In the forms of meditation practiced by many Westerners, one central practice is simply "being with" everything that arises in the body, mind, heart, etc., neither holding onto anything nor pushing anything away. This is quite different from most Jewish and psychiatric practices, which often seek to change these states--from sadness into joy, for example, or restlessness into peace. And it is entirely different from our basic instinct, which, thanks to eons of evolution, is exactly to hold onto the good stuff and push away the rest. If we didn't do that, we'd never survive. Indeed, self-preservation is surely the purpose of registering stimuli as positive or negative in the first place.

Happiness, too, is unnatural. Once again, if we were all perfectly happy with what we already have, we wouldn't strive for more. We wouldn't reproduce, wouldn't compete for scarce resources--and we'd be selected right out of the species. So it's human nature to be somewhat unhappy, and to work to address that unhappiness by taking action, building things, having children, nurturing them, and building cooperative communities of love. All these things feel so right because we've been bred for them.

So what the Dalai Lama has called "the art of happiness" is unnatural in its means and its ends. Its means are counter to basic human instinct, and its promised end of happiness is the opposite of our natural (naturally selected) disposition.

But given the choice between Buddhist-style being-with and Jewish-style fighting negative emotions, I'll take the Buddha, thanks. Nothing depresses me more than trying to be happy.

In my own practice, I've often experienced "being with" negative emotions in a visual way, seeing myself as someone nearly drowning in mud or excrement, but managing to be with it, to stay alive and breathe. For years, this extremely unhelpful image both encouraged and betrayed me. Encouraged, because it emboldened me to stay with it, like a dharma fighter on the cushion. Betrayed, because the whole image contains an inevitable aura of resistance--of fighting, enduring, persisting. Actually, it was more Jewish than Buddhist. After all, how many Jewish mothers does it take to change a light bulb? "None, dahling, I'm fine here in the dark." We stay, we complain, we endure.

But what I've learned over the last few months, in the wake of breakup, loneliness, heartbreak, and occasional rebirth, is the benefit of drowning. There's been so much pain for me in this period that I couldn't fight it if I tried (and I have tried). If I were really standing in a deep pile of mud, it would've covered me long ago. And so I've let it. And I found I can breathe underwater.

Instead of fighting to stay afloat in the indignity, anger, sadness, unpleasant physical sensations, I've just myself sink down, and down, and down... and sometimes, through. The lesson is: I thought I needed air, but I don't. I can breathe in the mud, and the act of surrendering to it is the relaxation and release.

What about the other times? The other times I do one of two things. Either I feed the negative emotion with stories, self-pity, and endless thoughts about what's wrong--or I fight the negative emotion with more stories, justifications, or accounts of why this happened or how I should act next. Either way, the effort is the problem. Sadness is like quicksand: moving in any direction makes it worse. But it's unlike quicksand in that the point is to sink in, be swallowed--and be fine.

Surrender and Supplication

This surrender, this willingness to be thoroughly taken and destroyed by sadness, is consonant with two quite different faces of God that I experience in my religious life.

The first of these faces is the nondual, which is essentially mental where the personal is emotional. This is the nondual truth that God is the yotzer or u'vorei choshech, the Former of light and Creator of darkness. This God offers a different kind of comfort; not the love of the Friend, but the simple truth of what is. This God is not necessarily nice; it's the God of cancer wards as well as summer pastures, of war as well as love. This is the God that asks us if we can handle the truth: that both evil and good are godly.

But then there is also the personal God, the emotional one, the one to whom I cry. The personal is the devotional, the place of faith and trust: hinei el yeshuati, eftach v'lo efchad. Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust and not fear. This personal, devotional, anthropomorphic God is largely projection; it's a way of seeing more than a thing that is seen. But as projection, God is a precious Friend, a beloved, a companion.

My religious life oscillates between these poles. At times, I love to think of God in what are essentially human terms. This is the God to whom I pray--and of whom I say "whom." This is the God that is You. At other times, I love the clarity of the more atheistic, nondual God: What Is, YHVH. And of course, I've long understood that these "poles" are better expressed as two sides of a single coin, or two perspectives on the aperspectival.

But I've only recently understood how these two perspectives so deeply enrich one another. When I'm drowning in the shit of life, I say hinei el yeshuati precisely because God is the vorei choshech. I can trust that I can breathe in this mud because the mud is God. Not good--it's definitely not good in any ordinary sense of the word. But God. I can cry out because I can let myself be drowned.

For the Seal of God is Truth

If all these words were just words, just theological proposition, they wouldn't be worth much. What's more important-at least to me-- is that I can experience the nondual God. After the surrender, during the drowning, the Presence is still there. That's what matters--not the premise but the proof.

I know, because I've heard from others, that the path of embracing light and darkness which I've sketched over these last few months is not for everyone, and is not necessarily the dominant strain in the Jewish religious tradition. I also know that it's difficult to tread, and difficult to share with others. No one really likes negative energy, even if, for me, it connects me to the parts of myself I like the most: the open, feeling, truthful, loving, and teaching parts. It's good at retreats, not so good at parties.

So given all of that, it's important to me to see that this idiosyncratic, difficult, and not-for-everybody religious path actually works. I assume that the more conventional one--fighting sadness with joy, accentuating the positive--works also, since I see so many people following it and seeming to have success. But I'm a truth addict. Anything that seems to be coloring or distorting what is feels uncomfortable, even insincere. Just to see that it is possible to breathe while drowning gives me the trust to do it more.

Just the release in my own heart is enough to make the effort/non-effort worthwhile. But there are three consequences I want to notice briefly before concluding.

First, as the "law of attraction" is increasingly popular these days, just a word about that. The main point is that "breathing while drowning" is not wallowing. Emitting negative energy, dwelling on it, turning it over, is even more counterproductive than trying to struggle over to the positive side. The point is total surrender, total release. Not judging anything as good or bad. Not feeding the fire (to switch elemental metaphors) or trying to squelch it. Just letting it happen, letting it burn--and letting it burn me up, only to discover that I am not consumed. In that fiery place, love is possible, as is positive intention. I continue to believe that the specific directionality of conscious manifestation is ineffective. But in my experience, there is power to a general setting of intention, and a general openness to abundance. These are enhanced, not compromised, by surrender.

Second, as I mentioned a moment ago, I'm at my most real when I'm most connected to my brokenness--and I'm at my most effective as well. Having just taught at two Nehirim retreats, I've seen firsthand that I am more effective and compassionate as a teacher when I'm not pretending to be okay. I don't know about you, but I can't stand these teachers who hold themselves out as never-suffering and so successful. I have met a few enlightened people, and it is indeed possible to end suffering. But only a small percentage of teachers who hold themselves out in this way actually are, and many are offering a kind of false consciousness. I don't trust them. In any case, even if all the authentic teachers were teaching the cheerleading approach, I'd stick with mine because it's true in my experience.

And speaking of my experience, I finally want to note that this doesn't work all the time--but it is available all the time. On a particularly lonely night recently, I just couldn't break free of the mental pattern of self-pity, blame, and regret. Even now, there are so many opportunities for it; just one evocation of one issue from my just-ended relationship, and I can get hooked into content and story and argumentation. It's almost irresistible. But unlike trying to swim, which gets more difficult the deeper you sink, drowning is always available. If I can't "make it work," I can surrender to having failed at making it work--and then it works. There is always a new opportunity to surrender more, even to the most inveterate of Buddhist sinners like me.

Ultimately, the method remains a simple one: releasing whatever is going on (but really), letting go, letting drown, letting expand, letting relax. Breathing while drowning, the attention naturally comes to the present, with nothing pulling it elsewhere. And then, with a breath, without hope, expectation, or object, a simple wish of love.

 

Art Credit: Sushanta Meh

 

...and on the books' pages - not a single letter.

--Borges, "In Praise of Darkness"

 

for Margarita Meklina

 

א

They said of old Isaac that he didn't go blind, but one day simply stopped opening his eyes. Many believed that Isaac's lids were sealed by angels - with beeswax and honey. To amuse us, Isaac would enumerate the people in the room and describe them - one after another - but would sometimes err, adding those who weren‘t even there. His trade was healing with the laying on of hands, and giving counsel.

ב

In the synagogue, during communal prayer, his voice would break from our voices, and we - one after another - would fall silent, looking on in astonishment as his prayer ascended. When the service would end, the rabbi would bring forth a cup, so that Isaac could drink his fill, and then accompany him home, propping him up by the elbow.

ג

In Isaac's home there were many books, and when we would ask how it is he read them, Isaac would answer that he smells every page, and sees what is written just as clearly as if he were reading it with his eyes. When one of us doubted him, Isaac offered to pick a book, open it to any page, and place it into his hands. He smelled the page and read aloud:

ד

... and so it is that in the holy days the Creator appears to gaze at all the dishes shattered by Him, and he comes to us, and sees that there's nothing to be joyful about, and weeps for us, and returns to the Heavens, so as to destroy the world.

ה

Hearing this, we began to weep, for we considered the book's words a dire omen, but Isaac said: "Do not weep, for He appears to us not only in the holy days, but everyday; and every time we are given a chance to convince Him that the world is good, and then He returns to the Heavens, joyous of what he has created."

ו

But we wept more than before: "Isaac, your days are numbered. You will die soon, and who shall then convince Him that the world is good? Who will take up our salvation day after day, caring for us, loving us, and taking pity, as you do?"

ז

Isaac replied to this: "You shall have other advocates and defenders before Him. But if you do not grow wiser and raise up your spirits, you will grieve and suffer one way or another." We beseeched him: "Speak to us of this," and he opened the book to another page, smelled it, and read aloud:

ח

...my silence created a High Temple, Bina, and a Low Temple, Malkhut. People say: "The word is gold, but twice as dear is the silence." "The word is gold" means that I uttered it and regretted it. Twice as dear is the silence, my silence, because two worlds were created by this silence, Bina and Malkhut. Because, had I not remained silent, I could not have grasped the unity of both worlds."

ט

Then we asked him: "So how is it that your intercession takes place in silence?" Isaac replied: "A prayer is good, but a dance is better than a prayer. I prance with you and so I converse in the Temple." We recalled that we were often amused at him, seeing the blind man prancing, and were shamed by this, and left him.

י

The next day Isaac died and we again gathered in his home to determine who would now answer before the Lord. Since then we gather daily after evening prayers. The world still stands and the stars do not go out - does this mean that someone has taken the task onto himself, but did not wish to announce it to us? We speak, we argue, we ask, we read and write things down. Alas, this is all we can do.

 

Dmitry Deitch was born in Donetsk in 1969, and has lived in Israel since 1995. His short prose has appeared in the anthology Very Short Texts, various collections of new prose edited by Max Fray, including Prozak, 78, The Best Short Stories of 2005, The Best Short Stories of 2006, The Best Short Stories of 2007, and in the Russian-language journals Semicolon and Solar Plexus (Israel), and Air (Moscow). His books include Incomprehensible August (Donetsk, 1995), Griffith's Advantage (Moscow, 2007), and Tales for Martha (Moscow, 2008). In 2005, he won the international literary contest Dvarim.

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In 1954, Aldous Huxley published "The Doors of Perception," a famous essay observing that the effects of mescaline were remarkably similar to the unitive mysticism of the world's great religions, particularly Vedanta, the philosophical-mystical form of Hinduism which Huxley practiced. It caused an immediate sensation. Because He Got High: Aldous Huxley's classic essay, "The Doors of Perception"Many in the public were outraged by its pro-pharmacological spirit, and many in the academy accused Huxley (like William James before him) of flattening different mystical traditions, and of disregarding distinctions between "sacred and profane" mystical practice.

But many more were inspired. Huxley's essay, and other works like it, set the agenda for 1960s spirituality, and what later came to be called the New Age movement. He provided a philosophical explanation of what was important about mescaline—that our perceptive faculties filter out more than they let in, and that mescaline, like meditation, opens those doors wider—and a personal account of what a "trip" was like. He showed how entheogens (as they later came to be called) could be a part of a sincere spiritual practice. And he perhaps unwittingly imported a certain Vedanta agenda of what the "ultimate" mystical experience was like: union. As has been argued by many scholars over the last few decades, this claim of ultimacy—that unio mystica is the peak form of mystical experience, with others defined by how close they approach it—is actually a rather partisan one. Why is "union with the All" superior to, or more true than, deity mysticism, visions of Krishna/Christ/spirits, and the text-based mysticism of the Kabbalah? Sure, for Vedanta it is—but that's just Vedanta's view.

Two generations of spiritual seekers have been influenced, for better and for worse, by this hierarchy. From the naive hippie to the sophisticated yogi, Jewish Renewalniks to Ken Wilberites, hundreds of thousands of spiritual practitioners have implicitly or explicitly assumed the prioritization of the unitive over all else: the point is that All is One.

Most of these constituencies are also, like Huxley, influenced by the psychedelic experience, primarily that of mushrooms and LSD. While most contemporary spiritual teachers have long since given these substances up, in favor of meditation and other mystical practices which afford the same experiences in a more reliable container (and one greatly enriched by self-examination and introspection), if you ask them, as I have, they'll admit that the psychedelic experience formed an important part of their spiritual initiation.Do You See God?: Psychedelic experience can initiate a lifelong spiritual journey Whether it's what got them on the road in the first place, or confirmed their earlier intuitions, psychedelics have set the agenda for a huge percentage of contemporary spiritual teachers, across religious and spiritual denominations, and many of their followers as well.

These two trends — that "all is one" is the point, and that it accords with the psychedelic experience—have occasionally led to a distortion of religious and spiritual traditions. In the Kabbalah, for example, unitive mysticism is only a small part of a wide panoply of mystical experiences. Yes, there are texts which speak of annihilation of the self (bittul hayesh) and a unification with God (achdut). But these are, truthfully, in the minority. Many more are visionary texts, describing theophanies of all shapes and sizes; or records of prophecy or angelic communication; or less explicitly unitive accounts of proximity to the Divine. Yet there's a sense, among teachers of contemporary Kabbalah —and I'm not referring here to the Kabbalah Centre (where Madonna goes), which does not teach Kabbalah proper, but rather a unique and sometimes weird synthesis of Kabbalah, the Human Potential movement, and New Religious Movements like Scientology—that unitive mysticism is the summum bonum, the ultimate good.

Some Kabbalistic texts agree, but many others do not. For example, Rabbi Arthur Green, today one of progressive Judaism's leading teachers, in 1968 wrote an article (under a pseudonym) called "Psychedelics and Kabbalah," explicitly analogizing the psychedelic experiences to aspects of Kabbalistic teaching—but selecting those aspects of Kabbalah and Hasidism which fit the experience. Naturally, Green was also influenced by the many forms of non-Jewish mysticism popular at the time, most of whom asserted that "All is One," but in that essay, he makes clear that the psychedelic experience affected how he understood Kabbalah. Green, and a fellow practitioner-academic Daniel Matt, have been enormously influential: their anthologies of Hasidic and Kabbalistic texts are read far more widely than the texts themselves, and are widely assumed to represent the mainstream of their respective traditions.

I am not taking a position on whether this "distortion" is for good or ill; in my own practice, the nondual/unitive perspective plays a central role, and I am grateful for it, whatever its sources. But I have a hunch that it is about to change.

The reason it is changing is that more and more Jewish spiritual seekers are pursuing non-unitive paths. This includes earth-based ritual, shamanic ritual, and other disciplines which, while they may hold the view that "all is one," provide experiences of differentiation (energies, elements, visions, etc). But perhaps more importantly, it includes drinking ayahuasca, smoking DMT, and visionary shamanic-entheogenic practices which offer different experiences from the unitive one. The ayahuasca trip, unlike the mescaline one, is not especially unitive: indeed, one of its hallmarks is the sense of communication with other life forms or consciousnesses. And while a sense of "all is One" is sometimes reported in the midst of the ayahuasca experience, it's more common to read reports of visions of phenomena—manifestation, not essence.

Some of these accounts are strikingly similar to texts from the Hechalot and Merkavah schools of Jewish mysticism, which flourished between the second and ninth centuries. In the texts from this period, we read detailed accounts of heavenly palaces, Divine chariots, and angels; of ascents to other realms which seem somehow to be in outer space or an extraterrestrial locale; of a sense of great danger, but also great awe, beauty and love; and of beings which travel on some kind of cosmic vehicle. The descriptions are visionary and auditory, much like the accounts of ayahuasca visions. They are "shamanic" journeys, both in the sense of being journeys of the soul to other realm and in the sense of a transformation of the self. They yield information, prophecy, revelation, theophany. And they are not really about "all is one."

Hechalot and Merkavah mysticism is studied in the academy, but it is little known in the contemporary spiritual world. It's complicated, arcane, and literally other-worldly. But just as the unitive moments of Hasidism appeal to those who have had a unitive experience on mushrooms, so too the visionary aspects of Hechalot and Merkavah mysticism appeal to those who have had a visionary experience on ayahuasca. The similarities are striking.

What's more, Hechalot and Merkavah mysticism, related as it is to gnosticism, provides one of world literature's richest libraries of other-worldly mystical experience. It's eerie how similar some of these millennia-old texts are to the records contemporary journeyers provide of the ayahuasca trip: the sense of being in "outer space," the tenuous links to consensual reality, the sense of danger, and above all the colorful descriptions of chambers, angels, songs, palaces, ascents, descents, fire, music, and so much more. It also provides a sense of history, context, and "belonging" to those who affiliate with Judaism, Christianity, or gnosticism; like unitive experiences, non-unitive visionary/ ecstatic experiences have a lineage within these traditions. Perhaps, too, it might offer guidance for those seeking to integrate such experiences into their lives.

To reiterate, I am taking no position on whether unitive or non-unitive experiences are "better," and see nondual essence and dualistic manifestation as two sides of the same ineffable unity. My point, simply, is that much of contemporary Western spirituality derives from a particular psychedelic experience and a particular form of mysticism it approximates. With the increasing popularity of ayahuasca and similar medicines, the former element has changed — and I think the latter will too.

In the esoteric world, this kind of change and interchange has always been with us. Hechalot mystics learned from the gnostics, who learned from the Jews, who learned from the Babylonians. Medieval Kabbalists learned from the Sufis, who learned from the Hindus, who learned from the Buddhists, who learned from other Hindus. One need not make the facile, and false, claim that all mysticism is the same thing in order to recognize that mystics across space and time have understood themselves to be gesturing toward the same truths, albeit in very different ways. And those differences advance, not obstruct, the progress of realization. After all, when one can ultimately know nothing, it helps to learn from everything.

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NEXT: Drugs mix with spirituality. But can they mix with parenting?

With matters of spirituality, you can't win. Religion has a tendency to start wars (like the one still raging in our comments section.). Faith makes us uncomfortable. As for mysticism, well, no one seems to even know what it means.

Least of all the Times Style section. I know this is nit-picky, but when I sat down to read a piece about a big new store in L.A. yesterday, one phrase jumped out at me:

Yet if fashion executives were to look beyond the granola rhetoric of Laurel Canyon circa 1975, beyond the $140 T-shirts with mystical-sounding phrases like “Texas Tokyo,” they may be forced to admit that Ms. Garduno is in fact very instinctual, that her ideas are prescient.

How the hell is “Texas Tokyo” mystical sounding? Is it supposed to make you think of, like, coyote Shinto spirits? Is the idea that Texas, a hot, dry, American state, and Tokyo, a big, busting, Japanese city, both represent such dramatic things that juxtaposing them immediately brings about some kind of kabbalistic explosion deep within your soul?

But then I started thinking. Garduno charges $140 a t-shirt. If she’s got “Texas Tokyo,” then maybe I could try "Indiana Isfahan." Or "Louisiana Lagos." That’s $280 per shirt right there!

Once I started, I couldn’t stop. On the subway into work, I came up with all of the following (to the tune of a cool $840):

Oklahoma Oslo
Kansas Kinshasa
Washington Warsaw
Kansas Kiev
Minnesota Minsk
Ohio Ouagadogou

And now I think it’s your turn. Seriously, give it a shot -- it's a lot more fun than it looks.