The Opening Opening to an Opening

...toward a metaphysics of love

Years ago I came upon an idea about how love works. It’s based on observation, not theory. And it’s still holding up after all the experiences that have put it to the test.

Here it is:

Love is an opening opening to an opening.

It started with looking at all the ways in which love is expressed as physical affection. Imagine kissing someone on the lips, someone you love, presumably. There’s an opening (your lips) opening to an opening (your partner’s lips). Or how about eye gazing, or even just eye contact, which can be so full and expressive? Our eyes are openings, and as we open to others, they can open up on yet deeper levels, to which we respond in turn.

Then again, consider something as apparently simple and commonplace as holding hands. This only happens when a hand opens and another person’s hand does likewise. So much can pass through that opening: reassurance, tenderness, affirmation, ardor, healing. Even handshakes can carry a lot of freight, in terms of our humanity, our presence, our willingness to engage.

And sex? Think about it. Once again: openings opening to one another. Even kissing the skin doesn’t work unless there is a subtle opening there, a way for the skin to receive that kiss. The person has to be open, and the skin can then open to receive.

Then I started looking at other manifestations of love. Gifts, for example. When I give something, be it a thing or an act of service, I feel an opening in myself. If my opening to give opens to another opening to receive, then the gift is experienced as an act of love. If it’s not received, it’s not really a gift, because the giving isn’t complete yet.

And of course there are subtle layers of opening and openness. We have all felt ourselves open up inside as we open our arms to hug on the outside. When our arms open to another pair of open arms, then a hug can happen. But what happens as the hug endures is really where the deeper levels of embrace that we find so satisfying can be found. How deeply can we open, and how open is the person we’re hugging?

What can happen is a voluptuous depth of feeling as each person’s continued opening encourages and supports the other’s continued opening. Each hug is the unique product of two people in a specific moment. When the situation is right, the intimacy of mutual opening can feel like a kind of infinity, and that infinity can feel like flight, like expanding radiance, like firelight, like an island in the middle of an ocean. It can feel all kinds of ways. When two hearts open to one another, anything can happen. Amazing things. Magical things.

And this opening doesn’t have to involve physical touch at all.

Yet there are times when we aren’t as open. I recall years ago when a person at a party whom I’d never met before asked me if I would share a hug. I accepted. We hugged. The hug ended, and I thought little more about it. It’s embarrassing to admit I was on my way to the potluck table and was frankly distracted at that moment. The thing is, I hadn’t opened to the depths this particular person is able to bring to her embrace, and in fact it took me more than two years before I finally opened up to the level where I could receive it and realize what had happened.

Keep in mind I had only just met this person. The hug was our only introduction, and didn’t see her in the interim. But I later learned that this person is a healer; it was part of her professional repertoire to heal with her touch. I finally caught up with her a long time afterward and told her what had happened, how it had taken so much time to receive what she had offered, how it had slowly percolated through.

She received my story in openness. It was another magical moment. Because when we open up to one another — and there are countless ways this can happen — it’s always magic.

Some people are able to open up and give quickly from a level that is astonishing in its depth. Such moments can function as a spiritual initiation. That’s how this particular embrace worked in my life. By the time I was ready to receive the gift, in many ways I had become a different person. But then, sometimes the opening is simply a look, a word, a simple act of kindness. The depth of openness from which such apparently simple acts come is the depth to which they can go and be received. As Dan Millman wrote in his book The Way of the Peaceful Warrior, “There are no ordinary moments!”

So, be ready for a miracle!

Most of the pain in love relationships comes from opening or trying to open to another on a level on which the person is closed or closing. It's like trying to kiss lips that are tight and closed instead of soft and open. It’s just not much fun. Or like being playful and vulnerable with someone who is shut down. We then have a choice of re-approaching with openness on a different level or moving on to someone who is opening in the same ways we are. Please understand that a moment of shared silence can be as profound an opening as ever there can be.

A word here is probably needed about why we close down. Often, in my observation, we close on some level because we got hurt. In the short term, this limits additional hurt. In the long run, it limits our ability to give and receive, which is to say, to fully live. Sometimes, I suspect, as children we close in certain ways just to fit in. We live in a society in which people tend to be closed down in some ways, so there’s a tendency to close down in those ways, also. This also limits hurt in dealing with all these closed-down people. Of course, for many, this may happen at the cost of a certain level of aliveness and authenticity. We can stay in that place, or we can start to open up anyway. When we do, we will tend to find others doing likewise.

Thing is, I don’t want to suggest that opening up and staying open is always super easy. It isn’t. Honestly, though, if we really think about it, being closed isn’t easy in the long run, either. What I can say for sure is that the more deeply and intentionally I remain open, the shorter the time between moving away from people and situations that are in one way or another closed or closing and the sudden appearance of people and possibilities that are opening up. At all times, I also try to find a level on which openness feels comfortable, even when someone has foreclosed a relationship or part of a relationship. Who knows? Sometimes people come back, maybe even years later, just as I did with that divine hug described earlier.

So, I offer this in the spirit of openness. With a little imagination you can (if you’re open to it), see how a new world could open for us if we open into this awareness, this way of being. Because what I’ve found is that the world will, in fact, open to receive those who are opening up to her, even if sometimes we have to stretch a bit to open in new ways. The world is…big, after all. So yes, we may have to stretch a bit to receive what the world is offering.

But then, that’s life, and that’s love, isn’t it? And a bigger life and fuller presence of love is what we’ll find when we open ourselves to receive it.