Love is not Blind: Marc Gafni

“Love is ‘the great art of the spirit.’” Art is where each magnified detail is part of a harmonized whole. An artist is a master at perceiving.

What is so special about the artist’s eye? It is always open to the New, the never before noticed. Emily Dickinson as she is often wont- says it best.

Not “Revelation” — tis — that waits
But our unfurnished eyes —

Emily Dickinson

What a gorgeous phrase. We don’t need to wait for Godot- an external God — who will redeem us with a great new vision of truth and beauty. . We merely need to unfurnish our eyes. Our eyes are furnished with old trauma, competition, greed and jealousy. We can’t see. The blind man is literally leading the blind man. Blake taught us that love was blind, but in truth it is not.

If anything, love is a magnifying glass. We notice more about the person we love than anyone else, for good and for bad. Of course, criticism can certainly be the shadow side of perception.

Every great quality of the spirit has it’s own unique shadow. We all know that the second we decide to love someone, we start noticing virtually every detail of their dress, habits, idiosyncrasies, all the wonderful and not so wonderful. But love is much more than just a magnifying system for ‘petty particulars’.

Dickinson invites us to a revelation that waits, to unfurnished eyes. The artist’s eye, the lover’s eye, is unfurnished. It is not blinded with the opaque trappings of pre-conceptions and mis-conceptions. Perhaps even more importantly the lover can give up being right.

marc gafni
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