CHALLENGE ACCEPTED https://twitter.com/captainblondy/status/1348301134457417729

So much to say about hitbodedut, but as a teaser, the Hasidic masters taught that over-formalization overwrote the core practice of oneness with God that was hidden right out in the open all along. Throughout the Torah, the ancestors simply went out into the field and spoke.

That’s “HEET-boda-DOOT” for those seeking phonetic assistance, and “hiss-BODA-duss” if ya nasty.

Once I *tried* this practice (when I was like 20 years old), I began to see how wise it was for the rabbis to provide fixed texts for prayer, because speaking to God — DARING to speak to God — can generate ENORMOUS resistance.

But few climb the stepladder of set prayer high enough to put it away. And in a religion that only survived because of frantic transmutation of living spirituality into text — and then professionalization of the exegesis of text — the deck gets stacked against trying hitbodedut.

More on hitbodedut ( @captainblondy)

You could see it as radical democratization of prophecy, arguably the core Israelite spiritual mode. Listening and speaking as spiritual capacities. The rabbis are clear we are all potential prophets: they say dreams are 1/60th of prophecy.

Practice in the prophetic mode can form a pretty sturdy third leg of the stool with formal chanting and silent practice. They’re all different aspects of finding or taking one’s “place.” Prophetic practice is the creative, personal mode, allowing you to state your terms to God.

(N.b. here the etymology of “person:” “per” = through, “son[a]” = sound, referring to a theater mask. Cheers to whoever I talked to about this a while ago, I think it was @sahajaji) https://www.etymonline.com/word/person 

All my experiments in prophecy have been interesting, some of them ridiculously so. They were the rituals or vision quests in which I was most free and accepting of myself as I was at that time, with all my failings and limitations. And in all cases, I was permitted to move on.

(If you know your Torah, you know God does not always allow overconfident magickal innovators to move on. Sometimes he incinerates them or opens the earth underneath them and swallows them. That has not happened to me yet.)

“Place” is actually a key name for God in Jewish tradition. HaMakom, actually THE place. This is how profoundly one is situated in one’s place in the prophetic mode. (cc @HapSavage, who is pretty sure the self is a place. I’m pretty sure the Self is a place, too.) https://twitter.com/kyosaku_jon/status/1352589481610801154

Saw synchronistic tweet. This counts, and is probably the predominant non-Jewish mode of what I’d say is the same practice. (Praying is encouraged.) Jews have certain injunctions against praying *to* [or even *towards*] statues, though. Hitbodedut is traditionally done outside. https://twitter.com/the_wilderless/status/1352597418513035268