Conscious Community: The Goal of Our Association

My chavruta Andrew and I are learning R’ Kalonymus Kalman Shapira (the Piaseczner Rebbe)’s sefer Conscious Community: A Guide to Inner Work b’iyun (the slow way), and the paradoxical title itself suggests a deep radical notion: that there is a kind of community that must be built upon the inner work of its constituents—and/or, there is a way of being in community that derives from grounded individual consciousness. This idea bears directly upon much that I have to say about the implosion of R’ Mordechai Gafni, and the consequent shockwaves in various communities. But I will write about all of that B”H some other time. First, some notes from Andrew’s and my first look at the first section . . .

The Goal of Our Association

Our goal is exactly the same as the hope and aspiration of every single Jew: we wish to serve our G!d, the G!d of Abraham, the G!d of Isaac, and the G!d of Jacob. Our goal is to be thoroughly devoted to G!d with our entire being, so that every capacity of our bodies and every spark of our souls is connected with the holiness of G!d, which permeates us and surrounds us.

Our Merciful Father has already stirred our hearts and implanted within us a desire to serve Him. We sense that we cannot be completely dominated by the mundane forces of creation. These dynamics are also G!d’s power, but when we are subject to them, we are distant from Him. We do not perceive the divine intent nor sense the illuminating beauty of His presence.

Our goal is exactly the same as the hope and aspiration of every single Jew. Is R’ Shapira about to define the essential Jewish experience?

We wish to serve our G!d, the G!d of Abraham, the G!d of Isaac, and the G!d of Jacob. This language recalls the first blessing of the Amidah prayer. It also emphasizes the (cross-cultural) multiplicity of aspects/forms of G!d that can be served, and the necessity of recognizing them all collectively as the One object of our worship.

Our goal is to be thoroughly devoted to G!d with our entire being, so that every capacity of our bodies and every spark of our souls is connected with the holiness of G!d, which permeates us and surrounds us. R’ Shapira does not describe un-thorough devotion, though perhaps hints at its existence. It is obvious that there are multiple capacities of the body, but there are likewise multiple sparks of the neshamah, the soul. “Soul sparks” are a technical convention of Lurianic cosmology that seem to operate in radiating layers: that is, there are sparks within sparks. The “spark” of the human soul wraps around a “spark” of Divinity, and is in turn wrapped within the individual body, whose capacities (somewhat less obviously) may be implied by R’ Shapira’s symmetrical language also to nest, or radiate, like Russian dolls. What would a map of nested/radiating capacities of the body look like?

Permeates us and surrounds us. The same holiness is always readily available within (the epiphany of a hermit) and without (the epiphany of a visitor to Niagara Falls). However, neither immanence nor immersion necessarily implies connection.

Our goal is to be thoroughly devoted, which is defined as a state of connectedness between Holiness and the various valences of soul-spark and body-capacity. This connectedness is clearly not a function of proximity—being permeated and surrounded, we are always proximate to holiness—therefore we understand that, in keeping with the sefer’s title, connectedness is a function of consciousness.

Our Merciful Father. Giving the individual an inherent yearning for Divine connection is identified as rachmanut, an expression of G!d’s Mercy. How is this principally merciful, per se?

Has already stirred our hearts and implanted within us a desire to serve Him. Our hearts are stirred: We are driven to do, make, experience. We have a desire to serve Him: Moreover, we want our doing, making, and experiencing to effect greater value beyond the individual moment, enterprise, or ego.

We sense that we cannot be completely dominated by the mundane forces of creation. What makes certain forces of creation “mundane?” Hammering nails is mundane. Building a home for a family is holy. The two may be the identical action; the difference is intention. Cynicism—to intend my effort or expression as being no more than what it plainly is to me in my immediate self-interest, or, in other words, to ignore or deny the possibility of participating in this moment in the cause of a greater good—can be called the yetzer hara, evil inclination, or, better here, the mundane inclination. Cynicism does and will have its way with us, maybe even quite frequently, yet we sense that we cannot be completely dominated. We sense that to fully avoid serving a greater good is either impossible (when the cynic sees that his selfish action had an unintended positive consequence for others) or untenable (when the cynic feels angst at his unthinkable loneliness in the world).

Andrew had a powerful insight: The pain of angst at one’s cynicism can drive one reactively into more and more cynical behavior; but with greater emptiness (mundaneness) in one’s life will come a more acute yearning for the experience of something greater, meaningful. Unmediated, this is a vicious circle. I was immediately reminded that this past winter R’ Mordechai wrote and distributed an impassioned treatise on yearning, his thesis being that no matter what worldly object one sees to one’s yearning, it is all deep down a universal yearning for connection to the Holy One. When he wrote and sent this, it seemed to me to come out of the blue, but now I know in retrospect that he wrote it at the time when his daily life had reached an unimaginably extreme clamor of cynical sexual behavior.

These dynamics are also G!d’s power. Refer again to the cynic whose selfish deed has unintended positive consequences. This raises the question of free will vs. determinism. R’ Shapira suggests that, even in the grip of the evil (mundane) inclination, we remain instruments—if involuntarily and unwittingly—of G!d’s Will. How then are we in partnership with G!d, having personal responsibility for our actions? How are we more than dumb cogs in the machine, who can be conscious or unconscious, happy or sad, but with no significant consequence one way or the other? I posited one solution: G!d’s Will is ultimately immutable, but we can make it easier or harder to get there. I may do something destructive that has constructive side-effects, but now the destruction I caused must be redressed. Perhaps I could have effected the same construction without the destruction. In other words, G!d’s Will ultimately is for there to be harmony. We can seek dissonance and end up being pushed from/by dissonance into harmony. Or we can just seek harmony. In the former case, we may get to harmony on an individual basis, but the dissonance will reverberate around. Therefore, a collective—a spiritual ecosystem, so to speak—can only get in synch with G!d’s Will together as a whole body, if the individual constituents intend this purpose. (Hence “Conscious Community.”)

But when we are subject to them, we are distanced from Him. We do not perceive the divine intent nor sense the illuminating beauty of His presence. We are not distanced of actual proximity, but of the realization, the consciousness, of connection. R’ Shapira is describing the psychology of alienation from, or insensitivity to, holiness. In relief he is describing how one can feel the holy embrace-and-infusion, by realizing the fact of one’s participation in a greater value. R’ Shapira then defines the basis of aesthetics as the sensation of perceiving G!d’s presence in the world around us.

So far the text only distinguishes value on the basis of individual perception. This reminded me of a song lyric by Jill Sobule:

I have a friend who swears she saw Jesus
Hovering above her lonely bed
She said it changed her life forever
“Whatever works,” I said
I sit a home, changing channels
It’s so hard to concentrate
I laugh at her, but I’m pretty sure
She’s having a better day
 
(from “Somewhere In New Mexico”)

My question is: If the way to know synchronicity with G!d’s Will is to feel it, then what happens if you feel connected while what you’re doing is totally wrong? Is that even possible? (It certainly would seem that people do it all the time.) Perhaps the answer lies in R’ Shapira’s earlier emphasis that we must pursue connection on all levels, suggesting that there are simplistic vs. holistic states of holy consciousness, the latter being defined as the more “thorough devotion” that is our goal. We look forward to the text breaking down and analyzing the phenomenology of different soul-spark and body-capacity valences, that we may learn a discipline of distinguishing not just cynicism from connection, but also true connection from false connection, or holistic connection from narrow connection.

Notes continue with subsequent post...