Drunk with Fire: Falling in Love: Part Twenty Eight: Marc Gafni

Drunk With Fire

This balance between ecstatic and normative, between in and out of love reflects a deeper ebb and flow within us. There are two forces which vie for domination in our lives. Each one must be honored. They are our wild ecstatic, sensuous right brain selves on the one hand, and our rational thinking, logical and ordered left brain selves on the other.

The Hebrew mystics called these two sides by many names, including Tiferet and Shehina. The Tiferet value of order and rational thought, self control and discipline is clear to us. Without this, neither civilization nor our own lives could progress. Yet, insists the tradition of Dionysus and the erotic Shehina, the ecstatic and the sacred sensual also have vital roles to play in our lives, and we ignore them at our peril. Dionysus, writes Euripides in his play The Bacchae, is “midwived by fire.”

The words of Schiller’s “Ode to Joy” strike upon the same chord: “We enter your sanctuary drunk with fire.”

marc gafni
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