Roses are red

Violets are blue

But beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.

Round is round

Square is square

But beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.

Why? What is beauty? What makes it so different? (I know… we’re talking about intimacy. I’m getting to it…)

Beauty is the result of harmony. Harmony is the absence of conflict. When you have two colors and they blend nicely, you have a beautiful shade of color. Red alone is red. Yellow alone is yellow. To become beautiful, the two have to mix. But if they mix badly, if they clash, the result will be ugliness.

If the colors blend pleasantly you have beauty. But the beauty is not a thing you can point to. You still have only the two colors, red and yellow, no new ingredient has been introduced. The beauty is what you don’t see, namely, conflict. The red is not arrogant, demanding all the attention. Nor is the yellow. They leave room for each other. They absorb each other. It is that humility that is beautiful. But how do we see humility? We see the absence of conflict; we see what is not: nothing comes between them and that pleases the eye.

Holiness is like that, too. It is not something you can see; it is the absence of conflict. It is holy because of what it doesn’t have – duality.

Now to intimacy. When two people can remove all possible obstructions between them; when nothing at all gets between them; when they have a connection that is not dependent on any thing – that is intimacy.

Love can come from having many things in common, but intimacy is much more than love. Intimacy is more sacred, more pure, more dangerous and it can make babies!

The baby is not produced by some things alone – just some stuff contributed my mother and father. Babies are made by what is absent between them – duality. “And they shall become one flesh”. Remove all things that separate one person from another. They become one. That which allows such oneness can also produce a child.

So here’s the thing: Intimacy that is motivated by the desire for conquest is not the real thing. Conquest is a thing that comes between them. Sexual pleasure is also a thing that can come between man and wife. Ask your grandmother, “What do husband and wife do behind closed doors?” and she says, “Nothing.” Do you think she’s lying or not willing to tell you? She is telling you the truth. ‘No-thing’ is the perfect description of intimacy. If they were doing ‘some-thing’ it would no longer be intimate.

So, you see, ‘no-thing’ really is everything.

In a materialistic society, it is hard to relate to what is not a thing. We don’t understand G-d, beauty, holiness or intimacy because we are busy looking for the thing. But enough already…