This is a raw transcript of our weekly broadcast of One Mountain, Many Paths. Dr. Marc Gafni shares the Hanukkah Story revealing the "Celebration of Partial Fulfillment" and the "Miracle of the First Day".
The Hanukkah Story: the Celebration of Partial Fulfillment.
Do you live a life of absolute fulfillment? How many of us live lives of absolute fulfillment? No one. There’s not one person who’s living a life of absolute fulfilment.
Absolute fulfilment is not the nature of the relative world. We live lives of partial fulfilment, but our brilliance, our light, our wonder, our evolutionary nature is that we have the capacity to have utter, radical joy in partial fulfilment.
We were celebrating Chanukah last week. Chanukah is an Outrageous Love victory. Outrageous Love victories are always partial victories. It is a story of partial fulfilment. The Chanukah story is about the Greek Seleucids about 160 years before the Common Era, before Jesus, and they are on a Hellenistic mission - Hellenism means the spreading of Greek culture - and they go to defile, deconstruct and then reconstruct in Hellenistic image the temple in Jerusalem.
The Temple is the temple of in Raiders of the Lost Ark - temple as in Ark of the Covenant, temple as in the standing for the great tradition of the interior sciences that sees reality in every jot and tittle as ultimately meaningful and sees the ethos of the human being as participating in the Eros of the Kosmos.
They defile the temples. Most of the Hebrews of that time feel that this is where it’s going, this is where the power lies, this is where the energy’s going, and they become Hellenists. But there’s a small group, a small band of Outrageous Lovers, who have no political power and they barely have a budget and they’re struggling—there’s a group of 60, 70, 80, of them at the center and a few hundred people around them, and a few thousand in the larger circles, and they organize this bottom up, grassroots rebellion and they manage to recapture the temple. They reconquer Jerusalem.
The only thing is that, if you study history, you realize that their victory lasted for about 25 to 30 years. Then the Greek Seleucids send other armies and, ultimately, they conquer Jerusalem. The Hebrews lost. Yet we have this holy day, this Chanukah, which is this great and gorgeous celebration that people are doing all over the world today, which tells the story of this great victory.
This is the deepest knowing of the inside of the inside. Open your hearts brothers and sisters. The actual victor is established in the way we tell the story.
“Evolution never forgets a breakthrough.”
You see, the masters who established the holiday of Chanukah, they weren’t unaware of the history. They knew the history. They knew that the victory was short-lived. They knew the victory was a partial victory. They knew it was partial fulfilment. The masters declare Chanukah a victory to be celebrated for generations - even though it’s only a partial victory, even though it’s ephemeral, even though it seems to last for a short time, even though for a moment it seems like we might be tilting at a windmill - but we know that evolution never scientifically forgets a breakthrough. Once there is a victory - even if partial and ephemeral - reality and its trajectory is already changed forever.
Because they knew that the victor is declared in the telling of the story. Look around, did you see any Greek Seleucids walking the streets last week in masks. Nope. But Chanukah candles - the little bit of light that dispels so much darkness - glowed all over the world.
“We don’t need a total victory.”
We almost never get a total victory. Our fulfillments are partial, our victories are sometimes short-lived, but the ability to be an evolutionary - to be an Outrageous Lover - is to rejoice in partial fulfillment. To know that those moments "in between" when we’re victorious, they actually add up. Those points of light become a thousand points of light just like the new imaginal cells in the caterpillar that’s hanging upside down in a chrysalis that’s turning into a butterfly.
Those imaginal cells - each one individually - is attacked by the old immune system of the old world. They reach for each other, they join together, you get clumps and clusters, new configurations of intimate imaginal cells and - gradually - the caterpillar turns into a butterfly.
Each early individual imaginal cell - even if it seems to be destroyed, even if it doesn’t seem to last, actually leaves an impression, leaves an imprint, participates in the Evolution of Love.
Those imaginal selves - those points of consciousness, those points of light - come together to form a mighty torch of liberation, a mighty torch of Cosmo-Erotic Humanism, a mighty torch of caring, a mighty torch of Outrageous Love. All over the world last week people lit Chanukah candles. All this week we will light Christmas Trees. Christmas Trees with their lights and Chanukah candles in their deepest essence shared the same. No Greek Seleucids in sight.
Chanukah stands for the ability to rejoice in partial fulfillment.
In this clip below Dr. Marc Gafni shares the story of Chanukah. Why do we celebrate Chanukah for 8 days? In the original story there is enough oil for one day and the candles last eight days. So the miracle should be the extra seven days. Why then is the miracle of Chanukah eight days?
In the koan like language of the mystics: "What is the miracle of the first day?"
Enjoy this story of hope and inspiration to remember:
A little bit of light dispels so much of darkness.
Marc brilliantly applies this ancient story to the world we live in today and invites us to "take a leap and trust the net will appear."
It’s raging in the world, Covid; more deaths yesterday than any other single day. We’ve got to fight Covid. The vaccine’s on the way. We’ve got to make sure the vaccine’s safe. We have to take care of all the sick. We have to feel the pain and suffering in the world, absolutely. We’ve got to breathe with everyone who can’t breathe and we have to celebrate partial fulfilment. Let’s feel evolution moving in us.
We have to celebrate partial victories. We have to step in and light the candles even though we’re not sure how they are ever going to possibly last eight days. We don’t have enough oil for eight days, that’s true, but it doesn’t matter. We know that the oil’s going to come. We are willing to take the first steps even when we do not know yet how to find our way. This is the miracle of the first day.
We only can light the candles from a cruse of pure oil, which is cruse of Goodness, Truth and Beauty that is the depth of our hearts. We light candles with our commitment, with our sacrifice, with our joy and pain and even with our desperation which we hold together. With the knowing that its going to be alright, and even more then all right: that we are willing to light the next torch to bring us towards the fulfillment of homo sapiens in Homo Amor.
This blogpost is almost all direct quotes from Dr. Marc Gafni collected from the raw transcript of the featured clip below, which is created from the free weekly broadcast of One Mountain, Many Paths, happening live every Sunday at 10 am PT.
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Receive a deeper transmission of the Hanukkah Story revealing that Evolution Never Forgets a Breakthrough by listening to this featured clip below.