Perceived upon entry! To be ‘seen before God.’ The word “before” as we have seen derives from the same root as face and inside. So the Pilgrim comes to experience himself as on the ‘inside of God’s face.” In the ecstasy of the festival he reaches the consciousness which moves him to cry out “If [...]
Who Is Seeing Who: Part One: Marc Gafni
December 30, 2008 · Leave a Comment
The End is in the Beginning and The Beginning is in the End We return now, full circle to the Cherubic mystery of love. When the pilgrims came to the Temple in Jerusalem three times a year, the biblical verse tells us that they came to “see and be seen.” The festivals are great gatherings [...]
Perception – Love- Intention – Creation: Marc Gafni
December 29, 2008 · 1 Comment
Aboriginal traditions in Australia, the Hebrew mystics, Quantum Physics, a modern travel writer and the biblical myth – in the the last three or four blogs …. all come together and and remind us of the powerful spiritual truth; Love=Perception=Creation This is a truth you can see for yourself by translating it into your own [...]
Aborigines, Songlines and Love: Marc Gafni
December 28, 2008 · 3 Comments
Listen to a conversation in travel writer Bruce Chatwin’s wonderful book The Songlines: “Aboriginals could not believe the country existed until they could see it and sing it – just as, in the Dreamtime, the country had not existed until the Ancestors sang it.” “So the land,” I said, “must first exist as a concept [...]
NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTION: YES WE CAN: Marc Gafni
December 28, 2008 · 5 Comments
My son Eytan is visiting me from his homeland where I live with my family. Even as I live for a period of time in the United States, and my home is here now. I love America and am American in every fibre of my being. Even so, if that time will be for ten [...]
Eyes to See: Marc Gafni
December 28, 2008 · 1 Comment
Eyes to See It is the Kabbalists’ erotic loving perception of being that helps create and sustain the very reality they observe. But observation doesn’t quite capture the sense of what the Kabbalist does. The Kabbalists were often referred to as Mistaklim or Chozim, roughly translated as the Lookers or Seers. To get a handle [...]
We need to “Disturb” God: Marc Gafni
December 27, 2008 · 1 Comment
One of the leading physicists of the century, Werner Heisenberg, explained relativity as the paradigm shift in which we understood that “there is not a fact and an observer, but the joining of the two in observation.” Physicist J.W. Sullivan in his important work The Limitations of Science put it bluntly, “We cannot observe the [...]
Perception is Love is Creation: Marc Gafni
December 26, 2008 · Leave a Comment
Perception as Creation The language of God is man. We are not just God’s messengers, we are God’s language and voice, the means by which she shares her message. This idea becomes a little easier to access in light of quantum physics. One of the essential mind-bending breakthroughs in quantum physics is that the observer [...]
To Be God’s Partner is Totally Hot: A Biblical Mystical Teaching: Marc Gafni
December 26, 2008 · 1 Comment
The symbol in biblical myth for partnership with God is Amalek. Amalek represents those forces in the world which act for the side of evil. Hitler, Pol Pot and Stalin are modern examples of Amalek. Together they are responsible for the brutal deaths of a hundred million people. Biblical myth affirms that there are times [...]
The Message of Christmas New Year Holiday Season: You Are God’s Partner: God Needs You: Marc Gafni
December 25, 2008 · 1 Comment
You Are God’s Partner The powerfully explosive and world changing idea in the great biblical wisdom tradition is that we are all somehow partners with divinity in creating a better world. The core idea in the biblical lineage teaching is that God’s call to every person in love is a call to unique partnership. One [...]
God’s Partners: Marc Gafni
December 25, 2008 · 1 Comment
God’s Partners The Kabbalists takes the mandate of love implicit in self perception – one step further. I need to understand that not only am I a part of God but I am also a partner to God. Renaissance mystic Judah Loew of Prague, whose transmission I was honored to receive in a Hebrew shamanic [...]
Evil is the part of us that perceives without love: Marc Gafni
December 24, 2008 · 1 Comment
The Original Misperception The original misperception, writes Israel, Master of the Name, is to see yourself as separate from God. That is original sin. Evil, in biblical myth, is called “Amalek.” Again, mystical gematria points us to a deeper truth, because as the Kabbalists note, the numerical value of “amalek” is the same as the [...]
The Underlying Fabric is Love: Marc Gafni
December 24, 2008 · 2 Comments
God is both erotically within me and beyond me at the selfsame moment. Touching and not touching. The intimacy of shared identity without losing the integrity of individuality. Two solitudes that share in a sublime moment of Sameness. This is the first intimation of union and the beginning of all self-love. This is the great [...]
Being Intimate: Marc Gafni
December 23, 2008 · 1 Comment
The unfolding of the universe entails full divine loving presence. The divine perspective changes to include human beings. It is an intimate relation of shared identity. We participate in God and God participates in us. The great mystery of reality is the mystery of intimacy. God is both erotically within me and beyond me at [...]
What is Intimacy: Marc Gafni
December 23, 2008 · 1 Comment
Without a doubt, love’s sister is always intimacy. An erotic inside word, intimacy. Although it speaks to our knower selves, evoking deep levels of intuitive recognition, we are often hard pressed to define it. And while a definition could never exhaust the fullness and depth of intimacy, it may give us some direction in distinguishing [...]
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