Marc Gafni

Daily Wisdom: Inside, Outside

June 1, 2012 at 1:25 pm by Marc Gafni Leave a Comment

By Marc Gafni

From my book, The Mystery of Love:

Love is all about insight–in-sight. It is the ability to see in, to the inside of the inside, to the Holy of Holies that is your lover. Eros is being on the inside. Thus, love is an erotic perception of the highest order. Naturally you have to move way beyond sexual seeing. Sex only models eros. To be an erotic lover you have to understand that “what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

When something is far from you, you have to open your eyes really wide to see it. As it gets closer you squint your eyes, when it gets really really close, you close your eyes. Seeing with closed eyes is when we perceive way beyond seeing. The adjective close and the verb close are the same word. Closeness–intimacy–higher vision–all happen when we close our eyes. We move beyond sight and invite the other faculties of perception to guide us. Smell, sound, touch, and taste all become alive in a deeper way when we close our eyes.

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Filed Under: All Posts, Daily Wisdom

The Democratization of Enlightenment (Part 1): Introducing Evolutionary Mysticism

June 1, 2012 at 9:59 am by Marc Gafni Leave a Comment

By Marc Gafni

“Why now? Why is a World Spirituality based on Integral principles which has as its core the democratization of enlightenment, which is the natural emergent of the Unique Self consciousness, why is it a possibility in a way that it never was, and why is it an urgent necessity in the way it never was?”

Filed Under: Belief & Practice

Perspectives as Post-modern Revelation

May 30, 2012 at 9:49 am by Marc Gafni Leave a Comment

By Marc Gafni

Every evolved culture and every evolved individual may realize Unique Self when True Self awakens to its Unique Perspective. An early expression of this equation is sourced in pre-modernity in the great teachings of the Kabbalists. For these masters, the sacred text of the Torah is the word of God. Yet, paradoxically. in Hebrew mystical teaching a human being who is deeply grounded in True Self while fully incarnating his or her own uniqueness, also speaks the word of God!

Human insight HOWEVER is considered the word of God and, given the status of Torah, only when it derives directly from the clarified unique perspective of a human being who is connected to the ground of True Self. In this radical teaching the supreme identity between the human being and the godhead is only realized through the paradoxical portal of radical human uniqueness. Irreducible uniqueness, the full inhabiting of unique perspective or voice, is revealed to be an absolute quality of essence.

In modernity and especially in post-modernity, the early realization of the Kabbalists in regard to the primacy of perspective takes center stage. There is an emergent cultural realization, placed front and center in Integral theory, that perspectives are foundational. But in post-modernity perspectives have to often been used as the key tool of post-modernity’s deconstructive project. The sentence used to deny all truth is “that’s just your perspective.”

Our conclusion in World Spirituality teaching however, is not that of the post-modern deconstructive thinkers who were among the champions of this insight. Deconstruction wrongly assumed that when perspective is revealed to be part of the process of meaning making, there is no longer any real meaning. Rather, when we understand perspective, we understand that every culture and every great tradition of spirit has its own Unique Self.

Perspective reveals a plentitude of meaning and not a dearth or death of meaning. All cultures perceive essence, but each unique perspective gives a particular resonance and cast to essence. Loyalty to one’s religion and culture is not, therefore, (as modern and post-modern fashions sometimes suggest), primitive or fundamentalist. It is rather partially true, in that it is how my culture is intuiting essence.

The pre-modern mistake was the failure to realize that every religion has a particular perspective, and therefore not to realize that no religion can claim that its intuition of ultimate truth is the only truth. Now that we understand that every great tradition and culture perceived essence through a particular perspective, we can avoid the tragic mistake of deconstructing the traditions as meaningless.

Instead, we understand that every tradition is a particular perspective, a particular instrument in the symphony of spirit that is indeed making sacred music. All of the perspectives come together to create a symphony. And at that point, there is the possibility that the followers of each tradition can begin to realize that their particular religion is not the music but an instrument of the music.

The Kabbalists foreshadow our post- postmodern World Spirituality reconstructive project. Nothing is true, says post-modernity, because everything is contextual. For the Kabbalists, foreshadowing World Spirituality teaching, the opposite is correct. When you fully inhabit your unique perspective you become Source. You not only speak the word of God You incarnate the word of God.

World Spirituality based on Integral Principles, including the first principle of Unique Self, understands that Uniqueness reveals essence through a particular prism. Perspective creates not a dearth of truth, but a magnificent kaleidoscope of truth. Every authentic insight deriving from Unique Perspective is true but partial. No part is reducible to the whole but no part stands alone. It is this insight of Unique Self that is the foundation of the great reconstructive project, which is Spirit’s Next Move.

Photo Credit: Jason A. Samfield

Filed Under: Belief & Practice, Unique Self Tagged With: integral, kabbalah, postmodernism, unique perspective, unique self

What does it mean to be fair?

May 29, 2012 at 10:39 am by Marc Gafni Leave a Comment

By Marc Gafni

What does it mean to be fair? In one sense being fair means to be just and good. To be fair is to be honest and have integrity.

Fairness implies appropriate weights and measure. To be fair means to give things the right weight and measure accurately.

When my sons were young the phrase that would indicate that they were the most upset or disturbed was the mixed English and Hebrew idiom, “Zeh Lo Fair.” It’s not fair. When they said that, they were appealing to a universal standard of the good and the just, which has ultimate natural authority.

The word “fair,” however has a second meaning as well. To be fair means to be beautiful.

The Queen asks the Mirror in the famous Snow White legend, Mirror on the Wall, “who is the fairest of them all.” And of course there is My Fair Lady. To be fair then is also a quality of aesthetics.

This reminds us that a lack of fairness is not merely an issue of justice but also an issue of beauty. Goodness and integrity are beautiful. To be unfair is not only a violation of justice, it is to be ugly.

All too often in the spiritual world fairness is seen as a practical obligation and an ethical value. And it is that as well. But it is so much more than that.

When someone — anyone — is treated unfairly, a kind of sordid ugliness is born into the world. It can be papered over with a thousand popular albeit numbing spiritual platitudes. It remains just as ugly.

In a forthcoming book (Radical Kabbalah, 2012) I trace the original texts in Hebrew mysticism that talk of the goddess, especially in the work of one pivotal Hasidic master. From a careful reading of that the entire Eros of the goddess is really about justice. The erotic passion of the goddess in Hassidic teaching is about the radical erotic commitment to fairness.

It is in that sense that some of the minions of the goddess in this world are sometimes called fairies. A fairy is a gentle yet sacred and seductive incarnation of the goddess. The fairy is both fair and fair. Beautiful and just. Any good devotee of Peter Pan and Tinkerbelle knows is that to believe in fairies is to give them life. If we would chant Tinkerbelle’s mantra, “I do believe in fairies I do, I do,” fairies come to life as integrity and beauty are once again united and made manifest in the land.

Filed Under: Belief & Practice, Featured, Shadow & Psyche Tagged With: fairness, goddess, goodness, kabbalah, morality

Protest as Prayer (Part 15): Did he blow out the candles?

May 28, 2012 at 11:51 am by Marc Gafni Leave a Comment

By Marc Gafni

This post concludes the “Protest as Prayer” series. It is continued from post 14.

It was late one Friday night, with the Sabbath candles flickering in the darkness, when the Rebbe stood up. He had been especially pensive this night: wrapped in thoughts and prayers of his own. He walked purposefully to the table, spat on his hands and snuffed out the Sabbath candles. In the sudden darkness the shocked Chassidim heard the cold fury and despair in their Rebbe’s voice resounding in the gloom as he intoned: “There is no Judge, and there is no Judgment.”

Rebbe Menachem-Mendel of Kotsk then walked out of the synagogue, locked himself in his room, and never came out. For over twenty years until his death he remained in isolation and spoke not another word. But his Chassidim did not reject him as a blasphemer, nor a madman. In his silent solitary rage the Rebbe of Kotsk became more respected, more loved than ever before, as the Kotsker Chassidic tradition flourished in all its contradictions.

Somehow the Chassidim understood that ultimate Doubt, ultimate challenge, when conducted from within deep relationship, paradoxically can become the ultimate service, the ultimate worship.

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Filed Under: Belief & Practice Tagged With: doubt, faith, god

Protest as Prayer (Part 14): Three Truths

May 25, 2012 at 1:04 pm by Marc Gafni Leave a Comment

By Marc Gafni

This post is continued from Part 13.

We began with three truths. God is good. God is powerful. Good people suffer. These are the three truths of Job. We hold all three. We can live in the deep and painful uncertainty of not always knowing how all three fit together. Those unable to hold the uncertainty emasculate God. This is Harold Kushner’s basic move. God can’t do anything about evil — God is nice but not powerful.

Others, unable to hold the uncertainty, emasculate man. That is pious orthodox thinker Gottlieb’s move. He has theo-logically solved the problem of suffering. He denies the rage, the protest, the unanswered question which defines Jewish text. He cannot live with the uncertainty of the question so he must argue that certainty has been achieved and the question answered.

Filed Under: Belief & Practice Tagged With: Bible, god, job, suffering

Protest as Prayer (Part 13): There is a Spirit in Man

May 24, 2012 at 10:53 am by Marc Gafni 2 Comments

By Marc Gafni

This post is continued from Part 12.

One of the most striking formulations of the Yehuda Moment in Chassidut is the movement’s founder, the Baal Shem Tov’s, teaching on a verse in the Book of Job. The verse in Job reads “There is a spirit in man — the breath of God — which gives wisdom.”

These words, which appear towards the end of the book, are spoken by Elihu in rejection of the ‘punishment for sin’ theodicy offered as a certainty by Job’s friends. The Baal Shem Tov interprets the verse: ‘The breath of God is the spirit of man’.

This is the intent of the prophet-poet writing in the sixth century before the Common Era. Jeremiah is describing redemption when he writes:

This shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel in the ultimate days … I will give my Torah through their inner selves, I will write it in their hearts … and no more will a man teach his neighbor and every man his brother saying, ‘Know God,’ for they shall all know me. From the least of them to the most of them. (Jeremiah 31: 32-3)

Indeed R. Kook, philosopher-mystic of the early twentieth century whose writings we have had occasion to visit, in his spiritual journal, ‘Mists of Purity,’ published after his death, refers to the Jeremiah text in precisely this manner. No longer, he writes, will sources of spiritual authority and knowledge be outside of ourselves. Certainty is not taught. It rather comes from the inner certainty of the spirit which is the sacred birthright of every person. The below passage from R. Kook is just too beautiful to relegate to a footnote.

Anything that enters the soul
from the outflow of a sister soul
even though beneficial in some aspect,
for in the end the receiving soul acquires some knowledge,
or sometimes a good or useful feeling
at the same time it also damages her
in that it mixes in an alien element into her essence.
And the world cannot come together in wholeness
except through a stance of negation of the alien influence:
“No longer will man teach his fellow
or a man teach his brother, saying: ‘Know God.’
For all will know Me, from the smallest among them to the greatest.”
With regard to each individual,
the process that negates alien influence,
even though it seems to take destructive form, this very collapse
is what leads to the most lasting and perfected structure.

And this is the only gateway to the World to Come,
for the Holy One Blessed be He makes a separate Eden
for each individual:
‘Your Eden’ is not written, rather ‘Your Edens.’

The communal consciousness of the Nation
to guard against alien influences
is the essence of its revival.
It penetrates as individual agitation
which generates destruction,
makes revolutions
and builds new worlds,
everlasting and shining.

This is the Yehuda Moment — this is core certainty which allows us to hold the light of our uncertainty — without the vessels shattering.

Photo Credit: h.koppdelaney

Filed Under: Belief & Practice

Protest as Prayer (Part 12): On Secrets

May 23, 2012 at 1:19 pm by Marc Gafni Leave a Comment

By Marc Gafni

This post is continued from Part 11.

That this is true is mystery and mystery is esoteric — it is secret. Secret, not because, as it is usually explained, it is forbidden to reveal the mysteries to the uninitiated; rather, secret because it is not possible to reveal the mysteries at all. For if the soul is not ready to receive the mystery then the secret cannot be transmitted. The holy energy of uncertainty is in the realm of mystery. I cannot fully explain. Yet two guidelines for those who would struggle to understand are in order.

The Rebbe of Kutzk teaches about the old man and the young baby. They both ask the same questions. ‘How, When, What, Where – Ayeh?’

Though the words are the same, worlds of wisdom separate them. For the baby asked his question and received an answer. That answer led to him ask the same questions again — only at a higher level. He received answers — which in turn created a new set of questions — the same as before and yet so much higher. And this process repeated itself through the years until the little baby was an old man. At the end of his life the old man asks, How — when — what — who — Where ‘Ayeh’?

In every question there are a thousand answers. Every uncertainty embraces a thousand certainties. The uncertainty is the highest expression of all the certainties and …beyond. This is what the old man finally understood.

What does the old man know as he formulates the uncertainty of the end. He knows that he is uncertain. He knows also that no lower certainty can contain his soul. Only uncertainly can sing the praises of his God. It is a song of relationship. For uncertainty is about loving. Loving means to care enough to be uncertain.

At this point the Yehuda Moment of core certainty merges with the Israel Moment of uncertainty. The affirmation of the question comes from a profound affirmation of core certainty of self. Specifically we affirm the dignity and validity of our rage.

We recognize that the rage is indeed holy as it wells from the deepest recesses of our being. We refuse to invalidate our core certainty of self. We refuse to deny the holiness of our moral intuitions. We embrace the sanctity of our ethical knowing. We are capable of calling evil by its name. We do not need to deny self by refusing to identify evil by its name because somehow to deny is to damage faith principles which are not of our selves. We refuse to deny our rage. We understand that at the deepest place our anger is God. It is holy anger.

The inner voice, which refuses to accept the cruel certainties of the theological answers to why bad things happen to Good people, is indeed the voice of God. The ultimate paradox: the core certainty of self allows us to hold the holiness of radical uncertainty in the face of evil. And at the same time — radical rage in the face of evil affirms our core certainty about the divine in world and most importantly, the divine in ourselves.

This is the certainty of the Yehuda Moment. This is the teaching of the Book of Job which we have unpacked throughout the book, “through my flesh I see God.” (Job 19). In Post-Renaissance mystical teachings, particularly in the works of the Chassidic masters, this means that my core sense of self is real and it needs to be taken seriously. Forced theological constructs should never be allowed to overwhelm my primal intuitions.

Photo Credit: h.koppdelaney

Filed Under: Belief & Practice Tagged With: esoteric, god, kabbalah, prayer, rage, secrets

Protest as Prayer (Part 11): God’s Language

May 22, 2012 at 1:05 pm by Marc Gafni Leave a Comment

By Marc Gafni

This post is continued from Part 10.

The Zohar writes that the Shechina is called “I”. This is a particularly dramatic way of expressing the idea that the Shechina speaks through the human voice. This means that whenever a person finds their voice on the deepest level, they are finding the voice of the Shechina. The human cry to God “Please be King” is also God crying out through the same voice, “Please I am trapped — bound in chains — free me and let me be King.”

God’s voice and our voice are one. The language of God is man.

Precisely the same spiritual dynamic is at play when the human being cries out in question, in protest and even in rage against the evil and suffering that so defines our reality. The question is not against God. The question Is God. God is speaking through his creatures. The cry of question is the Shechina in exile crying out for redemption. Our question, rage and protest are our ‘participation in’ and ‘expression of’ the cry of the Shechina.

We allow God’s voice to resound in ours when we refuse to accept facile solutions to the great question of human suffering and instead cry out in protest and anger. This is the deepest meaning of the Zohar’s declaration — “the shechina which is called I.” God’s voice and the human voice merge into one. Our protest is God’s protest. Our rage is divine rage. In some mysterious sense our question is God’s question.

Now we can finally understand the hidden implication of a seemingly straightforward teaching in the Zohar.

The teaching – ‘When texts refer to God as the King — Hamelech — reference is being made to the upper three sefirot.’ At first blush this is a typical Zoharic statement which identifies each Biblical name of God with a different sefirah or set of sefirot. That is, until we remember what Luria taught us – that the word Ayeh, where, as in ‘where is God,’ also refers to the upper three SefIrot. Then we have to add our understanding, based on a close reading of mystical sources, that the cry “Hamelech’ is the merging of human and divine voice in a plea for redemption.

I would suggest that Luria’s source for the poignant cry of Ayeh as the three upper sefirot is indeed this Zoharic teaching about Hamelech. The Zohar, far from being innocent, supports our radical understanding of the Hamelech of High Holy Days liturgy as being not a statement but rather a question, a plea — God, Hamelech, where are you, Ayeh?

This means that God’s title itself, Hamelech, expresses not only certainty, but also the question. This last radical notion can be sourced in bold relief in a Zoharic teaching in Genesis. There the mystical text points out that the divine name Elohim is made up of two distinct Hebrew words — Eleh and Mee (Eloh-eem). The first three letters spell ‘eleh’ –- which means ‘this’, and the last two letters spell ‘Mee’ – which means ‘who’. ‘Eleh – this,’ indicates knowledge and clarity, while ‘Mee – who’ is a question, expressing the uncertainty rooted in the divine name Itself.

The divine dances between the Judah Moment of certainty and the Israel Moment of question…. And we dance along with it.

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Filed Under: Belief & Practice, Featured Tagged With: god, kabbalah, language, prayer

Protest as Prayer (Part 10): God’s Emotions

May 21, 2012 at 7:00 am by Marc Gafni Leave a Comment

By Marc Gafni

This post is continued from Part 9.

To go one step further — God feels the pain of the sufferer through the agency of human beings who feel the pain of other. God feels, not only but also through, human agency. We are God’s emotions.

Based on this understanding a number of mystical writers provide us with the vocabulary to re-think the idea of God’s Kingship. It was with this quandry that I introduced the problematics of God-language in a world that suffers. How can we call God King?

Borrowing a text from the Songs of Songs, early Hasidic writers describe God as a “King bound in chains.” God may be King but he is bound — waiting to be redeemed. The image of a King bound in chains refers to the Shechina in exile.

In light of this tradition we can now understand the ostensible proclamation of Gods Kingship — “Hamelech” which begins the morning prayer service of the Jewish high holy days. If it is interpreted simply as a declaration of God’s kingship then it is profoundly difficult to understand. For, as we noted at the beginning of our discussion, King means more than just relationship. Kingship is an expression of control. Kings rule overtly. They are not hidden. Kings decree and the decrees are obviously implemented.

If God is King and his desire is for Good (God =Good) then it is difficult to understand how we can declare God’s kingship in a world ravaged by distended stomachs and unparalleled brutality. If God loves truth, and truth means that our theological language needs to be true to our experience of God in this world, then we cannot yet declare God to be King.

Indeed I believe that the cry of “Hamelech” at the beginning of the Liturgy is not a declaration by the human being of God’s Kingship. It is far more profound. It is a human cry pleading with God to be King. “God,” cries out the human being, “reveal yourself as King!” It is a plea for the redemption of world. Deeper still, it is a human plea for the redemption of God. Echoing in Hamelech, however, is a second voice of overwhelming power.

“Hamelech” is the cry of Shechina, of God, re-sounding through the mouths of human beings.

The Shechina cries out to the assembled congregation – “Please, I beg of you, Let me be King … I am caught, bound in chains, free me, redeem me!”

Photo Credit: Stuck in Customs

Filed Under: All Posts, Belief & Practice, Daily Wisdom Tagged With: god, prayer, shechina

Protest as Prayer (Part 9): “The Shechina which is called I” (Zohar….)

May 19, 2012 at 12:00 am by Marc Gafni Leave a Comment

By Marc Gafni

This post is continued from Part 8.

“The Shechina which is called I” (Zohar….)

The implication of this Kabbalistic strain of thought needs to be unpacked more fully. One of the core ideas in the Lurianic understanding of the religious act is the need to identify with the pain of the Shechina in exile. According to the Talmudic masters the divine presence — the Shechina — is exiled with the Jewish people. In one of the most daring affirmations of divine intimacy, the Talmudic teachers and later the kabbalistic masters insist that the transcendent God of the Bible becomes incarnate in the suffering of the Jewish people (and, I would add, of all people).

Indeed the actual term for Shechina in many kabalistic sources is kenesset yisrael — the community of Israel. The community per se is an embodiment of the divine. This identification achieves its most extreme form when God is described as suffering the pain of the people. Emerging from the verse in Isaiah, “In all your pain — he is in pain,” the mystical writers develop at great length the very powerful notion that God suffers together with every person in pain. For the mystic there may be much quiet desperation in the world but there is no lonely desperation. And being “with” is always the beginning of redemption. One mystical writer turns God’s infinity — which is understood by the medieval rationalists as being the expression of divine perfection — on its head and talks not about infinite power but of the infinity of divine pathos, intimacy and love. God loves us so much that when we suffer he experiences our pain — infinitely. This explains why God is hidden in world. For if God’s infinite pain were to be revealed — if one divine tear were to fall, it would surely destroy the world in an instant.

This notion of divine intimacy — together with a combination of two major ideas — one from Cordevero’s and the other from Luria’s Kabbalah — need to be transformed into a mandate for human spiritual activism. Luria teaches that a major raison-de-etre for the performance of Mitzvah is to participate in the pain of the Shechina in exile. When I perform a ritual act says Luria I am engaging in far more than the fulfillment of a divine command — I am rather empathetically identifying with the Shechina in exile. Through this identification I contribute to her redemption.

This idea brings us full circle. The human being suffers. God abandons the heavens, risking his transcendence in order to create intimacy with the sufferer by fully participating in her pain. Even for God there is no intimacy without risk.

Yet intimacy demands response. We are called on to participate with God in her pain. The act of Mitzvah is interpreted by Luria as a sort of participation mystique. For example, when we give charity it is not only an act of social justice. It is a movement of redemption — namely the redemption of the Shechina (who is called “the poor one”) from her exile. According to Jewish Law the dispenser of charity to the poor is commanded not only to give charity but to empathize with the pain of the poor person. According to Luria we experience the pain of the poor one on two levels, the actual poor person and the Shechina who is called the poor one. God’s redemption, according to Luria, takes place through our participating in God’s pain.

Cordevero in his classic work the Palm of Devorah teaches that Imatatio dei — the imitation of God — applies to all God’s revealed characteristics. All theology — i.e. knowledge about god — is a challenge to imitate, to be like, God.

Therefore the knowledge of God’s ways passed down by the spiritual visionaries of the generations — that God emerges out of Herself to participate in human suffering — demands that we imitate God. Just as God merges infinity into finity by participating in human suffering, so do we merge finity into infinity by participating in divine suffering.

How do we accomplish this? Clearly in the same way that God does … by participating in the pain of the other. Divine suffering is human suffering. We meet God in the pain of the other. God participates in the pain of suffering human beings. If we are challenged to imitate God by participating in divine suffering — then we meet the challenge by feeling the pain of other. Human beings meet God in pain — not, however, in our own pain, but in our ability to expand the narrow boundaries of self and fully identify with and experience the pain of other.

Filed Under: Belief & Practice, World Politics

Protest as Prayer (Part 8): Ten Sefirot

May 18, 2012 at 10:05 am by Marc Gafni 1 Comment

By Marc Gafni

This post is continued from Part 7.

An early Kabbalistic text, Bahir, declares that there are ten levels which link the world of the divine with the world of man. Each one of these ten levels of divine presence represents another dimension of God in our world. They are referred to as the Ten Sefirot. When we perform a commandment, says Luria, we participate in one of these levels of the divine.

Indeed the mystical writers point out that the word ‘Mitzvah’ has more than one meaning. Simply of course it is man’s commandment. The human in doing a mitzvah is thus seen as responding to a divine command which comes from outside the human being.

There is however a second sense of the word Mitzvah. It means Tzavtah — to be together with. When one performs a mitzvah one literally merges with divinity. One is together with God. In the mystical understanding, each Mitzvah moves me toward merger with a different Sefira, a different level of divinity. However, says Luria, we are only able to participate in the lowest seven levels. The human being, trapped in mortality, can never touch the highest three levels of divinity in this world. And yet one word can reach the heights. Ayeh.

Ayeh in Hebrew has three letters, alef, yod, hey. Alef, says Luria, is the letter that represents Keter — the divine crown, the highest sefirah – the level of divinity in the world. Yod represents Chochmah — wisdom, the second highest level. And Hey is Binah — intuitive understanding, the third highest level. When the human being cries out to God in uncertainty — ayeh — he expresses the highest three levels of divinity and in so doing reaches beyond his mortal limits to touch “the highest.” Luria affirms that the expression of uncertainty in God does not contradict spirituality, but rather is the highest expression of the human search for divine connection.

Ayeh — where are you — the ultimate uncertainty — is then the highest level of religious authenticity!

Photo Credit: Neon23

Filed Under: Belief & Practice, Daily Wisdom Tagged With: divinity, kabbalah, sefirot, uncertainty, wisdom