Stereoscopic SouLift

From Gratefulness to Lament to Revelation (and Everything in Between)

“Often there is a binary in Judaism — it’s either the yadadai or the oy. I feel that things are more complex than that, and I want to live in that truth.”

— Rabbi Shefa Gold

So it was that my first act as a newly ordained Rabbi was to manage a retreat for my mentor, R’ Shefa Gold. While there are many binaries in Judaism that need dismantling, I’ll focus my reflections here as they flow from the above quote. Because I received so much from our week of deep immersion in chant practices created by Shefa from the psalms that I need somewhere to begin (and end, and begin again).

For those who don’t know Shefa, she is a true mystic — walking the path of devotional Judaism and clearing the way for many others to join. From my perspective, a mystic isn’t satisfied with merely talking about something, they need to try it out, see if it works, if it’s helpful in connecting to the Infinite One. If it is, they take it on.

When Shefa takes something on, her life becomes completely subsumed in it. Such was the case when she took on Shir HaShirim (the Song of Songs), which she chanted for a year and a half while holding the question, “How can I put love at the center of my life?” Then she proceeded to create chant practices from the sacred text and eventually, to connect them to the weekly Torah portion. (There’s an app for that by the way. It’s called Love at the Center.)

Over the last year, Shefa took on a new project — creating chant practices from the psalms. Yes, all 150 of them. She categorized the body of the psalms into 8 pathways: Gratefulness, Praise, Lament, Supplication, Exaltation, Revelation, Comfort, and Encouragement. Each of these pathways has chant practices that relate to it. What I found after being with these pathways for a week is that they are fractals — each contains the others inside of it, like the Sefirot.

We might journey through all 8 pathways every day, every year, every moment. When I feel I’m fully in gratefulness, there may be parts of me that are still lamenting, needing or giving comfort, supplicating. In my heartfelt supplication, there are petals of exaltation and praise. The important thing is not to feel like we’re stuck in any one of them, or that one is disconnected from the rest. We contain all of them within us, and any pathway, when we turn towards it and fully experience it, opens us up to expanded consciousness, to Love, to the One.

I remember hearing the phrase as a kid, probably in connection to my piano lessons, “Practice makes perfect.” But it’s not true! Practice makes practice, willingness, and growth. Another gift I received from the SouLift retreat was the term “stereoscopic.” When I looked it up, the definition I found was something about making images appear 3D through creating partial depth perception from a set of two two-dimensional images. I’m not entirely sure what that means, but it seems like when we join two separate entities together (heart and mind, doubt and faith, past and future?) we can make an entirely new whole.

The way Shefa utilizes the word relates to spiritual practice. Stereoscopic consciousness is the ability to maintain awareness of both the outside and the inside simultaneously. So if you’re in a group of people chanting a line of sacred text for say, 20 minutes, it means that you’re able to see with eyes closed what the energy of the group is doing, needing, how it’s arching, while also bringing awareness to your own inner state and how the chant is affecting it.

I appreciate the way mythologist and author Michael Meade puts it:

“There’s an old notion from India that says there are two great paths of practice: the yea and the nay. The yea is the path of the creative arts, the path of expressing oneself from the inside out and of putting things into the world. The nay is the path of contemplation and meditation, the path of turning from the outside in to find what’s missing. Yoga and meditation are acts of withdrawal from the entanglements of the daily world, and the creative arts offer ways of engaging the world and adding to it. Both paths depend upon the hidden holiness and the inner abundance of the soul, which by its nature, is ancient and immediate, and both paths are practices of centering, awakening and discovering a deeper and more genuine sense of who we are.”

There is something essential to the art of stereoscopic consciousness in these times of chaos and upheaval in which we’re living. There is a need to turn outwards with open eyes and see what’s before us — what’s happening in our country, to our neighbors, our families, and do what we can from where and who we are. But there is also the essential act of turning within, clearing out the shmutz, and keeping our hearts open so that our words and deeds come from a place of love and courage, rather than fear and anxiety.

The poetry of the psalmist echoes through my being now:

וַאֲנִ֗י בְּרֹ֣ב חַ֭סְדְּךָ אָב֣וֹא בֵיתֶ֑ךָ

And I, by Your abundant grace/love, enter Your house. - Psalm 5:8

The question of pretty much any spiritual practice is, what keeps me out of the Divine House? It was this question that Shefa invited us to write about last Thursday night, and then while everyone in the group of 22 of us chanted the above line, each took their scrap of paper — with all of the outdated habits, thought-patterns, and conditioning condensed into a few potent and vulnerable lines — and tossed it into the fire. When it was my turn, I felt incredibly held and courageous. It’s amazing how when we feel held, we can let go of our defenses. Then the real magic begins.

I didn’t have much of a relationship with the psalms before joining the SouLift retreat. Sure, I’ve read them before — when someone is sick, or under the chuppah at a friend’s weddings, or on my birthday. I’ve found them to be at turns beautiful and troublesome, often depicting that angry, punishing God that we see sometimes in Torah, but who is not the One I’ve come to know in my own life experience. Shefa spoke about her process of being with each psalm and all the reactions to its complexity. It was from that place that she coaxed out one line and opened to the medicine it contains.

The essential ingredient for Shefa and for all of us on the SouLift retreat was the act of chanting. The psalms were always meant to be sung, not simply recited. It is in that relationship between the word and the melody, that the psalms were illuminated for me and truly became pathways of practice.

In Shefa’s words:

“The greatest revelation comes out of a dialogue, a conversation.”

It’s the dialogue between silence and sound, intensity and novelty, focus and awareness, repetition and reverence wherein my heart remembers its wholeness and like my ancestor Yaakov before me, exclaims, “Oh, God was in this place and I didn’t know it!” But my soul knew, it always knows, and always will. It’s just that the small self (mochin dekatnut in mystical parlance) forgets.

In the words of Michael Meade again:

“In this time of uncertainty, anxiety and fear, arts and practices are vital paths for making coherence in our lives. Through them, we find ways to express our true selves, and when we become a more genuine version of ourselves, we have something to give to the world and to give to others…

There’s an old saying I like, ‘The spirit will not descend without song.’ You can use many kinds of chants to pull spirit down. And when you pull the spirit down, you also pull the earth up. That’s the old image of the human being, connected to the heavens and anchored deep in the earth. That was our job, in ancient understanding, to be the vessels through which heaven and earth become connected.”

Spiritual practice keeps our vessel clear and open, so that we can truly sing:

All of my bones say, Yah Mi Chamochah! (Who is like You!) — Psalm 35:10

Thanks as always for reading,

Rabbi Ariel Hendelman

If you’re curious to experience the magic and medicine of the psalms for yourself. There’s an app for that and an app launch on Feb 4th! Register here.