Eros and Holiness: Part Fourteen: Life is a Recovery Movement: Marc Gafni
Marc Gafni
Published on marcgafni.com
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In reaching for the awakening of love we do well to bear in mind the teaching of mystical master Menachem Mendel of Kutz. Writing in eastern Europe in the first half of the nineteenth century, he offers an original deeply resonant re-reading of a biblical myth text. “These words which I command you this day should be on your hearts”. How do words sit on a heart? Do they not either enter in or stay outside? What could it means to have words sit “on the heart”? Answers the master, ‘When dealing in issues of heart – lev – love — one cannot force the heart’s opening.’ Love is mystery — the word mystery deriving originally from the Hebrew word Seter – meaning secret. The greatest secret, the most wondrous mystery, is the openings and closings of the heart. ‘The best we can hope to do — and that is a lot — is to place our words on the heart–and when the heart opens the words fall in.’
These writings are about truths deeper than logic and impenetrable by the limited tools of reason. The truths we seek to touch are not irrational but trans-rational, beyond the feeble grasp of the merely rational mind. They are about a knowing beyond knowing.
Listen with all five senses but also with faculties beyond the five we usually employ. Listen with love.
In the Hebrew language, the first letter of the alphabet is Aleph. Aleph is a love letter. The following three letters are Beit, Gimel and Dalet. In Hebrew, those three letters also form a word, “Beged,” meaning both clothing and betrayal. For we all know that there are two kinds of clothing. Occasionally we have clothes that really express who we are on the inside and that is good. But all too often clothes are a place in which we hide, betraying our truer selves. Betraying our Aleph, our silent places. And so it is with language. The first letter — the silent letter — is Aleph. It is the place beyond words and…
And then comes Beit-Gimel-Dalet. And come they must, for language is magical. With language, the mystics tell us, our world was created. For as quantum physics teaches us, the core construct of our reality is information and language, the medium of information. And yet as you read these words, know that they point beyond themselves towards the Aleph. Towards the lover in you.
Because of this, I will often speak directly to the knower in you relying always on the truth of two kabalistic koans.
The first truth:
‘The words of truth are recognized’.
Re —cognized.
For in reality… we already know all truth. We recognize truth as one would a long lost lover.
Biblical myth mystic Abraham Kuk teaches that life is not a journey but a return.
Our goal is not perfect health but deep healing. All learning is not discovery – it is rather re-covery.
Life is A Recovery Movement.
Life is the movement towards Recovery.
The second Koan:
‘Words that come from the heart enter the heart’.
So open your hearts even as I open mine.
And let us begin.
Marc Gafni
Published on marcgafni.com
Please share comments at info@marcgafni.com
