Daily Wisdom Series

Of course, to remind another of their full beauty you have to be fully aware of your own.  The Baal Shem Tov has a wonderful teaching on the biblical mandate “love your neighbor as you love yourself.”  First it is a statement of fact–you love your neighbor precisely as much as you love yourself.  For in the end, you can only perceive another’s greatness if you have glimpsed and believe in your own.  Self-love is self-perception.

If this is so, then a powerful question arises.  How do you love yourself when you know all of your foibles, pathologies and blemishes?  Isn’t self-love self-perception?  And does not honest perception yield forth all of the reasons why we are not lovable?  And yet most of us manage, at least to some degree, to love ourselves.  Is it just self-deception?  No, not at all.  Love is not merely perception, it is a perception-identification complex.  Self-perception means that although you are aware of the full complexity of your personae–the good, the bad, and the ugly–you identify the essence of who you are with your good–your good, loving, giving, creative, and generous self.

That does not mean that you deny your beast.  It is, of course, critical to integrate all of you into your self picture.  To love yourself is to identify yourself as part of the Shechina.  Writes the Baal Shem Tov, “To love yourself is to love the Shechina.”  Not to love yourself is to send the Shechina into exile.  So proclaim the Kabbalists, to which Rumi adds:

By God, when you see your beauty
You will be the idol of yourself.

In your deepest nature you must know that you are the hero of your story.  In your deepest nature you are love and grace and strength and splendor.  Now you must decide to identify with your deepest nature.  Do you focus on your innocence or your guilt?  Do you focus on your ever-inevitably dirty hands, or on your ever-eternally pure soul?  To love yourself or anyone else, you need to know that your innocence is your essence.  That you always remain worthy of love.  That your innocence is never lost.

The Mystery of Love
Dr. Marc Gafni
Pages 121, 122

A word in the Zohar used for those souls who are living their story is lechisah, meaning “whisper.”  To live your story is to be able to hear the intimate whisper of divinity erotically caressing your life.  We are all recipients of cosmic love notes.  Paul Tillich reminds us that we can only hear through the love that listens.  Buber captured the spirit of biblical myth when he wrote, “To live means being addressed.”

To live one’s story is erotic in the resonance of its melody and the fullness of its canvas.  The world, when we are in our story, is no longer empty.  The soul is not here just pay back karmic debts.  It has a contribution to make from the depth of its infinite specialness.  Through making that contribution a human being feels ful-filled.  That is the eros of living one’s story.

The universe is full of whispers, and they are talking directly to you.  And here is the paradox–the more you act as if you are being addressed, the more you will be. The world is filled with soul print hints.  It may be the lyrics of a song, a sign on a building, an old friend you meet after years of not seeing each other, or a book that grabs your attention and demands to be read.

Each person has their unique talent, pleasure, obligation, form of silliness, and pathology.  These are all personal soul print hints that direct you toward living your story.

The Mystery of Love
Dr. Marc Gafni
Pages 243, 244

Calling out “the Name” is evoked the world over in greetings.  The Spanish hello–hola–originated in Arab Spain from the term “O’Allah” — Allah of course being the Arab appellation of God.  In Austrian German they say Gruss God.  In Hebrew, the common response when asked how you are doing is Baruch Hashem–Praise God, or Thank God. The Hebrew greeting Shalom is actually a name of God.  In English, we still follow this custom when we part from someone and say “Godspeed” or “God be with you.”

In a wonderful and mysterious passage, the wisdom masters talk of a special decree made nearly three thousand years ago.  It taught that one should greet his friend with the name of God.  Although the Third Commandment proscribes such “idle use” of God’s name, this new law legislated special permission to use the divine name in casual greeting.  The source for the decree is said to be the verse “In a time to do for the Name (God) you may override the Torah.”

The idea underlying the decree is very powerful.  To greet a person, we are allowed to use the sacred name of God, which is never taken in vain, because to greet a person is to recognize them, to perceive them.  Perception is healing through love, for there is nothing more painful than anonymity. Love, you remember, is the perception of the infinite divine specialness in other!

You came to a party alone.  No one recognizes you for several long minutes.  You feel forlorn, alienated. Then someone taps you on the shoulder and calls your name in warm welcome.  The world is transformed. You have been recognized, perceived.  Called by name!

Of course, true recognition is deeper than a mere greeting. It requires a true knowing, receiving, and even merging with the name.  This is what happens when the Name (God’s and the beloved’s) is called at the height of sensual passion.  If the passion is situated in the context of a shared story and commitment, then the calling of the Name in the cherublike embrace of sexuality is the ultimate transcending of loneliness, both for the lover and the beloved.

Minimally, however, the wisdom masters write that we must greet each other with the Name.  The simple and correct reading of the text indicates that they are referring to the name of God.  But on some deeper level, the Name they refer to is none other than the Name of the person being greeted.  In this powerful rereading the new decree is that no person should remain anonymous. Every person should be called by their Name.  Never allow yourself to be served by someone without knowing their Name.  In knowing the Name of the waiter serving you there is a fixing and healing of God’s Name.

It is a time to fix divinity.  To create God.  God is created by revealing the infinite divine in every person.  God’s name is emptied when people live without having their Names recognized, without being called by Name.  So the wisdom masters decree, “Greet every man with the Name.”  The Name of God and the Name of the blessed and beautiful individual before you, for they are one and the same.

The Mystery of Love
Dr. Marc Gafni
Pages 237, 238

The ultimate model for reality is the divine. The most central teaching of the Kabbalah is that God’s highest gift to world is to receive the human being as a partner in the perfection of the world. God allows himself, as it were, to need us.

This is God’s ultimate gift to humanity.  It is therefore not at all surprising to learn that the very word Kabbalah means to receive – for to receive in imitation of God is the highest level of giving – and is thus the most profound form of spiritual service.

A friend and colleague tells a wonderful story about going to a class in Kabbalah. The teacher handed him an apple. He stretched out his hand to take it. No, said the master withdrawing the apple. This process repeated itself several times until my friend finally understood. Instead of stretching forth his hand to take the apple he cupped his hand to receive the apple. And this is the essence of Jewish mysticism – to be a vessel, Kabbalah, to receive.

Certainty and Uncertainty
Dr. Marc Gafni

Each one of these ten levels of divine presence represents another dimension of God in our world. They are referred to as the Ten Sefirot. When we perform a commandment, says Luria, we participate in one of these levels of the divine.

Indeed the mystical writers point out that the word Mitzvah has more than one meaning. Simply of course it mans commandment. The human in doing a mitzvah is thus seen as responding to a divine command which comes from outside the human being.

There is however a second sense of the word Mitzvah. It means Tzavtah – to be together with. When one performs a mitzvah one literally merges with divinity. One is together with God. Each Mitzvah in the mystical understanding moves me toward merger with a different Sefira, a different level of divinity. However, says Luria, we are only able to participate in the lowest seven levels. The human being, trapped in mortality, can never touch the highest three levels of divinity in this world. And yet one word can reach the heights. Ayeh.

Ayeh in Hebrew has three letters, alef, yod, hey. Alef, says Luria, is the letter that represents Keter – the divine crown, the highest sefirah – level of divinity in the world. Yod represents Chochmah – wisdom, the second highest level. And Hey is Binah – intuitive understanding, the third highest level. When the human being cries out to God in uncertainty – ayeh – he expresses the highest three levels of divinity and in so doing reaches beyond his mortal limits to touch “the highest.” Luria affirms that the expression of uncertainty in God does not contradict spirituality, but rather is the highest expression of the human search for divine connection.

Ayeh – where are you – the ultimate uncertainty – is then the highest level of religious authenticity.

… there is no person who does not possess Unique Gifts that respond to unique needs. From a nondual perspective, it is your Unique Gift that creates your Unique Obligation. To live your Unique Self and offer your Unique Gifts is to align yourself with the evolutionary impulse and fulfill your evolutionary obligation.  The realization of your Unique Self awakens you to the truth that there is a Unique Gift that your singular being and becoming offers the world, which is desperately needed by all that is, and can be given by you and you alone. There is no more powerful and joyous realization available to a human being. It is the matrix of meaning that fills your life and is the core of your Unique Self enlightenment.

Your Unique Self
(in press)
Dr. Marc Gafni
Page 33

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

The goal of the erotic life is to engage every area of our lives with the mantra of lismah beating in our breasts.  This means being fully present for each thing itself without needing always to justify our activity by recourse to some external gain.  In the poetry of Hebrew mysticism this is referred to as taam haeitz ketaam haperi, meaning “the taste of the tree is as the taste of the fruit.”  This phrase has its source in the delightful biblical creation myth where God commands the trees to be “trees of fruit which bear fruit.”  The stunning implication of a precise reading of the divine instruction is that the tree itself, the bark, should also have the taste of the fruit.  The point is, there should be no distinction between means and ends.  A coarse tree that brought the fruit into being should share the very taste of its succulent fruit.

The Mystery of Love
Dr. Marc Gafni
Page 218

“Every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world’s phenomena intersect, only once in this way, and never again.”

HERMANN HESSE

What IS, as the mystical principle of constant creation teaches, changes every moment.  To go against what is in any given moment is therefore to lose touch with the God force of love in the cosmos.  All failures in love are rooted in losing touch with the love that is in the moment.

The mystery of love returns us to full presence. By doing so it reconnects us with the healing power of time. When we fully live in any moment we become powerful. We have complete presence and confidence. The infinity experienced in that time enriches us beyond measure. Indeed it is priceless.

The Mystery of Love
Dr. Marc Gafni
Page 293

Uniqueness is not a concept! Unique Self is a quality of presence that shows up when the ego is set aside””even temporarily””and our deeper being and becoming emerges in all of its resplendent beauty. When someone shows up in their Unique Self, you are aroused to love them and intensely desirous of being loved by them. In Christianity this exercises itself as the personal relationship with Jesus Christ that so many sectors of Christianity understand so profoundly””and which is so derided by New Age teachers caught in the impersonality of so much misunderstood Eastern teaching.

In Hinduism the goddesses hold you in radical personal embrace. In classical Judaism the G-o-d loves you and knows your name, while in Sufism and Kabbalah she is your most intimate erotic partner. None of this is dogma. It is the first and second personal realization that the interior face of the kosmos is the infinity of intimacy. And it is the revelation of the infinite, who yearns to love you personally and uniquely.

Dr. Marc Gafni
Your Unique Self
page 92

Love, which previously was cloaked in third-person as an impersonal force, becomes obvious in second person and first person. This is the awesome realization that impersonal kosmic love and personal human love at their highest levels are one and the same. One love expresses itself all up and down the great chain of being, and all up and down the evolutionary ladder. We see love in action in our lives and feel love as Source from which we live. More than that, we are capable of articulating our first-person love and sharing it in second-person conversation and third-person reporting. This is the momentous evolutionary leap of love at the leading edge of human consciousness.

Your Unique Self
Dr. Marc Gafni
Page 122

Eros seduces man toward evolution, toward greater consciousness. Love seduces man to love. Eros is the inner animating quality of the ecstatic evolutionary impulse of the Ground of Being, evolving toward the most aware and noble expression of itself. It is love persuading us to ever-deeper levels of love.

Marc Gafni
Your Unique Self
p. 135

“To really get the great esoteric teachings of one love, to know love as the strongest force in the Uni-verse, we first have to understand that love is not just a feeling. Rather, love is the motivating force driving and animating the entire Uni-verse. Love is not merely a human emotion. Love is both the currency of connection between human beings and the essential Eros that drives the evolutionary process as a whole. Love is the Eros of all relationship even as it is the very Eros of evolution itself. Personal and impersonal love are one. One Love. Evolutionary Love.”

Your Unique Self
Dr. Marc Gafni
Page 10

For some passages in the Zohar, the mysteries of the cherubs are virtually a synonym for unity consciousness.  The Zohar understands the union of the cherubs as symbolic of the union of all opposites.  This is what mystic Abraham Kook means when he writes, “While all qualities have their opposite, good and evil, life and death, and even holy and profane–there is no opposite to the Holy of Holies.”  The Holy of Holies is the place that overwhelms all distinctions.  That which unites opposites, writes Kook, is love.  It is love–the perception of the infinite Divine in all of reality–that allows us to embrace both paris in the opposition as glimmerings of the one.

The Chinese master Lao-tzu saw this clearly when he said all opposites arise simultaneously and mutually:

Is there a difference between yes and no?
Is there a difference between good and evil?
Must I fear what others fear?  What nonsense.
Having and not having arise together
Difficult and easy complement each other.

To suggest otherwise, writes Chuang Tzu, is not “to apprehend the great principles of the universe or the nature of creation.”

What does all this mean?  Ultimately reality is a unity of opposites.  What that means is that there are no real boundaries.  True wisdom is the sweetness of integration and union.  Ultimately the world of two does not exist in the deepest reality.  To love is to reach for the radical divine presence in all that is.  To love is to know that ultimately there are no boundaries.  And yet the road to the circle in which everything is on the inside is through the line. Ethics is the Hebrew mystic’s path to eros.

The Mystery of Love
Marc Gafni
Page 318, 319

The trees are part of the Goddess’s erotic manifestation.  The central symbol of much of the ancient pagan cult in biblical Canaan was the Ashera tree.  The Ashera is the feminine earth goddess erotically expressed in the image of the Ashera tree.  In a wonderful phrase of Keats, “Even as the trees that whisper round the temple become soon as dear as the temple self.”  For the pagan, the hills were literally alive with the sound of music. Nature is the music of divinity undressed to the human ear.  Every hill, brook, tree, and blade of grass was invested with its own divine muse.

The Mystery of Love
Marc Gafni
Pages 190-192