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Protest as Prayer (Part 8): Ten Sefirot

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

Sefirot

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

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Protest as Prayer (Part 6): The Ayeh Stories

May 16, 2012 at 11:07 am by Leave a Comment

This post is continued from Part 5. 

By Marc Gafni

R’ Nachman, I would suggest did not originate this understanding of Ayeh — rather it emerges out of a tradition of Biblical ‘Ayeh’ stories.

In the book of Judges, a messenger of God comes to Gideon at a time in which Israel has suffered greatly at the hand of the Midianite nation. The messenger of God offers certainty to Gideon: “God is with you, hero of valor,” and Gideon rejects this pat offer of security: “You tell me that God is with us? Then why is all this…” He cannot even give it a name. The silent questions ring out in the spaces between the words: ‘Why has all this suffering, why has all this pain, defined our lives for so many years? Why are men killed? Why are children orphaned?’ And the text goes on: “‘Ayeh’- where are all of his great wonders of which our Fathers told us, saying God took us out of the land of Egypt. And now, God has abandoned us.”

Gideon the Judge, in the tradition of Abraham, turns to God and says, “Does the Judge of the entire world not do justice?” Gideon the Judge challenges God, challenges the messenger and challenges the message. The divine response seems unclear, enigmatic and troubling; but also powerful, inspiring and deeply directive. God answers Gideon: “Go with this strength of yours and save Israel … behold, I have sent you.” (Judges 6: 12-14)

What “strength” is God referring to? I would suggest, and at least one Midrash implicitly supports my reading, that God meant: ‘Go forth with the power of your uncertainty.’ God is confirming that if Gideon has the ability to doubt that this is the best of all possible worlds, this means he shares a common moral language with God. The wrestling with God in itself implies messengership on behalf of the divine: “Behold, I have sent you.” God confirms the Chassidic tale that initiated this chapter: to grapple with God is indeed to touch God, and to enter into the wrestling ring is to be a representative of all Israel, to plead redemption for all the world.

Gideon says to God’s messenger: “Where, ayeh, are all of His great wonders?” — echoing Moses’ and Abraham’s uncertainty about God’s dealings in the world.

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Protest as Prayer (Part 5): Certainty of Rage

May 16, 2012 at 11:00 am by Leave a Comment


This post is continued from Part 4. 

By Marc Gafni

Said differently, by holding uncertainty and not settling for explanations of suffering that our soul intuitively rejects, we reach a higher certainty — the certainty of rage. It may well be that in a century that has seen one hundred million people brutally killed the only path back to God is the certainty of rage. Those who deny the holiness of our anger deny God.

Babies are part of our core certainty. They remind us of all that is pure. They somehow cut though our posturing and touch something deep inside us. Have you ever seen a baby brought into an office — no matter how serious the office — grown men and women almost immediately revert to baby talk, to goo goo gaga. Babies cry out for our protection. They call us to rise to our highest selves. Perhaps this is what Leah understood for the first time as she looked down at little Judah. Until Judah’s birth Leah had been so intent on using her children to get Jacob that she hadn’t really seen them. Only when she gives up her need for Jacob is she able to see her baby. It is from this place she cries out — “I have found myself before God.”

Babies being ripped apart — my mother’s youthful vision — destroy that core certainty. “Where Is God” writes Weisel, “he is hanging on the gallows”…. In the body of a young boy. Incarnation is reversed in the horror of suffering. God becomes human and dies on the gallows. In the reversal is the death of God about which some post-holocaust theologians wrote with such pathos. The Biblical response is different. Biblical men and women work their way back to God, not through pious imprecations justifying God nor through pathos-filled announcements of God’s demise, but through the certainty of rage.

Photo Credit: dariuszka

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Protest as Prayer (Part 4): Where — is God

May 11, 2012 at 3:32 pm by Leave a Comment

Angst

This post is continued from Part 3.

By Marc Gafni

R. Nachman of Bratzlav in a profound and daring teaching reveals the light shimmering in Alyosha’s speech. It is a teaching on the word ‘Ayeh’. Ayeh in Hebrew means where, in the sense of ‘where is God?

Ayeh encapsulates in one word Alyosha’s entire oration. I want to share with you R. Nachman’s teaching directly, in my trans-interpretation of the original Hebrew text. The bracketed words are my additions:

‘When one follows the path of intellect – (certainty)
one may encounter
multiple mistakes and pitfalls
There are many who fell
and who caused the world to fall
and all through their intellect (false certainty)

….. when you fall into uncertainty
the fall perse
and the descent
are the ultimate ascent.
For all of creation…
derives sustenance
from the ten revealed utterances of creation(certainty)
but the place of the fall
derives sustenance
from the hidden utterance. (uncertainty)
(which is keter)
…in the place of the fall
certainty can give no nourishment
there only the hidden utterance – uncertainty
gives nourishment.
When a person says ‘Ayeh’- where is the place of his glory
when he realizes how distant he is
how deeply he has fallen into uncertainty
this – itself is his fixing

Nachman teaches that in the depth of uncertainty is certainty- the experience of worth, value and being loved. In the anger at evil is the profound intuition that our rage matters – and that it is holy.

Note: This is part of an ongoing series.

Photo Credit: h.koppdelaney

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Inner Revolution: The 7 Steps of Radical Transformation

May 9, 2012 at 12:29 pm by 1 Comment

Butterfly

By Sally Kempton

Note: This post has been previously published, including an appearance on the IEvolve.org website. We’re proud to present it to the readers of Spirit’s Next Move.

Feel like all hell is breaking loose? You might be experiencing a radical transformation that could change your life for the better.

1. The Wake-Up Call
You realize that something needs to change.

2. Holding Uncertainty
You search for methods to help you change, explore teachings and avenues, all the while being willing to live with the insecurity of being in a process of identity-shifting.

3. Asking for Help
You approach teachers and mentors, and you strongly appeal to the power of grace itself.

4. Grace, Insight, and Awakening
Grace opens the situation, creating a breakthrough, inner shift, which may manifest as new gifts or insights.

5. Honeymoon
Enjoying the new situation, you live in the breakthrough. It may feel like being in love.

6. The Fall From Grace
You lose touch with the new gifts, experience the consequences of over-confidence, and a sense of dryness or loss of contact with your Source.

7. Integration
You bring insight to bear on the contractions that have caused you to lose contact with grace, you apply spiritual insights to the nitty gritty actions of life, and you experience the ripening of your breakthroughs over time.

Doug went on his first yoga retreat because he hoped to do some firsthand research into the effect of yoga on stress. But one morning on that retreat, he came out of meditation knowing beyond reason that something in his life had to change. “Everything I was doing felt utterly inauthentic,” he told me. His medical practice had gone dead for him, and it had been years since he felt a real connection with his wife.

A few days later, Doug confided his new insight to his wife, telling her that he needed some time out to contemplate his path. His wife thought he had gone crazy; soon the fault-lines in their 20-year marriage had cracked irrevocably. Now they are preceeding towards divorce, while Doug studies yoga therapeutics and spends hours every day meditating and writing. His children won’t speak to him. He tells me that he cries several times a week, and feels as if he were swimming in a fast hot river of emotions—his own and other people’s. Even more unsettling is the fact that he doesn’t know where all this is taking him.

We often don’t realize, when we enter a transformational process, exactly how much upheaval we may be letting ourselves in for—and how radical the uncertainty we may feel along the way. In one of Rumi’s poems, a boiling chickpea speaks up from out of the stew pot, complaining about the heat of the fire and the blows of the cook’s spoon. The cook tells him, “Just let yourself be cooked! In the end, you’ll be a delicious morsel!” Over the years, when the fire of yoga has felt especially hot, I’ve often turned to that poem, It describes so well the psychic cooking that goes on during certain phases of transformation. Transformation, after all, is a process where you literally allow yourself to be softened, opened, even broken apart, in order to expand your sense of who you are. When you are in the midst of the process, you might feel like that overheated chickpea, or like cookie dough—raw and untogether. It’s hard to keep your cool, or even to convene the different pieces of your personality. You say things that other people find weird or embarrassing. Even more dislocating, you don’t know exactly who you are. That uncertainty—the feeling that you’re caught between an old self and an unknown new one—is one of the signs that you’re in a true transformative process.

Transformation is different than spiritual awakening or enlightenment. The contemporary philosopher Yasuhiko Kimura defines transformation as a dance between Being and Becoming. ‘Being’ is the changeless source of all that is, the formless ground where words and categories dissolve, and which many of you have perhaps touched during meditation or Savasanana. ‘Becoming’ is the part of you that grows, changes, shifts. It is the realm where inspiration becomes actualized in the world. Being is your still center, your source; becoming is your personality, your body, and your interactions with the world.

When you have a spiritual awakening, or even a deep experience of stillness in meditation, you are returning to pure Being, immersing yourself in the love and freedom of undying essence. Transformation, on the other hand, is what happens when the insights and experiences that emerge out of pure Being meet your ‘ordinary’ human personality and your day-to-day reality and begin to infuse your choices and relationships.

Doug’s transformative process was actually a recognition that the insights he was touching in meditation were demanding to be lived. An old friend of mine described a similar moment in his life. He’d spent a month in retreat with his teacher, finding that his capacity for loving had increased exponentially in his teacher’s presence. Back in the stream of ordinary life, he’d watch the love evaporate under the daily pressure of making a living and dealing with the minutia of life.

For him, the process of transformation arose from the tension between the love and wisdom of pure Being that he experienced while on retreat, and the real life habits and feelings that characterized his ‘old’ self. It’s that tension that actually births change. In fact, the tension is part of the process, a sign that transformation is immanent or in development. There are other signs that you can learn to recognize too, because for most of us, real transformation happens in stages that can be tracked.
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A Bouquet of Truth Tests: Reflections on Certainty and Uncertainty (Part 2)

April 23, 2012 at 3:00 pm by 3 Comments

 

By Liza Braude-Glidden

Continued from Part 1. 

Reflection Six

An Opportunity and Crisis Truth Test

When uncertainty engulfs the present, how do you respond?

Hot winds off the Mojave Desert engulfed our neighborhood in towers of fire when I was seven. Dive-bombers careened overhead as if we were at war. Our teacher rushed us out of our second grade class crying, “ we must evacuate,” words instilling more fear than understanding in our seven-year-old hearts. Soon our bus rumbled though familiar streets made hellish by black smoke. We huddled together, wondering if our parents had saved our pets. When would we see our families again? Some of us wondered if our parents were alive.

We were right to wonder. My father, for example, stood on the roof of our home with a hose until the water ran out. One third of my friends lost their homes and possessions. Whirlwinds of fire charred the tops of our trees. The Fire spared my father and our home, but it could have gone another way. Miraculously, no one died. Yet in those moments we shared as children it was as if God had suddenly thrown all the balls of our young lives up into the air. No one knew how they would come down, MAYBE not even God.

We call our historical moment “the age of information.” We seem to know whatever we care to know on almost any subject including the chaos and suffering that seem ready to overwhelm our humanity daily. We know enough to be awestruck by the forces in play. Do we know enough to be willing to dance with all the balls God has tossed up in the air?

Reflection Seven

A Solitude/Isolation Truth Test

Am I allowing this truth to isolate me or using it to connect to a larger whole?

Most expansions of consciousness wrestle with shadows of isolation. I am connected with the universe in a new way and suddenly bereft of anyone with whom to share my new world space! William Blake is an example of a visionary who complained bitterly that the gutless cartoonists of his time received glory he deserved. Eastern influenced Westerners may see his rage as a lack of equanimity, yet wrestling with this shadow may have given Blake’s vision greater strength and integrity. One can imagine Blake alone in his workshop by the light of a single oil lamp, working furiously through the night on his engravings of the story of Job.

The shadow, the truth that I am alone in my revelation, is true enough, but not as true as the sense of belonging that knows that every opening to a wider embrace weaves me deeper into the fabric of life and being.

Expansion of consciousness connects. Its shadow dissociates and alienates. This dissociation and alienation is an important shadow truth. In it’s best expression, it aids in the evolutionary process of differentiation. At the same time, truths that connect me, that bring me into engagement with the whole and its parts are truer than those that isolate me from my fellow humans and the universe we share.

Expanded consciousness is sometimes described in terms of increasing self-reference and individuation and this is of course, true. Such beings are recognized by equanimity and lack of fear. And in the truth test I call Solitude/Isolation, an expanding consciousness is described as an increasingly vulnerable, engaged connectedness, thus the apt term, embrace. Such beings are recognized by monumental acts of love.

Reflection Eight

A Mud Hole Truth Test

How much humiliation does it take to humble me where intuition is concerned?

Glastonbury, England, home, some say, to the Holy Grail, has more than it’s share of mud holes. On You Tube, you can see a couple on their way to an outdoor concert disappear when what is beneath the wet, reflective surface of their path is much deeper than it appeared! Soon two thickly coated brown, demoralized beings are shown, struggling out of the depths.

Have you followed intuitions’ path only to land in a messy, inconvenient and perhaps wounding mud hole? Were reflections sometimes misleading? What was revealed in that messy instant that was invisible a few moments earlier? Did you hear, at loud volume, voices that ordinarily mutter in the background? Does the drenching shock of the mud hole discredit the original intuition? How does the baptism of the mud hole inspire your courage and resolve?

Like old-fashioned cartoon characters, we may walk a long way with only intuition supporting us and only notice we have done so when we fall painfully to earth. Does that mean that the steps we take on solid ground are more real than those we take in flights of intuition?

Maybe there is strength and integrity in both. Maybe each informs the other. Mud holes are crucibles of evolution and you never know whom you’re going to meet there. While the baptism of certainty may be water, perhaps the baptism of uncertainty is mud

Reflection Nine

An Authenticity/Complexity Truth Test

How can authenticity emerge from complexity in our historical moment?

Recently an iconic photo circulated on the web of an indigenous man in traditional dress weeping with his face in his hands as he received the news that his tribe had lost the battle to save their entire cultural homeland from destruction by a hydroelectric project. Have you faced an uncertainty that wiped out all knowledge and meaning?

Many of us have experienced a dark night of the soul or considered that God might be dead. It’s still more painful to consider how many of us have come to a moment when it seemed our fellow humans had just executed God. How do we move forward from such a moment? This is one of the deep uncertainties shaking the foundation of our world.

A central task of World Spirituality is to help us respond to such moments in a state of engagement with one another and with All that is Holy, rather than in a state of alienation from one another and flight from the Divine.

How can our personal encounters with truth become a part of this Holy engagement in the face of convulsive forces? How can these encounters become a gift to the Pool of Knowing that connects us with one another and with the Whole? Our power as individuals and as groups comes in our ability to respond.

Certainty and Uncertainty emerge in the most intimate places. What we long for in our romantic partnerships  is often certainty in the face of our almost infinite vulnerability, yet what we discover, both in our own hearts and in our encounters is often uncertainty. Every therapist and pastoral counselor faces endless variations on this dilemma.

In the hearts and minds of seekers of truth resonant questions on certainty and uncertainty continue to surface. Theorists in many fields speak of the importance of novelty, a scientific term for the emergence of stuff scientists can’t predict. Psychologist and Complexity theorist Terry Marks-Tarlow in her new book on clinical intuition in psychotherapy writes:

…clinical intuition is an inner faculty necessary for therapeutic change both in therapists and patients alike. True change requires openness to novelty. This is the bailiwick of the right (and not the left) hemisphere. Transformation during psychotherapy harnesses imagination and creativity. Unless we can conceive of a future that differs from the past, we cannot live one out. (emphasis mine LBG)

What does it mean to us as an emerging global community to conceive of a future that is different from the past? How do we, as a global community address what every psychotherapy patient addresses: Stuff has become unworkable. We need new stuff. Yet self-replicating bots are hard at work in our global consciousness. We need new intuitions (on a personal scale) and new revelations (on a global scale.)

The Traditional Christian Author, Lael Arrington, blogging in the women’s Christian collective, Tapestry, laments that faith in a post-modern era has become a process of sitting with unanswered questions. These questions sit in the post-modern heart where conviction once was. Yet she knows we cannot go back to our old certainties. She quotes Jesus in the Book of John: “• Jn 18:37-38 “…for this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.”

What could it mean, in a post post-modern world to be “on the side of truth”? Arrington reflects: “But how do we do this (testify to the truth LBG) with cognitive humility? Authenticity is the key.” These terms authenticity and cognitive humility lead into a rhythmic engagement with certainty and uncertainty that gives access to both.

Personal truth tests, such as the ones I recounted here, are a source of knowledge of my unique authenticity. Through sharing them and relating them to liberating structures, I am able to know and test both my authenticity and cognitive humility, even in those intuitions where I am currently alone, or in a small cohort of understanding.

Testing personal truth, inquiring into authenticity and cognitive humility invokes the liberating structure of Marc Gafni’s teachings on Unique Self. The emergence of Unique Self in the face of certainty and uncertainty, is, Marc says, a transition from the statement “It is true.” to the statement “I am true.” Through my eyes, God reveals unique and essential features of truth that sheds light on my inner life, my human family, and on the physical and practical world. I reveal myself as a Unique and necessary source of revelation. When I am true, I am making my truest contribution to the Whole. I am offering my unique piece to the puzzle of an emerging World Revelation.

Up until now, revelations of our collective spirit required compromises of each individual spirit, placing every human in an unacceptable dilemma: either narcissism or cream of wheat. Neither makes much of a party.

Can we tune our antennae to the signs of a revelation of the Whole that not only permits but in some sense requires the full expression of each unique human perspective?

Reflection Ten

Care to Dance?

Inviting an important person to dance creates a bit of trembling- will you? Won’t you? Dear Reader, have you found one exquisite detail here that got your feet moving to a rhythm?

We dance best in festive rooms full of dancers. There is music, maybe a live band. Perhaps interesting lighting, firelight, or maybe it’s warm and we’re dancing outdoors. World Spirituality’s invitation to the Dance of Certainty and Uncertainty is an invitation to gather enough inspired certainty and cognitive humility to engage such macro complexities as population growth, climate change, diseases of starvation and overindulgence, the extinction of species and cultures; and to engage intimate complexities such as how to be human and humane in a world of accelerating novelty and complexity.

To dance in affirmative engagement in such a world, each of us must do our best to embody an inner spiritual authority that provides alternatives to literal readings of scripture and fundamentalist ways of knowing. In these ten reflections, we have explored seductive glimmerings of alternatives. We have glimpsed World Spirituality’s challenge to apply liberating structures to our unique encounters with truth. MAYBE, dear reader, you have found renewed enthusiasm for offering your tests of truth as gifts to a matrix of collective wisdom without diluting their unique authenticity.

Some truth tests didn’t make the cut, so I’ll mention two: The truth test of the market place in which my daily life is engaged deserves an essay of its own. Another, as important as any I’ve mentioned is gratitude: How grateful am I for the opportunity of this moment and the consciousness I am able to bring to it? How grateful am I for you dear reader, for your response, whatever it may be, and for the teachings of World Spirituality that brings us together?

As consciousness evolves, we evolve new ways to recognize revelation in ourselves and others. I’m hoping for a good party with lots of dancing. I am grateful to be invited, grateful to remain curious about the unique gifts arising in each moment in you, me and we.

I hope for both Divine and human help in finding the courage to act in the face of uncertainty. For without such action I may not find enough knowledge and energy to contribute to the evolutionary momentum of the Whole. This means being willing to act with the certain knowledge that infinite numbers of God’s balls are currently up in the air. Which will come to earth? Which will hit me on the head? No amount of mapping will provide an answer, yet maps are glorious and needed.

The Integral map is like a pattern of landing lights on a runway. When God throws me up in the air, I use the map to return to Earth safely. I land where important others live, people with whom I can talk, people with whom I can build. Together we find the power to resist easy certainty and MAYBE in that resistance, a revelation of WE is being born.

Notes

“Physics Jokes, Number Three”, From Jupiterscientific.com, 2012

Life on Mars, BBC Wales, 2009

* It turns out this Einstein quote is a persistent urban myth. It’s likely Einstein never said it. The quote simplifies an insight that Einstein did exemplify. Intuition was central to his process and values. The quote was likely born out of a need to have one simple phrase to express that fact.

Lao Tsu, trans. Mitchel, Stephen. The Tao Te Ching, Harper and Row, 1988, 1

John 1.1, King James Version, 1769

Gafni, Marc, “The Path of Wrestling,” in The Marc Gafni Blog, 2011.

Mark-Tarlow, Terry. Clinical Intuition in Psychotherapy, W.W. Norton and Company, 2012, P.29

New Testament, New International Version, John, 18:37: “You are a king, then!” said Pilate. Jesus answered, “You are right in saying I am a king. In fact, for this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.”

Arrington, Lael, “Certainty Versus Cognitive Humility, Why Does it Always Have to be Either/Or?”, Tapestry, 2010.

Photo Credit: Liza Braude-Glidden

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A Bouquet of Truth Tests, Reflections on Certainty and Uncertainty (Part 1)

April 23, 2012 at 2:46 pm by 1 Comment

By Liza Braude-Glidden

Introduction

Physics Joke 3:
Q: Why are quantum physicists so poor at sex?
A: Because when they find the position, they can’t find the momentum, and when they have the momentum, they can’t find the position.

To engage with the growing community of the Center for World Spirituality is to accept an invitation to the dance of certainty and uncertainty. The relationship between certainty and uncertainty is one of the key teachings of World Spirituality in the writings of Dr. Marc Gafni, The Center’s teacher in residence. These recent teachings  emerge from Marc’s book The Uncertain Spirit published in Hebrew in the mid-eighties. An updated, expanded version of Marc’s teachings on certainty and uncertainty will soon be released in English. This essay is a series of ten short reflections on Marc’s teachings on the dance of certainty and uncertainty from a feminine and inter-subjective lens.

Reflection One

A Granular Truth Test

How detailed is this truth?

Breeze wafts through my open window. Outside, flower vines bob in a slow rhythm. I feel your eyes looking out on whatever scene is yours to see at present, feeling honored by your presence here, wondering how you will come to know what you know in your moment about what I am writing here in mine. In this moment, dear reader, how are you knowing what you know?

Consider this scene from Science fiction: a man stands joyously on a twenty-story rooftop edge about to leap. He’s certain he’s found a way to prove that the reality around him that seems real, isn’t. He’s confident jumping will show him what’s real. A female character calls him to step away from the edge. Her voice is too inviting. He grasps her hand. “Grit” he says, “I feel gritty sand on your fingers.”

“Yes,” she says, “I touched a broken plaster wall on my way up to the rooftop.”

“How could my mind fabricate that level of detail?” The main character questions, “Perhaps you are real.” Her feminine presence plus the sandy grit on her fingers gave birth to enough uncertainty that he stepped away, at least long enough for the story to continue.

Traditionally, “certainty” and “reality” and “truth” are used in close connection. In Marc’s writings reveal truths of both certainty and uncertainty.

Some of us love to jump; others habitually hang back. Is either choice inherently wise? What kinds of details make a moment more certain than your interior can fabricate? What details in your life might give you what Marc calls” the core certainty of your existence?”

Reflection Two

“Maybe Stories”

Of what, dear reader, are you absolutely certain?

Is there a place in you that rests gently in the natural uncertainty of each arising instance? Is there some uncertain country inside your heart that longs for inspired action? Is there a nostalgic wish for the certain unity of the One True Right and Only Way? Or do you cling ironically to uncertainty, like a post-modern security blanket?

As globally connected spiritual practitioners, compelling and seemingly contradictory texts on certainty and uncertainty call to us from religious scriptures of many eras and cultures. “The Tao that can be told is not the Eternal Tao” is a common invocation of uncertainty stated in the first line of the Tao Te Ching, primary text of the Taoist tradition (Forth Century BCE.) In contrast, in the New Testament, John echos Genesis: “In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. “

Is it possible that two great traditions could differ so completely? Can we see these two perspectives as part of a larger whole? World Spirituality lives into the question:

If consciousness is indeed evolving, our recognition of revelation must also evolve. In a post post-modern world, how can we recognize authentic revelation?

In the quote below, Marc recounts a revelatory process of discovering Maybe Stories, tales of inspired certainty about the central importance of uncertainty:

It occurred to me in a moment of graced intuition that although the word Safek (Doubt LBG) does not occur in biblical text, the word Ullai, meaning, Maybe, does appear. Not once but in seven major pivoting points in the book of Genesis.

It also became clear to me in that moment of grace, that there is a distinct and intentional biblical genre of Ullai- Maybe stories which form the basis of the biblical theology of Uncertainty.

In each of these stories the ability to hold uncertainty and not be seduced by easy certainties is the key to the triumph of the Biblical Hero. (2011)

God, who could be called a biblical hero, died. We attended His funeral throughout the twentieth century, yet for the vast majority of people the thirst for the Divine refused to be quenched. Something in us refused to be seduced by the easy certainty of His demise. MAYBE, our hearts said, the Beloved is becoming more present through the act of dying. MAYBE a death of God in each unique heart sweeps the slate for a flood of Eros, a unified yet multiple revelation of the Beloved. MAYBE God’s heroism is revealed uniquely through the heroism of each and all of us.

MAYBE I will get the job. MAYBE she will say yes. MAYBE I will conceive a child. MAYBE the Arab Spring will bring enduring change to the Middle East. What are the MAYBE moments in your world, dear reader? What is the worthy fulcrum on which your life is leveraged at this moment? What is the heroic challenge? Is there a temptation to be seduced by easy certainties?

Reflection Three

A Bouquet of Truth Tests

How can I offer my personal truth tests as a gift?

On one hand, a field of study with centuries of tradition and scholarship, sourced mostly by male sensibilities, inquires into how human beings know what they know. On the other hand each of us, in an intuitive space and in each fresh moment must make judgments about what is certain using whatever skills and resources we have. In that spirit, beloved reader, I offer this bouquet of truth tests, as an empowerment and blessing for the intuitive leaps your life inevitably asks of you. For, as the title implies, truth is a gift, one that emerges uniquely in each instance of expanding human consciousness.

No one test makes something true or insures that I am able to share my truth with you. Yet a well-arranged bouquet of truth tests helps. The purpose is not to assure ourselves that things are real and solid. They both are and aren’t. Rather, the purpose is to inquire into what inspires us to believe that they are and aren’t. What truths move us forward? How do we come to understand the authenticity of such truths?

Sometimes your truth tests may be the same ones I use, sometimes they may be remarkably different. Do your truth tests tend to be linear or rational? Or do you find yourself relying more on whole pictures, leaps of intuition, and nonlinear juxtapositions? We all need and rely upon both of these styles yet in everyone, one or the other is dominant

Some people assume that linear processes have truth tests while holistic, intuitive processes do not. Some assume that only the truths we share with others can be tested. These assumptions have at least two downsides: first we do not give intuition credibility, and second we do not hold intuitive individuals to the level of integrity necessary to fully integrate them into our most vital conversations.

As our world becomes more complex, we are asked to make more and more leaps of creativity and intuition. As the technology we have collectively sourced demonstrates it’s linear superiority over us as individuals, intuition and the synchronicities it stimulates become our assignment as warm-blooded, wet people. Since the latest research in neuroscience affirms the centrality of intuitive and right brain functioning in all human decision-making, we may as well enjoy it and explore it.

There are few things more interior and personal than how you or I know what we know; yet these inner intuitive tests of truth become truer when we share them. Gathered from wild fields and carefully cultivated gardens within, I offer this bouquet of truth tests, and though I cannot, through the medium of writing, receive your bouquet in return, I hope that in every passage of this writing you will feel my curiosity about what is in your bouquet. How are you engaging your essence by testing your personal truths?

Reflection Four

An Inquiry Truth Test

How can I rest in my questions in a way that evokes ever more beautiful and functional questions?

At one point in the dance of certainty and uncertainty, we may have assumed that the purpose of testing the truth is to find a clear answer. Another way of testing truth is to assess the depth, beauty and power of the questions that emerge from it.

Each section of this essay poses contemplative questions. One way to use them is as starting points for journaling or dialogue. Questions are italicized so you can find them easily. Another way to use the questions is as contemplative tools. Here are some steps:

  1. Read the piece through once with open eyes and heart.
  2. Scan through again, this time underlining the questions that have the most resonance.
  3. Choose three questions and write them, perhaps long hand, on a paper you can place near your bed.
  4. Instead of writing responses, simply read the questions in a quiet, relaxed moment, ideally before sleep. When answers come, bow to them gently, jot a reminder, and keep asking. Sit with the questions.
  5. Out of step four, new questions are born. They will lead your curiosity in important directions. MAYBE to an ever-expanding sense of wonder at the particular flavor of mystery to which your being is most alive.
  6. If you find yourself stuck in inaction, uncertainty may be dominant. If you find yourself exhausted by relentless activity, certainty may be at an extreme. What questions emerge from inaction? What questions emerge from relentless activity? When new questions become rich and resonant, (or threatening and charged) repeat the process with the new questions.

Most stuff is stuff we don’t know. And while it’s vital to be certain and to act, my hope is to do so with humility born of contemplation of how inevitably mysterious and complex any human life is. Each human life unfolds in a Singing Kosmos that makes the greatest human music seem like a nursery rhyme. In each intimate and expansive moment, how can we best listen to its song?

Reflection Five

An Exemplar Truth Test

What do you learn about your own intuitions through exploring those of your exemplar?

Many of my personal truth tests arose as I sang in and studied the choral works of J.S. Bach as a young person. In Bach, complex, mathematically perfect structures refine and amplify personal and religious feeling. As a choir singer I entered the maelstrom of that perfection. Do you remember a watershed series of experiences that occurred perhaps in your teens or twenties that helped you form what later became vital ways of recognizing truth?

In high school and college, my wise, feminine, unstructured presence produced countless songs, poems, paintings and deep conversations under the influence of a marvelous variety of creative women who still influence me including my college mentor, Deena Metzger, Cal Arts Faculty member Judy Chicago, and my grandmother, the abstract expressionist painter and Christian Science mystic, Vicci Sperry.

In the process of obediently following intuition I stumbled into plenty of blind alleys. While nursing bumps and bruises, I had many golden opportunities to become curious about masculine role models of structure and vision that could lend strength, integrity, and direction to my intuitive and empathic gifts. Yet most of the possibilities that presented themselves seemed to want to decimate the pleasure, beauty and energy I recognized as intuition’s life-blood. So, the search continued, who could be my exemplar?

Albert Einstein was a candidate. “The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant.” He wrote, “We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.” * True enough, yet as Einstein knew, intuition also has a Master, a divine one. Einstein was not always happy with the warlike masters his intuitions served, and as I mentioned above, J. S. Bach’s comprehensive expression revealed the beauty and identity of intuition’s Master.

Have you searched for an exemplar of intuition? Perhaps if you are quite masculine and/or rational your exemplar has contrasting qualities. Is there a passage of writing or an interview that describes her intuitive process? What moves you the most about her expression? What grounds you the most? What do you most seek to emulate?

At age eighteen at California Institute of the Arts, singing in a choir devoted to Bach, the meaning, theory, and history behind his choral works became an early touchstone that mirrored important intuitions of the Kosmos and humanity’s place in it. At the same time, I began practices from Eastern wisdom traditions. The choral works of Bach stood out as the most unimpeachable esthetic, spiritual, conceptual and structural authority. Studying and performing Bach gave state experiences of early spiritual practice meaning they could not have had otherwise. For a sizable minority of students and faculty at Cal Arts in the seventies, spiritual practice and musical expression were one fabric. We held both Eastern and Western enlightenment in our intuitive musical rapport.

A seed was germinating: Structures such as those I found in Bach make it possible to exchange and cultivate our knowledge of the filigree of manifest love we call our world. These structures have the potential to give us more freedom and beauty than they require from us, and to serve as evolutionary ladders, not only for those coming up behind us but even for those ahead of us, who teeter on the shaky edge of human possibilities.

Much later as the seed that was my knowledge of liberating structures began to grow, Ken Wilber sat down beside Bach as a living treasure whose integral map helps give intuition an honorable and expanding home.

Now, as my emphasis on individual expression intimates, I’ve become a student of Unique Self, World Spirituality and Marc Gafni, who has given inspired context to these truth tests. “Questioning,” Marc says, “is a right which emerges from intimacy.” In intimacy with myself, I gain the right to question myself, in intimacy with you; I gain the right to question you. In intimacy with truth I gain the right to test it. In Intimacy with God, I gain the right to question God.

What questions have you earned the right to pose, dear reader? How does your curiosity inspire intimacy? How does your intimacy inspire curiosity?

(for end notes, see the end of part two)

Continued at Part 2.

Photo Credit: Liza Braude-Glidden

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The Israel Moment: Reclaiming uncertainty as a spiritual value

April 19, 2012 at 11:01 am by Leave a Comment

Old Person

By Dr. Marc Gafni
Edited, prepared and with introduction by Dr. Heather Fester

Uncertainty is ethically and spiritually essential, Marc Gafni writes here, because it allows us to reach higher certainty, avoid the seduction of false certainty, and reach spiritual authenticity. In this excerpt from Chapter One of his volume Uncertainty, Marc introduces the core “Ullai Stories” or “Maybe Stories” of the Old Testament, explaining the role of Jacob, whose name is changed to Israel, as a major character in these stories.

The Israel Moment: Reclaiming Uncertainty as a Spiritual Value

Much of religious tradition can be understood as culture’s attempt to fully triumph over uncertainty. Indeed one of the most important modern Biblical commentaries argues that divine revelation is the gift of a loving God who wants to spare the world the pain of uncertainty.  Many voices in the religious world have declared unilateral victory, arguing that all of life’s doubts can be defeated through faith, religious observance, and logic.1

I believe our life experiences give lie to absolute religious and spiritual claims to certainty. Sometimes the way religious tradition critiques itself and conveys its more subtle and even radical ideas is through the seemingly innocent story. It is in this light that I understand the following wonderful story:

Yankele used to go to the market every week to buy the basic necessities for the Sabbath. Every Friday, he would buy Sabbath candles for one ruble, bread for one ruble, and Kiddush2 wine for another ruble: three rubles were all he and his wife could spare for the Sabbath meal. One day, Yankele arrives at the market with the three coins jingling in his pocket, and he comes across an elderly gentleman that he has never seen before. The old man looks at him deep in the eyes and says softly, “Excuse me, young man, but I am terribly thirsty. Could you please buy me a cup of tea?”

Now a cup of tea cost one ruble. To buy this man a cup of tea means that Yankele would have only two rubles left, which would make one of his Sabbath purchases impossible. Yankele is not sure what to do. But he looks into the eyes of the stranger, and for some reason, has a feeling this man is truly thirsty.  And, as something of a scholar, Yankele knows that one can make Kiddush over bread even without  wine, and so he decides to do without the wine this week and buy this enchanting stranger a cup of tea. Together they sit down in the tea-shop, the old man picks up his tea cup, makes a blessing and drinks the tea, closing his eyes in pleasure as the refreshing liquid pours down his throat. It is a few minutes before he opens glistening eyes and thanks Yankele with a very slight bow of the head.

Just as Yankele stands up to leave, the old man says, “Excuse me, could you wait a moment? You have been extremely generous to me. But you see, I am very, very thirsty. Perhaps you could buy me one more cup of tea?” Yankele looks at this old thirsty man and knows he has a problem. What to do? On the one hand, he likes this strange old man. On the other hand, his wife will not like him too much if he comes home with no way to celebrate the Sabbath.

……But then, on the other hand, Yankele remembers that one legal authority,  R. Akiva Eger, taught that lacking bread and wine, one can just say “Shabbat Shalom” to bring in the Sabbath.  In the end, Yankele takes the plunge. He sits back down and orders the man another cup of tea.

Again, the old man makes the blessing and drinks deep with eyes closed. Again, the man thanks Yankele with glistening eyes. But this time, as soon as the man bows his head, Yankele stands up quickly in the hope of escaping the words he knows are about to come: “Excuse me, sir,” says the old man before Yankele has reached the exit, “I am still very, very thirsty. Please could you buy me just one more cup of tea?” Again, Yankele is full of uncertainty. A crowd of Halachic variables rush around his head, but this time he can find no legal justification for forfeiting the last ruble which he needs for the Sabbath candles. “I’m sorry,” he says, “But I can’t buy you another cup of tea.” The old man smiles a sad smile, and bows his head. “Before you leave, let me bless you,” the old man says. “I bless you with great wealth, health, and a good long life.” Yankele thanks the man for his blessing and hurries off to prepare for Sabbath.

Sure enough, Yankele becomes a very wealthy man. He is able to look after his wife and all his children in luxury and style. He lives the epitome of a good, long life. But he is now nearing the end of his days, and he has only one desire left in the world and that is to thank the old man from that fateful encounter in the tea-shop. And so he goes and sits in the tea-shop every Friday in hopes of finding him again. Finally, one Friday before the setting sun, Yankele looks up from his tea and sees…the old man. It’s the old man—and although Yankele has grown older, the old man seems to look exactly the same.

Yankele jumps up, grasps the old man’s hands and blurts out all the gratitude that has built up inside him all those years. But the old man does not return his embrace, does not respond to his thanks. Yankele sees that the old man has bowed his head in order to hide a silent tear running down his face. “What is the matter?” asks Yankele, “Did I say something, did I do something wrong?” And the old man says, in a quiet, infinitely understanding voice—a voice which resounds throughout the heavens—he says, “If only, if only you had poured me one more cup of tea…”

The story,3 speaks to the experience of us all. We have all of us faced situations where we have needed to risk buying a cup of tea for a stranger, where we have to decide whether to take a leap in the dark. Likewise, we have all come across situations where we wish we had risked more, where with the benefit of hindsight we regret our caution. I have drawn on a story from within the Jewish tradition to point out that this universal experience of the uncertainties in life happens to us all. Yankele is a religious man, an observant, knowledgeable Jew with a deep faith in God, and yet this faith does not save him from uncertainty. Yankele acted according to the certainties provided to him by the law. The stranger makes the radical suggestion that there are times when we need to move beyond the soothing certainties of law or even common sense. This is the symbol of the third cup of tea. There is a point in our lives where, in order to reach authenticity, we need to buy the third cup of tea. Indeed in this story, sometimes only through entering uncertainty can the highest treasures be attained.

And yet Safek, which we have translated as uncertainty or perhaps more correctly, ambiguity, is the greatest producer of anxiety, tension, and existential malaise. There is no joy like the resolution of doubt. But how do we know how to resolve and when to resolve? Emily Dickinson wrote, “Hamlet wavered for us all.” His “to be or not to be” soliloquy is Shakespeare’s song of uncertainty which resonates in the melodies of all of our lives. How, if at all, can certainty be achieved? How are such decisions made? When to buy the tea and when not to buy the tea? When do we need to be safe and clear; when is risk irresponsible and immoral; and when is risk courageous, audacious, and even the highest expression of our humanity?

Biblical theology’s unique understanding is that living the sacred life requires a dialectical relationship between paradise and paradox, between core certainties and the existence of uncertainty. Both certainty and uncertainty are vital—each has its moment. Healthy religion, as well as healthy living, flow from simultaneously maintaining certainty and uncertainty.

In order to live in the world in a way that is both grounded and passionate, I need first to be certain about myself. If I do not doubt myself, then I have the inner strength to be able to encounter the many areas of my life where uncertainty is inherent and inescapable. Moreover, healthy acceptance of uncertainty will enable me to avoid both the paralysis of indecision and the recklessness of an extremism which craves the certainty of over-simplification. If I am anchored and motivated by some sense of inner certainty, then I can act courageously in uncertainty. If I hold no inner certainties, then acting from uncertainty is almost invariably a far too dangerous proposition.

In our book on Certainty, we understood that in order to reach sippuk—fulfillment—I need to resolve my inner safek—uncertainty. My failure to resolve that inner safek will prevent me from ever reaching true sippuk—satisfaction and will cause me almost pathologically to seek sippuk in places which are not of myself. Such a spiral will eventually lead to Amalek—the embodiment of evil—which the Zohar explains is the mystical equivalent of safek.4

In the first book of this study entitled Certainty, the Judah Moment framework was introduced, associated with the biblical story of Judah, in order to unpack the experience of core certainty. There is, however, a second moment in biblical consciousness where precisely the opposite holds true: where, rather than being enemies, safek-uncertainty and sippuk-satisfaction are inseparable allies. In this way of thinking, I can never reach deep sippuk without holding, choosing, or grappling with safek. Satisfaction is not attainable without uncertainty. In this second mode of Jewish thought, it follows that if I am unable to countenance safek in my life, I will always rush to grasp at a false certainty in order to escape the tension of uncertainty. This false certainty will never lead me to true sippuk.

In conjunction with teaching the need for inner certainty, biblical thought also deeply affirms the benefit of doubt. Uncertainty is understood to be both a spiritual necessity, a requisite for reaching authenticity, and an indispensable tool in achieving the highest levels of certainty. I shall refer to this experience as the Israel Moment. This because the archetypal Biblical figure of Jacob, whose name is changed to Israel, is the paradigm for the spiritual reclamation of uncertainty as a reality to be embraced and not resolved. First, however, let us acknowledge the common assumption that faith and uncertainty are inherent contradictions.

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