In order to respond to the voices that call us to meaning we need to first experience the world as meaningful. Read more… ...
Archive for the ‘Shadow’ Category
Pathology Article #1 — The Way of the Dragon – Marc Gafni
by Marc Gafni The spontaneous integration of body and mind―for Shelley the “eloquent blood”―tells “an ineffable tale.” Many Red Devils Many red devils ran from my heart And out upon the page. They were so tiny Th ...
House of Mirrors – Marc Gafni
by Marc Gafni When the book Soul Prints was published, the bulk of the writing and thinking at the time remained excluded from the final edition. I had submitted an eight hundred page manuscript to Simon & Schuster; my editor, Emily, was less tha ...
Blog Post Six: Revealing Light from Darkness: Marc Gafni
In the path of higher teshuva one accesses the core shadow energy. This energy – rooted, as it is in one’s most primal and essential self–is far more potent than the more staid and bland energy emanating from the more refined parts of the self. ...
Blog Post Five: Revealing Light from Darkness: Marc Gafni
In biblical language the word for “creation” is yatzar. But yatzar also represents primal, even dark, passions. We reveal our light, our soul, from the shadows. The shattered vessels of our miniature temple, which for Luria was the image of our s ...
Blog Post Five: Revealing Light from Darkness: Marc Gafni
In biblical language the word for “creation” is yatzar. But yatzar also represents primal, even dark, passions. We reveal our light, our soul, from the shadows. The shattered vessels of our miniature temple, which for Luria was the image of our s ...
Blog Post Four: Revealing Light From Darkness: Marc Gafni
Artists create from their own shadows. The kabbalists teach that we are all artists of our own lives, engaged in the ultimate sacred act of self-creation. Nietzsche correctly intuited a core biblical idea when he said, “The artist becomes the work ...
The Way of the Dragon: Part Three in Series: Light From Darkness: Marc Gafni
How fascinating that the Sanctuary, said to be the source of all the G-dly light in the world, should have been designed by Bezalel, whose name means “in the shadow of G-d.” For nearly two thousand years, this was considered too dangerous a path ...
Blog Post Two: Light From Darkness: Marc Gafni
For nearly two thousand years, people ignored, denied, or labeled as evil the darker crevices of their soul. It was considered a deficit that was best left unexplored. Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi–the founder of the Chabad Movement, goes one step ...
New Series of Blogs: Light From Darkness: Marc Gafni
Dear Reader, This series of posts was written originally for a book I wrote called Soul Prints back in 2000. This material, along with a few hundred other pages, did not make it into the book. I am now revisiting, rewriting and re-souling this torah ...
Snakes and Scorpions: Marc Gafni
marc gafni posted on marcgafni.com share comments on info@marcgafni.com We have all met snakes and scorpions. The biblical master ask the students. The mantra reads. The pit was empty, it had no water. {This comes from the description of the pit that ...
Life is what you do with your emptiness: Marc Gafni
marc gafni posted on marcgafni.com share comments on info@marcgafni.com Life is what you do with your emptiness. Life is about walking through the void. Every time we walk through and not around the void we come out stronger. Every time we are seduce ...
Echoes of Emptiness; The Erotic and the Ethical: Marc Gafni
marc gafni posted on marcgafni.com share comments on info@marcgafni.com The arena where emptiness- non-erotic living – is most destructive is in the ethical. Every ethical failure comes from the absence of eros. It is the inability to stay in t ...
Stay in the Emptiness: Marc Gafni
marc gafni posted on marcgafni.com share comments on info@marcgafni.com The cherubs once again serve as our guide. Remember that the vortex of Shechina in the biblical myth is no less than “atop the ark in the Holy of Holies, between the cherubs.†...
Aftertaste Part Two: Marc Gafni
marc gafni posted on marcgafni.com share comments on info@marcgafni.com Now here is a wild idea. Biblical myth practice suggests that, just as a fast day is helpful in sensitizing you to distinguish between wholesome and desperate eating, regular sho ...