To think we can apprehend truth through
the intellect is an illusion.
We need lovers that draw us to its source.
Moonlight is the tenderest of my lovers. There are others—the sea, birdsong before daylight, wind and thunder—but very few. I do not give myself lightly to the things of this world.
There is no violence in moonlight’s lovemaking as with the storm or teasing coyness as with the sea. You cannot posture or pretend in its embrace. It gently strips from us the things we use to hide our nakedness. They dissolve beneath its earnest, steady gaze and slip away like mist.
Plato says the world of sight is our prison house. He may be right, but the prison house is more absolute than the one he configured. Things may appear more sharply focused and clear to the mind when stepping into the light of Plato’s blazing sun, but an enlightened mind is only a higher form of blindness.
Plato’s sun is only a brighter fire
in a more illuminated cave.
To think we can apprehend truth through the intellect is an illusion we are not easily freed from. It draws our souls away from the wellspring of life and truth that is Spirit.
I did not know my blindness until moonlight laid me on its gossamer bed and began making love to me. One knows one’s crooked shape when its smooth fingers slide down your limbs and the mind’s futility when it probes the shadows where thoughts breed. Its explorations are not harsh or judgmental. It is a lover seeking to know its beloved, and in the light of its knowledge, we know ourselves in ways Plato could not comprehend.
Those who see in the darkness by the moon’s reflected glory see most clearly, perhaps, what moonlight really is, the reason it tugs on something deep in our nature the way it pulls on the tides. They may see themselves more clearly, too.
Moonlight is not only the tenderest of my lovers. It is the most faithful of them, the measurer of my character and the opener of my eyes. It is true light from true light, Spirit made visible.