The ability to know and not use the knowledge. To give while giving up control. The greatest expression of divine self-limitation allows us our ability to choose, even as we choose against God. As the Hebrew mystics write so beautifully, “even ...
The ability to know and not use the knowledge. To give while giving up control. The greatest expression of divine self-limitation allows us our ability to choose, even as we choose against God. As the Hebrew mystics write so beautifully, “even ...
 Why do we respond to death not with an exclamation of comfort, but with the Kaddish — a seemingly theological statement, “Magnified and Exalted is his great name”? The answer holds one of the most sacred mysteries of love rooted in the se ...
By Dr. Marc Gafni In this excerpt from Reclaiming Rosh Hashanah: The Dance of Tears (forthcoming), Dr. Marc Gafni explores the Garden of Eden biblical story and Abraham Kook’s teaching on the “inner essential I,” through which we come to u ...
By Marc Gafni We are all despearate for communion. It is what makes our lives worth living. Communion is the movement from loneliness to loving. It is the experience of being held and received. We are all systematically mis-recognized. To be recogniz ...
Love is almost always proceeded by an act of will. We do not fall in love unless we decide to fall in love. ...
The mystics teach us that to access the erotics of being – the fullness of ourselves in every moment - we need to first linger in the emptiness for a time. ...
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. ...
In Hebrew the word yes – Kein – means integrity. Yes is the ultimate affirmation of our integrity. The question of your existence is whether you can say yes to the adventure that is your life. ...
It is said that the Great Maggid would convene his inner circle every night to teach them the sacred texts. All of his greatest students would gather. ...
The core intuition of all the great systems of the spirit is that love and eros are captured best by the image of light. ...
In Hinduism the goddesses hold you in radical personal embrace. In classical Judaism the G-o-d loves you and knows your name, while in Suffism and Kabbalah she is your most intimate erotic partner. ...
The word most often associated in Kabbalah with joy is “chiyut,” roughly translated as “life energy,” somewhat like the Chinese notion of chi. To be happy is to be plugged into the chiyut of the Universe. The portal to that en ...
The Alchemy of Love “IT DEPENDS ON LOVE.” In this old Aramaic phrase, “it” refers to shadow. This phrase will guide you on the path of shadow integration that the old Unique Self masters called the “left-handed emanation” or the “way of ...
Life as Practice and the Three Stations of Love The evolution of states and stages of consciousness are explicitly discussed in the great traditions. We are using the terms states and stages in the classic sense that they are defined in integral theo ...
Part One Dr. Marc Gafni and Dr. Mariana Caplan explore the the notion of a World Spirituality with Claudio Naranjo and ask him what type of spiritual practices he recommends to practitioners to help articulate the principles of World Spiritual ...