The way to open your heart through the pain is to find the God that
is infinitely pained in your contraction. It is that God that leads
from the narrow constriction of your pain to walk again in the side
spaces of your heart.
When the ego’s heart breaks, then the heart closes and contracts.
When the Unique Self’s heart breaks, the heart opens through the pain
into greater love.
The divine is dependent on us. In the direct language of the
Unique Self Kabbalist, “Your actions either weaken or empower God.”
When you expand, the divine surges with power and ecstasy, and expands
with you and as you. When you recoil into your small petty egoic
self, the divine contracts with you and as you. But in the
contraction, God also feels your pain. We may live lives of quiet
desperation, but here are truly no lives of lonely desperation, for
God is always with us in our pain.
You are invited to imitatio dei, the “imitation of the divine.”
Imitate no one except God. Just as God never forsakes the personal
for the the sake of the process, so too never let go of your empathy
and compassion, even for self-inflicted suffering.
The prophets never close their hearts. When someone hurts, they
say, “Oh my God, you hurt so badly! Let me hold you and love you. I
know you may have done this to yourself, and I will bust you for it
tomorrow. But at this very moment, I do not care. I just want to
hold you and make it better.”
Your Unique Self
(in press)
Dr. Marc Gafni
Page 131