92 — EMPTY WISDOM

The cherubs once again serve as our guide. Remember that the vortex of the Shechinah is no less than atop the Ark in the Holy of Holies, between the cherubs. “Between” is interpreted by the Kabbalists as a word that dances between the emptiness and the fullness.

In the first unpacking, “between,” which is bein in Hebrew, is understood as the “empty space between the cherubs.” Bein is the emptiest place in the world, hence the place in which the Shechinah dwells. This is a seeming endorsement of the emptiness. In a second understanding, “between the cherubs” is said to be the place where there is no emptiness. That is the place of the Shechinah — that is to say, of erotic fullness, the radical intensification of presence from which wells up the voice of God. This is a seeming endorsement of the fullness. The meaning underlying these paradoxically different understandings of bein (“between”) is clear. Only when we can hold the emptiness does it become filled with the divine voice.

Beautifully, the Hebrew word bein also means “wisdom” — binah. For wisdom comes only when we are willing to stay in the emptiness long enough to hold our center and walk through it. When we try to fill it too quickly, we always wind up shocked and deeply unsettled when the emptiness does not go away. Instead, the void gets deeper, thicker, more palpable, virtually suffocating us.

— An excerpt from the book “A Return to Eros” by Dr. Marc Gafni and Dr. Kristina Kincaid