The Kiss

The mingling of breath, body, and water holds a powerful metaphor for spiritual intimacy

When properly regarded, the simple and profound kiss just might be the most intimate act one can do… even more than sex. Mouth and mouth are brought together, body and breath. When one entwines tongues, one adds visceral fluids to this commitment of oneself. So it is time we take a look at the simple kiss done soulfully as a re-enactment of the kiss of life from which we ourselves are born and to which we return.

A moment of mingling which reveals

Much is revealed in a kiss. The breath itself that is shared has long been a symbol of spirit in all earthly cultures in all ages. In Western languages, spirit and breath have the same root. “Respire” (the physical act of breathing) has the same root as “inspire”, the spiritual breath in which the divine “breathes into us” and we inhale that breath.

The lips, one of the most sensitive areas on the human body, are brought together in a kind of prayer. Tongues provide the sacramental water.

All these are united as a intimate collision of dimensions. Therefore, the kiss is to be hallowed and NOT dishonored for its divining action. Many know immediately by a kiss if another person may meld with them or if any potential relationship is doomed. The kiss involves and reveals.

The kiss as spiritual mystic connection

Across the mystic traditions, the kiss takes on an especially spiritual power:

In Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism):

"The Zohar states that a kiss is the merging of one breath with another. Love begins with the physical attraction. Then, as lovers begin communication, they begin to speak. A they get closer, they stop speaking and are merely aware of each other's breath. Finally, they come closer still, and their communication becomes a kiss, at which point they are actually in physical contact. At this moment, in the kiss, they are aware of each other''s life force. Kissing is thus a natural consequence of increased intimacy in speech. The two mouths come closer and progress from speech, to breath, to the kiss. Thus there are four levels in the intimacy of love: physical attraction. speech, breath, and the kiss. These same levels exist in the relationship of a person with the Divine. This level corresponds to a still higher level of the soul, even above neshamah. This fourth level of the soul is known as chayyah, which literally means 'life force.' If the level of neshamah involves an awareness of the breath of the Divine, then the level of chayyah is the awareness of the divine life force itself."— Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan, The Lights of Kabbalah

Seventeenth and eighteenth century, Christian mystic, Madame Guyon gives a corresponding spiritually evocative rendition of the kiss in her meditations on the Song of Songs in the Old Testament, which has as part of its poetry, “Let Him kiss me with the kiss of the mouth”:

Essential union and the kiss of his (God’s) mouth is the spiritual marriage, where there is a union of essence and communication of substance— where God takes the soul for a spouse and unites himself with it, no longer by way of the persons of the Trinity, nor by any act or means, but immediately by reducing all into unity and by possessing it (the soul) in his own unity. Then it is the kiss of the mouth, and real and perfect possession… We must remember that God is all mouth, as he is all word, and that the application of this divine mouth to the soul is the perfect enjoyment and consummation of the marriage by which the communication of God himself and of his Word is made to the soul.

The breath of God, opened and sealed with a Kiss

Are the expanding universe (and our expanding selves) but the outbreath of God? Is it not the inbreath of God, both opened and sealed by a kiss, that recalls us back into our innermost sanctum, our reunion with our own souls and ultimately the undivided Godhead itself? Isn’t covenant actually a kiss?

In this kiss there is surrender. In this kiss the outbreath meets then inbreath. In this kiss there is home. In this kiss dwells life everlasting, even when our earthly life is ended.

Mary Oliver, take us home:

When it’s over, it’s over, and we don’t know
any of us, what happens then.
So I try not to miss anything.
I think, in my whole life, I have never missed
The full moon
or the slipper of its coming back.
Or, a kiss.
Well, yes, especially a kiss.

― Mary Oliver, “When,” Swan: Poems and Prose Poems. (Beacon Press; first edition September 14, 2010)

All blessings, Zeus