The Wounds of Love: Part Six – Marc Gafni
marc gafni
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On The Wounds of Love: Part Six
The Second Step
Surrendering so deeply and unconditionally into the pain reveals another radical truth. Everyone is present within it. We are all hurt. In the brotherhoods and sisterhoods of pain, we realize the invisible lines of connection that weave us into an indestructible whole. It is the wholeness itself that has within it the erotic power to transmute and heal pain. Our suffering itself is born of the alienation that derives from the part and partial nature of our persons.
Meeting the other in pain, receiving the dignity of another’s story is a movement towards redemption. The mute, silent, and dumb experience of pain is redeemed and embraced through the felt experience of one’s word spoken, heard and received. In the recognition that our pain is part of the larger Pain, something softens and opens with the healing power of Wholeness. In the invitation of Wholeness, we catch a glimmer of the enlightenment born of pain–a radically democratizing enlightenment.
The Third Step
Some things are just bigger than we are. Just as sex compels us beyond ordinary boundaries of self, so Eros in the guise of pain overcomes ego. When the hurt is so large all separative bets are off. When there’s no keeping pain at bay, when it hurts so much that explanations and stories won’t hold, when emotional escape isn’t possible, the dharma gate blows open and realization of all and everything becomes possible. There is no time, no past nor future. There is nothing at all–no hurt and no hurting, no transgression, nor betrayal. Everything is forgiven in the truth of complete surrender.
If we are willing to feel into the pain so deeply that we as separate self no longer exist, there we will meet God. There we will be privileged to participate in the pain of the exiled Shekinah, the feminine face of God. In the Buddhist tradition, the divine feminine is called Kuan Yin, or Kanzeon Bodhisattva, hearer of the cries of the world. In Kabbalah, she is the Shekinah, God’s feminine face. We meet Shekinah in our pain.
“Love is the funeral pyre where the heart must lay its body.”
Here is the embrace of the Shekinah of Eros, the blessing of the divine feminine. She holds us in the deepest core of our being, rocking us, listening to our sobs, even as she caresses our head. Solomon wrote in The Song of Songs, “Her left hand is under my head even as her right hand embraces me.” The Shekinah holds us in our pain, and in pain itself she is present waiting to embrace, comfort and heal. We meet her there. In the comfort of her arms, with the soothing sounds of her voice, we realize that pain is none other than divine compassion herself.
“In all of their pain, I am in pain…” cries out the Hebrew mystic Isaiah, and we feel her caress.
There is a deep heart within all of us which knows how to hold others in their pain. That deep knowing is our birthright. It is the Shekina who lives in us, yet is only realized when our own overwhelming hurt is transposed into overwhelming compassion. This is what the Hebrew mystics in the Zohar referred to when they spoke of “the Shekinah which is called I.” In our evolved realization, we are, each of us, none other than the unique face of divine compassion herself.
So, complete Surrender enfolds us into the feminine face of the divine–the most expansive, compassionate and full lover a being could hope for. Shekinah holds us in infinity. In the redemption of her arms, pain is none other then compassion itself.
Most people do not know how to make love because they do not know how to truly open to emotional and physical pleasure. In the same way, most people do not know the felt experience of true compassion because they will not allow themselves to enter so deeply into hurt that pain itself gives way to the sweetness of the Shekina’s embrace. Whenever you truly collapse into your soul’s pain, the pain itself collapses into the infinite goodness of existence itself. This is its mystery.
The pain of sexual and romantic heartbreak is an intense and exacting model for how we can engage pain in every facet of being. The sexual models the erotic. In the sexual, whether in her pain or pleasure, all the sacred secrets are held. It is only in opening ourselves to her wisdom that we can resist the temptation to turn secrets sacred into secrets sordid.
by Marc Gafni
