Tikkun & the Restorative Power of the Awkward Moment

The last Dave-vent (“Mas­tered By Love”)

The part that stood out from me from this Sunday’s 4.5 hour Dav­event was Tikkun (he left off the Olam).

Tikkun Olam is some­times trans­lat­ed as “world repair.” For me, “human ener­gy field repair” fits much bet­ter, since “world” can mean dif­fer­ent things to dif­fer­ent peo­ple. (For Chris­tians, “this world” refers to Satan’s serf­dom, and I would tend to agree.) If you are inter­est­ed, there’s a descrip­tion of tikkun olam quot­ed at the end of this article.

Dave went from Tikkun straight into “the awk­ward moment,” which I woke my wife up to hear, since she often advo­cates the rich­ness of awk­ward moments, and encour­ages not try­ing to avoid them in group work.

Dave also used the tan­ta­liz­ing phrase, “Aim to fail.” A mes­sage to the false iden­ti­ty if ever there was one.

Awk­ward moments are glitch­es in the matrix when the false iden­ti­ty starts to flick­er and fal­ter (both as a cause and an effect). When one sub­per­sona is switched out for anoth­er, and the switch-over occurs in a clunki­ly delayed way, the cracks in Hump­ty become expe­ri­enced by us, often in excru­ci­at­ing ways. (Some par­tic­i­pants may have found this event stormy to weath­er, since Dave invari­ably prac­tices what he preaches.)

This was also some­thing I attempt­ed to show, as well as tell, in my recent talk at the Stoa. Not because I am so wise and enlight­ened, but because I knew I was like­ly to try to avoid awk­ward­ness, and that I would fail, so I might as well … aim to fail! I suc­ceed­ed in fail­ing, to my own sat­is­fac­tion, if not my host’s (actu­al­ly he seemed quite content).

This brings us to the AGs, and how we can opti­mize their poten­tial. I said else­where that these events are for us to meet, greet, and com­plete (not deplete) one anoth­er. This process requires find­ing ways to allow our dif­fer­ences to become com­ple­men­tary rather than divi­sive. Tikkun Olam.

A bit lat­er on Sun­day, Dave men­tioned how a wound is a gap and how we fill the holes in our ener­getic being with what­ev­er the cul­ture pro­vides, and so become hosts for tox­ic pro­pa­gan­da and delu­sion­al, life-sap­ping behav­iors. The fan­ta­sy bonds of mind cement us in a state of unre­al­i­ty (hell).

He advised tak­ing small jour­neys away from our habit­u­al­ly inhib­it­ed, pro­grammed selves. As we come off bal­ance by meet­ing frag­ments in oth­er peo­ple that stir up frag­ments in our­selves, our many dif­fer­ent reac­tions, and our reac­tions to those reac­tions, cause us to com­pen­sate for the awk­ward­ness of being off-bal­ance, and try and cov­er the cracks. We keep with­in a cer­tain nar­row band­width of expres­sion in order to feel “safe.”

To aim to fail means being will­ing to inter­rupt the rit­u­al pat­terns which our social alters dance to, to fall out of step and stum­ble and bab­ble and blush, so we can start get­ting clos­er to one anoth­er, and so move clos­er to reality.

*

Tikkun Olam:

In ref­er­ence to indi­vid­ual acts of repair, the phrase “tikkun olam” fig­ures promi­nent­ly in the Luri­an­ic account of cre­ation and its impli­ca­tions: God con­tract­ed the divine self to make room for cre­ation. Divine light became con­tained in spe­cial ves­sels, or kelim, some of which shat­tered and scat­tered. While most of the light returned to its divine source, some light attached itself to the bro­ken shards. These shards con­sti­tute evil and are the basis for the mate­r­i­al world; their trapped sparks of light give them power.

Accord­ing to the Luri­an­ic account, the first man, Adam, was intend­ed to restore the divine sparks through mys­ti­cal exer­cis­es, but his sin inter­fered. As a result, good and evil remained thor­ough­ly mixed in the cre­at­ed world, and human souls (pre­vi­ous­ly con­tained with­in Adam’s) also became impris­oned with­in the shards.

The “repair,” that is need­ed, there­fore, is two-fold: the gath­er­ing of light and of souls, to be achieved by human beings through the con­tem­pla­tive per­for­mance of reli­gious acts. The goal of such repair, which can only be effect­ed by humans, is to sep­a­rate what is holy from the cre­at­ed world, thus depriv­ing the phys­i­cal world of its very existence—and caus­ing all things return to a world before dis­as­ter with­in the God­head and before human sin, thus end­ing his­to­ry

For the strong of stom­ach and bold of heart, this is what I wrote about Tikkun in Homo Ser­pi­ens: 

In Jung and the Gnos­tic Gospels, Stephen A. Hoeller describes a “Gnos­tic teach­ing with­in Kab­bal­is­tic Judaism … close­ly resem­bling the Gnos­tic and Chris­t­ian con­cepts of apokatas­ta­sis, a process known as “Tikkun.”

Tikkun is the process where­by the lost light-sparks are drawn up from their impris­on­ment among the dark shards that abound in the unre­gen­er­ate realms of the cos­mos. Tikkun is pri­mar­i­ly the task of the Mes­si­ah, but all wise and right­eous human beings play a vital role in it. The task of resti­tu­tion is in fact the Gnos­tic alter­na­tive to the forcible and vio­lent extrac­tion of the light from dark­ness, such as may occur in man-made and cos­mic cat­a­stro­phes alike. Uncon­scious­ness, the unwill­ing­ness to redeem the shad­ow with­in our­selves and in the world, leads to destruc­tion: egos, cul­tures, and worlds are equal­ly shat­tered by the pent-up force of the unmet dark­ness that lurks in psy­chic and cos­mic depths. Holo­causts and cat­a­clysms, whether envi­sioned as the flood that sub­merges Atlantis or the nuclear con­fla­gra­tion that dev­as­tates the earth: all of these are light extrac­tors, extreme mea­sures for the free­ing of sur­viv­ing soul pow­er when no oth­er means are avail­able.… Thus, there is only one option open: Like Shi­va in his destruc­tive aspect, the Antichrist, the “dark fish,” obtains ascen­dan­cy and breaks asun­der the mate­r­i­al frame­work, so that the light and life cap­tured with­in it may be freed from its shack­les and ascend unham­pered into the full­ness (Hoeller, pg. 240–41, p. 235).

Such a descrip­tion may help us under­stand how an evo­lu­tion­ary “dieback”—as described above—would be a nec­es­sary part of species “soul res­cue.” At present, human con­scious­ness is sim­ply too dilut­ed and disorganized—spread out over too vast and dis­or­ga­nized numbers—to focus its intent on a sin­gle end, or to access (much less fuse) its count­less ener­gy bod­ies. But the prob­lem goes deep­er than this. Human­i­ty is indeed focus­ing its intent on a sin­gle end—that of extinc­tion. For it to over­come the pull of iner­tia-decay and sum­mon a new intent—one of freedom—the major­i­ty of indi­vid­ual humans have no oth­er option than to suc­cumb to the will to death and “cross over” into the inor­gan­ic realm. Once there, they will ipso fac­to remem­ber their true natures, out­side the tyran­ny of the per­son­al self, and orga­nize them­selves inor­gan­i­cal­ly, to help pull the remain­ing “residue” (that ring of sor­cer­ers) past the entropy bar­ri­er and into a new state of being. It is this com­bi­na­tion of push-pull intent—from both sides—that will “tip the scales” and release the sling shot.

Put crude­ly, the glob­al cat­a­stro­phe and result­ing release of “sur­viv­ing soul pow­er” will pro­vide the nec­es­sary ener­gy-fuel to fire the ascen­sion of those still in the phys­i­cal. This will com­plete the apoc­a­lyp­tic process of “extrac­tion of light from dark­ness.” The liv­ing sodal­i­ty will then “pilot” the col­lec­tive con­scious­ness of human­i­ty in toto (the liv­ing and the dead) into the realm of the inor­gan­ic beings, to access the “dark alien ener­gy” there­in. From there it will make the leap into the worlds beyond death, to “ascend unham­pered into the fullness.”

Accom­pa­ny­ing audio (for con­trib­u­tors; search for“Tikkun”).