched block all sculpture, but our awareness can handle only one image at a time. Thus the artist puts his hand to stone, and with each block develops a different piece. Each one was always possible, but only when they became actual could we know them.

Likewise all poems, letters, essays, etc., are potential and “hidden” in a dictionary – since it contains every word I’m using to write these entries. But who can stare at a dictionary and realize all knowledge? The purpose of a writer is to consider these words before each sentence, and remove everything but what reveals his meaning.

So art, speech, the visible world, all consist of a process of placing limitations on a much vaster substrate of possibility. The painter carves light by applying pigments which absorb – and thus inhibit – the flow of pure light that would otherwise reach our eyes. Because of this limiting effect we become aware of things like color, shape, texture, etc., which are the substance of visual experience.

And yet, the elements of all we see were at every moment potential within the same white light, since it has always been the same sun shining down. The activities of life greatly modulate and alter that light, producing innumerable variations, but that’s all we do – vary a pre-existing potential. “There is nothing new under the sun”. Nothing is visible which doesn’t come from the same light as always. It may appear new, but the potential for its appearance was there from the beginning.

Life is like this too. Experience is a tenuous process of imposing limits on an infinite background. Or in the sense of a sculptor, we are a kind of nothingness who causes the waiting statue to be revealed. Michaelangelo’s David sat in his block of marble for many millions of years before we knew him. He may have known he was there all along, but until we brought him the gift of empty space, he remained “hidden” and unsung.

With respect to God, perhaps our very souls are a brand of nothingness like the space surrounding David’s features. God knows Who He is, and always has, but He wrote through His Messengers, “I wished to become known.” As a pure light, He shone with perfect brilliance, but the colors and possibilities of that light remained fast bound within it, hidden by its own perfection. So He created darkness to sculpt that light and reveal the beauties it contained.

If we are that darkness in motile form, it would explain the basic pattern of our lives: to serve that Light by revealing and concealing different aspects of its possibility. For example, men are capable of doing just about anything, but how we each choose to live brings out a different artwork: a David or a roughened lump of stone. We are the border, the contrast, the pigments who coax from pure light its wondrous forms. Those who strive to compete with God, through the acquisition of their own powers and attributes, miss a basic feature of their nature: We are a nothingness by which Something is known, as if gaps in the figures of a parchment. Yet the meaning is in those gaps, as much as the ink between them. The two together reveal the purpose.

Now I look at the light in the room where I’m sitting, and know that every face I’ve ever known or will know is hidden within it. It’s obscure only to my eyes; in my mind I know the potential is there. It’s because that potential so full and so complete that I can’t see their faces until the time arrives. The fullness of its shining forth hides what it might reveal. God is everywhere, but my eyes cannot penetrate such an infinite radiance. Not until that light is carved will I know what more it has to show me.

Everything hidden requires a manifestation to first become known, just as the soul, without a body, would remain pure spirit and invisible. So without His various Manifestations, God would likewise be forever hidden from us. We require a medium to hear His Message – that medium being the Holy Books, the lives of the Prophets, the world and its peoples.

But the medium can confuse we of limited understanding, causing the seeker to strive to develop keener vision, to make the “world” more and more transparent until the Divine is seen in the face of the mundane. In this way, the mystic’s path lies in the development of insight.

Take for example a television. It may have many flaws, or it may have a truly amazing picture. In both cases, people will look at the television itself and wonder at the aspects of its being. Then a movie starts playing, and suddenly the television is gone. It has become transparent in its role of conveying the broadcast. I remember growing up with a thirteen-inch black-and-white television that I watched all the time in my basement. Now there are plasma screens with high-definition video that looks like a window onto other worlds. However, my memory is not of the tiny screen and its lack of color, but the programs I watched. In fact, it doesn’t matter what TV I watch a program on, if it’s fascinating enough my mind will transcend the medium. Even if there are flaws on the screen, a bug crawling across, a scratchy speaker – my interest in the program causes every distraction to be eliminated.

I think religion teaches a path that can cause a similar thing to happen in the heart with respect to God. That is, some behaviors lead to improved transparency of view, such as prayer, fasting, meditation, detachment, etc., and some make it more obscure – back-biting being one of the greatest of these, since it blinds us from seeing other people and “quencheth the light of the heart”. `Abdu’l-Bahá even wrote, “… it [back-biting] would make the dust to settle so thickly on the heart that the ears would hear no more, and the eyes would no longer behold the light of truth.”

So some activities improve transparency – allowing us to focus on the message beyond the medium – and some degrade it. These two directions would describe the soul’s morality, since one path leads us closer to knowing God-through-the-world, and the other leads away from it. Perhaps this is “the Straight Path” of mystical literature, implying that the whole of the journey lies in the development of vision and education of the heart, rather than actual travel. We are at the Goal, from day one, but the dizzying array of its possibilities has blinded us, as if a light our eyes weren’t adapted to see. Then what will improve sight, and what impair it, and what are we aiming to see? These are questions I think religion must address directly, if its promise is to guide the soul on its way.

If any individual should speak ill of one who is absent…13

It simply says “speaking ill”, not whether what is being said is true or not, whether it is already known to the hearer or not, whether it is a public figure being spoken of, etc. It is just “speaking ill” – the opposite of “speaking well”.

Further, back-biting is speaking ill of one who is “absent”. It does not clarify if this refers to deceased persons, simply people who are not “present”.

As an example of this, `Abdu’l-Bahá counsels us not to discuss even the faults of our rulers:

Except to speak well of them, make thou no mention of the earth’s kings, and the worldly governments thereof.14

Additionally, the House of Justice has provided clarification which makes it possible to engage in necessary consultation (this is found in Lights of Guidance, page 90):

You ask in your letter for guidance on the implications of the prohibition on backbiting and more specifically whether, in moments of anger or depression, the believer is permitted to turn to his friends to unburden his soul and discuss his problem in human relations. Normally, it is possible to describe the situation surrounding a problem and seek help and advice in resolving it, without necessarily mentioning names. The individual believer should seek to do this, whether he is consulting a friend, Bahá’í or non-Bahá’í, or whether the friend is consulting him.

`Abdu’l-Bahá does not permit adverse criticism of individuals by name in discussion among the friends, even if the one criticizing believes that he is doing so to protect the interests of the Cause. If the situation is of such gravity as to endanger the interests of the Faith, the complaint, as your National Spiritual Assembly has indicated, should be submitted to the Local Spiritual Assembly, or as you state to a representative of the institution of the Counsellors, for consideration and action. In such cases, of course, the name of the person or persons involved will have to be mentioned.15

When considering if something you might say is back-biting or not, I ask whether it is important enough even to risk it. Back-biting is so horribly destructive to community life, it is often wiser just to leave the opinion unsaid, rather than express it and find out afterwards it is indeed “speaking ill of one who is absent”. The Guardian’s secretary wrote on his behalf:

On no subject are the Bahá’í teachings more emphatic than on the necessity to abstain from fault-finding and backbiting, while being ever eager to discover and root out our own faults and overcome our own failings.

The Writings refer to back-biting as “the worst human quality and the most great sin”; Bahá’u’lláh gives its prohibition in the same sentence as murder, theft and adultery; states that it “quencheth the light of the heart, and extinguisheth the life of the soul”; `Abdu’l-Bahá describes it as “the leading cause among the friends of a disposition to withdraw”; and labels it and fault-finding “the destroyers of the foundation of man”.

Finally, `Abdu’l-Bahá emphasizes in Bahá’í World Faith:

It is particularly important to refrain from making unfavourable remarks or statements concerning the friends and the loved ones of God, inasmuch as any expression of grievance, of complaint or backbiting is incompatible with the requirements of unity and harmony and would dampen the spirit of love, fellowship and nobility… Whoever sets himself to do so, even though he be the very embodiment of the Holy Spirit, should realize that such behaviour would create disruption among the people of Bahá and would cause the standard of sedition to be raised.

I have not found anything in the Writings that links back-biting with intent. That is, back-biting is the action of complaining about others, and it does not depend on why you complaining, unless you are consulting about an issue of serious concern and refrain from using the individual’s name.

For example, in this quote:

It is obvious that if we listen to those who complain to us about the faults of others we are guilty of complicity in their backbiting.16

It does not refer to the heart of the complainer, but his action. But how, really, could there be a spiritual way of mentioning the faults of another? What use could that possibly serve the spiritual life of the Faith?

How couldst thou forget thine own faults and busy thyself with the faults of others? Whoso doeth this is accursed of Me.17

Question: The other problem I have is when we mention peoples faults on this public forums is that backbiting? If so why?

As for “backbiting”, if they aren’t absent, I don’t see how it could be. However, avoidance of backbiting and fault-finding are very often expressed together:

O ye Cohorts of God! Beware lest ye offend the feelings of anyone, or sadden the heart of any person, or move the tongue in reproach of and finding fault with anybody, whether he is friend or stranger, believer or enemy.18

The friends must overlook their shortcomings and faults and speak only of their virtues and not their defects.19

On no subject are the Bahá’í teachings more emphatic than on the necessity to abstain from fault-finding and backbiting, while being ever eager to discover and root out our own faults and overcome our own failings.20

… Each of us is responsible for one life only, and that is our own. Each of us is immeasurably far from being ‘perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect’ and the task of perfecting our own life and character is one that requires all our attention, our will-power and energy. If we allow our attention and energy to be taken up in efforts to keep others right and remedy their faults, we are wasting precious time.21

I see the tendency to complain as a desire for perfection of the material world. However, our goal is not efficiency, or accuracy, or well-orderedness: The goal of the faith is to promote love and harmony amongst men.

Once such a love exists, sincere and strong, this world will take on the attributes of heaven. If this is truly our goal, it can be seen how much criticism and complaint, however “true” or “appropriate”, are ultimately counter to our goal. They should applied like a powerful medicine, too much of which will harm far more than it heals. When love is the rule, with its sin-covering eye, then, mystically and mysteriously, solutions will present themselves.

I have found this to be true in my personal life, where I thought for certain the only way to solve something was direct confrontation. But, after much thought, and requiring tremendous sacrifice of my hopes, I chose a different path. I can only describe as miraculous the way things worked out. “And whoso maketh efforts for Us, in Our ways will We guide them.”

I’d like to share with you a nice story from `Attár on this subject:

A young man, brave and impetuous as a lion, was for five years in love with a woman. In one of the eyes of this beauty was a small speck, but the man, when gazing on the beauty of his mistress, never saw it. How could a man, so much in love, notice a tiny flaw? However, in time, his love began to dwindle and he regained his power over himself. It was then he noticed the speck, and asked her how it had come about. She said: “It appeared at the time when your love began to cool. When your love for me became defective my eye became so for you.”22

Question: In addition I would like to hear some input from the friends on whether an Assembly member is backbiting in bringing to the Assembly a report of a community members violation of laws or other bad behaviors?

Perhaps this will help clarify the point:

There is a clear distinction between, on the one hand, the prohibition of backbiting, which would include adverse comments about individuals or institutions made to other individuals privately or publicly, and, on the other hand, the encouragement to unburden oneself of one’s concerns to a Spiritual Assembly, Local or National (or now, also, to confide in a Counsellor or Auxiliary Board member). Thus, although one of the principal functions of the Nineteen Day Feast is to provide a forum for “open and constructive criticism and deliberation regarding the state of affairs within the local Bahá’í community”, complaints about the actions of an individual member of an Assembly should be made directly and confidentially to the Assembly itself, not made to other individuals or even raised at a Nineteen Day Feast.23

Question: Person A has a dastardly deed done to them by person B, confides in person C and maybe D, because it helps them to talk about it. Is this backbiting?

We are permitted to consult with others after trauma if we keep it nameless.

If we say that the above is not backbiting (even though B’s name is being mentioned), where does it stop? What if person A feels the need to talk to E, F, G, H, I, J and K as well? What if they never feel “resolved”, and keep spreading news of B’s misdeeds for years to come?

The Bahá’í standard is not an easy one. Nor is the eradication of backbiting easy. It requires sacrificing some of our cherished sources of emotional comfort, like retelling the wrongs done to us by others – usually to a spouse.

Yet this is a noble sacrifice we’re called to: An effort we’ll someday lay at the feet of our Beloved as a token of our love and faith. Each time you must swallow the pain, realize you are sharing Bahá’u’lláh’s pain, as He suffered untold indignities heaped upon Him by a cruel and corrupt nation.

Question: Person X warns person Y about dealings with Person Z because Person X has had very bad experiences with person Z and wouldn’t like personal harm to come to person Y.

We are permitted to bring issues of concern to an Assembly or Board Member, not to individuals.

In the case of individuals, the above is backbiting. Remember: If no exception is given to a Law, no exception exists. Unless the Writings allow us to relay the misdeeds of a person for the protection of another, we cannot. I am certainly open to anyone pointing out such an exemption, but in my studies have not found one.

Again, take it to the extreme degree: If Z has harmed X, and we allow X to complain to Y, where does it stop? Wouldn’t X start warning everyone who gets close to Z? Pretty soon, the whole community starts hearing about the misdeeds of Z, “for the protection of the community”. But such protection is the Assembly’s job, not the individual’s.

Furthermore, who gets to decide how “bad” a bad experience must be before it is shareable? If we take the issue to an Assembly, they can consult and decide; but if we allow ourselves that latitude, where does it stop?

Here is an example of how my community dealt with a similar issue: Apparently, someone was slighted in the matter of a loan or debt. I never learned which. I only know because the Assembly, at Feast, announced that anyone considering a loan to or from another Bahá’í should consult with the Assembly first.

Why would they say this? Because someone had acted unjustly, but rather than point out the injustice, they asked everyone to clear their financial dealings with the Assembly, allowing them to protect the community from unwise agreements.

I thought this was an excellent way of protecting the community from injustice, without having to bring up anyone misdeeds. There are ways to cope with even difficult issues that do not involve accusation or retelling of faults. It requires patience, love, faith to find them, but they are there.

Statement: When it comes to backbiting, I do not believe that structure and rules are of much use. I believe backbiting is more about sincerity than it is about tangibles. Motivation and intentions I believe are very key. I believe this subconscious is very important in backbiting.

I would be interested if you would present guidance which supporting this view. I have heard it suggested before, yet nowhere have I read that back-biting is defined by one’s motivations and intentions.

Murder is certainly not, nor theft or adultery, or any other of the crimes listed in the Aqdas. Perhaps there is a tendency toward leniency with backbiting, because it is easier to fall into and harder to stop? And yet, the damage caused by backbiting is terrible:

For the tongue is a smouldering fire, and excess of speech a deadly poison. Material fire consumeth the body, whereas the fire of the tongue devoureth both heart and soul. The force of the former lasteth but for a time, whilst the effects of the latter endure a century.

Here are the quotes I see as denying us such speech:

If anyone should speak ill of one who is absent…

The tongue I have designed for the mention of Me, defile it not with detraction.

Speak no evil, that thou mayest not hear it spoken unto thee, and magnify not the faults of others that thine own faults may not appear great; and wish not the abasement of anyone, that thine own abasement be not exposed.

How couldst thou forget thine own faults and busy thyself with the faults of others? Whoso doeth this is accursed of Me.

Breathe not the sins of others so long as thou art thyself a sinner. Shouldst thou transgress this command, accursed wouldst thou be, and to this I bear witness.

Ascribe not to any soul that which thou wouldst not have ascribed to thee…

That seeker should also regard backbiting as grievous error, and keep himself aloof from its dominion, inasmuch as backbiting quencheth the light of the heart, and extinguisheth the life of the soul.

These quotes, to my eyes, describe actions, not intentions.

In our speech, we have been asked to eschew: conflict, contention, strife, harm to the feelings of another, excess criticism, detraction, slander, harsh words, unfavourable remarks, speaking ill of the world’s leaders, grievance against another…

Instead, Bahá’ís are called to remark to the world the bounties and attributes of God, and share that Light which alone can resuscitate the fortunes of the world.

The Great Being saith: One word may be likened unto fire, another unto light, and the influence which both exert is manifest in the world. Therefore an enlightened man of wisdom should primarily speak with words as mild as milk, that the children of men may be nurtured and edified thereby and may attain the ultimate goal of human existence which is the station of true understanding and nobility. And likewise He saith: One word is like unto springtime causing the tender saplings of the rose-garden of knowledge to become verdant and flourishing, while another word is even as a deadly poison.24

Of course, the observance of these Laws is ultimately determined by the conscience of each believer, since there is not – and I hope will never be – a police force to guard against backbiting. After all, obedience is one of the precious things we can offer God, to One Who is already the Possessor of All.

I leave this discussion with the following thought: When determining whether backbiting is forbidden, there are numerous quotations from each of the Central Figures on this matter. But as for justifying what appears to be backbiting, have you noticed that no quotations are ever given? Did no one pose these questions in the past? Or is it that the answer has always been the same?

Common sense is an excellent tool, and I hope we accord it the respect it deserves: but neither more nor less than this.