In order to have the courage to shine light into our darkness we must extend our exploration further still into the forest of our psyche. There was, at the Great Gathering, a second path that the mystics paced. This was the path of love. B’Chavivuta Talya Milta. “It all depends on love,” said Shimon Bar Yochai to the small group of friends who had gathered with him in the field. Love is to perceive the unique self, the soul print in the footsteps of the dragon. Self love – in the nomenclature of this mystical text – is the ability to embrace and ultimately transform, my shadow. Love as understood by the Alter Rebbe, which I have explained in greater depth in my book Soul Prints, is not an emotion. It is rather a perception-identification* complex which gives birth to an emotion. Love is to perceive the infinite and unique specialness in other or self and to identify them or myself with that specialness. Love is a perceptive art. It is only from the security of this self-perception that one is able to acknowledge shadow.

Abraham Kuk, writing in Jerusalem between the world wars, taught that the purpose of living is to learn what he calls “the great art of loving.”

Ultimately what the mystics are teaching is that the path of the dragon can only be walked in love. Indeed the two paths that of embracing Tzel, the path of the dragon and the path of love are really one path.

There is a wonderful Bhuddist story about a man with a Garden overrun with Dandelions. At his wits end he goes to consult the elderly gardener who lives down the street. A wise old woman with a rose garden you wouldn’t believe. She slowly walks with him to see his garden, listening to his lament over the dandelions along the way. By the time they arrive at his gate, she has one look at the yard and says decisively, “I’ll tell you exactly what you need to do…” Sasha nods eagerly, poising his pen on pad to capture the precious advice. The old woman puts her hand over the notepad, looks straight into Sasha’s eyes and says, “You need to learn to love dandelions.”

In Kabbalistic sources the Gardner is often a symbol for the Shechina the divine feminine incarnate in the human psyche. It is through the nurturing advice of the Gardner that we human beings can tend our garden. Suggests the wisdom tale: We all have Dandelions. If we but love them they may well become roses before our very eyes. The way of the darkness must be tread with love.

Whenever we keep eros confined to one narrow frame of being, while de-eroticzing the rest of the picture – the Shechina remains in exile. Sex is only one of the places where we exile the erotic.  There is a wonderful Balinese saying which goes something like, “We do not have art – we do everything as beautifully as we can”. When we build ugly cities where beauty is  abused and people are depersonalized and then build a beautiful art museum, the Shechina is in exile. We exile the eros of beauty to the constricted precincts of formal art.

The same is true of music. Music is not limited to symphonies or rock concerts. We are all musicians and life is overflowing with music. Remember the Broadway show “Stomp”? There was no dialogue; it was all music and dance. The catch was that no musical instruments were used. The instruments were adapted from the fabric of everyday living. Pots, pans, brooms, sinks, faucets, garbage can lids, bottles, bags, newspapers, hands, feet, virtually every part of the body – all of these became instruments of music. The implication is stunning; what we usually do is limit art to formal work by people we call artists, just as we limit music to formal instruments. Formal music and art need to model the erotics of sound and beauty in all of our lives and not just in their narrow provinces.  Music and art need to pervade all of living. Every moment is a canvas and is possessed of its own melody.

Rumi knowingly instructs us:

Let the beauty that we love be what we do.

There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the

Ground.

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

In biblical mysticism love and oneness are identical. In Hebrew, there is a mystical technique called ‘gematria’ in which each letter, and thus each word, has a numerical value. The Hebrew word for love, ahava, has a numerical value of thirteen. Echad, meaning one, also has a numerical value of thirteen. To the Kabbalistic mind, this coincidence of number is more than coincidence. It is as if it is a mystical law has been encoded into the letters of these words. Love is Oneness and Oneness is Love. One is but another word for the erotic interconnectivity of all being.
But the rhyme of mystical meaning continues, for these two words added together equal twenty-six. Twenty-six is a central number in Hebrew mysticism because it is the numeral value of God’s four letter name: Yud Hei Vav Hei – יהוה – the divine name of healing and love. Thus, God is One Love.  Love is the universe’s way of embracing us and telling us we are not alone. We have a home, a bayit. We are connected.

One + One = One

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

If I listen to the murmuring of my soul, I am in effect listening to the murmuring of the sacred God.

(Rabbi Mordechai Lainier of Ishbitz, a radical Hassidic teacher of the nineteenth century, teaches in his stunning work, Mei Shiloach, Volume One, p. 19, Column 2)
Excerpted from The Erotic and the Holy
Marc Gafni
www.marcgafni.com

Love is all about insight–in-sight.  It is the ability to see in, to the inside of the inside, to the Holy of Holies that is your lover.  Eros is being on the inside.  Thus, love is an erotic perception of the highest order.  Naturally you have to move way beyond sexual seeing.  Sex only models eros.  To be an erotic lover you have to understand that “what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

When something is far from you, you have to open your eyes really wide to see it.  As it gets closer you squint your eyes, when it gets really really close, you close your eyes.  Seeing with closed eyes is when we perceive way beyond seeing.  The adjective close and the verb close are the same word.  Closeness–intimacy–higher vision–all happen when we close our eyes.  We move beyond sight and invite the other faculties of perception to guide us.  Smell, sound, touch, and taste all become alive in a deeper way when we close our eyes.

The Mystery of Love
Marc Gafni
Page 114
www.marcgafni.com

We are on a journey to Love. For as the Zohar writes, ‘All the Paths (Shilin) lead to the Temple of Love.’ Wherever you are, wherever you are standing or kneeling or crouching — the place where you are is on your path to Love.’

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

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 mean 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 alot – is to place our words on the heart–and when the heart opens the words fall in.’

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

The truly great dancer – like all lovers- flows with the fullness of being. She trusts the universe. She knows she will always fall right so she allows herself to fall into the erotic rhythm of life. To do so she must first empty herself to receive the flow.

The word ‘dance’ in the original Hebrew is mehol. It has two virtually opposite meanings. Mehol is etymologically identical with the word hallul which means empty. From here springs the Hebrew word mehila –forgiveness. Forgiveness comes from the ability to empty myself to receive the full wonder, complexity and imperfection of another. Mehol however also means halah – fullness – used in the biblical myth text to describe the erotic fullness of a pregnant woman.

The Erotic and the Holy
Marc Gafni

God in the first person is the experience of God flowing through you. God flows through you not by your denial of your unique perspective, or what Carlos Castaneda and many teachers influenced by him referred to as your  “personal his-tory” — rather, your unique perspective is precisely the place in which you, the human being, meets and embraces the divine. Thus, God in the first person according to the Hebrew wisdom masters is realized not through generalized meditation which effaces one’s unique perspective, as is usually thought to be the case.
Rather, it is accomplished by what Lainer of Izbica calls Berur – literally, clarification or purification.  Berur is a mystical technique which can take many forms, including meditation. The core of it, however, is that through Berur you merge with your  radically unique perspective.
This is your unique face.
It is only through the embrace of your unique perspective that you are able to transcend your narrow human perspective to embrace a divine perspective.

Book of Tears
Marc Gafni
Pages 10, 11

The fifth and final level is called yechida and is reached very rarely by the very rare individual. Yechida derives from the Hebrew root yachad.  In the magic of biblical Hebrew, the root of yachad means “singular,” “special,” “alone,” as well as “together.”  This is the highest place where in our aloneness we merge with the all — we are together.  Aloneness becomes All-Oneness.  It is where the contradictory drives–to stand out and to merge–become one.

All distinctions between subject and object disappear.  The archer and the arrow become one.  The solitary archer, who represents aloneness, merges with All-Oneness.

The litmus test of genuine singularity is this:  Does it lead to Union?  For our wonderful singular soul prints, all authentic uniqueness merges us with the One.  Loneliness resolves itself grandly as the uniqueness of the soul print crystallizes, even while it sensuously melts into the all.  We cannot hold this place with any constancy–yet in its grip we feel mere joy and taste eternity.

Soul Prints
Marc Gafni
Pages 58, 59