Healing to Face to Face

 

Image courtesy of joshbousel

Last night I learned a text on Purim from the Shaar Hakavanot by R Luria and R Vital. His explanation for something I commonly experience was quite beautiful and I'll try to explain it here.

What I experience is that on some days the divine energy flows and on some days it just feels like it's inaccessible. It flows in a very cyclic manner. The other thing I experience is a period of deep stillness during my treatments. In craniosacral terms they are known as "still points". The energy in the patient and the room seems to come to a halt as everything slows to a stop. Sometimes they last just moments, sometimes they extend beyond the time I have for the treatment. When things start to move again, it as if everything has "reset" and where there was dysfunction is now health. I always explain it as equivalent to hitting Ctrl-alt-delete in the PC world. But I think the Ari's explanation is a lot more beautiful.

In Lurianic Kabbalism, when God created man during the first creation story, God created man as androgynous, one being containing both male and female, connected back to back. During the second creation, God put the man to a deep sleep דורמיטא and separated the two halves which allowed them to turn around and be face to face.

One way of understanding the effects is to look at how the two beings would relate to each other. Back to back allows no communication and, although they are connected, they aren't having much of a relationship. When they are face to face they can really relate to each, see each other, understand and love each other.

God took a being in a state of dysfunction, caused a still point, and they awoke from sleep in a state of health. My experience in the treatment room models on the same process. I help the client enter a stillpoint at which point God rearranges them into a state of health.

The Ari points out that during Purim, Haman, who was a master Astrologer, knew when the connection between the Jewish people and God would be weakest. It was then that Haman planned to destroy them.

The Ari writes that the human experience of the deep sleep דורמיטא is a time of troubles and difficulties, during which there is very little divine providence. God feels very distant to us, but when the cycle completes and the connections again strengthen, there is much greater health. In the midrash around Purim, it is believed that Esther's son became King and assisted the Jews to return to Israel to build the second temple.


The cycles of divine energy are part of the healing too. This is a beautiful way of understanding the ebb and flow of divine energy in the world, and how that too, pushes us towards healing.

Silence is not creation

It occurred to me the other day that it makes no sense to talk on Shabbat.

God created the world in six days and on the seventh he rested and did no creation How did he create? He talked and as he spoke the world came into being. We are created in God's image, and, as many kabbalists have pointed out, every time we speak we create. Which is a strong incentive to watch one's words very, very carefully as they have immense power. On shabbat we are commanded to neither create nor destroy. Since words are creation, why do we talk on Shabbat? It would make sense for it to be a day of silent contemplation and meditation so that we take a break from the role of continuously creating the world (another kabbalistic idea).

On the surface this idea seems silly, I mean, hey, we're Jews, we talk. But it seems to make sense.

I asked my friend Yoni about it and he said that there is a discussion in the Jerusalem Talmud about whether it is permitted to say "shalom" to someone on shabbat. This would imply that their practice was to be silent on Shabbat, and they concluded that it's maybe, reluctantly permissible to greet another person on Shabbat.

And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God ceased from all the work of creation that he had done.
Genesis 2:3

This is the first time God does not speak during the week of creation, but God blesses and makes it holy in silence. Two possibilities present themselves: either there are two different types of speech, one with the power of creation and one for blessing, or speech is for creation and silence is for blessing and making holy. It would imply that our words create, while our intention is what is important for blessing and making holy. So words could either create a good or a bad thing, holy or mundane, and it is our intention that determines how if it will be holy and a blessing to the world.

Menachem recently described to me the difference between God's nature and God's ability. It is within God's ability to create and destroy, to make both Good and Evil, but it is God's nature to Love and bless. Much as we see in the Human realm, the mirror of God, that we can do wonderful things and terrible abhorrent things, and it is up to us to decide. We struggle to give our good nature control over our ability so that we can be a blessing to the world. This idea dovetails nicely with what I'm describing above: our speech can do things, but our intention is what determines if it a blessing or a curse.

This is a good reason that all people walking the spiritual path have to spend a lot of time working on themselves and always look inward at their intentions and emotions to make sure they stay on the path.

In my own experience, I think there also exists speech that has power and speech that does not. One is done while connected to God, while the other is done without. When I work with my clients and am responded to something they have said, I always try to make sure I am connected, so that my words are healing. The same is true of writing, some of it is done with power and some of it is just words. This a longer discussion that I will get back to in another post.

The language of feeling

One of the things John has talked about for the past few years, and now written about in his book, is seeing vs feeling. There are two general ways that people connect to the spirit world: one type of person can see first and then connects, the other has to connect first and only then is able to see. I am a feeler. I need to feel a connection to a person and to God before I can see what is going on with them spiritually. Often, I am only able to feel, and not able to see, which makes it difficult to explain what I do.

My friends who are seers can look at a person and know things about them. They instantly get an idea of who this person is and can accurately talk about what's going on with that person. In a healing world, these are the people who put their hands on someone (or even just look at the person) and can immediately know where the problem is located in their body. Their method of seeing is placing their hands on a person, but once they do that, they can "see" the person's energy and issues.

For me, I feel. I feel a connection with a person, I feel power generate when I work on someone, I feel when there is a change and when they are healing, and I can sometimes tell what is going on. I know that one of my fears of the spiritual world blinds me to what is going on. We all have to work through our fears to do this work - this is mine. Hayyim Vital talked about Tikknei Avon, repairs of sins that need to be done before a before a person can enter the spiritual realm. Perhaps there should also be a tikkunei pachad - repair of fear.

John's book is written from the perspective of two people who see, as both John and Judy are see-ers. I am curious and want to explore the language of feeling. How to describe what one is feeling as one make the connections that allow that work to be done in the spiritual world.

When I meet someone who says they do spiritual work, I always ask them to be very specific about what they are doing and feeling. That helps me to clarify what they are experiencing so we can compare notes and make sure we are talking about the same experience. But when it comes to my own experience, I often lack in words. I think, over the next few months, that I will try to explore the language of feeling and see if I can more accurately describe my experiences.

a line of light

Tonight I went to Morgenstern's and had a very interesting and intense experience. I have started to take a class with him on Wednesday nights on Hayyim Vital's Otzarot Hayyim. I've only gone to two classes so far, but it's very interesting. The class is supposed to be in English, but I think only 50% or less in actually in English. The rest is in either Yiddish or Heavily Yiddish accented Hebrew. Many of the words he uses have multiple meanings, or they are used to refer to concepts (which I only sometimes know) so it's been very challenging to follow what he's saying.

I've been studying the book on my own before class and reading all the commentaries in the edition I own, so I think I'm keeping up! Fortunately, I live in the 21st century and all the classes are digitally recorded as MP3's. In the next week or so, the classes will be posted on a website and I can listen to them again to make sure I'm understanding what he's saying.

The first lines of the book (we've only covered two or three paragraphs so far) is about the creation of the world. God, who is called אור אין סוף (ohr ayn-sof) or light without end, created the world by a process of contraction. In the middle of the light, God contracted himself and created a ball of חלול (meaning both hollow space and desecration against God). Into this ball, God inserted a קו (straight line of light) or צינור (pipe) and filled the ball with his light. Thus all of the worlds were created.

The rebbe interpreted this to mean that outside of the ball, there are no borders, but within the ball there are. There is a division between inside and outside that is still a border, and the pipe is also a border, but within the pipe, it's still light ayn-sof. If there were no borders, the world would return to pre-contraction state. But this pipe remains open so God can send his light into the world. How an infinite light can exist in a finite pipe is a good Koan.

When I first read the book, I wrote in the margins: This is just like a shamanic tunnel. Shamans always talk about going through a tunnel to get to the spirit world, and we have a tunnel that lead to God. Thus, if one can access this pipe, one can use it as a shamanic portal into the spirit world.

Tonight, at the Rebbe's Tish, I was flowing with the energy of the room and as he began to talk, I found myself wondering about this pipe. And, as happens with these things, the picture of the pipe in the book came to me. As I focused on the pipe within the circle, there it was in front of me. I went towards it, and as I looked up it's length, it twisted and turned. I kept moving forward through the wall of the pipe and was inside it. It was like nothing I've felt before. I felt like I was completely immersed in a heavy liquid, but felt no pressure anywhere. When I looked up, I could see the pipe going straight above me to Ayn-Sof. And then there was no up or down anymore.

The light in the pipe was moving, but it felt very random until I realized that I no longer had any sense of directionality. There was no up or down or left or right. Everything was exactly the same in all directions. Except that I knew that if I backed up, I would be back through the wall. There wasn't anything except the substance surrounding me.

Morgenstern had talked about using the line to go up through the worlds and for God to emanate light into our world, but inside the line, there was no movement in any particular direction. I backed out of it and found handles on the outside of the pipe. I grabbed hold of them and before I knew it, I was flying upward through the worlds. When it stopped moving, I don't know where I was, but it felt pretty high and far from where I'd started.

I have always wanted to know what the sephirot feel like, and when I asked at this point to feel them or feel the worlds, I was told to wait, one thing at a time.

I used my time at this high point, to check in with some old and current patients and see how they felt from this vantage. One of them in particular felt very rough and, as I'm writing this entry, I received an email from her with some bad news.

We'll see what the coming weeks bring, but it's amazing to read something and get an intellectual understanding of it and then get an experiential feel as well!