The Editors

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
Page 114

Marc Gafni

For more information on private study or to book a public teaching, contact Dr. Marc Gafni at support@ievolve.org

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

For more information on private study or to book a public teaching, contact Dr. Marc Gafni at support@ievolve.org

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

For more information on private study or to book a public teaching, contact Dr. Marc Gafni at support@ievolve.org

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

For more information on private study or to book a public teaching, contact Dr. Marc Gafni at support@ievolve.org

One of the places where we overcome alienation and step inside to an act of surrender is the sacred realm of music.  Eros cuts through ego and touches essence.  We feel alive and totally present in the fullness of our longing.  Mastery in song and music takes place precisely at the point where radical discipline and control are transcended.  At the intersection between control and surrender the singer or musician gives herself up, allowing herself to be played by the universe.  It is of course not an accident that an essential component of the Temple service was music.  The biblical myth text reads, “If you are searching for Shechina” then come to the Temple with its symphony of holy song.  Through music from exotic instruments and songs that opened the heart, the people were aroused to the erotics of desire and personal surrender.

Mystery of Love
Marc Gafni
Page 165

For more information on private study or to book a public teaching, contact Dr. Marc Gafni at support@ievolve.org

Her name means Indwelling Presence, “the one who dwells in you.” She is presence, poetry, passion. She is the sustaining God force that runs through and provides a womb for the world.  She is the underlying erotic, sensual, and loving force that knows our name and nurtures all being.

Shechina captures an experience, a way of being in the world, for which we do not yet have an English word. For this is a way of being that we in the West are hard-pressed to articulate.  It is the experience of waking up in the morning full of utter joy for the arrival of the day. It is weeping over the splendor of the sunset or the scent of the ocean or the fragility of a newborn. It is a way of living in love.

The Mystery of Love
Marc Gafni
Page 9

For more information on private study or to book a public teaching, contact Dr. Marc Gafni at support@ievolve.org

The Eros of evolution dances up the evolutionary spiral to higher and higher levels of complexity, and consciousness emerges from the evolutionary soup. It is a continual process of self-organization through self-transcendence, in which self transcends itself to recognize and join other in higher embrace. Love by any other name. The evolutionary ladder continues to spiral to ever-higher and deeper levels of complexity and consciousness. Each higher level is always defined by ever-higher levels of mutuality, recognition, union, and embrace between the evolving cells and organisms. Plants, amphibians, mammals, then higher mammals, until we get to the full bloom of human consciousness. This is the Great Story of One Love: Evolutionary Love.

Your Unique Self (in press)

Dr. Marc Gafni

For more information on private study or to book a public teaching, contact Dr. Marc Gafni at support@ievolve.org