Ommmmm: This guy's been hanging out in the mantra trailer"I Will Survive" + "I Am Nothing" = the truth is somewhere in between. From the addictive website for The Mantra Trailer:

Parked at the intersection of imagination, evangelism and propaganda, The Mantra Trailer is a traveling mediation space, recording studio and site of mysterious broadcast in the form of a 1972 breadbox trailer. The Mantra Trailer invites us to contemplate, chant, voice and explore our prayers, aspirations, desires, frustrations and petitions for the transformation of self and society, or whatever resonates within us, even the nonsensical. By-passers drawn to the Mantra Trailer are invited inside one at a time to contemplate and record their mantras in privacy.

Yes indeed, the mantra trailer is exactly what it sounds like! Click on any number of mantras (from the expected"Let It Go" and "It's All Okay" to the inscrutable "Pet The Wolf Run From The Rat") to create your own multi-layered mantra symphony. I especially like "Keep Your Eye on the Doughnut" plus "You Shall Know The Truth" plus "Concentrate and Expand." "Love" plus "Open Your Heart" is awesome. "It's All Gravy" goes well with pretty much everything. Go nuts.

The Sanskrit word mantra consists of the root man- (to think) (also in manas, or mind) and the suffix -tra (tool). So literally an "instrument of thought" or "mind tool." A mantra is a sacred word, chant or sound that is repeated during mediation to reduce our everyday material worries and elevate our worldly, spiritual aims.

Mantra Trailer mastermind Sherri Lynn Wood says mantras are "a homeopathic remedy for the mass media slogans of the day."

(Dig especially, then, the clever soul who chants "Visa takes Life.")

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?

Yesterday facebook had one of its daily surveys ask “Are you religious?” The majority of the 1000 respondents said no.

You can look over the stats here, and see the breakdown of how many men and women answered, how old the respondents were and so on. (You may have to sign in to facebook to see this info—I’m not sure).
Just Don't Ask: if I'm religious.
I didn’t respond to the question myself (I didn’t even find out about it until a friend emailed me) but it really annoys me. It annoys me first because it’s completely ambiguous. It’s not like it’s easy to pin down what “religious” means, especially when for a lot of people it’s more a state of mind than anything else, and thus fairly difficult to measure. And if it’s about observancy then you have the problem of where exactly you draw the line—in Judaism does it mean attending synagogue/Temple? Keeping Shabbat/Kosher? Marrying a Jew? Who decides?

But beyond that, I don’t like it because it seems like it just feeds into this whole thing of America dividing itself between religious whackjobs and Godless heathens. And the last thing I need is someone else trying to tell me why God can’t possibly exist.

Facebook surveys are hardly comprehensive, scientific or nuanced in any way, and I can’t imagine facebook would have any objections to that statement. Still, I see the survey as indicative of a larger problem: people define themselves by their religious identity in a way that’s no good for anyone.

Being Jewish is a big part of my life, but it’s not now and has never been the way I introduce myself to people. Even in my work here at Jewcy it’s important to me that people see that I do plenty of non-Jewish things, I have non-Jewish friends, and listen to punk music and generally balance the Jewish world with the non-Jewish world in a way that works for me. I just don’t like to see any population divided into bar graphs of religious and not religious.

You know what I just realized? I mostly don’t like it because it reminds me of life in Israel.

This week on FaithHacker our guest editor is Amy Guth, writer extraordinaire. Amy Guth is the author of Three Fallen Women, which she is perpetually schlepping around to pimp out. Between travels, she's the woman with the pink-stripey hair usually starting up the horah at MOT get-togethers. Keeping true to her stick-it-to-the-man Hebrew namesake (Shifreh), she has written about feminism, sexism, tikkun olam, tzedekah, blaxploitation, social reform, media literacy and all sorts of other things for The Believer, Monkeybicycle, Bookslut, Hungry Chicago, Four Magazine, JewishFringe.com, and The Complete Meal, among others. She blogs Bigmouth indeed Strikes Again about everything, Granola Bar D'var about jewy eco-kasher goodness, and a few other spots here and there, has collaborated on a few shows within Second City's Training Center and is an assistant fiction editor at 42 Opus. The select few remember the days when she dabbled in improv, as well, including the night she was the "Kill Whitey" crayon. Stalk her silly at Guth-a-Go-Go.com.

Amy Guth: gets all Jewcy Last week Amy and I met up at a coffee shop in Chicago to talk about what we love, like and wish. Plus, boys, tattoos, and lots of Jewcy goodness. Here's some highlights of our conversation:

 

TF: In your book, Three Fallen Women, there are a lot of non specific spiritual revelations. Why did you decide to keep Judaism out of it explicitly? Do you feel like there's a difference between Jewish spirituality and other kinds of spirituality? What is it?

AG: To me, the spiritual is the spiritual. I don't think there's one true path; I think that whatever you feel in your bones is right for you. I love Kol Nidre, for example, and during services, I can't help but feel like there's nowhere else in the world I'd rather be and nothing else I'd rather be doing. Any sort of spiritual practice that brings that feeling about is right for the person doing it, including, in my opinion, seemingly secular activities that anyone finds joy or meaning through. I had this coach that I trained with for my first marathon who used to say something like "running is my religion" and I knew just what she meant. She didn't mean anything about rote or routine, but that feeling, the same as the feeling I also get on a great run and in the example I used of Kol Nidre. It's right for her down to her bones, so she finds spiritual meaning in it. I can dig that for anyone from any background.

You know, I think I'm always thinking about the ethereal and the spiritual so much that I didn't really ever make a conscious decision, I just wrote about my world view, really. I had a few Hebrew words and some transliterated lines from Mourner's Kaddish in the original manuscript of Three Fallen Women, but I cut them in the end for accessibility. I was writing about pretty universal themes, and didn't want to exclude anyone from it, or alienate a reader for not, say, knowing a particular word, or knowing what it means to say Mourner's Kaddish.
Three Fallen Women: try it--you'll like it!
TF: What do you consider your most spiritual practice? Why?

AG: I think I already started to go here a little in my previous answer, because I don't necessarily weigh one thing as having greater spiritual weight than another out of the things where I find meaning. And, it's always changing. I find meaning in some things for ages then one day, it doesn't fit. To me, that's a very Jewish thing-- to have the freedom and sense of self-reliance to know when it's time to try something new, or do something in a new way or even to abandon it entirely, if need be.

I tend to not categorize things as "Orthodox stuff", "Reform stuff", etc., but just to do what feels right. I just try to listen to my gut and do well. But, if I had to pick one thing, I would have to say that I could boil my entire spiritual life down to trying to be as compassionate as possible. I try to know where my money goes when I buy something, how my products and foods were manufactured/grown, who my choices benefit/harm, and I try to just keep things simple and go with the kindest possible option.

I do this occasional feature on my blog Bigmouth Indeed Strikes Again, called Guthmantics where I interview an author. A few weeks ago I interviewed Margaret Sartor, author of Miss American Pie, who I read with in New Orleans last spring. She said something in the interview that I ended up blogging about a second time: I wrote, "I keep thinking about that beautiful thing Margaret Sartor said on here the other day when I interviewed her: 'I believe that compassion is a kind of power and kindness may be the one virtue that can save us all — if it's not already too late.' And, I believe that so hard that it almost makes my chest hurt. That sentence is my religion, my world view, a summary of everything I really believe in."

TF: What do you find to be the most frustrating thing(s) about the Jewish community today?

AG: I feel like there are a lot of things that people assume without really knowing and make a lot of declarations about what we should and shouldn't be doing as Jews, when I feel like Judaism is such an encompassing thing and, I mean, really, it's really constructed to find things for yourself, I feel. It's built to live and let live in a way, so when things arise, I really hear it because it seems so antithetical to what Judaism is to me. But, even in saying that, I'm sort of doing just that. I suppose in wanting to freedom to make Jewish choices, I have to give people the space to think there isn't room for anything but by-the-book.

TF: Where do you go to shul? What do you love or hate about it?

AG: Oh, my rabbi would be so mad if a stalkery type showed up at services. I like having a designated place to just sit and be and think, and I like the sense of community that being a member of a shul offers. What don't I like? Hmm, not much. I guess it's a little un-fun when it becomes about politics and committees instead of encouraging and supporting each other.

TF: What's your favorite part about the High Holidays?

AG: I love anything that feels tabula rasa. A new start. The High Holidays are so inspiring in that way to me. A sort of life inventory, outward and inward, and really sitting with myself and my thoughts (I tend to write a lot of essays around the High Holidays) and thinking about how my choices affect my life and the people around me I care for. Maybe a little hokey, but true.

TF: I know you have this blog, Granola Bar Dvar. What's the impetus behind the blog?

AG: I have my main, general blog, Bigmouth indeed Strikes Again, and a couple of side blogs, including Granola Bar Dvar, where I take the weekly parsha and think about it in the most practical, earthy and applicable terms I can, which usually ends up pointing to environmental, social and interpersonal issues. It was really something I did secretly for a while just to kick around ideas about the world and people, in my own sort of outside-the-box granola way, and it came pretty naturally to me. I hear something, anything really, and think about how it relates to my life in practical and applicable terms and I wasn't seeing much of that out there, so I tried my hand at it and really got a lot out of it. I like taking a time out and writing a piece for Granola Bar D'var and thinking about the spiritual and the things we can't know but can only really consider. That said, I'm a jerk and I haven't updated it in a bit.

What's your earliest Jewish memory?

AG: Latkes.

TF: It seems like you're a really disciplined writer. How have you gotten that discipline, and has it been helpful in other areas of life? How?

AG: Thanks, I try to be. I think I am fairly disciplined in most areas of my life. Maybe even too much in some areas, if that's even possible...? No, not really. I mean, I'm human, whatever. I do yoga, I'm a distance runner, and when do those things or write, I tend to put a song on a continuous loop for... something like mantra-like steadiness. It's not as compulsive as it sounds, and not based in compulsion at all, really, but in the way the repetitive sound and motion gets my brain to turn off of the daily blah-blah and lists and such and sort of open up and let me get down to the real things to think about and consider.

TF: Can you tell me something about your next book?

AG: It got a lot of stripped down elemental stuff in it. A lot of fire and water, but in subtle ways. Some of the woman-breaks-out-and-does-the-thing-people-think-she-cannot themes are in there that are present in Three Fallen Women, I think, but that just might be my thing, at least for now. I try to do new things and creep myself out to have new experiences. That's the name of the game, right?

TF: How do you feel about this whole "trendy Judaism" thing? Do you think Judaism is cool?

AG: Well, I have mixed feelings about it all. On one hand, I hate how Kaballah has been co-opted and made trendy. I hate hearing things like "Ashton and Demi were married in a Kaballah-style ceremony". I'm like, what the hell is that? Kaballah isn't a religion! That'd be like saying, "Oh, we had a Vacation Bible School-style wedding", I mean, seriously? It doesn't make any sense to me, and, frankly, I think it's so disrespectful to the people who-- according to tradition-- became both Torah and Talmud masters prior to Kaballah study. I mean you devote your whole life to this study and then Madonna and Paris put Kaballah on like a new pair of Blahniks. I can't stand that. If someone wants to convert, by all means. Get thee a Rabbi! But Brittney Spears running around with that Magen David seems trite to me. It makes me want to scream, "She's not my people! That's not how we are! She's not Jewish! I'm not like her! She doesn't represent me!"

I hear it's hip for non-Jewish guys to wear kippot and got to Jewish singles events lately, in order to pick-up Jewish women, which I think is both hilarious and rude. I mean, how different would the world be if we all were just our authentic little selves instead of crap like that? So, things like that feel more like a mockery of us that's probably a side-effect of the trendy-Judaism. Then again, I think maybe Jew Stuff being more on mainstream radar offers some myth-dispelling and maybe is a little bit helpful, at least in a positive way...? Maybe? I say that and I don't even know if I really believe it. I guess the bottom line is that I think there's probably more in the "unforch" column then the "forch", when it comes to this. I mean, VH1 has talking head shows devoted to Jews, Sarah Silverman did the "Give The Jew Girl Toys" song that was so funny, Borat made for great Satire, young non-Jewish Deadheads and Rasta kids are all over Matisyahu, and all of that's positive, but it's tricky (and sometimes awful) to see Jews represented when we're deadling with a religion that's so based in personal choices and practices. I mean, we all "do Jewish" differently, you know? It's nice to see non-Jews enjoying or appreciating our Jew Stuff because that's probably building bridges of some kind ultimately, but it's so uncomfortable when my neighbor asks why I don't wear a "red string bracelet like Madonna's".

All of that said, sure, I think Judaism is very cool. I'm proud to see the world through my own brand of Jewish filters.

I have always been a shul-goer. On Shabbat I get completely thrown off if I don’t make it to services. It’s an integral part of my weekly routine, and it frustrates me to have it disrupted. That said, I am not a fan of synagogues, Temples or shuls.

For one thing, too often they’re huge and anonymous, the rabbi is far away from me and boring, and the cantor is ridiculously showy. Also, though I have no proof to back this up, I get the impression that the population at most synagogues is aging. I rarely see young singles or couples, especially not at those massive 1000 family congregations. What I do see a lot of is really bad decorating, uncomfortable chairs, and those awful silk kippot.

So why are synagogues so tacky and uninviting? And what’s the alternative?
Does Stained Glass Put You To Sleep?: There *are* alternatives!
I think a lot of synagogues and Temples grew out of themselves, and are still adjusting to such mammoth proportions. People are also using synagogues less and less, generally only stopping in for life cycle events, and whatnot. Many synagogues, especially in suburban well-to-do areas, seem to have become just another venue to keep up with the Jones’. While the insides are fancy, they’re too massive and overly air conditioned to give any a sense of a warm and welcoming community.

There are a few alternatives, I think. First of all, I’m a huge fan of the indie minyan, a la Hadar, the DC Minyan, Chicago’s Egal Minyan, and the Library Minyan. Those are non-synagogue services that will give you your spirituality fix without a choir, or 400 people milling around the bat mitzvah girl at Kiddush.

But if services aren’t your thing, consider making a weekly volunteer commitment on Monday morning. You can search for volunteer opportunities near you at Volunteermatch.org. Serving at a soup kitchen, helping out at a homeless shelter, or sitting with patients at a hospital are great ways of connecting with your spirituality without having to submit to the awkwardness of a Kiddush luncheon where you don’t know anyone. If you already have volunteering as part of your schedule, Saturday morning might be a good time to work out, take a run, or do some yoga. Or maybe you hate synagogues but are interested in Jewish learning. I highly recommend you get yourself a chevruta (a study partner) and discuss what you’re interested in learning. You may want to poke around on MyJewishLearning where they have lots of good trigger articles and will point you towards all kinds of good books and other helpful resources. Or if you’re more of a Jewish culture person, tune in to Nextbook’s amazing podcast, and start buying (or borrowing from the library) the books they recommend. Sarah Ivry, the voice of the podcast, is awesome and has never directed me to a book I didn’t love.

The point is, hating shul doesn’t mean you can’t do something Jewish on Shabbat, and it certainly doesn’t make you a bad Jew. But thankfully synagogues aren’t the only places to go to get a spiritual pick me up

A couple of people have requested that I blog more about my sex life, which, frankly, is not going to happen, what with my parents, Bubbe, grade school teachers, and ex boyfriends all reading my posts every once in a while. Also, none of my romantic ventures of late have been anything even approaching spiritual (I did have an unfortunate revelation involving a man in Queens a few weeks ago, but it was something along the lines of God reminding me that I am incapable of being fully entertained by a Princeton man, so I should stop kidding myself and move on to Yalies already). Anyway, I can’t legitimately blog about dating on the Upper West Side on FaithHacker.
Birds Do It, Bees Do It: But I have to go to the mikvah to do it?
What I can blog about is the discussion I have with almost all of my observant friends at one time or another involving our decisions about sex. By the time we’ve graduated college, many of us have been in one or more serious relationships, and we’ve struggled with the conflicts that halacha places on our sex lives. There is, sadly, not a huge amount of wiggle room for those who want to have sex with their significant others. Theoretically, if one is in a monogamous long-term relationship, and if the woman goes to the mikvah and the couple observes the period of nidah, there’s no problem. Only a few of my friends have even considered this, because though it seems simple, it pretty much necessitates lying to the mikvah lady, which makes lots of women uncomfortable. One of my friends said simply, “It seems like cheating.”

The vast majority of my friends who have struggled with this issue have decided ultimately to just have sex outside of marriage. The one notable exception is an Australian guy I knew in Israel who, in a discussion of this issue with me one night at a Shabbat dinner table, slammed his hand down on the table and said, “Halacha says a man who sleeps with a woman who’s in nidah is issur koret, [or violating a commandment that requires the death penalty as punishment.] He’s the only one who has ever it stated it that way, but the general concern about the wrath of God has certainly scared the pants back onto a few of my friends who oscillate between observant and less-observant lifestyles.

My general policy has never been to look for outs within halacha. I’m sure that if I did enough digging and finagling of texts I could come up with something that would satisfy me ideologically, but it simply does not keep me up at night. As I’ve mentioned before, the Bible is full of Biblical characters struggling with sexuality, fidelity, trust, commitment and honesty, and more often than not, it’s these struggles that lead to real change and improvement in their characters. Ultimately, I look for role models in Tanach and not in the Talmud because the Talmud’s understanding and treatment of women is both problematic, and completely unrealistic/unhelpful in regards to making serious choices about how I conduct relationships. If I won’t go to a mikvah and lie to a mikvah lady about being married, then halachically I can’t justify touching any Jewish man who isn’t related to me. But if I open up my Tanach I see that Rachel and Jacob kiss upon meeting. Which do you think I’m going to find more instructive to my life?

The struggle for me, and I think for many of my friends, has been how much we let our spiritual selves govern our love lives. And how sure are we that by focusing on one we largely abandon the other? There’s little discussion outside of the kiruv-y Orthodox world about how to have a spiritual dating experience, or what spiritually conscious intimacy would involve, but more and more often I find myself wondering about how all this could/should work.

When he was 21, a prominent drug policy reformer recalls, he climbed a cliff overlooking Mount McKinley National Park after taking LSD. “God came to me and commanded me to acknowledge Him as the ruler of the universe,” he says, “and He was as powerful and as real as any appearance of God is to anybody. I got down on my knees and thanked God for revealing Himself to me. That was a completely authentic, real spiritual experience.”But it is not the sort of experience that would be protected by the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Lacking a formal organization or a recognized religious tradition, individual spiritual seekers cannot gain the status accorded to members of Uniao do Vegetal or the Native American Church. Yet it seems clear that many independent psychedelic users are seeking experiences that are fundamentally similar to those of legally privileged peyote and ayahuasca users.

Close Your Eyes and Sway: Don't forget the guitarIf you’re interested in bringing the intense spirituality of Shabbat (back) into your life, head over to the Institute for Jewish Spirituality website and check out their upcoming events, including a big Shabbaton during the first weekend in July entitled ‘Re-Souling: Shabbat as a day for restoring our soul.’ Sounds pretty awesome. The Shabbaton will be held in Connecticut and costs $400 per person for three night and four days.

“Just looking.”

What is wrong with just looking?

Does it harm anyone just to look?

I had said that I would blog about evil today, but certain events this week have led me to write about lust instead.

One of those events was pricing a fence for our back yard. Sticker shock! Could a fence be so important that someone could spend three months' salary on one?

FrostWhat did Robert Frost mean by this line: Good fences make good neighbors. (Bonus points if you can recall the name of the poem.)

Is the poem about the irony of meeting your neighbor only when building a wall between you, or is it a metaphor for constructing social fences between people? Social fences make good relationships?

There are several religious Jewish families in our neighborhood. We’re even friendly with some of them. We recently saw some of these Jewish daughters hanging out with some teenage boys who are not Jewish. Normal for a secular teenage girl, unusual for a religious one. Then they were playing some kind of game that kids play. But one of the non-Jewish boys was overheard taunting one of the girls, “You can’t touch me because you’re Jewish!” I’m certain that he didn’t make that up.

Good fences....

Maybe he meant good fences as opposed to bad fences. The narrator’s voice comes across as critical of the wall, but acknowledges that his neighbor’s belief in the wall comes from his father – that is, from tradition. He has a tradition that good fences make good neighbors, but he may not know why.

Another Jewish fence besides the touching thing is the looking thing. If you have a significant someone in your life, man or woman, how do you feel when he or she looks at other women or men? How would it feel if you were absolutely certain that he or she never had eyes for anyone else?

How do you yourself feel when you're playing the seeker?

That feeling is totally physical. There is nothing spiritual about it. Once, after hearing me say this, some guy challenged me -”Isn’t it possible to look at a woman and just appreciate her beauty without it being sexual?”

Well, I guess theoretically, but not practical for 99.9999995 percent of the men out there.

The Entire PlanetMeaning, there are approximately three dozen men on the entire planet who can pull it off.

Judaism says that if you look merely at a woman-who’s-not-your-wife’s little finger in an aroused way, you are objectifying her, which is bad for you. Makes you more of an animal, less of a holy soul.

What’s a poor fella to do?

Well, he could start by finding a soul mate. And with her channel all of that physical energy into a synergistic spiritual fusion that can only happen when you’ve made a binding commitment to each other.

A soul mate isn’t the solution, but she can help.

Like any addiction, the surest way out of the wandering eye syndrome is a 12-step method. The first step is to admit you have a problem.

So men (and women) should at least be honest. Instead of “just looking” they should say, “Just lusting”. It’s not going to make your partner feel better, but it’s the way to start.

Here’s a little exercise you can do: next time you're out there - try counting how many times in one hour you wander after your eyes. Then challenge yourself to go an entire hour without seeking.

As usual, please share your results below!

This is my final guest blog of the week. Thank you to Jewcy for inviting me and thank you everyone for welcoming me here. Your comments and feedback have been always interesting, at times uplifting and occasionally moving. I will continue to blog my Friday Table Talk over at my usual space, (if there is enough clamor, maybe the good folks at Jewcy will invite me back some time!) Please stay in touch, and don't forget to check out the book that everyone's talking about.

Wishing you a truly Shabbat Shalom.

PS – Does anyone remember Opus the Penguin?

Opus

I don’t know how I feel about using online resources for meditation. Something about my laptop just doesn’t scream inner peace and tranquility. In a bind, though, I might give it a shot, and I found an awesome list of ten free guided meditations available online. You can read about all ten over at Be Conscious Now, but here’s the info on the first four.
Guided meditations: You are getting sleeeeepy
Ommmmm…

1. Universal Soul - 6 minutes: This is a video meditation, and it’s short, so it’s a nice one to do if you only have a few moments. The trick is to treat it exactly as you would a aural meditation. Plant both feet firmly on the floor and ground yourself. Place your hands in a comfortable position on your lap. Focus on your breathing and hit play. As you watch, drop all thoughts and judgments and just lets the words, images and sounds permeate your very being. See the meditation without thinking about it, and you will feel it’s magic working. This is a stunnig experience put together by Vera Nadine. Enjoy!

2. Meet a guide - 19 minutes: I had the honour of testing this meditation before it was posted, and I loved it. I’ve long admired Jeff Lilly’s posts on his meditations, and envied his ability to ’see’ the most amazing scenes unfold before him. He really does have a knack for the visual - so I was eager to see what would happen if he guided me through a meditation. I wasn’t disappointed. Both times I have done this lovely meditation, I have ’seen’ a guide and spoken to them. It’s the most concrete visual experience I’ve had from meditation so far. No doubt part of this is because I have been meditating more and more, but I think part of it is also Jeff’s magic. This is a meditation I will be returning to time and time again. (Plus it’s a great length at just under 19 minutes…) Don’t skip the article either, Jeff has some great stuff to say about meditation, and it’s well worth reading that before clicking on the meditation.

3. Brain Sync - 10 minutes: To get access to this meditation, you need to subscribe to their newsletter, but it’s easy to immediately unsubscribe if you’re not interested. This is a great practical meditation which focuses on the physical and real first, like the breath and relaxing the muscles of the face, before moving into imagery of a deep, still lake and a refreshing waterfall. It’s described as a health and well-being meditation, but I found it invigorating and especially enjoyed the very end, when it tells you that you have everything you need in life. (Discolosure: If you go on to purchase any Brain Sync products, I do receive an affiliate commission.)

4. Visit the Angels - 30 minutes: You need to download this file, and as it is quite large (27.5MB), it can take some time. It’s only good if you’re on a high speed connection. I really enjoyed this meditation though, and am glad it’s now saved on my desktop. It does use angel imagery and angelic realms, so if these don’t resonate with you, it’s probably not the meditation for you. I was able to see and sense my guardian angels on either side of me taking me into the angelic realms, and felt the joy and happiness described in the meditation. It’s a long meditation, but the time flew past.