With all this talk about non-dual Judaism, whether or not Orthodoxy is the "true" Judaism that Progressive Jews are just too damn lazy or stupid to accept, or whether G-d even exists, I like to propose an idea. That G-d can be explained with a simple, straight line.

Take a look at this image and ask yourself, "what is this?" It could be a letter: a lowercase "l" or an uppercase "I." It could be the number "1" or part of "11."

Imagine this image, from the perspective of a person walking through the woods. If you saw this image, say stapled to a tree, what would it be? Perhaps a sign pointing you in the right direction toward a walking path? Maybe it's a walking stick? Maybe it's some kind of warning or a piece of graffiti left behind?

Flip the image horizontally. What do we have? a picture of the horizon, a "negative" sign or a dash mark.

Now, let's take this line, and put it into a new context:

G - D

This single, straight line is now a part of something that philosophers, scholars, rabbis, priests and every day people have struggled with for thousands of years. It is everything for some, and nothing for others. It's the being so close that you can touch it, or something so remote that you can never truly know it.

With one straight line, we can find a million different perspectives. So what makes any of us vain enough to believe that something as huge as G-d can ever be agreed upon or argued in any way that isn't mental masturbation?

What is? G-d is! G-d is, is! And if for you, G-d is nothing, then G-d is still something. Thank G-d for that! 

"You can't have everything. Where would you put it?"
- Western sage Steven Wright

Anyone involved in new age spiritual Judaic practice has probably heard of Jay Michaelson; his influence extends to books, articles, publications, spiritual retreats, speaking tours and the like. He was even recently named as one of the Forward 50, an annual list of important and influential Jewish figures in America. In Everything is God, his magnum opus on the nondualistic Judaism Michaelson promotes, he attempts to bring "Jewish Enlightenment" to more traditional consumers. I assume.

His sources are not strictly Jewish; by "mapping" Hindu, Buddhist, Islamic, Christian, and other religious traditions onto traditional Judaism, Michaelson and his ilk are syncretizing a new Judaism, one more compatible with mystical Eastern traditions. I'm many years out of yeshivah, but I recognize avodah zarah when I see it.

Traditional Judaism posits a anthropomorphic god, with human characteristics, who intervenes in the universe and gave positive commandments. Nondualism on the other hand sacralizes, well, everything, insisting that the whole universe is in the process of "godding." That is to say, that all existence is God's existence, that there is nothing that isn't god--and therefore God encompasses all existence--good and bad, pleasure and suffering--but does not necessarily have discrete characteristics or a personality (except when it does). God isn't just in everyone and everything, it is everyone and everything. The Kabbalistic name for this phenomenon, Michaelson tells us, is "Ein Sof," meaning "without end."

In Michaelson's universe, nondualism is a pervasive and obvious truth, but don't look to the book to make too much sense out of it. The true nature of God is constantly being described as both knowable and unknowable; ineffable but universally understandable. Nondualism, the focus of this book, is the idea that God is the universe. "Nothing is excluded," Michaelson writes early in the book. (It turns that out this is false, but not in the way you're probably thinking). Nondualism stands slightly apart from monism (everything is one) and dualism (there is a difference between the mental and the physical) by being unable to commit to either view to the exclusion of anything else: separateness (for example, the mind/body split) is an illusion, a series of masks God wears because he loves to play tricks on us, or something like that. Nondualism, the author tells us, is not exactly pantheism (all gods are the same god, who is within all of us) or panentheism (pantheism plus a bonus extra god outside of all of us), but encompasses both in a characteristically equivocal fashion.

Atheists call this kind of argument "conversion by bear hug" -- you don't have to believe in god, god is already inside you, therefore you can't realy disbelieve in god, QED. "Neither oneness or twoness, neither yesh nor ayin, but both, and thus neither. It's not quite paradox--it's enlightenment," explains Michaelson. "The Kabbalistic math of this reality is that 2 = 1 = 0. Fortunately, I don't have to be good at math anymore."

Continue reading...

It never ceases to amaze me how difficult it is to talk about Israel.  One enters a conversation about Israel-willingly or not-with a kind of dance of words in which every utterance is loaded from the get-go, so that the meaning of a simple phrase like, "I work for an organization that supports justice and equality for all Israelis" can no longer be assumed.  Justice and equality? For whom? All Israelis? Do you mean settlers in the West Bank? Who are you? And most importantly, are you with me or against me?

Jay Michaelson's recent opinion pieces in The Forward are a case in point.  Michaelson's ambivalence about Israel elicited a range of responses:  affirmation, suggestion that a meaningful relationship with Israel requires more perseverance and good will; personal attacks; references to the Holocaust; blanket dismissals; and, perhaps not surprisingly, accusations that Michaelson somehow questions Israel's right to exist (though he specifically said he supports Israel's right to exist).    

It's hard to pinpoint when the breakdown of the American-Jewish conversation about Israel began, but one thing is clear: our relationship with Israel has not been nurtured.  The cliché about ‘two Jews, three opinions' references an ancient tradition of Jewish argument and debate dating back to the Talmudic era.  This tradition values, above all, the questioning of ideas.  Somehow, though, when it comes to Israel, there is an institutionalized insistence on one opinion for all. Or else....

Or else what?

Over the span of several generations, this institutionalized insistence has engendered frenzy, dogma, stagnation, and rejection among us young Jews.  Many of us have become either gatekeepers of the conversation on Israel or, as Michaelson suggests, have simply walked away.  Some of us are inspired and interested, yet exhausted, disappointed.  Then there are those of us who simply don't know.  We don't know where we stand, we don't know enough about the issues.  Above all, we feel unable to get away from the ongoing volley of judgment: back and forth, and back and forth, and back and forth...  

All of us are looking for a safe place to talk about Israel - a place that will respect our thoughts, experiences, emotions, knowledge (or lack thereof), and most of all, our questions.  Many of us have been told we must love Israel, or hate it, but have not been given the tools to discuss its complexities-as a country, as an ideal-and how it might relate to American Jewish life.

Love, Hate, and the Jewish State

Back to my original phrase for a moment: I work for an organization that supports justice and equality for all Israelis.  This organization, which helps give a voice to every member of Israeli society-Jewish, Arab, Russian, Bedouin, Sudanese, and Filipino, whether Orthodox, Secular, or anything in between-is also working to give a voice to the next generation of American Jews.  We at the New Israel Fund are deliberately carving out a space to dialogue about the difficult (and the easy) issues related to Israel.

Why are we doing this? Because this safe space is critical to fostering a thoughtful and nuanced Jewish identity.  Because we've found that investing in a safe space empowers people to develop tools to understand each other and the world around them.  This is especially important when it comes to a place like Israel, which engenders conflict both internally and externally.

And let me be clear: ours is not a space for the faint-hearted.  You will hear the words Nakba and Occupation.  These words will be given as much credence and respect as we give to Yom Ha'atzma'ut and Jewish identity.  But your opinion will be heard and considered.

We invite you-the ambivalent, the opinionated, the fatigued, the disappointed, the head-strong, the inspired, the angry, the naïve, and the inexperienced-to join us.

Interested?
Check out this video: www.nif.org/lovehate

Get a word in edgewise at our next event:
Love, Hate, and the Jewish State: Jews, Arabs, and conflicting narratives
Thursday, November 5 @ 7 pm
The JCC in Manhattan
To register, visit, www.nif.org/lovehate

Recently, on a trip to South Korea, I was moved to tears at a rock formation venerated by Korean shamans.  The place was so holy that the power of it, the energy of it, was immediately apparent and absolutely obvious.  And it moved me to tell a story about irony, idolatry, and nature.

Here's the irony: for many monotheists, nature-centered spirituality smacks of paganism, and thus idolatry.  But for me, being cut off from nature is idolatry.  When I'm surrounded by the noises of the city, and the incessant lures of consumer capitalism, I become diverted from my true self and my spiritual path. 

I'm not such a puritan as to resist the joys of urban life.  Yet those pleasures evoke, sometimes within minutes, a consumption-based perspective of "what do I want and how can I get it" -- the yetzer hara indulged so completely that it becomes invisible, taken for granted.  I define myself in terms of the pleasure or pain that is being provided, and confuse stillness with boredom.  Surrounded by glass and concrete, I lose my connection to my Source, and have to work to get it back.  So, to the extent I still subscribe to monotheism at all, I find it enriched, not compromised, by the spirits in nature my Israelite ancestors sought so hard to erase.

Theoretically, as a nondualist/pantheist/whateverist who thinks that "God is Everything" makes more sense than "God is in Heaven," I shouldn't be so attracted to nature.  My spiritual practice is oriented towards resting in the simple feeling of being, in naked awareness itself, regardless of what perceptions are occurring.  In theory, I should be as at home in a parking lot as in a meadow; awareness is in both.  "Is" -- the way I translate YHVH -- is in both.  And yet, I'm not.

Perhaps the pivot here is that, while we often think of nature as a positive quality, as if it is something added to our experience, I want to suggest that nature is, well, our natural state.  It is urban life that is something added to life as it is, something that covers up the natural state.   Our ancestors lived in conditions more immediate with the facts of natural life than all but the most rugged of our contemporary vacations.  Like other animals, humans are connected to the cycles of time and the seasons.  Yet unlike other animals, we have created an artificial world that defies those cycles.  That world, not "nature," is the change.  The artificial world is the idol we erect between ourselves and everything else.

So it's not that "going into nature" is adding ingredients to the soup of consciousness.  "Going into nature" is subtracting noise.  Maintaining contact with "the simple feeling of being" is easier sometimes than others, and when there is something interposed between the soul and its natural state, and that something is a giant titillation of the selfish inclination, it is more difficult to rest in the omnipresent truth.  Nature does not condition God.  But un-nature tends to block our awareness of Her.

There is, perhaps, even a third irony, which is that I am most able to be monotheistically devotional when I am polytheistically awake.  When God is abstract, I am able to approach God-consciousness with wisdom.  But when God is concrete, and manifest in form, then devotion becomes primary.  When I'm in touch with the various spirits inherent in natural settings, my heart opens, and my religious soul awakens.  The fact that the spirit in question resides in a sacred mountain venerated by shamans might trouble some monotheists, but at this point in my journey, the particular form in which God/dess manifests is much less important than the energy of the manifestation itself.  I am a more ardent Jew -- that is to say, a more heart-centered and devotional one -- when I am in sacred spaces, regardless of the particular traditions which venerate them.

More ardent -- and more firmly grounded in what matters.  In my experience, religion denuded of religious experience is likely to have a very short lifespan.  Of course, I know that many people are not interested in spiritual experiences, and do not want to have them.  I didn't have them myself, until a few years ago.  Ten years ago, if someone had told me they visited a shamanic rock and felt a surge of sacred energy, I would raise my eyebrows and confess that such experiences were not part of my spiritual path.  But because I have trained, investigated, and explored, they are now.  And as a result, I feel closer to, not farther from, the essence of religious life.

My intent is not to pronounce judgment on those who worship an abstract God, or an imaginary father figure derived solely from Scripture.  I have also experienced God in traditional monotheistic ways -- as a father figure, concerned with righteousness and integrity -- and I appreciate that experience.  But I appreciate it because it is an experience, not because it happens to conform with a text or tradition.  It sits alongside my experiences of Goddess-in-the-form-of-nature-spirit, God-as-emptiness, Spirit-as-eros, and so on.  Thus the last of my ironies is that precisely because I remain a monotheist, I am committed to the holiness of all of these encounters. 

I confess, the spirit of the sacred mountain does not feel to me like the spirit in the ancient tree; they do indeed seem like separate, distinct things, and if I were differently inclined, I might well describe some as sacred, others as profane.  But I am not so inclined.  I want to know the sacred in all of its garbs, recognizing all our concepts and maps as so many attempts to interpret the uninterpretable.  The counter-intuitive and revolutionary proposition of monotheism is that beneath all those forms, there is One Reality.  And to me, the necessary consequence of that proposition is that all religious forms gesture at the truth.  Of course, the interpretations we provide may well lead us astray from monotheism.  But before and beneath those interpretations, there is the experience, and that is where truth resides.

I want to suggest that, today, monotheism needs the paganisms of nature in order to fight the new paganism of commercial capitalism, with its deification of desire and its technologies of satisfaction.  Against the market, God doesn't stand a chance, unless religion offers a tangible alternative to Mammon -- and that means experience.  Indeed, we are seeing in our times a return to non-rational experience, to spirituality, and to personal mystical encounters with the Divine.  This trend is both for better and for worse -- all these moves are often couched in fundamentalist religious language, or still more crusader-like zeal.  But if we open the doors to multiple forms and sources of inspiration, monotheistic religion can be radically pluralistic, rather than imperialistic, and, above all, deeply powerful.  Dry religion cannot be felt -- but nature religion can.  Let's open our hearts to the spirits of the rocks and the trees.  They will forgive us our trespasses against them.  We need them.

Jewish spirituality is, in large part, in the state-change business.  At the better synagogues-i.e., the ones which actually care about prayer or spirituality or at the very least a good community feeling-you show up thinking about mortgages and to-do lists, in the middle you're feeling a holy presence, and afterward you feel refreshed and re-energized.  This is what state-change is: moving your mind from one way of being to another.  And we Jews, like all religious groups, have developed a wonderful array of tools to enable it to happen.

For most people-indeed, I'd say for about 95% of people-state change is what it's all about.  As I'll describe in a moment, spiritual states have the power to open the mind, nourish the heart, and change the world.  They are, I think, the most important force for social and environmental sustainability on the planet.  And they can be lots of fun, too. 

But, states can also become dead-ends, or misconstrued, or actually dangerous.  For every one hippie becoming one with the universe, there are five fundamentalists ossifying their experience into dogmas of hate and ethnocentrism.  So, do the costs outweigh the benefits?  Is there a way to get the good stuff without the bad?  And what lies beyond spiritual states for those of us experienced enough in the spiritual path to have grown weary of them?  Let's take a look.


1.The Benefits of (Temporary) Transformation


The first value of spiritual states is what might be called their "negative" capacity: you get to see that you are not your "box" of identity, predilections, and mind.   You get a break from being you, and that is really important. This you can experience easily.  Go to a drum circle.  Let go totally, get into the rhythm.  Forget yourself, like hopefully you do during sex.  Lo and behold!  Mind, ego, and all the rest of your personality finally shuts up-and look, you can experience life just fine without it!  Maybe even better, and more alive!  So, states are really useful, if only for that.  Many people never do it, and as I described in an earlier Zeek article, I think that's part of why so many people seem locked into traditional values, conformity, and narrow thinking.

States also have a "positive" capacity.  There's something important about those experiences when the walls of self are lowered.  Drum circle ecstasy isn't just Not-Usual-Me; there's a glimpse of an oceanic oneness beyond ego, a melting into the Goddess that is deeply profound and important.  This is some of what Gilbert and I experienced on our first retreats: a dissolving into the One, a glimpse of the numinous.  At least as an experience, holiness is real.  All those spiritual weirdos-they're not nuts.  I don't know what they're experiencing (more on that in a minute), but there is an experience, and that experience is really valuable.  And if it gets mixed in with a notion of Shechinah or deities or spirits or whatever, these are useful concepts, even if they are only concepts. 

Third, mystical states have a tendency to shift one's priorities, in useful ways.  You experience this joy and bliss and compassion, and you get a little less obsessed with competition, career, and materialism.  At least for a while.  These states, transient as they are, yield a deeper, wider perspective on life's "stuff."  Would we really have as many angry people, hunters, sexual predators, stressed out neurotic nuts, or conservatives if everyone underwent a real state change every Friday night?  I don't think so.  It wouldn't save the world, but it would help if we were all a little more calm, and more infused with a joy that doesn't depend on consumption.

More specifically, genuine spiritual states invariably lead to compassion.  I don't know why that is; it's kind of a miracle.  And that compassion leads to all kinds of good things: less selfishness, more justice, less greed, more generosity, less hate, more love.  I can hear my social-justice-obsessed editor clucking her tongue at spiritual narcissism, so let me emphatically state that, in my view, nothing would be better for the global pursuit of social justice than for more and more people to meditate and cultivate compassion on a personal level first.  As I suggested last month, there is just no convincing a conservative that it's worth caring about some unfortunate marginalized person.  They have to feel it themselves, and that takes changing the heart-and that takes spiritual practice.  I don't see any other way if what we're after is durable, systemic change rather than fighting about the cause of the moment.

Finally, states lead to lasting insight.  First, experiencing spiritual "highs" can provide a little more perspective on, and a little less thirst for, highs of other kinds, like sex, spirituality, drugs, love, music, food, travel, and other experiences.  Again, I've had a very rich and wonderful life filled with all of those, but as anyone can tell you, chasing kicks forever is both puerile, and a little addictive.  Mystical states can provide some of that joy and ecstasy without the side-effects and without all the clinging.  Last month, you may recall, I described some of my own strongest spiritual experiences ("A Jewish Perspective on the Jhanas".  They were so intense that afterward, I would  sometimes feel like, this is it, okay?  I have gotten higher than I ever thought it was possible to get.  Okay.  Whew, that was great.  I'll do it again.  Okay.  Now I'll do it fifty times over a two month retreat.  Okay.  Now I'm even tired of it.  So what's next?  What lies beyond "kicks," even the most sublime ones?  This is very useful: good spiritual highs lead to a better relationship to highs in general.

In fact, states lead to insights of all kinds.  Again drawing on my recent experience, coming out of jhana, insights into dharma, Torah, and Jay's messy life popped like popcorn.  One time, the "wisdom light" in the third and fourth jhanas healed me of grief over a broken relationship which I'd been carrying around for six months.  Honest-it's much later now, and the anger and heartbreak is gone, replaced only by a reflective, wistful sadness that feels sweet and appropriate.  Other times, I would exit jhana and instantly see the radical impermanence of all sensations: here one moment, gone the next.  I could poke through any wall of loneliness, anger, or greed.  These insights do last, even though the blissful or content or equanimous states which produced them do not.

So, states heal us, they re-orient us, they motivate us, and they teach us.  What could be bad?


2. The Limits of Spiritual States


In fact, the limitations of spiritual states are as perhaps as important as their strengths. 

First, what really matters-God, the Unconditioned, Emptiness, Nirvana, call it what you will-is not the state, the bliss, the light, et cetera.  Let me repeat briefly from last month that there's a tendency that all of us have-but particularly spiritual Jews have-to deify and thus idol-ize certain states.  Oh, that gorgeous warmth of lighting candles.  Oh, we were so high during that drum circle / Kabbalat Shabbat / whatever, that was really mamash it.  But that's not it.  It is what's always here; Ein Sof, everything.  If it wasn't always here, it isn't it.  Real devekut has only one attachment: Is.  Totally colorless, totally omnipresent, and in fact, if you look closely, the only thing that doesn't come and go.  There is no state that is it.  This is it; just this.  Not feeling special about this, not feeling relaxed or wise or anything in particular-although sometimes those feelings may arise in the wake of letting go. Just is. 

In fact, mistaking a state for It is idolatrous, and the gateway to fundamentalism.  The reason is "fetishizing the trigger," which I wrote about a few years ago.  Fetishizing the trigger happens when we find a trigger to amazing mystical states, and then mistake the trigger for the state, the finger pointing at the moon for the moon itself.  This is the root of fundamentalism: this ritual is holy, that one is not; this religion is right, that one is not.  And it's the root of the "right-wing hippie" phenomenon in Israel, in which well-meaning neo-Hasidic types get really seriously high off of the holiness of the Land of Israel, and end up hating Arabs and being incredibly ethnocentric.  States are powerful, and that means they can be dangerous.

Even when they're not dangerous, states can lead to a whole huge pile of suffering when the conditioned state passes and you're left wondering what the hell went wrong.  Believe me, I've spent many months in just that sense of bewilderment.  The answer is actually pretty simple: I mistook something conditioned for the unconditioned.  You just can't relive those peak experiences after awhile.  I've tried.  I've tried really hard.  It just leads to suffering.  The only thing you can do, over and over again, is let go.  Let go of everything.  Every desire, every identification, every place your ego is hiding out and saying "I'm this."  Let go, let go, let go, and keep on falling-because there ain't no place to land.  Yet this falling, I am here to tell you, is the same as flight.

It is also bad, bad news to get addicted to bliss states, as many people do.  It's a spiritual dead end, a kind of masturbatory spirituality that's basically not so different from being addicted to drugs.  You get high, you get withdrawal, you get high, you get withdrawal.   It's kind of tragic, since as I just mentioned one of the many benefits of spiritual highs is that they tend to reduce clinging to getting high.  But sometimes it doesn't work that way, and one addiction is simply substituted for another.  I've met a lot of "spiritual" people who really are just looking for their next fix, and it's sad.  It is also irresponsible, imbalanced, and even if its less severe forms, can actually increase selfishness-as in, "stop bothering me with your needs!  I'm trying to have a bliss state!" 

Now, again, some perspective.  I was told on one of my first retreats that concentrated mindstates can become narcotic.  I understood, but I wanted them anyway-and I don't regret it.  Those four or five years of concentration brought on all kinds of insight, compassion, and the other benefits from above.  They were also freaking amazingly awesome and beautiful.  (See "Meditation and Sensuality")  So, if you're just starting out: cultivate states!  Just try not to get too attached to them, or think they're something they're not.  Love, learn, and let go.

But for those of us who have eaten the apple, tasted the forbidden fruit, and been transformed by it-is there anything beyond?  Are we just to go on loving and letting go?  Or is there something beyond the holiest of spiritual states?


3.What's Beyond States?


There is-but let me take a short detour first to reiterate why for the vast majority of people, states are still the way to go.  Really, where the work of spiritual teaching and the work of social justice actually intersect is not in the more esoteric or refined realms, but in what you could call the "retail business" of spirituality: bringing spiritual change to more and more people, usually in somewhat gross ways.  Ultimately, while I personally am interested in the further stages of the spiritual path, and try to write about them in this magazine, as someone concerned about the fate of our planet, I am actually more interested in the initial stages.  I believe that spirituality can bring more and more people over to the good side of the fence-the side with more concern about equality and justice, more respect for the environment, and more pluralism on global and local levels.  And I think spirituality can make people less racist, violent, overly conservative, greedy, and materialistic. But to do that, spiritual teachers need to interact with the not-so-good side of the fence, and cheapen what they are doing in order to reach more people.

Eckhart Tolle, after the huge success of The Power of Now, took a year of silent retreat to discern what should be his next step-not as a matter of a career, but as one of mission.  What he did next was not unveil the next stage of the path, what lies beyond "now," but rather adjust the way he was teaching, simplify it, and, in a way, translate it into more coarse terms.  The result was A New Earth, worldwide success, and, through Oprah, the largest audience a spiritual teacher has received since perhaps Deepak Chopra.  (Chopra himself is an educated, enlightened nondualist.  His teaching is often quite coarse in presentation-live forever, never age, etc.-but I think he's really trying to reach the most people with the most light.)

So, to rethink Jewish spirituality does not mean to junk its reliance on spiritual states, because for most Jews, like most people, states are still what is necessary.  We still need to promise that you'll feel good, and deliver the goods.  And let's remember that the majority of synagogues in America can't do even that; they don't even know there are goods to deliver, or that there might be goods other than coming together as a community, celebrating our religion, and repeating half-believed notions about God or commandments.  For most people, the first step is still yet to be taken.

But if you've read this far, I'm guessing you're not one of those people.  I'm guessing that you've had powerful spiritual experiences, and that, like me, you've struggled with what to do next: how to integrate them, or have more of them, or perhaps move from "state to stage," in Ken Wilber's terms.  This is the real goal, right?  Not to go off on retreat and feel close to God but shiviti adonai l'negdi tamid-to set YHVH ("Is" / Being) before you always.  So for you, what's the next step?  I'm still very much on this path myself, but here's what I've learned so far.

First, states must be refined and made increasingly subtle, so much so that they approach omnipresence.  The jhanas, which I wrote about previously, are instructive in this regard.  The first jhana is pretty over-the-top, filled with intense rapture.  Then that gets too coarse, and the second jhana takes over, with pleasure and delight and amazing, shimmering light, but without some of the intense concentrated effort.  Eventually even that gets coarse, and the mind moves to the third jhana, with pleasure and bliss, but not rapture and amazement.  And eventually, even the love and bliss of the third jhana gets a bit coarse, and the mind moves into the fourth jhana, which is equanimous, transparent, and so subtle it's barely there.

The first jhana's coarseness is its strength: without that brute force, it's very hard to get "in."  As I write this now, transitioning out of retreat, the fourth jhana has become difficult to sustain-it's just very subtle.  Likewise with all spiritual states.  At first, we need to get our socks knocked off: some amazing, wild ecstatic prayer service, or an upwelling of love so beautiful it makes us cry.  As we progress, however, what I've found is that the states become more subtle-and thus approach ordinary life more and more.  The title of Jack Kornfield's book After the Ecstasy the Laundry is apt, and the book deals frankly with some of the painful hangover-periods that inevitably come after ecstatic highs.  But the ultimate point is for the laundry itself to be holy, to be good.

That does not mean that the laundry provides ecstasy.  Rather, it means that by refining spiritual states, you don't need ecstasy to feel connected anymore.  I remember after my first few retreats, I would try to re-experience the joy or devekut I felt on retreat.  For a while, it would work, but eventually, I'd get too distracted, and eventually even bored with trying.  Now, however, I'm looking less for a spiritual state than just to let go into "what is."  It's tricky, because "let go into 'what is'" sounds like "relax, feel connected, be holy"-but my point is the opposite: that it's really just letting go into what is, and being deeply, profoundly okay with that.

If you've not experienced any of these states and progressions, that must sound rather banal.  But imagine having the sense of okay-ness that you have when you're snuggling with your lover-just now, snuggling in with the "present moment."  Not the love, necessarily (though that too may arise), but just the... yes.  This is it.  This really is it.  This is God, this is the point, this emptiness that underlies all of my transitory states of mind... yep, this is it.

The result need not be an aching sense of holiness, or the belief that you can fly.  (Though those too...)  It is mostly a negative capacity rather than a positive one: it's mostly in the letting go, the relaxing, the un-distracting, the remembering.  Poke your head up out of the huge flock of self-absorbed sheep that all of us collectively are-oh yeah, you're awake.  Consciousness.  Emptiness.  Even "God," if you like, though that term is inevitably freighted with associations and expectations.  My God is named "is."  So, for me, it's sometimes easiest to just say "is it is?"  Which... it usually is.

This is the process of making states so transparent that they slowly turn into stages.  What we're looking for, "it", the goal, enlightenment, whatever grows increasingly thin.  The "trigger" is always available.  What you're looking for is always available-indeed, it's just your ordinary awareness, if you can believe that.  Remember: if it hasn't always been here, it isn't the unconditioned.  And it is, in my experience, slow, gradual, and filled with fits and starts.  But it does seem to be working.  "To see the light in everyone and every thing," Surya Das told me.  Yes-and not radiant, shining, first-jhana light-but just the ordinary light that is, all the time.  Nothing special-and yet, with enough practice, just as special as that which is most special.  Sorry if that seems paradoxical. Walk the walk, you'll see what I mean.

So, at first we have mundane consciousness, the space of I-me-mine and work and the rest.  Then, we have spiritual states, where those boundaries and demands are relaxed.  And then, we have some notion that the real goal is not any state, but what Wilber calls "the simple freedom of being."  This is rather like negative theology in our own experience: not this, not that, not this thought, not that idea, not this ego, not that possession.  Ayin is everywhere, but it has taken me, at least, a lot of work to be able to refine consciousness so much that I'm not mistaking it for a pleasant state of mind. 

And then, finally, there is the re-embrace of the ordinary itself-but, please, don't do this too fast.  First, have the states.  Then, refine them away.  And then see that in every ordinary moment, lonely ones and lovely ones, there is the unity of form and emptiness, nirvana and samsara, yesh and ayin.  Don't rush.  But do move forward.

Now, in order to enable this negative capacity, of seeing God without "God", there are at least four necessary ongoing factors.  First is a regular spiritual practice: meditation, yoga, prayer, reflection, that sort of thing.  You've just got to take out the garbage, every day.  You have to interrupt the torrents of thought, to-do lists, plans, senses of self, and so on, because otherwise "letting go" just won't take.  A lot of times, when I ask "is it is?" I get a response of "yes, but so what?"  This is a good sign that I'm identifying with factors in my mind, such as restlessness or unhappiness.  It's a good sign to take a nice, deep breath and try to remember that "I" am not restless; restlessness has just arisen.  There is no "I."  Okay, whew.  Regular spiritual practice maintains the base level of presence of mind necessary to do that.

Second, you've got to extend the spiritual practice beyond the mat, beyond the mind, and into action.  If it's all about you, you're going to get too wrapped up in your feelings, your journey, your states, your shit.  Take some time out of your head and go work in a soup kitchen.  Council somebody who needs help.  Volunteer for a cause you believe in.  Whatever it is, there has to be some measure of spiritual practice in the world-not just to heal the world, but to ensure that spirituality doesn't dead-end in you.

Third, I think-and some would disagree here-that in addition to awakening, there needs to be some kind of "purification of mind," to use the Buddhist term.  Theoretically, one can be a fully awakened, enlightened human being and still be a total schmuck.  Enlightenment does not have to do with being a nice person; it's about seeing through the veil of illusion, knowing all things to be totally conditioned and transitory and thus unclingable.  What's left depends on how you see the world-it could be God, or Emptiness, or liberation, could be All Mind, or No Mind; doesn't really matter, the point is what it isn't, which is any thing.  Now, if that's true, it doesn't much matter whether what's in the mind is peace and love, or sexual desire, or simple obnoxiousness.  It's all God, right?  This is how many clearly enlightened people still have psychological baggage and other hangups.  For me-and again, not everyone would agree-I think there's still a lot of delusion that needs to be cleared up in order for it not to eventually block clear seeing.  I still get very, very tied up in the illusion of "I", in large part because of the way neuroses from my childhood still continue to operate.  They are very hard to see through sometimes.  So, for me at least, the ongoing process of cultivating patience, equanimity, lovingkindness, and other illusory, transitory qualities remains part and parcel of the overall spiritual project, if only so I don't get jammed.

Finally, I think you've got to take a good look at your life, and see if it is really conducive to taking the "next step."  Maybe it just isn't.  Maybe you're at a stage in your life where you're working really hard and building something, and so you need to stay with cultivating really juicy states once a week.  No harm in that.  Or maybe you're raising a family, and the stress is just too much for subtlety.  This is why monks are monks, and not householders.  In my own life, I've shed three entire careers in the last two years, and am working much less-for me, anyway.  I've chosen to take large chunks of time out and focus on contemplative work.  I've stopped fighting with Jews about how their religion should be, and I've cut back on my political writing and work.  And I've stopped living in New York City.   These steps have often been painful; I'm a greed type, and I want it all.  But I want one thing more, and that thing requires quiet of mind and body.

So, that's what I've learned.  It is possible and necessary to move beyond spiritual states, but it takes work, the right conditions, and ongoing maintenance.  And to repeat, I am not claiming to have completed this work, or attained anything.   As a final aside, if I were really beyond identifying with my "ego," I probably wouldn't be writing at all; the more awake I become, the less I am interested in teaching or writing, and even less in impressing anyone by doing so.  Compassion still motivates me somewhat, but humility counters it: do I really think I am so wise, or that I am saying something that can't be found elsewhere?  I can imagine many realized beings who see no possible purpose in doing anything or going anywhere except Being itself, except perhaps in direct, compassion-motivated helping of others.  So, if you are reading any book or essay, including this one, you must be getting something less than the totally genuine article.  Beware of anyone who writes or teaches.

At this point in a Zeek essay, I often try to conclude with a poetic image, or a recollection of a spiritual moment at which all the veils dropped away and the nakedness of the Divine was so radiant and cleansing.  Having just finished a jhanas retreat, I have a big satchel of such moments.  But the point of Zen poetry and ritual, as I understand it, is to get beyond all that.  Whatever it is you're looking at now-that's the scenery for your enlightenment.  So I'd rather not write any conclusion at all.

Get it?  :-)


All images by artist Judith Joseph

"You've got to go out on a limb sometimes because that's where the fruit is."

- Will Rogers

 

In high school, all I wanted, but didn't even know that I wanted, was a magician to suddenly appear in my life and peel back the grey curtain of my existence to reveal a magical, rainbow world underneath.  Now, at 37, I know that world exists -- multiple ones, in fact, places of discovery, spiritual awakening, sexual ecstasy, altered consciousness, creativity, emotional connection, diverse experiences, all totally unknown to me when I was younger.  But it took me years to find them.  There were a few intimations in my twenties: a couple of peak experiences, usually with the help of one substance or other; some spiritual highs in my Orthodox Jewish years; and, as the shells began to break, some wonderful times with music, with pot, and at a few rave parties.  Really, though, it didn't start happening until 2001, when at age thirty, my old life shattered and I felt I had nothing to lose by jumping off the cliff, and either falling or flying or both.

 

The closest I came: I saw Dead Poets Society at age 17, and was instantly convinced.  Unfortunately, I made two mistakes.  First, I mistook the form for the freedom, thinking that poetry specifically was the point, rather than self-discovery, which would have included coming out, getting beyond my ego's fears, and other terrifying things.   And second, I followed poetry into a cul-de-sac of early-90s irony and cynicism -- a trap from which, even now, I occasionally have trouble escaping.  By the time I got to Columbia, the Allen Ginsbergs had all gone, and in their place were coolness, sophistication, irony... all wastes of time.

 

There was no Mr. Keating in my teenage life: no teacher, no older peer, not even a friend.  I did my best, but I had no guide, and no internet either.  I was into the Beatles, and read the Beats, but where anything was happening contemporaneously, I had no idea.  And there was a furtiveness to it (another early closet), a shame of being into the 1960s, which for my stood for everything related to creativity, free expression, and living life fully, as opposed to the 1980s, which to me stood for superficiality, football games, and conformity.  I had neither the aptitude nor the interest in what my peers seemed to be doing.  I was a gay kid closeted from himself, so I had no idea what I was supposed to do with girls, except from what I could glean from pop culture and porn, neither of which could substitute for actual desire.  And I was a geek, toward the bottom of the social food chain, but without that blithe ignorance some geeks seem to have.  I knew I was a loser, but there seemed to be no alternative.

 

Of course, in the late 1980s, there were plenty of countercultures to choose from.  But I either didn't know about them, or was intimidated by them.  There were a few punks at my school, but they all seemed dangerous and mean.  I didn't know of any artistic communities near where I lived, and of course if I had, I would have been ludicrously out of place.  So I spent such large chunks of my adolescence editing a computer club newsletter, playing computer games, and being by myself.  Some of that alone-time was really quite creative, and a foreshadowing of the time I've spent on solitary retreat more recently.  But I was so alone, and isolated.  I had no idea how to make my life extraordinary.

Where Shall We Go

From this vantage point, there's a sort of sadness, a wistfulness, looking back on those times lost.  I know that the experiences of those years shaped me into the person I am now, for better as well as for worse, and so I try not to regret.  I try also to be conscious of how this dynamic contributes to potentially destructive patterns now, e.g. indulging the inner child unwisely, chasing after boys, and resisting discipline even when it would help me.

 

But mostly, I admit, there is regret.  Imagine, if there had just been one person: a boy, maybe, or a teacher, or someone to rip open that junior-high school facade, and tell me the secret that there are whole other worlds out there, don't waste your time with these people, come with me, and I'll show you a life so intense, so alive, that they can't even dream of it. 

 

For a time, I played the Mr. Keating role myself.  At the summer camp where I worked, I turned the ultimate frisbee team into my own Dead Poets' Society, complete with scorn for the normals, counterculture values, and even some actual poetry.  And as a Hebrew High School teacher in my 20s, I tried to influence my kids to... what?  To seize the day, I suppose.  To see things differently.  To make fun of the mainstream.  Simple stuff.  Catcher in the Rye stuff.  But stuff that no one told me at the time.

 

Yet as I tried to show my students the virtues of living out loud, was I seizing the day myself?  I was in law school, albeit for partly noble reasons.  I was deep in the closet, hopelessly and sometimes pathetically in love with straight boys.  And while I was going out and drinking and seeing some shows, none of those things, when I look back on them now, really seem that powerful.  In law school, too, I was lost among the normals, as if college had never happened.  All along, I was being creative: writing, painting, eventually writing music once I taught myself guitar.  Yet none of those had much of an outlet.  One photography show at Yale, and a few poems in literary magazines.  Otherwise, I treated my creativity as a hobby.

 

It took more traumatic knocks on the head, literally and figuratively, for me to practice what I preached.  A failed longterm relationship with a wonderful woman convinced me that maybe I wasn't bisexual after all.  Burning Man showed me that I could get physically and emotionally naked without humiliating myself, and that it was possible for me to have those wonderful, intimate conversations that previously I'd only read about in books.  And eventually, meditation and spiritual practice cracked open my soul to possibilities of love I'd never even known about.  It has been a long journey, and it continues.

 

2.

 

I realize that the dream of the magician is, in some ways, an adolescent dream.  There's a reason Dead Poets Society was set in a high school; just "going for it" in some vague sense is, well, a kind of high school/college thing to do.  But I think it's still an important dream to nourish, for at least two reasons.

 

First, most people never take that first step.  Today, all these years later, it's a wonderment to me to see some of my peers all grown up, yet never having begun a spiritual, artistic, philosophical, or just plain hedonistic seizing-the-day journey.  I'm sure their lives are fulfilling, with kids and family and the rest.  But to never have escaped the box you were born into!  To never have seriously questioned it!  It's hard for me even to remember what those first steps are: questioning authority and conformity, finding that essence inside of yourself, being true to your heart.  This isn't about being a writer or an artist specifically.  It's about being an aficianado of life.  Something -- and preferably, something rich and transformative.  Jazz, or exotic travel, or S&M.  Something that lets you really live, for God's sake, rather than just go on, love (hopefully), and reproduce.  This may be an adolescent dream, but if so, many (most?) people are pre-adolescents.

 

Second, the dream has political import.  Part of seeing that you're living in a box conditioned by convention, privilege, and unquestioned values is seeing that the box also contains oppression and injustice.  It's not just vapid; it also despoils and chains and subjugates.  I think failing to "seize the day," individuating, and escaping from expectation is how Republicans are made.  As long as you don't look too closely, and as long as you're satisfied with what you've got, you prefer not to change how things are.  Most of the oppression is invisible anyway, and injustice happens beneath our notice.  So the system continues.

 

Maybe that's what mainstream religion (as opposed to spirituality, radical religion, etc.) is really for.  It props up the householder life, and provides just enough juice, meaning, and reflection for it to be worth living in the first place.  Or who knows, maybe kids really do change everything, and maybe one day I'll find out.

Reflection

But right now, I want to live.  To paraphrase Mr. Keating again, my spiritual practice isn't there to enable me to live a normal life happily; it's life itself.  I love my writing projects, my queer activism, my lust of life, and my spiritual practice.  I love my weird and unusual life, featuring months of silent meditation and five careers and living in the woods and some pretty far out sensual and spiritual experiences.  There is deep bliss, love, enlightenment, compassion, and holiness on the paths I have chosen. People who've never "left" the box can't see that; they can't see that there are other goods out there that people might choose to pursue.  This is what distinguishes those who voluntarily choose a householder life from those who slipped right into it without self examination.  And again, I think it has political import.  How can you be deeply pluralistic if you've never seen from outside your born-into-it perspective?

 

It's certainly not all sweetness and light out here on the limb.  There is loneliness, dependence, and the dangers of narcissism.  There's not a whole lot of money or power, which for me, raised as I was to be a lawyer-statesman, or at least a lawyer-professor, causes a lot of envy -- especially since I actually did go to law school, and now have friends who are rich, successful, powerful, and justifiably respected.  I've worked on that, and have come to some peace around it, but it has taken work.  Perhaps worst of all, long-term relationships are notoriously hard to maintain among bohemians, spiritual types, and other misfits; one three-year relationship of mine ended because my partner felt a "heart-pull" to leave, explore, and grow on his own.  These are all understandable and even praiseworthy from a spiritual and self-actualization perspective, but it sure hurt like hell, and it took me about six months to come to accept it without rage or searing pain.

 

And yet, for all that, I don't think I would trade lives with my peers, if I could.  But the truth is, I can't.  I tried very hard to live their lives, and failed.  That's the point of the dream of the magician: I wish that I could have escaped sooner.

 

There are many alchemies that spring from those years of frustration and pain, some productive, others less so.  Thanks to meditation practice, I have learned to let go of regret.  I was always trying the best I could; it just took me awhile to find my way.  And the loneliness and pain has, obviously, motivated a lot of my spiritual work in the first place.  But I think my favorite of the alchemies of spirituality is how I play the Mr. Keating role today, only this time from the edges of my own experience, and with adults rather than adolescents.  Today, as I teach in spiritual contexts and invite people to explore the edges of their own hearts and minds, I encounter people who are as gray as I was back in 1988.  And I know, because they have told me, that I've brought color and light into their lives.  I also encounter people who are already growing and flourishing, and with whom I enjoy a symbiotic relationship, mutually opening, daring, provoking, laughing, and inspiring.  We are each other's magicians, performing at a kind of carnival, in which I get to grow wiser and kinder, and experience more ecstasy than I'd ever thought possible.

 

Though I do wonder, sometimes, if the admission ticket could have been bought with a bit less pain.

___________

Images: Where Shall We Go, Reflection and Black Bird (lead image) by David Brooks.

Part II: Is there God in the Jhanas?


So what about that "Is"--that sense of devekut, the numinous, the Lover, that I found in the fourth jhana? As I've indicated, I didn't just experience the jhanas as a blissful or contented state, which is how the Buddhist texts described them. I experienced them as holy--which is how the Hindu texts did. I'm not prepared to say that any particular experience was necessarily an experience of God, or an angel, or anything in particular--but I will say that they were extreme encounters with the "numinous."

Moreover, if I were setting out on this practice from a specifically religious perspective, there's no question that these experiences would be described in terms of visions, mystical union, blessings, even prophecy. Jewishly speaking, they correspond in interesting ways with the states described in some of Abraham Abulafia's books, and in the Shaarei Tzedek, a text by one of his disciples that is translated in Gershom Scholem's Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism. If the jhana practice doesn't match these mystical states, I don't know what does. (For more on this, see "Does Mysticism Prove the Existence of God?") The presence, the light--it is literally bringing tears to my eyes as I write this, because it is so healing, beautiful, gorgeous, holy, and pure.

For example, sometimes, during the third and fourth jhanas, there would arise a bright, hot light at the "third eye" spot--basically, where the head part of the Tefillin rests, a correspondence I did not fail to notice, although sometimes it would move up to the crown chakra point. This I will not describe further, except to say that I experienced all kinds of wisdom and insight in connection with this light. If you've had similar experiences, hameivin yavin. If not, I'm going to shut up about it anyway for now. Go see for yourself.

Now, what's going on in such experiences? As I see it, there are three options:

This is a sacred state, and it's just ignorant not to see that. Buddhists experience the state but choose not to see it as sacred (my Burmese teacher told me not to get distracted by any of these sensations, and that doing so was dangerous); materialists don't see it because they are willfully blind. If love is real, this is real.

This is purely a mindstate, which perhaps one day we can measure and stimulate artificially. The sensation of "holiness" is purely a sensation. Any claim that this is of anything--whether God or anything else--is reification, and thus delusion. Great that the states healed you and helped you see truth; leave it at that.

God is there if you look for Him/Her.

Facets of LightMy choice, no surprise, is number three. It would be dishonest to sit here and tell you that I did not experience an intense closeness to God in these states, far more than any in prayer, meditation, ecstatic, entheogenic, or energetic work I had done in the past--and again, I've done a lot. This is what I experienced, and I don't want to lie in order to make myself seem sane, credible, or level-headed. But I also don't want to make any assertions or jump to any conclusions. I just don't know. And I like resting in that question, because it prevents me from falling into idolatry, fundamentalism, reification, or attachment.

As I've written about at length in my book Nondual Judaism (coming out next September from Shambhala), I think this word "God" is a kind of naming, a way of relating to "Is" that some people choose to do and other people don't. Remember, "Ein Sof" does not mean "God"--it means "infinite." And YHVH doesn't mean God either--it means, I think, "is." Asking whether "is" exists is nonsensical. Asking whether "God" exists is a question of naming. Do we choose to experience this moment as You, rather than It? If we do, You appear--quite reliably, the more spiritual practice one does. God is here, right now, I know it. However, it is also possible to choose to experience this moment as It, in which case the personality of God recedes, and is replaced only by a placid, transparent, omnipresent, maybe-aware emptiness. This is also true, right now, and I know it too.

I know both of these things because, thank God or karma, I am blessed with these two ways of relating--the secular Buddhist one, and the religious Jewish one. I find both of them incredibly nourishing. On my jhanas retreat, days would go by without God-consciousness. I would surrender to the practice, experience ecstasy, bliss, contentment, and equanimity as factors of mind, and grow very quiet and precise. Other times (especially since the retreat coincided with the Jewish holiday season), the protective, loving, and sometimes erotic natures of God/dess would arise even during quiet concentrated mindstates. Even in the fourth jhana, there was a sense of "I am always here." At the very least, there was often a sense of gratitude--and "God" was just a name for Who/What I felt grateful toward.

So, I really do want to say that everybody is right--partly because I experience both sides myself. As Ken Wilber has described in great length and of great use, it's a matter of looking, and as Wilber also discusses, it's really helpful to look from as many perspectives as possible. I don't think the Buddhists are ignorant because they're missing the God piece, and I don't think the Christians are deluded because they're seeing Christ. I think we approach the mystery with perspectives, expectations, and vocabularies that both shape and interpret those experiences. The wings of the Shechinah are the flapping ears of Ganesh, and both are just a visual impression that should not be reified. Which perspective works best depends on the moment, and your heart.

Now, this may not be enough. In a way, the jhanas really undermine some of the foundations of Jewish Facets of Lightspiritual life: if these amazing and holy states can be stimulated purely through concentration, then what do we really mean by "an experience of God"? Is devekut just a mindstate? Isn't this just the kind of non-religious version of religious experience that Sam Harris, at the end of The End of Faith, says we should institute in place of dogma and religion? If you can "get there" purely with concentration, then what's the point of all the God stuff--the piety, the worship, and the inevitable attachment to form? Biggest of all: is "God" purely a projection of the mind, a reification of a feeling?

And not only that-what if "God" is an unhelpful projection of mind? Several times during retreat, I found myself engaged in what I came to call "pseudo-covenant," or making neurotic deals with God to please grace me with another mystical encounter. From a Buddhist perspective, this is a really unhelpful delusion, because it prevents the clear seeing of the conditions that actually bring jhana about: concentration, effort, and so on. Even from just a nonsectarian spiritual perspective, though, pseudo-covenant is crazymaking. There's no end to it--it's basically a prolonged state of fear and insecurity. Whereas, when the states are seen as simply conditioned states--profound, amazing, life-changing, loving, blissful states, but still just states--calm and clarity prevail.

I really don't know, but I have a few replies--or at least, ways of seeing.

First, I come back to a very basic understanding that it's easier to see the truth at some times than others. This is true in mundane as well as spiritual contexts. Ever have a moment in a relationship when, due to whatever reasons, you suddenly see the truth (for better or for worse) about your partner? Conditions enabled that seeing--a crackling fireplace, a blown responsibility--but the seeing is true nonetheless. Maybe jhana is just an extreme example of that. With the mind blown and the heart open, the numinous just appears--at least to those of us who are looking.

Second, let's remember that sometimes this state appears even when we're not looking. I didn't come on this retreat looking for God. I had my intentions, and they were not particularly Jewish ones. In my experience, which I trust but do not defend, which I fall back on but do not proselytize, purely in my experience, without any assertion but with an admission, a confession, a release: God found me. Again, I'm not saying I saw God or spoke to God or anything like that. I'm just saying these are the holiest experiences I've ever had, and that if I was inclined to ascribe such labels to them, they would certainly fit.

Third, let me return for a moment to the fourth jhana. One of the lessons of that state is how thin it is. It's extremely subtle, which is why it takes the most concentration to enter, and why it holds so much power for spiritual practice. It is devoid of qualities: it's not loving like the third jhana, or ecstatic like the first, or delightful like the second. Just pure equanimity. Now, that too is a conditioned phenomenon--but it's a very In Your Light, I See Lightthin one. The "God" that emerges in that state is the nondual God: Is. So we're not really reifying a mindstate; we're seeing What Is through different prisms, some of them colored with love or joy, and some entirely colorless. This seems really important, and as I mentioned above, is one of the most important Jewish teachings of jhana. God is not a name for when you feel good.

Fourth, I want to really inhabit that "I don't know" for awhile, and see where it leads: not answering, not knowing, surrendering and letting go to this mystery that is beyond any capacity or concept. Surely this is wisdom. If there is God, nondual or otherwise, surely it's beyond our capacity to explain. And if there isn't, but there's just a vast emptiness when all conditioned phenomena are let go of, well, then it's exactly the same, isn't it? Both "God" and "not God" end up in exactly the same place: empty of all concepts, radiant, mysterious, and yet somehow with a tinge of knowing.

Finally, I don't want to get lost in theology, when the point is the experience, whether its religious in nature or not. Let's assume these are purely conditioned mindstates, whatever the consequences of that assumption may be. Let's let go of magical thinking, and religious thinking. Great! Now the question is what are they good for, what do they teach, how can they enrich our lives. Sharon Salzberg, following the Buddhist canon, defines the quality of faith as "trusting your own deepest experiences." Trust, not explicate or define or reify. That seems right to me, and these were certainly some of the deepest I've had. Everything is as it was: tables and chairs, loneliness and wisdom. But in my heart, there is now a deep knowledge of love.


All images by Harriete Estel Berman.

The jhanas are states of heightened concentration that have been cultivated by Hindus and Buddhists for just under three thousand years. They are altered states, full of bliss and, I would say, holiness, and they play a central role in the Buddha's Eightfold Path ("right concentration"). Recently, I completed two months of silent meditation retreat devoted to the jhana practice. I went with certain intentions and expectations, which I'll discuss in a moment, but the experience was more profound and more religious than I expected. After a few introductory notes, I will describe my experiences of the jhanic states and describe what I believe to be their significance for Jewish theology and spirituality. As far as I know, such a project has not been attempted before.

1.         What I did, and why I did it

I wish to make three introductory notes. First, I want to explain why I undertook this rigorous practice, which involved sitting still for extended periods of time (usually, 90 to 120 minutes), and spending the entire day doing nothing but observing the sensations of the breath at the nostrils, even while walking, eating, et cetera. I had three reasons, and discovered two additional ones during the retreat.

First, my real goal is liberation from the delusions of ego and the clinging nature of the mind: to learn to let go of clinging. On the Theravada Buddhist path, liberation comes from insight: directly seeing and knowing that all phenomena are empty of substance, impermanent, and fruitless to cling to. Insight, in turn, depends on concentration; you've got to get really quiet to see these characteristics clearly. So I went to learn concentration skills as a kind of prerequisite for a four-month retreat that I am on now, as this article is published.

Second, I went because jhana itself helps insight. Distractions and hindrances are suppressed in jhana, and the experience is deeply purifying and refreshing; one emerges with an extremely sharp, clear, and quiet mind, ready to do the rigorous, moment-to-moment noticing that leads to insight.

Seder PlateThird and finally, I did this practice because I was curious about jhana itself. On earlier retreats, I experienced what many meditators experience when their minds become concentrated: deep contentment, bless, gratitude, love, and awe at the beauty and miraculousness of ordinary life. Jhanas are like those concentrated mindstates squared, amplified, distilled -- and I wanted to see what they were like.

Along the way, I discovered two additional purposes to the practice. One is the deep "purification of mind" that is required to enter jhana: you really have to see and let go of all of your stuff, which in my case included a lot of grief, confusion, loneliness, ego, expectation, and just plain chatter. Every moment is an opportunity to let go of all this stuff, and I had a number of extremely powerful openings that perhaps I'll write about some other day.

In addition, the jhanas were themselves a powerful lesson in letting go. They are like everything I had dreamed about from the moment I became interested in spirituality as a young adult. Imagine your greatest dreams fulfilled, in oceans of light, bliss, love, and mystical union. Now imagine that you have to let them go. This is the lesson: that even the greatest of states arise and pass. You can't hold onto anything conditioned, even the dearest and most precious experiences imaginable. This insight alone was surely worth the price of admission.

The type of practice-what I did

My second prefatory note concerns the type of practice I did. There are different schools of thought among Buddhist teachers as to what constitutes a jhana and how to cultivate it. Some hold that discursive thought and perception of the outside world must completely stop for a jhana to be truly taking place. In this model, a jhana is a totally absorbed state of mind; the meditator is only aware of the object of meditation (more on that in a moment), and nothing else. Even the passage of time is not noticed in such an absorbed state. Other teachers, however, will say that a jhana has commenced as soon as its factors are in place and an obviously altered state of mind has arisen.

My own practice was a hybrid of these two approaches. I studied with perhaps the Buddhist world's leading expert on jhana practice, who holds the more strict view. Yet after a full month of rigorous concentration, I was unable to achieve total absorption as his practice demanded. I would enter clearly altered states, but would still be aware of strong bodily sensations and the sense of time. Therefore, after one month, I switched to the more moderate approach, which I had learned earlier. I still cultivated the jhana in the "strict" method: I concentrated on the sensation of breath at the nostrils until the mind formed a mental image of the breath -- a white cloudy light called a nimitta. The nimitta would then become my exclusive focus of concentration. But I proceeded through the first four jhanas even though the absorption was not total. My experiences, as profound and powerful as they are, should thus be understood as only partial in nature. I am a beginner -- some might say a failure -- not a teacher and not an expert in these practices.

(For detailed description of jhanic states and practice, please read Shaila Catherine's Focused and Fearless, the best contemporary book on the jhanas. The best online resource is my teacher Leigh Brasington's website, where you can learn more about the stricter approach.)

Jhanas are better

That said, my third and final prefatory note is that I actually do have a fair amount of experience with mystical states, and these blow all those experiences out of the water. With the possible exception of ayahuasca, I have never encountered anything like this -- and I have spent many years meditating, davening, doing energy work, and engaging in a wonderfully wide range of ecstatic and contemplative practices. Without being too arrogant about it (which would be an ironic reversal of the point of spiritual practice!), I think I know whereof I speak.

Seder PlateWhen I described some of my experiences to a friend, she remarked that they sounded similar to what Elizabeth Gilbert describes in her book Eat, Pray, Love. I had precisely the experiences Gilbert describes on my first meditation retreats, six years ago. They are world-shattering, mind-altering, and profound. They provide a direct experience of what generations of mystics have described in glowing mystical terms. I do not wish to minimize them, and have described them in these pages in the past ("You Are God in Drag," "What the World Is"). But the jhanas were far, far more powerful and more profound -- perhaps an order of magnitude more. They're like the qualities of those earlier experiences, well, concentrated, refined, and distilled. If what Gilbert, and I in those earlier essays, described is like a lovely Hershey's Kiss, the jhanas are like a rich, hot molten chocolate cake. Get it?


2.            Mikvas of light


With those provisos out of the way, I will now describe my experiences of each of the four basic jhanas. (There are actually eight jhanas, but the other four are less essential to insight practice. Moreover, while I had some limited experiences with them, they require their own essay.) While the descriptions that follow may seem hyperbolic and overblown, I assure you that I am deliberately understating and underdescribing the experiences. Every writer who describes the jhanas does this. I don't want to condition your experience by telling you too much, and I don't want to heighten your expectations should you undertake jhana practice yourself (which I hope you will).

First Jhana

The first jhana is like the "big wow," an awesome peak experience that arises after the mind has finally settled on the object of concentration with focused, sustained, one-pointed attention. Bodily or emotional rapture called piti may arise, suffusing the body with bliss or filling the mind with awe--sometimes the feeling is more "gross" and embodied, other times more subtle and purely mental. In my experience, the nimitta would become radiant, awesome, and beautiful, and grow to fill my entire field of vision, and surround my body; the experience was like a glowing, energetic light surrounding and cocooning my whole being. It's quite captivating. There is also a sense of seclusion--of finally being safe from the chattering mind. From my Jewish spiritual perspective, this was like holiness as the big amazing awesomeness, full of mysterium tremendum and radical amazement. It's Niagara Falls, the Grand Canyon. Like many mystics, I'll use erotic analogies as well; the first jhana is like having sex, before orgasm: panting, arousing, ah--ahh---ahh--- that sort of thing.

Eventually, though, the first jhana begins to feel like too much effort. You have to work to keep it up. This is its advantage--if you didn't work, you wouldn't get in--but eventually, after anywhere from fifteen minutes to an hour or more (my longest was one hour), the mind gets tired of ecstasy, excitement, and bliss and moves naturally onto the second jhana. The transition between jhanas is always from gross to subtle: the more gross factors drop off, revealing the more subtle ones underneath. In the case of first-to-second, the factors of applied and sustained thought drop, and the other factors--rapture, joy, and one-pointedness of mind--reveal themselves more. Usually this "drop" is conscious; after a few weeks of practice, I would feel a kind of mental itchiness when it was time to move on, and would consciously resolve to let the factors drop and the others predominate. A few times, though, the drop happened automatically; the mind would just bail out. Eventually, the four jhanas are kind of like four rooms in a house that you've come to know; you don't even have to make the resolve clearly, because you know the territory, and can recognize it and adjust quite naturally.

Second Jhana

And There Was LightIn the second jhana, the feeling tone shifts to joy--"drenched in delight" in Shaila Catherine's words. Effort drops away, and the mind rests one-pointed on its focus. I experienced the second jhana as being like swimming in a mikva of light--in my journal one time, I wrote that when the nimitta expands, it is a "waterfall of shimmering light that fills your body with joy." Again, sometimes this was a semi-bodily sensation, other times purely mental. There was often a bright light in my eyes as well--more on that below--and sometimes a deep sense of healing. This is it, you're here, you can trust and let go. The sexual analogy here is to the time of orgasm itself--not the first moment, but the longer period of time if, like me, you like really long and drawn-out orgasmic states. It's like that gorgeous sexual feeling of letting go: not ah-ah-ah, but ahhhhhh. Sometimes it really felt as if the light were kissing me, penetrating me, filling me. This is God as lover; the fascinans, the erotic partner envisioned and embodied by mystics. It's really something.

Believe it or not, the mind eventually finds all this ecstasy, even without effort, a little gross. Piti becomes too showy; it's almost exhausting. Now, when I was first learning the jhanas, I would spend several days with each one before moving on. Part of this was to really nail down the jhana; the Buddha said that someone who moves on too fast is like a foolish cow wandering from pasture to pasture. But another part was that it took me a while to get disenchanted with these states. For several days, I couldn't imagine anything more wonderful than the second jhana. But eventually, disenchantment sets in--once again, an insight that is, itself, worth the price of admission. Eventually, the mind gets disenchanted with anything. So the grosser factor of rapture drops away, leaving behind only joy and one-pointedness.

Third Jhana

If the second jhana is like an orgasm with God, the third jhana is like resting comfortably on the breast of the Goddess; its dominant sensation is contentment. Here, the love is less erotic and more familial; it's like being cradled by your mother--that kind of "ahh." The light I experienced was golden, radiant, and warm. Many times, I cried and felt healed. Other times, I was still and concentrated. And sometimes, I felt like a little boy sitting by the window, with sunshine streaming in. In the third jhana, piti is relinquished, and sukha, joy, becomes predominant. Sukha is quieter and more subtle than piti, it's less embodied, and more like an emotional, intellectual joy with a honey-like embodied component. Meditators know sukha from whenever the mind in concentrated and everything just feels lovely. The mind is content. What could ever be wrong with the world? Of course, sukha is so lovely that we naturally cling to it, which means we suffer when it's gone -- that's what's wrong. But for me, I spent about three years cultivating sukha, thinking it was enlightenment, and being devastated when, a few days after retreat, it seemed to disappear.

Fourth Jhana

Finally, there is the fourth jhana--the real point of it all, it sometimes seems. In the fourth jhana, even joy passes away. The experience is totally neutral: just "Ah," as in "Ah, I see." And yet, it somehow--just is. I can't quite describe it; there's a powerful sense of equanimity, a closeness to the object, and not much else. Somehow, this state is the most beautiful at all, even though it is totally colorless, bliss-less. The erotic flavor is not even post-orgasmic; it's post-post. The mind is clear, the restlessness is gone. It doesn't feel good anymore, but in some deep profound way, it feels extremely good and peaceful that it's not even necessary to feel good. This is not the Shechinah, not awe, not love; it's just YHVH--Is. It's a love beyond love; satisfaction without joy or even contentment.

For me, the fourth jhana is really the point, because it leads to one of the deep insights of the jhanas: that God is not in the fire, or the earthquake, or the flood. There's a tendency that all of us have--but particularly spiritual Jews have--to deify and thus idol-ize certain states. Oh, that gorgeous warmth of lighting candles. Oh, we were so high during that drum circle / Kabbalat Shabbat / whatever, that was reall,y mamash, it. But that's not it. It is what's always here; Ein Sof, everything. If it wasn't always here, it isn't it. Even the fourth jhana isn't it--it's a state, with equanimity and focus that are conditioned, and thus pass away after a time. You can't cling to it either.

Real devekut has only one attachment: Is. Totally colorless, totally omnipresent, and in fact, if you look closely, the only thing that doesn't come and go. Ramana Maharshi said, "Let come what comes, let go what goes. See what remains." That is the essence of enlightenment right there, I'm telling you. The way leads nowhere. There is no state that is it. This is it; just this. Not feeling special about this, not feeling relaxed or wise or anything in particular--although sometimes those feelings may arise in the wake of letting go. Just is.

Now, does that mean that mystical states -- including the jhanas themselves -- are without value? No; not at all. By fulfilling this spiritual seeker's wildest dreams of joy and rapture, the jhanas point to the limitations of states, chiefly their transient nature. And next month, I'll describe in some detail the benefits as well as the limitations of spiritual states of all kinds, mundane to marvelous. First, though, I want to focus on a different question: God.

Essay will continue.

All images by Harriete Estel Berman.

Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human existence.

From these contraries spring what the religious call Good & Evil. Good is the passive that obeys Reason. Evil is the active springing from Energy.
Good is Heaven. Evil is Hell.

William Blake, the Marriage of Heaven & Hell



When I was younger, the ideal Jew for me was a kid who would wear a yarmulke but who also still smoked, or drank, or enjoyed secular pleasures. To this day, I'm not exactly sure what this ideal Jew signified, but I think it has to do with having the best of both worlds, with not having to make a choice. Yes, the symbol said, you can be both Jewish and in the world; you can be Jewish and have a good time; you can be Jewish and cool; even Jewish and bad.

As the kippa indicates, "Jewish" for me meant religiously Jewish. Obviously I know, and knew, that there are plenty of Jewish identities which are entirely compatible with, or even encourage, various forms of sensual celebration, hedonism, and/or dissoluteness. But when I was younger, the part that mattered was the religious part, which to most people seemed antithetical to all of them. Was it possible, I wondered, to have my challah and eat it too? To taste the sweetness of a devotional religious life but not give up too much of the sensual world?

It's entirely possible that this early interest in gam v'gam--both-and--was synechdoche for sexuality. That is, "Jewish and cool" really was about "Jewish and gay." But the gam v'gam is so pervasive in my life, I think it's more than that. Sure, two decades on, the bad boy kippa wearer no longer holds the same appeal, but as a queer, spiritual, progressive, meditating, neo-Hasidic Jew, I am close to the ideal I once sought. I now am the heretic who preaches, the lawyer-poet, the Jew who thinks that God loves him when he's at Burning Man.

This is not my personal idiosyncrasy. Contemporary spirituality is, in large measure, entirely about the great gam v'gam: the marriage of Heaven and Hell, as first articulated by William Blake. It's a refusal to surrender either the spiritual or the sensual, and more than that, to insist that religion and paganism, God and Satan, are at their core, one and the same.

The rhetoric is rarely so extreme, but it is there nonetheless. For example, in the Jewish world, we "Neo-Hasidic" Jews want it both ways: the authenticity and fiery love of the Hasidim, the "neo-" of feminism, progressive politics, and sex-positive values. One could argue, from a more right-wing perspective, that "Modern Orthodoxy" is a similar straddle. Or the Conservative notion of "Tradition and Change"--"Change" here being specified to accommodation of love, pleasure, and human potential. Or "Jewish Renewal"--Jewish, but also renewed, with altered mindstates, left-wing politics, sexual liberty, and the rest.

God and Satan

William Blake's great work of philosophical spirituality, "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell" is ostensibly a dialogue between the two poles but really an advertisement for the latter. "Heaven" is the puritanical religious ideology that condemns desire and points skyward toward transcendent, and usually body-denying, values. It is what we now know as the mainstream of Western religious rationalism: the religion of sobriety, restraint, society, and objective values. Over two hundred years ago, Blake was already blaming it for repression, oppression, and war. But as we'll see, it has its role to play as well.

"Hell," for Blake, is that principle which holds that "Energy is Eternal Delight." "Those who restrain desire," says the Voice of the Devil in Blake's poem, "do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained." The Satanic libertine is not weak; she is strong, and more in touch with her (and his) erotic being. Hell sees holiness everywhere, especially in eros. It is pagan, sensual, and vibrant. It is sex, freedom, self-actualization. If Heaven is the Hasidism of neo-Hasidism, Hell is the neo-. Blake's "Proverbs of Hell" include:

The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom...

The pride of the peacock is the glory of God.

The lust of the goat is the bounty of God.

The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God.

The nakedness of woman is the work of God.

To spiritual folks today, as well as readers of Philip Pullman's heretical His Dark Materials trilogy, all this should sound familiar. Likewise to all of us who see God in the body, especially the naked one. As I've written in these pages before, there is, in my experience, a glorious holiness in the fire-dancers of Black Rock City, the misbehavior of rowdy schoolkids, the grandeur of nature. All this is God/dess as Manifest, as Shechinah, as presence, as Earth, as sex, blood, guts, and energy. It is the suppressed, shadowed half of Divinity, often aligned with the feminine, suppressed by centuries of patriarchy.

For Blake, as a poet, the tension between Heaven and Hell is not one which ought to be resolved. Hell without Heaven is total, sensual, Satanic anarchy. A less well-known Proverb of Hell, for example, is "Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires." Hell has no ethics, no restraint. It is a de Sadian libertinism, and is corrosive of all order.

But of course, Heaven without Hell is all order, all stasis, all restraint. It is dead, devoid of true holiness, and governed by fear and Reason to the exclusion of love and human energy. This, too, should sound familiar to those of us who either grew up in such a world, or see its leaders on television. In our time as in Blake's, there are those who would extinguish all fire in the name of the occasional conflagration.

Messianic Wedding

What Blake sought, and what I for years have sought, is not a "golden mean" or happy medium or vacuous "balance" between the two poles. It's trite to say that, yes, well, I'll have some of each, because where one draws the balancing line is entirely determinative of the substantive result. Blake sought a marriage, a union of the two. A recognition of their stark opposition, but a messianic wedding of opposites.

 

Likewise and l'havdil, I've tried for years to square the Jewish circle with creative readings of Scripture which showed that Judaism, too, embraces both Heaven and Hell, spirit and sense, God and Body. But it's clear to me that, for many people, and probably most, Judaism is about Heaven. It restrains our desires so that civilization can flourish. It is monotheistic: there is only One God, and while He does take on many different images, most (like Goddess, Pan, Christ, Ganesh) are beyond the pale. It is indeed about traditional values; family and marriage are built upon the curtailment and constraint of human sexuality.

From the perspective of Heaven religion, liberated sensuality, and arguably even humanism, are the workings of Hell. And it is indeed a slippery slope down. Just four years ago, in these pages, I wrote what I thought was an innocent essay called "Guilt and Groundedness," in which I noticed, vipassana-style, that the feeling of "deep down" is just a feeling; it has no particular claim upon truth. There, my context was sexuality, and noticing how self-hatred that has been reinforced for twenty years will seem more "deep down" than self-affirmation that has been taught for only five or six--not because its truer, or what you "really feel," but simply because of time.

And so the slippage began, as I recently described in these pages: first moving away from Orthodoxy, then the notion of normative Judaism, then the pretensions of monotheism. Yet I have not slipped into darkness. On the contrary, throughout the entire rake's progress, I have checked in with Light. And throughout, like Blake's hero, I have found Light accessible even where Heaven's angels say there is only darkness. From the perspective of Heaven, there is light and there is darkness. As one slides into Hell, there is only Light.

But there is fear too. My ego won't let go of the notion that God wants some things, but not others. That God won't love me if I fail to do this or that mitzvah. That there is a force in the world other than Love. I see the heresy of this Manichean view, but it's the heresy of the Orthodox. Just try to follow the inversions: the voice of Hell, which is half the voice of God, sees everything as holy and the road to Hell as the spiritual path to enlightenment. Meanwhile, the choruses of Heaven who sing of dichotomies, the pious ones, are the true heretics, for they place divisions in God and deny the omnipresence of love.

Whew.

Blakean Kabbalists?

Uprooting the basic Manicheanism of normative Judaism is a central part of a certain Kabbalistic agenda. Theosophical Kabbalah insists on a radical reunderstanding of evil, in which evil is merely that which is erroneously separated. Ultimately, it is not vanquished so much as reincorporated, reabsorbed. There is only Infinite Light (ohr ein sof) after all.

But then, for the Kabbalists, this only happens at redemption--which is why the Sabbateans insisted the redemption had already come. For neo-Hasids and neo-Kabbalists, like the Sabbateans, it is an ontological fact at all times: God is yotzer or u'voreh hoshech, the source of light and dark. Division is apparent, unity is real. To see that everything is light: this is the realization of the Ein Sof that underlies nondual Judaism, neo-Hasidism, and, in very different language, Mahayana Buddhism as well ("To see the light in everyone and everything," Surya Das told me when I asked him, a la Hillel, to summarize his entire Buddhist Torah in one sentence.)

Experientially, I feel the truth of the nondual, of Infinite Light. There are still moments of alienation, and for now, I step back from them, retreating to Jewish practice with its boundaries and norms. But in general, as the cords loosen, there is more breath, not less. So both my experience and heretical neo-Kabbalah point to the same place, and that Makom is one of love, acceptance, compassion, truth, ease, awareness, being, consciousness, bliss.

But my love quakes with an admixture of fear. What if it is true that what hides behind the greatest of taboos are indeed the greatest of truths? What if it is true that what is condemned is simply the light in a vessel too sacred for orthodoxy? When I can truly surrender, the notion makes all the sense in the world. When I cannot, I'm terrified. In either state, I feel that those of us, and we are many, who see spirituality as advancing eros rather than controlling it are a pole apart from our co-religionists who still worship in pews and believe the old tales. I'm not sure how many of them there are, outside fundamentalist communities. But they are not reactionary; they are decent people, and probably more numerous than the rest of us. So, fear asks: What if they are right?

Again, as with Blake, this must perforce be a marriage, not a regression. I am not suggesting that the worshipers of Baal lived in some arcadian unity with the cosmos, and weren't possibly cruel, vengeful, and unethical. The values of Heaven are to be integrated, not rejected or reversed. Anyway, spirituality is not really the same as Satanism; it's only called that by the armies of Heaven, who burn witches and condemn shamans. Spirituality doesn't venerate the devil; it observes that he doesn't exist.

If this is a marriage, it is one haunted by uncertainty and covetousness. As much as I have seen renewal and vitality in the unchaining of eros, I have also seen firsthand how it can overtake even sincerely meant intentions of ethical conduct. As much as I feel myself to be a kind of refugee from Heaven's suburban lawns, there are moments when I wonder about the lives of my peers who live there with their children. Maybe it is only a marriage of convenience.

But--there is a quality of love that I feel when nothing is surrendered, one I no longer seek to teach to others but nonetheless set my life beside. There is a kind of union between sense and soul, earthy and heavenly, It is fierce and gentle, sexual and spiritual, and it lights heart and body afire.

All  images by artist Ruth Wetzel

Eisen's ascension inspired the Forward to host a forum on the perenially popular topic of the Conservative Movement's ongoing malaise, the theme of outgoing chancellor Schorsch's caustic goodbye speech.  The Forward had the foresight to include some fresher voices along with the usual suspects.

Continue reading...

A kerfuffle broke out Friday in the atheism comment thread over whether Albert Einstein was an atheist. NoEinstein: Deist, pantheist, or atheist? debate about God is complete without somebody trying to enlist the physicist on their side of the argument.

“Albert Einstein spoke lovingly and deeply of how to him Science and Mathematics and God were all clearly seen in one another,” said one anonymous commenter.

“Einstein was an atheist. People misunderstand him when he makes reference to God,” said another.

He was a pantheist, argued a third, citing Einstein’s quote that “I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and aGod: Angry tribal king of the world, or the beauty in nature?ctions of human beings."

“This canard about Albert Einstein's religious piety just won't die,” moaned yours truly, citing the following quote from Einstein’s letters: “It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."

This all takes us back to Jay Michaelson’s post about defining our terms when we talk about God. If belief in God can mean everything from the worship of a kick-assJay Michaelson: Is he right or is he right? tribal deity in the sky who strikes masturbators dead to an appreciation for the outdoors, then isn’t “God” a “slutty, sloppy, imprecise word,” as I referred to it in the first sentence of the Jewcy Radicals article? “Einstein believed in God” and the opposite are meaningless phrases. As is "I believe in God."

So if the word "God" no longer communicates anything specific, why not just retire it altogether? Will anybody's spirituality suffer if we let go of that one English word in favor of terms and descriptions that actually refer to something specific?

Kentucky Kathmandu,

Joey

"Talking past each other" happens when two parties in a debate use the same term to mean different things. In the case of Prager vs. Harris, that term is "God."