Marc Gafni Facts

There is a passage that most stunningly captures this notion and takes it one step further. Recorded in the Babylonian wisdom texts, it is a strange symbolic conversation between God and his angels. “Why,” the angels ask of God, “do you accord the people of Israel your favor even when they are not deserving?”  God responds, “How can I not?  After all, in my Torah it says, ‘And you shall eat, be satisfied and give blessing.’  And the children of Israel give blessing even if they have only eaten an ‘olive’s worth’of food.”

The text refers to the biblical myth text injunction above we just mentioned which seems to indicate that one is only required to give blessing in thanks for food if one is fully satisfied. Nonetheless, continues the Talmudic passage, the children of Israel give blessing over food even when they are not satisfied, even when they have only eaten an olive’s worth.

Mystical master Aaron of Karlin unpacks the powerful wisdom of the passage. What the text suggests is that if you wait to be satisfied, to be ful-filled (kedai Seviah) until you have everything you desire, you will never be able to give blessing. Moreover, you will never experience your life as blessing.  Spiritual greatness is about being able to experience satisfaction and  blessing even when we only have an olive’s worth of fulfillment. The feeling of blessing emerges from the ability to experience the fullness of divine reality in every fraction of goodness. When I fully receive anything it is enough to make me full. This is the lover’s art of receiving and giving blessing. It is the secret of fulfillment.

The Erotic and the Holy
Marc Gafni
www.marcgafni.com

Imagine if there were no moon – we would never see the ever-present light of the sun. So too, if there were no creation, then the ever-present light of God would never be revealed. And so, in order to dispel the darkness of unseen light, matter was created. Matter itself is dark – it casts no light of its own. Yet it is this very dark matter which allowed the darkness of God’s light to be dispelled. It is the simple formula of yin yang – without the presence of darkness there can be no real light. We can even take it to the extent that without the presence of evil, there can be no real juxtaposing good.

Just so, other people in your life can either been seen as obstacles or lovers. In one sense, every person you meet could potentially block your light, get in your way, obstruct Your path. The spouse who is constantly criticizing you, making demands of you, causing you untold amounts of frustration and pain. As Sartre complains in “No Exit”, “Hell is other people”. Or you could view that other person as the celestial body which stands there “against you” only to reflect back to you, and to the world, the radiant glory of your light.

Something must obstruct the steady flow of our path in order for our own full glory to be revealed. Hence, we encounter obstacle upon obstacle of dark matter along our way – so that our light may better shine. Indeed, the darkness of our pathology may be the very pebble of moon in our sky which blocks our larger light – thereby catching the rays and reflecting them back to us. Next time you catch a glimpse of the reflecting moon, ponder the dark places in your life which have allowed you to, ironically, more vibrantly shine. The greatest gift is to receive.

The Erotic and the Holy
Marc Gafni
www.marcgafni.com

The relationship of the lover to the beloved in almost every myth tradition is likened to the sun and the moon. The source of the light is the lover, the sun. On the other hand, without the moon, that light would disappear into infinity. For without the moon, we would see no light at all at night. Not because the sun light is not there, but because there is no object which stands in the path of the rays for the light to hit and be reflected back to us. Ray upon ray of the suns light is streaming through the universe. The only reason we see it is because the moon is there to catch the light and bounce it back to us.

In the same way, the beloved catches the love and reflects it back to the lover. In a very real sense, it is your  beloved who transforms you into a lover!! It is all in the receiving. Receiving is the greatest gift.

There is a Kabbalistic notion of a light which existed prior to the world’s existence. It is called “the light before creation.” It is also called Ohr Haganus – the hidden light – for, in a sense, it was a dark light. Why dark? Because this light streamed  on and on, with no obstruction to its path; no moon to catch and reflect back its shine. And thus, darkness. This, say the Kabbalists, is why God created the physical universe; in order for this ‘hidden’ light to have something to hit so that it could reflect back its glorious shine.

The Erotic and the Holy
Marc Gafni
www.marcgafni.com

To be a lover is to be a giver. It is through the consistent commitment to the growth of the other expressed through regular and spontaneous acts of giving that you become a lover. Slowly over time – in a gradual expanding of self – you are able to regain and surpass even the initial ecstasy of falling in love. The ego boundaries dissolve, self is expanded to include other, and the true intimacy of shared identity is achieved. This is the spiritual dynamic between lover and beloved. It is of course important to remember that the beloved could be a man or woman, a community, a child, a vocation, location, animal or cause. The principle remains the same. There is no loving without giving. Love always involves the willingness to transcend self for the sake of the growth of an other.

The Erotic and the Holy
Marc Gafni
www.marcgafni.com

The perception – eros as the underlying reality of the universe. The ecstatic individual senses the erotic in every crack and crevice of reality. Love is the fabric of being. The ecstatic is on the inside. He feels the intensity of desire, the fullness of being, and  the radical in-weaving of all reality. The paradigmatic  ecstasy of falling in love, that cheap (but wonderful) grace which requires no work, moves us to our first glimmer of these cosmic erotic truths. Higher ecstasy requires commitment, effort, and will, but is fully available to virtually everyone and anyone who dares try. Ecstasy is present in each and every place and instant, even as it envelops all of space and all of time.

Ecstasy at its core, teach the Hebrew mystics, is but a shift in perception. Remember that famous silhouette picture of two faces turned towards each other – which, if you just shift your perception, suddenly reveals the outline of a goblet. This is precisely the experience of ecstasy. Nothing changes. Everything is as it was. And yet nothing is the same. A whole new gorgeous experience of reality has opened up to you. Alive and alove, you live the same life you live now – but it is radically different from anything you have known.

The Erotic and the Holy
Marc Gafni
www.marcgafni.com

Redemption is greater than a simple return to our point of origin: it is a spiraling return which takes us higher. The Kabbalist captures this notion in the images of Tzimtzum, Shvirah and Tikkun – contraction, shattering, and repair. The first stage – tzimtzum, contraction – is the Kabbalistic understanding of the idea of creation. In this primary experience of God’s emanation, vessels are created and suffused with divine light.

In the second stage, the vessels shatter, shvirah: they cannot hold the light. If the first stage is the creation of the world and everything in it, then the second stage parallels in Biblical myth, the exile from Eden, the Flood, and the breaking of the tablets of the law by Moses. All of these events are understood by the mystical tradition to be operating on two levels. They are, on the one hand, historical events. At their most important level however they are both the spiritual laws of the universe. They represent processes in the spiritual-existential life of every individual. Our experience of falling out of love is an echo of the first Fall from Eden.

The third stage of repair – tikkun – is our attempt, both personally and historically, to return to Eden.

The Erotic and the Holy
Marc Gafni
www.marcgafni.com

So far, the two major qualities of the erotic lover have been perception and giving. We have seen how the sexual models the erotic, hinting to us how we can live a deeper, more profound existence in all areas of our lives. In order to give in the realm of the sexual, we must be great listeners – fully attentive to the subtlest nuances of our lover’s desire. Similarly, to be a giver in all arenas of being requires our mastering the lover’s art of attention.

Just as the sexual lover listens deeply to the needs of the beloved and thereby brings the beloved to satisfaction, so too must the erotic lover, in all facets of life, be deeply listening and attentive to the needs of the beloved.

The Erotic and the Holy
Marc Gafni
www.marcgafni.com

Love doesn’t just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new.

Ursula K. LeGuin, The Lathe of Heaven

Loving and giving are inextricably bound up. The great medieval philosopher Maimonides teaches that to love God is to know the divine in both world and self.  Maimonides understands well that to know and not to love is not to know. But he goes one step further; to love and not to do is not to love. Love is as love does.

So when Maimonides lists what it might mean to love God, he talks about a broad range of simple acts of goodness that we do for other people. Helping the poor, rejoicing with the bride and groom, escorting the dead at a funeral, and the list goes on and on.

Small deeds, simple acts of kindness – that is what makes me a lover of God. People are God incarnate in this world. Each person is a different face of God. To love people by being a giver is to love God. There is no great deed of loving God. There are only small deeds of giving to people – done with great love!

The Erotic and the Holy
Marc Gafni
www.marcgafni.com

To be a lover is to be a giver. It is through the consistent commitment to the growth of the other expressed through regular and spontaneous acts of giving that you become a lover. Slowly over time – in a gradual expanding of self – you are able to regain and surpass even the initial ecstasy of falling in love. The ego boundaries dissolve, self is expanded to include other, and the true intimacy of shared identity is achieved. This is the spiritual dynamic between lover and beloved. It is of course important to remember that the beloved could be a man or woman, a community, a child, a vocation, location, animal or cause. The principle remains the same. There is no loving without giving. Love always involves the willingness to transcend self for the sake of the growth of an other.

The Erotic and the Holy
Marc Gafni
www.marcgafni.com

As we have said, the model for being an erotic lover – in all facets of our existence – is the sexual. I see you and you are gorgeous, magnetically dazzling, to me. I yearn for you – all of me wants to break down and dissolve the barriers between us, to enter the inside, where the world stands still for a moment and  I am inside the chrysalis of all reality. You-nified.

Since being a lover is modeled on the sexual, we understand that love too is a perception. Moreover, love is a Perception-Identification Complex. I perceive the infinite specialness, the God point in you, and identify that highest point in you as the Real You.

In the understanding of the quantum spirit, I understand that my perception not only discloses a reality that exists, it actually brings this particular reality into existence. “I love you” means both “I perceive you in your beauty” and “You become even more beautiful under my gaze.” Remember, love is a verb. So just as when I shine shoes, they become shinier, when I love you, you become lovelier.

Built into our spiritual hardwiring is a great desire to realize the beauty and divinity that is our birthright. The experience of falling in love is a true perception of this. It allows us a glimpse of union; of what life might be when the thick walls of ego dissolve. We understand, nevertheless, that those walls will always be raised again.

Though but a poetic paradox, it is true that that which is razed, will be only raised again. Ego separation will, sooner or later, always snap back into place. It is precisely at this time, that the real work of loving begins. We seek, by doing the work, to reclaim the heights we glimpsed in the initial ecstasy. Those heights, and even greater ones.

The Erotic and the Holy
Marc Gafni
www.marcgafni.com