Rodger Kamenetz with Shiur International: The Healing in Sacred Encounters

Rodger Kamenetz speaks with listeners from around the world in this excerpt from a Zoom session with Shiur International. We hear Rabbi Nachman's tale “The Turkey Prince,” which is also about how to be a healer. Rodger reads part of his poem “Turkey Talk for Reb Nachman” followed by a talk about Natural Dreamwork and how sacred encounters in our dreams bring healing.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zR1hclUey8g Rodger Kamenetz, founder of Natural Dreamwork, works with clients in a program of spiritual, imaginative and creative development through the contemplation of your dreams. If you are interested in this sort of work, please contact him at thenaturaldream@gmail.com For additional background reading: W.H. AUDEN ON THE SACRED ENCOUNTER"Whatever its actual content and overt interest, every poem is rooted in imaginative awe." -- W.H. Auden"The concern of the Primary imagination, its only concern, is with sacred beings and sacred events. The sacred is that to which it is obliged to respond; the profane is that to which it cannot respond and therefore does not know. The profane is known to other faculties of the mind, but not to the Primary imagination. A sacred being cannot be anticipated, it must be encountered. On encounter the imagination has no option but to respond. All imaginations do not recognize the same sacred beings or events, but every imagination responds to those it recognizes in the same way. The impression made upon the imagination by any sacred being is of an overwhelming but undefinable importance-- an unchangeable quality, an Identity as Keats said: I-am-that-I-am is what every sacred being seems to say."-W.H. Auden, from "Making, Knowing and Judging" in The Dyer's Hand  pp.54-55THE TURKEY PRINCE   (2:35-4:57)Once the king's son went mad. He thought he was a turkey. He felt compelled to sit under the table without any clothes on, pulling at bits of bread and bones like a turkey. None of the doctors could do anything to help him or cure him, and they gave up in despair. The king was very sad...Until a Wise Man came and said “I can cure him.”What did the Wise Man do? He took off all his clothes, and sat down naked under the table next to the king's son, and also pulled at crumbs and bones.The Prince asked him, “Who are you and what are you doing here?”“And what are you doing here?” replied the Wise Man.“I am a turkey,” said the Prince.“Well I'm also a turkey,” said the Wise Man.The two of them sat there together like this for some time, until they were used to one another.Then the Wise Man gave a sign, and they threw them shirts. The Wise Man-Turkey said to the king's son, “Do you think a turkey can't wear a shirt? You can wear a shirt and still be a turkey.” The two of them put on shirts.After a while he gave another sign, and they threw them some trousers. Again the Wise Man said, “Do you think if you wear trousers you can't be a turkey?” They put on the trousers.One by one they put on the rest of their clothes in the same way.Afterwards, the Wise Man gave a sign and they put down human food from the table. The Wise Man said to the Prince, “Do you think that if you eat good food you can't be a turkey any more? You can eat this food and still be a turkey.” They ate.Then he said to him, “Do you think a turkey has to sit under the table? You can be a turkey and sit up at the table.”This was how the Wise Man dealt with the Prince, until in the end he cured him completely.--Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlav (tr R. Avraham Greenbaum)source: http://www.azamra.org/Essential/turkey.htm Turkey Talk for Reb Nachman by Rodger Kamenetz(5:49-14:26)You who heard angels singing in the grass, prayers in the daffodils,Do you hear, between the rusted hinges of closing gates,Sad thumps of engines losing heart—my little prayer?I’m down here, under the table playing with crumbs and bonesIn the gleam destruction leaves behind.As no kabbalist ever said, you can lick the oilFrom a broken shard, but don’t cut your tongue.The gleaming oil, the light behind your stories—just words?Reb Nachman, look at me now, I’m trying to dance.Even from heaven where you study all day with the sages,It must be amusing to see my bony knees knocking,My knobby ankles' shining thin skin—it's a kind of danceWe make here when we tremble or shiver.It’s also a dance when I make stupid jokes for the way things are.As if I were the king who set the table when you knowAnd I know it isn’t that way, never was,Just feels so good to think we make our world.You danced in Breslov to bring down the czar,But I’m trying to bring down your look into my eyesYour voice whispering and your beard scratching my earlobe . . .Forgive also my terrible Hebrew with its broken piecesYou who look at holy letters without their disguises,Who see them naked with their endearments,As the Infinite sees them parade in the days before days,Or so the stories say the stories say . . .Sad prayers cough up scraggly letters, stick on the larynx,Twist their way through a burning throat,Parched no matter how much we drink.The fruit we stole from the tree doesn’t nourish us at all.I’m bone and skin, Reb Nachman, skin and bone.Every voice is a broken radio mixing static with holy light.Now I’m not dancing any more, just twitching, spatteringWords and slobber, a poor equivalent of a human beingWho dresses to disguise his sadness which is always out of fashion . . .So tell me, Reb Nachman, you too who will always be out of fashion,Until stars fall out of the sky with all our eyes—What clothes can I wear for my mumbling, and how can you spare meFrom slipping on glistening crumbs and bonesOf the meal that falls from on high?Can you turn my turkey talk back to human,Reassemble torn stems into a bouquet of coronas,You who gathered handfuls of stinkweed on your long walksExhorting yourself out of despair and into God,Striking and striking your chest with bigger and bigger fists,Until you cracked the millstone around your heart?I know any place I’ve been, you’ve been a hundred times before.Whatever I’ve felt you’ve known with pain complete and unabridged.You wrote it down in a secret book written to save the world,But ordered your simplest hasid to burn it in the stove.Pages rose one by one—puckered black nearly flat, canceled souls.And yes, as you taught, I am asleep in the second degree, asleep in my sleeping,Unaware I am unaware of the mighty lightThat throttled your body & now shines in your mind—Breaks it into a thousand syllables like flower tongues in radiant flower headsThere in heaven’s heaven where there are no flowers . . .But when you looked down at daisy head and black-hearted poppyOn the czar’s earth, lily and primrose and sullen mullein,Green towers of weeds that poked into the airShaggy sumac swaying in a breeze you could not touch—all invisibility is a lesson from world to soul—You picked flowers as letters for your enormous prayersThat shook with conviction and inhuman voice.You only stopped praying when you heard your own voice speaking to itself.Reb Nachman, that’s me down here crying inside—as you suggested—Shouting and screaming with my head on the pillow though no one can hear me.[Not even the dear one who lies beside me who snores quietly like a lady.]Though I’m banging the back of my head against the wallAnd shouting behind my teeth, my head is still,I’m hardly moving, there's a dream behind my eyes that won’t be seen.I hear nothing, not even silence answers meBecause no wall is thick enough to mute the noise in my mind.If I ran to the ocean to scream at the waves,A kid with a plastic shovel would look up amazed from his sandcastle.If I shouted in the storm like a yiddishe King LearSawing my arms like the bad actor I amI’d probably get arrested for indecency and blasphemy and dosedFor all my crying with tear gas and Prozac.They say you too were crazy with sadness, that you tumbledA thousand years from truth into a pit,Sat disconsolate and refused to teachUntil a small light illuminated your thin faceAnd you said, with your searing pride, “All my teachings are high,But my ‘I don’t know’ is higher than all my teachings . . . ”(In a dream all your followers left you—and many did,You were so hard on them and made them confess sins to your faceAnd wept for them harder than they wept for themselves.)And when they complained that your followers were meshugehsDancing in the marketplaceOn that day we Jews call Happiness in the TorahYou answered: “I love the old time hasidimWho storm the palace of the king with grease still on their sleeves!”Here I sit in my dull impiety, my common senseWhich is everyday insanity masquerading in plainness and plain sight—Hungry for crumbs—crumbs of success, crumbs of moneyLying on my deathbed reciting my resume—crumbs of opinion, crumbs of desire mixed with grief and shame—Like the poor schlep who stood glum at the edge of the dancing circle until you,Reb Nachman, reached out and grabbed him by both palmsLifted him and his sins back to their long-lost love, their root in God.There is no ground now where flowers can’t grow in spite of the darknessOf fields where broken bodies layAfter their heads were broken and human tongues went lifelessAgainst tongues of the wort and prickly burrs,When they lay mute in fields outside Breslov and Nemirov and Kamenetz,In fields where you once gathered prayers.But if God can make a new world from darkness,Surely you, Reb Nachman, can raise a sparkNo matter how far buried you are in the earth or heaven is buried in the mind.And I’m still dancing with clumsy throbs and aches because you saidThe greatest sin was despair. Though how you loved despair,More than I do even . . . more than anyone can imagine.For despair you gathered your hasidim around youAnd for despair you abandoned them for the holy landThen came back—though ships were wrecked and others drowned.For despair you said you were the Messiah and believed it three whole years,Sent out secret agents on horseback to spread the word and publish the news.Then after your baby son died you told your stories night after nightThough your heart was completely broken—all to rectify despair.Your first tale was "The Lost Princess," and you said whoever heard iWould try to find her and could not help but think of redemption.And no one got redeemed, but still you told it and invited despair to listen.So Rebbe Nachman, I’m asking you, is it true or just another story you toldThat when you saw a naked man gobbling under the table—a prince, son of the king—Who pecked at scraps and crumbs, you tore your clothes off instantlyAnd sat with him a long time in silence until he asked you who you were?You said, “Who are you?” And he said, “I am a turkey.”Is it true you turned your face to him, your whole head full of Torah,Your sad brown eyes with the heavy lashes—you who knewExactly how long the journey is from under the table, how hard to return.Did you say, “Yes, I am a turkey too”?So you slowly healed him. Or he healed you. Or did you? Did he?Is there ever healing in a world always breaking?Is there a wise man who heals? Is there even a table?And is there really a king?This is the sad prayer coughed up my throat—my turkey gobble.But can you make any sense of belief that doesn’t believe?Or why else do I talk to you inside my mind? DREAM: HEY(21:08- 33:56)Joe and I are at Cathie’s sister’s home in Thibodeaux.  It is getting late and Cathie is leaving. We are the only ones there, have a longer drive so we are spending the night.  She show us huge blocks of cheese that she says we can have.  They are wonderful.A few moments later Cathie’s sister walks in, looks at the cheese and says she wants it, that she will divide it up between the family.  I don’t want to share this cheese but it’s her house.I end up with a little baggie of cheese.  I go into a back room where there are other people and I pick up my phone.  On it I hear Cathie talking with Rodger; it is their session.  I know I should hang up but I listen for a moment.  Cathie’s voice is pained as she speaks and I hear Rodger right there with her.--A woman runs in the room and says, “Grandpa is dying!”  I follow her and say to the room in general, “Call 911.” We go into a bedroom where there are two beds. On one is a large figure completely covered in the bedspread.  On the other is a little girl, 6-7, blond, bright smiling face. I notice she is lying in feces. I go over to her, kneel by the bed and say, “Hey.” We talk quietly and she is so sweet and precious to me.  DREAM: THE WOUNDED ELK (NINA) I am walking along an upper balcony of what feels like a hotel.Off the balcony I see a large elk lying on the ground being attacked by another elk;  his side is opened up and bloody.A large crowd watches.  A young man walks back to a waiting car carrying the elk’s bloody rack of antlers.  I am horrified.  From the balcony, I yell, “that’s against the law!” It turns into a chant that the others pick up…in unison they chant, “that’s against the law”.