Project Description
Tears: Reclaiming Ritual, Integral Religion and Rosh Hashanah: Introduction by Ken Wilber Afterword by Annie Lalla
By Dr. Marc Gafni
This is a book about tears. It is about the dance of tears in our lives. Tears are not of one texture. There are many forms of holy tears. And there are also, or so it appears from the perspective of one level of consciousness, unholy tears. This book is about learning to discern between these different forms of tears. To learn the language of tears is to discern between the different forms of sacred tears. Ultimately, however, from a higher level of consciousness all tears are holy in their root. Part of what it means to wake up is to identify the nature of your tears, and to give your tears voice. To wake up is to know the language of tears. When you are awake, you hear and hearken to the melody and message of your tears.
This work takes as its case study the Jewish holy day of Rosh Hashanah, the Hebrew New Year celebration. Dr. Gafni then re-reads the entire corpus of liturgical literature on the New Year and reveals a key hidden theme – crying.
Specifically, Gafni identifies twelve major forms of tears and the archetypes that enact these forms of crying. Gafni’s role as a leading voice in the evolution of consciousness is fully crystallized in this volume. He lives and breathes the sacred texts, imbued by and transmitting their energy even as deploys the ecstatic scholarship of the master, reverentially yet boldly evolving their meaning.