To love is to know Me, My
innermost nature, the truth that I am
~ Bhagavad Gita 18:55
Knowing is where one finds true intimacy. Here love is active, it is the work of knowing the deepest truest nature of another. In the case of the above quote, it is God or Krishna that one must love and know. While sacred texts ask us to love a god or gods, they often also ask to love others.
This requires us to see what one likes about a person, what one may not like about them, and what one may not understand. This seeing is a knowing, it is an act of love. An act that asks us simply to know which is far easier then understanding. Just as one can most likely never hope to understand the divine, they can never truly fully understand another person. Often one wants to understand another, they may want it desparetly. When they find they cannot understand another, they turn away in frustration, indifference, or even hatred.
Love is much much easier then that. All it requires is to know, to be a witness to the truth of another being. It does not ask us to like or accept or judge just to know. Intimacy flows out of this knowing. Truth flows out this intimacy.
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