Iyar - Healing in Relationship
This newsletter is almost a month late. With all of the excitement about the growth and impact of Shefa, there is a hesitancy to broadcast all of our sincere good news when the world is burning and their is deep grief in the hearts of so many. Rabbi Avraham Isaac HaKohen Kook, captures my own internal state quite well: “There are those that trip over life in their wanderings--unable to find a spiritual anchor. They become too exhausted in their spirit to execute the daily functions of everday life. A bog of confusion and polarization sprouts forth from this mass spiritual exhaustion.” How can we take pride in our ongoing spiritual work, our healing, while acknowledging the brokenness that continues to exist, within and outside us?
The Piacezener Rebbe—Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira, encountered similar concerns in his cultivation of spiritual supportive communities. In “Bnei Machshava Tova,” his practical treatise for building and developing small groups of inward-focused camaraderie, he emphatically states, “As you develop this sense of elevation, do not become arrogant, God forbid! It should be quite the opposite: we should be sincerely humbled before everyone…It may not be obvious to others, but who knows what damage I cause through my behavior—actions, thoughts, and speech—now that I have given myself to heaven?” Attainment of deeper levels of awareness and attunement are necessary, but there are more appropriate and discrete places and ways of disclosing the fruits of our personal exploration. For the Piacezner, that sharing is best done with a cohort of others doing similar work.
While I have built Shefa over the past two years with an incredible amount of help from eager participants, teachers, donors, community partners, and researchers, we have not yet been in dialogue with other organizational leaders at the same stage of their programmatic development, until now. Shefa was recently selected, along with nine other growth-stage organizations, to take part in the thirteenth cohor of the UpStart Venture Accelerator. Not only will this cohort experience give us direct support, training, and mentoring to take Shefa to the next level of our organizational development, but it marks a inflection point for our recognition by the organized Jewish community. While our content area is still controversial and unconventional for much of the Jewish funding world, UpStart demonstrated true discernment in understanding our mission and vision and the critical role Shefa will play as psychedelics become more ever-present in our lives. We are grateful for their leadership and support, and share in their excitement about the learning, growing, and healing we get to achieve with this excellent cohort. Learn more about Cohort 13 and UpStart’s work here.
With love,
Z
