Dr. Marc Gafni: Interiors, Face, and the Reconstruction of Eros
By Dr. Marc Gafni
Summary: The four faces of eros, described by Marc Gafni in this excerpt from Mystery of Love (2003), are 1.) being on the inside, 2.) fullness of presence, 3.) desire, and 4.) interconnectivity of being. As Marc describes, with its mystical role in these four expressions, the face itself is the truest reflection of the erotic. In the flow of eros, we access the experience of being on the inside of God’s face, which Marc explores here through the Temple mystery of the sexually entwined cherubs atop the Ark who are positioned face to face; the Hebrew word “panim,” which means “inside, face, and before;” and the erotic experience of having a true face-to-face conversation. This significant passage from Mystery of Love invites you to embody the erotic which is modeled but not exhausted by the sexual more deeply in your own life.
Eros has many expressions. Each expression is hinted at in the temple mysteries. There are four faces of eros which, when taken together, form the essence of the Shechina experience. In this essay, we will explore the erotic understanding which forms the matrix of the secret of the cherubs and informs every arena of our existence. As we shall see, at the very heart of Hebrew tantra was a very precise and provocative understanding of the relationship between love, sex, and eros. This will open us up to a whole new understanding of our sexuality and will show us the way to erotically reweave the very fabric of our lives in more vivid patterns, sensual textures, and brilliant hues.
The First Face of Eros: On the Inside
“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
The cherubs in the magical mystery of Temple myth were not stationary fixtures. No, these statues were expressive, emotive. They moved. When integrity and goodness ruled the land, the cherubs were face to face. In these times, the focal point of Shechina energy rested erotically, ecstatically, between the cherubs. When discord and evil held sway in the kingdom, the cherubs turned from each other, appearing back to back instead of face to face.1 Back to back, the world was amiss, alienated, ruptured. Face to face, the world was harmonized, hopeful, embraced. Thus, face to face in biblical myth2 is the most highly desirable state. It is the gem stone state of being, the jeweled summit of all creation. Face to face, to be fully explicit, is a state of eros.
The Kabbalists takes the mandate of love–implicit in self perception–one step further. I need to understand that not only am I a part of God but I am also a partner to God.
The unfolding of the universe entails full divine loving presence. The divine perspective changes to include human beings. It is an intimate relation of shared identity. We participate in God and God participates in us. The great mystery of reality is the mystery of intimacy. God is both erotically within me and beyond me at the selfsame moment. Touching and not touching. The intimacy of shared identity without losing the integrity of individuality. Two solitudes that share in a sublime moment of Sameness.
The mystics teach us that to access the erotics of being – the fullness of ourselves in every moment – we need to first linger in the emptiness for a time. To resist filling up the emptiness with quick hits of pseudo-eros. This is the secret of dance. The move between emptiness and fullness. “Dance me to the end of love.”
The language of God is man. We are not just God’s messengers, we are God’s language and voice, the means by which she shares her message. This idea becomes a little easier to access in light of quantum physics. One of the essential mind-bending breakthroughs in quantum physics is that the observer is part of the experiment. That is to say, the perceiver influences the outcome of the experiment. Said more broadly, perception not only observes reality, it creates reality. To say that love is perception is therefore to say that love–far more than a mere emotion–is the erotic creative force which in-forms all of being.
I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine,
The most important thing we can ever tell someone else is, “You are beautiful.” We were all made conveniently equipped with built-in mirrors – our eyes. They are the reflecting pool in which the person before us beholds herself. It is up to us to choose what she will see reflected there. To be a lover is to make sure that whoever looks into your mirroring eyes will feel the embracing energy of “You are beautiful”.
Eros is to be on the inside, including the inside of your desire. What being on the inside does is invite a person to clarify his desires, yet not transcend them. True desire is attained through the deep meditation in which you access the internal witness. From this place of detachment, you survey with penetrating but loving eyes all of your desires. This place of internal witness allows you to move beyond an addictive attachment to any particular one. At that point the person engaged in Birur– clarification – does not abandon desire. Rather she moves to connect to those desires which were truest to her deepest and most authentic self. It is in the empty space between the spasm and the desire that the person is born.