My first encounter with Lewis happened quite recently
but the impact was powerful. It still is.
I felt as if I had been walking for a long time
through a desert and then came to an oasis that could
seemingly quench my thirst for life.
Since then, I have continued to feed my spirit with
words and ideas that weave a never-ending tapestry of
emotions, desires and longings for more, for deeper
searches into my most intimate being.
I held the book in my hands, looking at it,
searching for meanings that played hide and seek with
me. Beginning with the cover, my finger tips sensed
an inner vibration...and there it was...a powerful
motto, words that did not let me rest for several
days.
I was in a struggle with the meaning those words
contained...I wanted and painfully needed a
confirmation that my thoughts were the right ones
related to that motto..."love is too young to know
what conscious is..." It seems to me that the book
starts with an explanation for what is about to
happen; that love means forgiveness and absolute
justification for whatever we do when we love.
I do not have an answer for this, I do not know
what right means or what wrong means when we love, but
what I know for sure is that nothing justifies, not
even love, the deliberate pain we cause to the others.
But again, this idea is conflicted, becomes a
contradiction to the meaning of true love...love never
hurts...love renders us better. This is my absolute
truth, my own truth and Lewis has guided me towards
this truth anticipating the hope I had in finding this
in his books.
When reading Lewis I am not alone anymore, he is an
overwhelming presence with a powerful touch upon my
soul. He so easily finds his way through open hearts
and I like to believe he could find his way to even
less open ones, for his sensitivity and the emotion he
sends through his pages could even move the dead from
their sleep.
For those who sleep the sleep of their mind and
soul, there is no other more wonderful way of being
brought back to life than by reading Lewis.
His insight, his ideas and the style of his writing
are so empathetic and perfectly embody human nature,
human needs and human struggles. His literature is
nothing less than holistic love towards mankind. Each
of us can find him or herself in everything Lewis
writes. His literature is not only thought provoking,
it is a felt one, a result of who he is, what he
feels, what he deals with in every day existence.
Regardless of the characters we find when reading
him...Psyche, Maya, Bardia...he is each and every one
of them as we eventually turn out to be.
The myth that serves as background for the story in
"Till We Have Faces" is wonderful and moving...but the
way Lewis retells it is beyond description at times
and I find it difficult to organize my ideas and
feelings as to give a natural flow of what reading it
means to me.
The feelings I have when reading come like arrows
with such speed that I can hardly handle the impact
they have upon me. All of them are essential to the
understanding of my own being and life, all of them
require equal attention, all of them are crucial in
guiding and opening my love for my fellows.
Psyche? Who is she? Is she me? Is she you?
Maya? Hidden face...the more she hides from her
exterior being, the more she grows inwardly, the
deeper she feels, loves and aches.
The myth, originally, suggests that some acts of
Maya are born from roots of jealousy and envy...but
that was the myth. The book belongs in spirit and
feelings to Lewis and no matter how hard I tried to
reach those roots, I could not, for Lewis strongly
believes in goodness and altruism and transparency of
pure hearts. He could not have turned Maya into a
cruel woman jealous of her sister's happiness; he
could not have turned Maya into a liar or a hypocrite.
Rather he made her be a sensitive and normal woman
whose doubts and fears are nothing the natural aspects
of a mortal human being.
I was mislead at first by the basic idea of the
myth and walked along the shores of this story
following the thread of Psyche's destiny. I do not
know exactly when I had the revelation of the true
purpose of the book. In my opinion this is Maya. She
is the real queen of this book, she is the one who
takes off the garments enveloping her soul and
eventually her spirit stands naked in front of us.
This nudity of spirit and emotions makes me kneel at
her feet and my arms are open to give her the embrace
of love, compassion and admiration for who she is.
Maya teaches us the ultimate lesson, that of love
and affection.
Maya teaches us that love is silent and humble.
Maya teaches us that love is "if I could have
beaten the breast, I would have put on steel gloves or
hedgehog skins to do it".
There is however a prerequisite for love of this
sort. Maya had to learn it herself from an apparently
insignificant character, Ansit, Bardia's wife. They
both, together, discover the meaning of true love,
through the deep pain caused by the death of the man
they both loved.
Lewis’s book comes to an end, but the echo of what
he shares with us is eternal...he is a deep well of
reason and emotions and its source is immortal.
Sometimes I feel I do not belong to these times and
it may be true, but Lewis taught me to never
feel...strange...but to feel like a "dream would feel,
if it were seen walking about in the waking world".