Purim Darkness

I just returned from the rebbe's on this Purim eve and several things struck me about the experience. The table was reversed from it's usual position, so the rebbe sat at what is normally the foot. There was a lot of alcohol and wine being drunk. Most of the people there were drunk by the time I got there at 9:30 pm. And the spirits in the room were not at all who I expected.

Purim is a holiday where most people dress up, though most of the hasids were not. I always assumed is was very different from Halloween as there are none of the scary costumes or traditions. Halloween is a night the dead return and we dress up so they don't recognize us. Purim has always been light and frivolous: we dress up to have fun.

But when I got there, the spirits in the room were dancing about, and when I finally connected to the strongest one, it felt like Loki, the Norse god of mischief, or Dionysus, the Greek god of wine. It struck me that Purim is a holiday that pre-dates Judaism, and we adapted it to fit one of our stories, though poorly. I need to learn from where in the story the costume and drinking is derived, as it doesn't seem a natural extension of the story. As I stayed longer, I could see that this dark energy was just another manifestation of God, but I do not understand why we devote a holiday to it. It has never been my way, but I guess it's important to acknowledge all the aspects of God, even the ones that don't speak to us personally.

As I walked home, I wondered why there was not more violence or mischief on Purim, but I'll have to think on that.

Looking for Jewish Koans

Text study is the koan study of Judaism. Koan study is a part of Zen Buddhism which involves long hours of meditation over paradoxical statements. At some point, the student has a moment of insight and gives the teacher the answer to the Koan. Jews spend long hours in a room filled with books pouring over texts looking for contradictions, and then trying to work on the text some more until the contradiction is resolved. Usually this involves either a deeper reading of the text which may reveal how the seeming contradiction isn’t really a contradiction, or bringing in a midrash or other idea that is not in the text to propose a solution.

Text koan study leads to two things: really, really good critical thinking and/or mystical insight. The former is the result of really close text study and learning to link other pieces of the texts together to form a solution. The second is when there is no solution and after thinking hard on the text, a flash of insight comes that explains the contradiction. Sometimes, when one has the answer, one can go back and find the proof in the text. Sometimes there is no proof, just the insight.

My experience of studying the texts is more the later, the flashes of insight. What seems unusual to me about it is that I often feel the presence of a soul or tzaddik guiding me through the text. When I studied about Jacob and the rape of Dina, Jacob came to me and explained the story to me. I didn’t find the textual proof for what he told me, but it sure made sense.

A shaman is a person who interacts with the spirit world for healing. I have spent the last eight years of my life learning about how to do that and it led me back into Judaism. I’ve just begun my text koan study, and I want to write about the shamanic in Judaism. I see a lot of similarities between my shamanic study and what I am learning in Judaism, and I think the shamanic way of looking at things can help to explain a lot of what it often puzzling to me in Judaism. I don’t know where this will lead me, or why I’ve been led on this path, but I hope that writing about it will give me insight into my studies and maybe help you understand both shamanism and Judaism a little better.

I am also going to see if I can come up with some Jewish Koans. Things like: God is everything. God is Ayn Sof, without limit, so God can not have any boundaries, but as soon as God is everything in the world, there are lots of boundaries and limits. So God is both everything and not-everything.

Mull that one over for awhile.

Wisdom from the Baal Shem Tov

For years, when someone would ask me what was shamanic healing, my stock answer was that there are two worlds, the physical and the spiritual. Shamanic healing is making a direct change in the spiritual world that is then reflected in the physical world. One type of shaman is a person who has power in the spiritual world and is able to actually make changes there. There are others who are able to perceive the spiritual world or travel there. But for me, the important part was always the ability to be able to make the change.

I was at service a few weeks ago, and the man leading the minyan quoted this text about the ba'al shem Tov (the founder of Hasidism):

רפואת הבעל שם טוב נשמתי בגנזי מרומים היה רק על ידי יחודים, שהיה מייחד ומעלה השכינה אל מדת אין. וממילא נתתקן למטה גם כן
-מאור עינים פרשת נשא

Roughly translated it means: The essence of the healing of the Baal Shem Tov was only by means of yichudim (unifications), in which he unified and raised the shechina to the level of Ain (God), and in truth, that would repair down below (in this world) as well.

That sounds remarkably like my conception of what I try to do. The challenge now is to learn the yichudim so I can really understand what he did.