Marc Gafni Teaching

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, Shvirahand 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