Soul Prints

Soul Prints, Your Path to Fulfillment, Marc Gafni, New York, 2001, Pocket Books, a Division of Simon and Schuster.

While I may disagree on Gafni's use of the word myth (myth implies a historically untrue story) in relation to the stories of the Bible, I agree on his understanding on the importance of story, especially our own stories, to our lives' fulfillment. In fact, I agree more then I understood. Gafni bases many of his theories on stories from the Bible, sometimes in new readings of them. His background as a Kabbalist rabbi, shades his observations toward the mystical. I was surprised to see how similar the eastern thought is to the Jewish (Kabbalistic) thought. The ends are, of course, quite different. The goal of eastern spiritualism is Nirvana, annihilation of the individual and merging into the infinite Being. The goal of Jewish (Kabbalistic) spiritualism is also a merging with God but never to lose the sense of the individual. God made us to be who we are, not to dissolve us.

Gafni proposes that when we become disconnected from our "story," when we shut out certain parts of our history, we lose our way in life. Only by accepting our stories and telling them to others do we recapture and reassert our soul prints. The term soul print refers to our uniqueness. This includes the calling that God provided for us and the path we have taken to get where we are. To be living our soul print means we have not dissociated with any of our path and we are fulfilling our calling.

Gafni provides much insight into Jewish thought, especially the stories of Moses, Abraham and Jacob (Israel), and the Jewish holidays of Purim (a carnival time when we get drunk and wear masks -- we try on other soul prints to see if they might fit us better than the ones we are living), one month later Pe-Sach -- the ritual of Telling the Story of the Exodus from Egypt (a dinner where the participants retell the Exodus story) and the fifty days immediately following called Sefira -- the Counting Ritual (where, every evening you say, "Today is the Nst day of the Sefira count," this to remind us that each day is a blessing; by the way, if you forget to say the Sefira one day, you are out and must wait until next year to restart the count).

14-Apr-2001