The High Holy Days and Reflections of Spiritual Experience
Among cultural events of this time of season that inspire the idea of fall reflection come the high holidays of the Jewish tradition. The shift of seasons traditionally brings Rosh Hashana, with its renewal of the New Year, and Yom Kippur, with its solemn day of prayer, fasting, and atonement. With my mixed ancestral Jewish and Protestant backgrounds, I’ve become increasingly focused on acknowledging the significance of such sacred holidays in my life throughout my adult years.
The significance of the New Year occurring at this time of year is not lost on me. The symbolic and literal shedding that occurs during the fall months marks this as a season of renewal and rebirth. We reflect on our lives as they are, as they have been, and the direction we intend to travel in the coming year. We remember our family and community, the roads they have traveled before us, and the roads they help guide us through now. We atone for our misgivings and come back to center, at-one-ness, with God in our lives. Yesterday was Yom Kippur and as we awoke to the first significant snowfall of the season, I took it as a positive sign of weather to come in the white season ahead.
Among those experiences, personally I am coming upon the 15 year anniversary of significant entheogenic journeys in my early college years that helped set the course for my life as it is now. It is from these psychedelic experiences that I began a deep pursuit of spiritual understanding and recognition in my life and what has brought me into communion with my family traditions. And it’s upon these experiences that I reflect most deeply now. As the weeks roll along, I plan to return alone to a wilderness location to sit in contemplation in recognition of those journeys.
Philosophically speaking, from those early college years to now, I would say that I’ve been most profoundly influenced by the ideas of Zen Buddhism and intrigued by a variety of indigenous views. Their fluid and sustainable natures simply make sense to me. And it’s through this philosophy that I’ve come to connect with my Judeo-Christian roots. Some might question how an individual can connect such contrasting beliefs to one another, yet I’ve always found connection.
In the fall of ’99, while traveling through Thailand, I first came to recognize a connection between Jewish and Buddhist traditions. At the time of the November full moon, I visited the city of Sukhothai and the Loi Krathong festival. Loi Krathong is the Buddhist festival of lights, just as Chanukah is considered the festival of lights in Judaism.
During the experience of Loi Krathong, I had befriended a group of young wanderers from Bangkok who let me tag along. They explained the significance of various ceremonies and let me participate with them. By a lakeside, we held krathongs, small disc-like objects made of banana tree cross-sections wrapped with banana leaves and decorated with flowers, a stick of incense, and a candle. The Bangkok kids guided me through, suggesting I place a strand of hair and a coin on the krathong, light the candle and incense stick, sit it in the water, and offer a prayer to the water spirits for cleansing and replenishment for the year to come. Simultaneously, we all floated our krathongs out into the lake water as they symbolically carried our prayers with them. The direction they traveled on the water and the connection they held to the other krathongs would represent the course our lives were to take over the next year. With a magnetic-like draw, mine floated into the path of one of the gals of their group who reminded me of a close friend in Pennsylvania.
The following week, in the southwestern coastal village of Rai Ley, I befriended a Jewish traveler from Seattle. We sat on the beach under the stars. As I described my experiences form Loi Krathong, he immediately recognized the similarities to Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur. Just as in the Buddhist tradition, the High Holy Days are a time for cleansing and replenishment (in repentance of one’s misgivings), for reflecting on the past year and looking at the year ahead. And just as the krathongs take our prayers onto the water, Judaism has a tradition with rocks. While it is customary to lay rocks on the graves of the deceased, it’s also a custom to some to place rocks into running stream waters to help wash away the sins of the past year. In reflection of these experiences, Yom Kippur will always serve as a sacred experience in my life and it highlights the extraordinary experiences I explored at Loi Krathong during my visit to Thailand years ago.
With the year ahead, I find it important to honor both tradition and past experiences that have guided me through my personal spiritual journey. In doing so, it helps me to recognize the spiritual direction I’m intended to follow through the future.
What spiritual traditions are important to you that encourage reflection in the direction of your life?
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