Falling in Love: Part Twenty Nine: Marc Gafni
Posted by Dr. Marc Gafni assistant
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.”
This story of Shehina and fire is also told in the biblical myth. It is about Nadav and Avihu, the two sons of Aaron, the High Priest. Nadav and Avihu enter the Holy of Holies to make an offering to God and are literally consumed by the divine fire. According to one tradition, they entered the Temple drunk and were thus punished. Another suggests that they died in the fire of ecstasy.
Both traditions remind us that ecstasy and Temple are places to enter – and then emerge from. They are a summit to be reached, but not the complete journey itself. A moment, but not a lifetime. Though we must strive to enter, we must strive even more to then exit and return to the land of the living. On the one hand rapture and union, on the other hand limitation and separation.
This is the rhythm of falling in and out of love. It is a healthy and necessary pattern of our lives. Our only mistake is that since we think we are supposed to remain “in love”, we feel like we have failed when this is not the case. Since failure is hard to own we project it on our partner. That of course makes it much easier to explain to ourselves why we are seeking a new partner. The moment I understand that this movement in and out of rapture is the natural rhythm of the spirit I can fall in love again and again — with the same person.
Each time we fall out of love we do the work of loving. Each stage of the work gradually expands our ego boundaries. Then we fall in love again. This time – because of the work we did — the fall is deeper and more true. However at some point we fall out of love again…and the cycle goes on spiraling higher and higher over the course of our journeys.
share comments below or on info@marcgafni.com
posted on marcgafni.com
