SOME people say love is blind. They see it stumbling through life—reckless, emotional, and often foolish. But what they do not realize is that love has two faces: Haqiqi Hubb (true love) and Mijazi Hubb (false love). Many mistake the shadow for the reality, the mirage for the spring, the echo for the voice. Haqiqi Hubb is not blind. It is the inner eye of the heart, seeing what ordinary sight cannot. It is the whisper of intuition that logic cannot capture, the quiet knowing that dawns in silence. Logic can analyse, but love perceives. Reason can calculate, but love reveals.
Mijazi Hubb, by contrast, clings to appearance, body, and fleeting desire. It burns like dry straw—a sudden blaze, bright for a moment, then nothing but ash. It mistakes lust for intimacy, possession for devotion, longing for true union. Such love is not vision but smoke—loud, impulsive, drunk on passion, and in the end, it blinds. False love is like a mind trapped in endless doubt. It is like a lamp flickering in the wind, giving no steady light. It is like a mirror reflecting images yet never showing the flame itself. It is like a moth circling the candle—too restless to leave, too fearful to surrender—lost in its hunger.
But Haqiqi Hubb is the moth that surrenders. It does not circle, it leaps. It dives into the fire of the Beloved and is consumed. And in that burning, it sees more clearly than any eyes could ever see. What the world calls blindness is, in truth, the only vision that truly sees. The lovers of Truth know that love is not blindness; it is sight itself. Love is the flame that lights the way, the compass that guides the heart, the hidden light by which all else becomes clear. For them, love is a mirror of the Divine. When the heart is polished, the Beloved appears. When both sides of the coin—material and spiritual—are revealed, the truth shines. The material crumbles, but the spiritual endures. And within that endurance dwells the Beloved, not far away, but within the secret chamber of the heart, closer even than the vein in the neck—the Shehrag. Every human being is such a coin with two faces. The material side leans toward appetite, always hungry, never satisfied. It chases forms and bodies, mistaking the fleeting warmth of touch for eternity. But the spiritual side is a mirror polished by longing. It reflects the light of the Beloved, catching sparks from the unseen sun. When this side turns upward, the heart becomes like an open window, and through it, love gazes upon love itself.
The Sufis often speak of the moth and the flame. The moth of desire circles endlessly, mistaking its dance for love. But true love is when the moth surrenders, dives into the flame, and disappears. In that burning, blindness ends, and the moth sees with the eye of the soul. So it is with us: Mijazi Hubb is the circling—restless, yearning, yet afraid of fire. Haqiqi Hubb is the plunge—the surrender of self into the flame of the Divine. What looks like madness to the world is, in truth, the highest clarity.
People say love makes you lose reason. Yes, but only false love drives reason into madness. True love—the love of the soul—turns reason into light. Rumi described it with the image of wine in the tavern: the cup may shatter, the hand may tremble, but the wine awakens what the sober mind could never understand. The body says: “Love is desire, love is touch.” The spirit replies: “Love is presence, love is unveiling.” One is bound by time and form; the other breathes in eternity. One is blindfolded; the other beholds.
Love can also be imagined as a river with two currents. One flows outward, noisy and restless, rushing toward the sea of desire, only to crash upon the rocks of attachment. The other flows inward, deep and still, carrying the soul to the boundless Ocean where no shore can be found. The first blinds; the second reveals. To call love blind is to mistake its shadow for its essence. The lovers of Truth know that love is the clearest vision—the eye of the heart, the hidden compass, the secret flame. Lust blinds, but love reveals.
The Sufis describe love as both particle and wave. When still, it is particle—singular, defined, contained. When it stirs, it becomes wave—spreading without limit, one yet multiple, unseen yet felt, flowing into countless hearts. Love is both quiet and radiant, limited in form yet infinite in reach. It is both static and kinetic, forever leading back to the Beloved. For those who walk the path of Truth, this is the secret: love is not blindness, but the clearest sight. It is the hidden fire that guides without a map, the unseen vision that reveals the Real. In its light, all shadows dissolve, and the Beloved is seen everywhere—within and without, nearer than near.
—The writer is contributing columnist, based in Manchester, UK.
