True Love Is Not A Reaching—but A Returning. Poem by Asad Ali

Love is not something we do, nor something that merely happens to us. It is not an accident, nor an event. It is not the consequence of beauty, chemistry, or fate. Love is not born—it is discovered.
It does not arrive. It has always been.
Love is the most ancient and unalterable truth of the cosmos. It exists beyond desire, beyond time, beyond even our own understanding of self. What we often call "falling in love" is not love itself—it is a trembling recognition of what has always surrounded us.
To love is not to reach outward, but inward—to touch the hidden pulse of existence through another. It is not a sensation but a sacred remembering.
Imagine yourself standing in a room shrouded in darkness. You do not know what surrounds you. You may have lived in this room your whole life, unaware. And then—someone hands you a torch. As the light flickers to life, you begin to see: the walls are adorned with unspeakable beauty. Masterpieces. Visions. Truths you never knew existed.
How grateful would you be for that single flame?
Such is the nature of earthly love—‘ishq-e-majazi'. Through the borrowed light of another, we glimpse fragments of the Real. This reflection, this echo of the Infinite, stirs something within us.
And as we keep gazing—entranced, undone—something strange occurs. The eye within begins to open. We no longer depend on the borrowed torch. A new light dawns, rising from within us.
This is not love given—it is love becoming. This is ‘ishq-e-haqiqi'—the love that sees with its own light, that burns without fuel, that is not extinguished even by death.
All else—affection, longing, devotion, worship—are merely earlier stations along the path. Thresholds of remembrance.
A return to what always was. A return to the only thing that ever truly is.
Asad Ali