…or, Confessions of a neurotic book lover
Everyone has their own experience, especially when it comes to reading a love story. For example whenever I get high from reading a spiritual romance novel (sometimes found in a Romance genre other than Inspirational), part of me is already planning on finding the next one.
But sometimes the author doesn’t write it fast enough for me. Or she has only the one novel. If there are others, sometimes they don’t give me that feeling. So I look for someone else. Sometimes I get to worrying before I even look. What if it’s not being promoted and I can’t find it? But I’ll find it, I have before. Just gotta have another one lined up!
And so it goes.
Can you can see my dilemma? I wasn’t being cute when I named this site ‘romance novel addict’. (Well maybe I was. But the shoe fits.)
To make matters worse, I’ve developed this eclectic taste that drives me to search romance sites endlessly. It’s tricky to rely on reviews to help me find it. I know what it is, I tell myself, but …
Is it even a sub-genre?
Am I looking for inspirational romance, or spiritual romance? Maybe. But it can also be in other sub-genres; I’ve crossed many in my search. I select something, I’ve paid attention to my gut. I start reading.
And then–I’m immersed in a higher plane.
I’m not usually aware until later how deeply a story has penetrated my soul. The only problem is someone else reading the same story might go to a completely different level. They’re exalted too, but our terminology differs. Darn, will I never learn to ‘read between them lines’? We’re on the same page!
Finding that right author can be as fulfilling as reading her work.
When I sit down planning to write about that great read, I hesitate. How do I describe something so inspired and do it justice? What do I call that exalted feeling without sounding like Marie Corelli? But I think she was onto something. This subtle element I crave might be like the mystic’s experience. I read St. Teresa’s writings and they didn’t seem like the ramblings of a pious saint to me.
Her prose reads suspiciously like hot romance complete with mystic’s code for otherworldly, er, ‘union’.
St. Teresa, like other mystics who saw ‘apparitions’ or heard ‘locutions’, poured her heart out. You should read her descriptions of the non-physical relations she had with her ‘heavenly spouse’. Highly educated, her prose reads like classics literature. She bared her inner life in moving romantic narratives. I wonder if she intended for us to see it?
Take a look sometime at texts from any of the world traditions to find your own evidence of spiritual erotica. But don’t go telling some of their proponents I said it’s erotic, spiritual or otherwise. It is, they get that.
My favorites are simple, from Sufi poetry.
One regret that I am determined not to have
When I am lying upon my deathbed
is that we did not kiss
enough.~ Hafiz (c. 1320-1329)
Others, like certain sects in the Hindu philosophies, consider erotica a form of divine worship between husband and wife. In the Ramayan, the brothers were bathed before the wedding under the supervision of their mothers who were determined to make their sons appealing for their brides.
They even gave last minute instruction on erotica in marriage. (The boys had just graduated from boarding school, I mean Guru’s Hermitage, with Ram. Their moms wasted no time in arranging marriages to Sita’s cousins.)
But what I’m looking for in esoteric romance doesn’t have to be Romantica. Or Tantric Sex. (That’s a nineteen-nineties inspired but oh so Westernized hybrid of Buddhist sexual meditation and Kama Sutra).
I wasn’t surprised to run across a Regency romance with this trend inserted by, someone remind me which author and novel, maybe one of Stephanie Laurens’ Cynster twins stories. The hero used a rare text with exotic illustrations to entice his lady and seduce her.
Like the writing of the romance novel, this esoteric element can’t be reduced to formula or enhanced by repetition.
Spiritual erotica doesn’t need to have the pages and pages of soft core found in Laurens’ recent novels. On a Wicked Dawn was excruciating. Some Amazon reviewers agree, one quipping that the author liked ‘impressing us with her knowledge of the Kama Sutra.’ Too bad, I enjoyed Lauren’s earlier works. They were more about love.
If you still like Laurens I won’t judge because life is about feeling good, knowing what you really want, and then inviting and allowing it into your life. Whatever it is.
In story, the hero and heroine do this when they make some type of declaration or observation to themselves or the world. They realize they’re ready for love, even when their thoughts or actions seem to protest. And then, they meet.
Some call this fate.
Even though you feel for sure these lovers are missing their window as they tangle through a twisting plot, that declaration is what got them together. It’s inviting what the want inside, opening the doors.
Looking for the next romance read is no different than anything else in life. You gotta invite those jewels you just know have to be out there and relax. Let them find you. That’s how the best ones came to me, now that I think about it.
So, what’s next? As I look for romance in any genre that lifts me to a high plane, I’m thinking I just may need to write a little story so I don’t go into withdrawals. Maybe I’ll get cozy and reread one of my favorite overwritten Victorian romance novels. Or a quasi romance from my esoteric collection.
I’ll write more articles and reviews about some of those books and new ones that fit this cubbyhole. I’d love to know if any of this resonates, or about your favorite books that give you ‘that’ feeling.
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The destined meeting of lovers: spiritual romance
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