Marc Gafni – Coming Home

Once a year in a spine tingling mystery rite the priest would enter the Holy of Holies. On this day, every person was forgiven. On this day, every person was to re-experience themselves in the depths of their own true innocence. For on the inside we are all innocent. This day is called in Biblical myth tradition Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement: At-One-Ment.

The core erotic idea of the Bayit — the Temple — was that every person could and needs to access the Shechina experience. Every human being needs to live erotically in all facets of being. Every human being has a primary erotic need to move beyond the imposter into his or her own deepest place of oneness, oneness with themselves, their relationships, and their reality. The Zohar refers to the exile from one’s deepest self as alma depiruda, the world of separation.

The most tragic separation is not from mother, not from community, but from self. The journey of a lifetime is to move from alma depiruda to alma deyichuda, from separation to oneness — At-one-ment. Love is the path back home. We are not talking about superficial love, not merely sexual love, but erotic love.