Aftertaste: A Pointing Out Instruction

By Marc Gafni

The following text is a transcript of a short video, part of “Awakening to Your Unique Self,” originally published in May 2010.

(Silence.)

So that’s how a pointing out instruction works.

If you feel into the silence, pointing out instruction, I distinguish between silence of presence and silence of absence.

As we open our eyes and step back into the personal space, the personal that’s now been breathed on, infused, touched by by the transpersonal. We would talk about it in Integral language as a state-stage. Or in Sufism, the distinction between hakim and makim. It invites us in. We engage in what Luria called “I see God from behind.” Aftertaste.

What’s the difference between fantastic food and three Baby Ruth bars? Baby Ruth bars rock. Growing up in Ohio, oh my God, Baby Ruth bars have a really bad afterstate. Four. I’ve done it. Fantastic elegant French meal, just the right aftertaste. Aftertaste is always the pointing out instruction. But what happened?

Great sex in the context of the sacred and great sex out of the context of the sacred which is for you the fallen. The distinction between them? Aftertaste. Aftertaste is always the place where we see God from behind. Silence of presence, silence of absence, it’s a pointing out instruction.

If you grow up when I grew up, there’s Simon & Garfunkle’s The Sound of Silence, that great song from the 60s they never quite repeated.
We’ve all been on love. How many people have been on a date? Okay. How many people have been on a bad date?

I’ll tell you about a bad date as a pointing out instruction. Then we’ll get started.

I’m 21 yeard old, I’m in Manhattan, and my cousin’s brother’s gardner’s uncle’s accountant’s sister-in-law’s friend set me up on this date. It’s true. We both get there. We’re near Lincoln and 66th Street and Broadway, wherever that is. If she could have got rid of me in the first minute, she would have. It was just a bad idea. But there were all these people involved. So we had to sit and talk, sit and talk, and three hours go by. Thank God there was a movie. She has a car, I need a ride to the A train to Rivendale. It’s seven minutes to the car. There was nothing left to say. You know that place? There were no more words to cover over the silence, and a kind of silence of absence settled on the car. If there was an eject button, she would have pressed it. It was horrendous.

Eight months later. On the same street corner, because that’s where I was living, I see an old friend. We hadn’t seen each other since high school. We talked for eight hours. I had a car then. She needs to get downtown to the village. It’s seven minutes to the car. And this silence settles on the car. There was no need to talk. Right? Words would have been in the way. It’s not a silence of absence, it’s a silence of presence. The way the litmus test of the enactment lives in the aftertaste.