In honor of KD To See the Imperfect Soul For me, this story that I shared yesterday from the tradition of the Baal Shem, incomplete and strange as it is, nevertheless captures at least one critical dimension of loving. The universe joins us with whom ...

A true story about the famous Kabbalist, Hayim of Sanz. A Room With a Mirror Hayim always stayed up studying into the depths of night. After everyone left the study hall he would sit at the window learning, all the while singing gentle harmonies. It ...

Running and Returning This movement — what the mystics called “running and returning” — is the core dance of the sexual. Here again, the sexual models the erotic. The cherubs hold each other. The passionately intertwined cherubs, symbols of t ...

Drunk With Fire This balance between ecstatic and normative, between in and out of love reflects a deeper ebb and flow within us. There are two forces which vie for domination in our lives. Each one must be honored. They are our wild ecstatic, sensuo ...

Through the Thou a person becomes I. —Martin Buber, I and Thou The philosopher who guides us on this path most clearly is Martin Buber. He talks in terms of what he calls “dialogic thinking.” Put simply, that means that there must be an I and a ...

Ecstasy undermines our sense of ego and personhood. On one level, that is terrific. It is the gate to the shared identity of intimacy. Moreover, it is the healing of the original sin of misperception, the thinking that I am separate from God. It is t ...

The Grateful Dead and Getting Grounded The Grateful Dead’s music was possibly the modern muse that most invited us to spin out of our narrow lives and sense the world of ecstasy. I remember that after Jerry Garcia died, there was a stinging critiqu ...