Eros and Holiness: Marc Gafni: Part Nine: Feel free to start reading from here; the part numbers are only for those who want to follow the whole teaching all the way through…
marc gafni
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The Epigrams below each capture the Dharma of Eros and Holiness.
“Even as the trees that whisper round a Temple become soon as dear as the Temple’s self…”
-John Keats
“Expanded consciousness is when the Taste of the Bark is as the Taste of the Tree.”
-Abraham Kuk
Leshem Yichud kushdha brich- hu uShehinateh.
May this be for the sake of uniting the masculine God with the feminine Goddess.
-Kabbalistic Meditation
Ma Yafit Uma Naamt Ahavavh Betanugim.
How beautiful and how pleasurable when love and eros are together.
-Song of Songs
Eros and Holiness:
A soul reaches heaven. Or at least she thinks its heaven.
It is a magnificent banquet hall. The tables are arrayed with all manners of delicacies. The guests have forks and knives in hands, ready to feast. A bell rings to begin the meal. There is a flurry of movement and then, to her astonishment, she sees that the guests arms are bound straight, unable to bend at the elbows, unable to take fork to mouth to partake in the great repast. The mob of hungry souls fling the food about frantically, cursing their predicament, shrieking at each other. A terrifying scene.
The soul hurries away from what she is sure must have been a glimpse of hell, only to arrive at yet another banquet hall, identically decked with tables of food and guests waiting to feast. A bell rings, there is a flurry of movement. Here too, the guests arms are bound straight, unable to bring food to their own mouths. But to the soul’s astonishment, she see no fury and frustration here. Rather, each guest with outstretched arms is gently feeding the guest seated across from them. The banquet hall brims with pleasure and peace. Heaven indeed.
If there is any truth to the myth – and myths are always true — we are in hell.
Competition is the reigning paradigm. Getting ahead is the direction of our lives. But there is no finish line. So we collapse somewhere along the path and wonder if it had to be this way.
Life is a mess ..but it doesn’t have to be. It could be heaven.
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I am a Kabbalist. And I am in pain. I am in pain because the world and therefore God is in pain 1. To shatter the narrowness of my egocentricity and to feel both the pain and joy of world/God is essential to my spiritual quest. Kabbalists refer to this consciousness as “participating in the pain of the Shehina in Exile”. Shehina, like Shakti for the Hindus, is the sensual feminine God Force.
The God force is in pain. Seemingly unnecessary and self inflicted pain. The primary response to pain however cannot be one of apportioning blame — either to human beings or to God. Although at first blush both seem to be more that a little bit at fault. The essential response to pain must be loving and healing. So I offer you these writings on Eros and Holiness as a gift in love. I pray that it will be healing, refreshing and ultimately transformational.
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footnotes:
fn. 1 This idea, which was extensively developed in Kabbalistic and Midrashic sources, is held by the Talmud and Midrash to have its origin in the Torah. In Isaiah 63:9 it is written ”In all their sufferings He was lo [not] afflicted. The Hebrew word lo is read with a vav meaning Him, rather than with an aleph, which would mean “is not”. The verse can therefore be read as “In all their sufferings, He, too, suffers”. Others derive this principle from the verse from Psalm 91:15: “I am with him in suffering”. See TB tractate Sotah 31a, and Ta’anit 16a, where two sages use these two verses as a basis for this idea. See also Midrash Rabba Bereshit 2:5, or Midrash Tanhuma Beshalah 28.
Marc Gafni
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