Tune In

Don't be so spiritually tuned in,

That you're humanly tuned out.

 

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How We Spend ...

Here's a story I told my two youngest children yesterday ...

There was once a king who gave a trusted friend $1,000 to travel to a nearby city and buy him a fine pipe with a large pouch of quality tobacco.  The friend arrived in the city and was tempted by the lure of an exotic restaurant. He reasoned, "It only cost $50 for a fine meal. I'll still have $950 left, enough for that wonderful pipe and tobacco. The king's request will still be fulfilled."

After the restaurant, he passed a clothing store. He saw a "perfect suit" advertised on sale for only $150. He mused, "By the time I buy this suit, I'll still have $800. With a bit of care and bargaining, I should still be able to buy the exactly the same pipe and tobacco the king originally requested."

The suit was bought. Right next store was a shoe store, for mere $100 he could have splendid pair of shoes, a glossy shining match to his new suit - perfectly suited ! "Ah", He thought, "I'll just have to put some of the king's order on credit. It would be a shame to pass up this pair of shoes."

Before long one purchase led to another until the whole $1,000 was spent. Now he was ashamed to return to the palace. He looked around for work to earn back the money. As a pampered favorite in the palace, he did not have many skills useful in an urban setting. Finding work was difficult. He had to accept low paying positions at the bottom of the societal ladder.

Meanwhile the king was frantic. "Where is my friend?" He wondered both to himself and aloud. Finally, he sent guards to fetch him. It was not long before the guards found him and brought him back to the palace - red faced with embarrassment for having spent the king's money and proven to be untrustworthy. Of course the king forgave his friend, but, the embarrassment painfully still lingered on for quite while. It took a long time for the relationship to regain its original feelings of intimacy.

Lesson: The King of the universe gives us many gifts and talents. These gift and talents take many forms: time, health, sensitivities, family, friends, intelligence, education, abilities, money, property, etc. This is the $1,000 the King gives us. He asks us to visit the earth plane and bring Him back something. Surprisingly, what He's asking for is not so much what He wants, but really what we want; namely, a chance to express the yearning of souls to give. The soul wants to give kindness. Paradise has everything. In heaven, there is no need for souls to give. So as the Loving Parent the Creator is, He sends the soul to place offering plenty of opportunity to give - this world. Here, there's enough darkness for the soul to brighten up. 

In giving the soul this opportunity, the King outfits the soul with a wide variety of resources. It's both the Creator's hope and the souls hope that the resources will be used to their fullest on the opportunities the soul craves. However, what happens when the body's desire to selfishly receive gets in the way and the person is swayed to indulge? This is like misspending the King's money. This is betraying both the Creator and oneself. Ultimately, the deepest inner satisfaction is attained when the soul brings into fruition his/her dream, which is to manifest his/her inner vision of kindness into the world.

Space Blurb

If gravity is caused by an object's presence reshaping the space around it, then what does this say about space? 

Probably, that space itself is a substance that has yet to be explored.

Extra Soul

Yesterday morning, a new co-worker shared with me that she wishes she was pregnant again. Surprised, I asked her, "Why?"

While  I could appreciate a woman wanting to have a child in order to bring new life into the world, this yearning somehow sounded different. It sounded like a yearning for the pregnancy experience itself. Generally, pregnancy is not a comfortable experience. So why anyone would crave pregnancy sounded mysterious to me and indeed it was.

"When I was pregnant I had a few very precious psychic / prophetic moments. They felt really special. Also, my overall creativity level was on a much higher level. I was in much deeper spiritual contact than I am now.", She offered.

This was something very new to me. Being a man, I never before considered that pregnancy can bring a woman to experience elevated spiritual states.

My mind flashed to a teaching in "The Gate of Reincarnation" that seemed suggestive of such a possibility, in a closely related scenario (where a mother gives birth to a girl whose soul had previously been attached to her own). Recalling the reasoning behind this teaching, I explained to my co-worker, "Probably the reason you had these experiences is because you were carrying an extra soul within you. Think for a moment, where's the child's soul located while the child is inside of you? Obviously during that time, you're not only carrying the baby's body. You are also carrying the baby's soul - especially during the stages when the body is not formed enough to fully hold a soul. So it makes a lot of sense to me that with the presence of an 'extra soul' you were probably granted additional soul power, heightening your reception to spiritual vibes and elevated spiritual states."

Today, I was a bit concerned that I have never heard from other women that they had similar experiences during pregnancy. Additionally, I found it a bit disturbing that after I posted a quickly written spontaneous version of this story on FaceBook, my co-worker's experience seemed to only strike a chord of familiarity with one of the respondents. Other female respondents did not seem to relate. Basically believing her story, I started to wonder whether there might have been other factors that also contributed to her spiritual experiences.

When I bumped into her during lunch time, she explained that she spent the pregnancy in the serene atmosphere of her family farm in rural Pennsylvania. She was very far from anything urban. Her time was spent relaxing and gardening. In other words, she was in a very meditative and nurturing environment. We both understood that a serene atmosphere combined with the entry of another soul where probably key ingredients in producing these experiences for her.

Reflecting on the exchange, I soon came to appreciate that the special life-long bond between mother and child might get its start from this time when the two souls were so closely connected. When souls are so closely connected, even when they part they never part cleanly. Each always leaves a drop itself with the other.

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Purim in "Eretz Yisrael"

The Purim story reads like a Diaspora story. Truthfully, it’s an "Eretz Yisrael" story.  "Eretz Yisrael" literally means, "The Land of Israel". However a careful reading also brings out the meaning, “I want to be Jewish!”

Only in our Holy Land can our Jewish identities be nurtured to their highest of heights to the levels where our souls resonate. This is possibly why even today there’s no Purim celebration like Purim in "Eretz Yisrael".

Happy Purim !

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A Prayer for Our Time

"Woe to one who takes issue with his Creator ... Does a piece of clay say to his fashioner 'What are you doing?' ... Woe to one who says to his father, 'For what reason have you begotten?' or to his mother, 'For what reason did you go into labor?' (Isaiah 45:9-11)

Dearest Sweet Beloved Divine Parent, in light of so much going on in the world I don't know what to say. On one hand, You truly do everything for the very best ! There's no being, including ourselves, who loves us like You do. There's no being that's even the tiniest dimming spark compared to Your vast light of knowledge. You created the whole creation, spiritual and physical. You keep creation going. As the Designer of creation, You maintain it's parts in perfectly designed interaction. To say that You know how it all works and integrates is a far vaster understatement than to point out how effortless it is for a grown healthy man to take a slight breath of fresh country air.

Yet, on the other hand You ask us to pray for the suffering. The problem with such prayer is that it questions Your judgment - or at least seems to. Unless prayer is just like any other co-creative behavior that You placed in human hands. There were people years ago who refused umbrellas on the basis of a belief that it interfered with Divine will for rain. Of course You made Your world "perfectly imperfect" so humanity has room, tiny room, to finish off creation. It's in this spirit that people design umbrellas. This is closely tied with the Kabbalistic notion of tikkun olam - mending the world.

One of the central areas where the masters of Kabbalah teach specific meditations to bring about this tikkun / mending is in the context of prayer. Here they teach Divine names to be visualized or at least identified with, accompanying certain specific words of the daily ritual prayer.

Prayer plays a role in this tikkun / mending. In some sense, it's no different than a carpenter banging in a nail to complete a cabinet. Sometimes a prayer is the missing nail. The problem was just awaiting a prayer. Once the prayer is recited, the problem no longer serves a purpose and can disappear. Other times, the problem awaits prayer plus action and so on ...

In this sense I am addressing You in prayer. Not to interfere with what You know is best, but, rather as part of the co-creative role You assigned to me, as a human - lacking true understanding as I am.

Sweet Divine Parent, there's tremendous suffering in Your world. There's suffering in Israel. My heart returns to this past Sabbath when as the whole Jewish world read in the Torah scroll about the sacrifices from the portion of Vayikra - You took a sacrifice of Your own - almost an entire family in the settlement of Itamar. Those conducting the sacrifices were not priests from the holy line of Aaron. They were very far from being an image of consecrated people. They were not motivatd by love for You. Rather, they behaved cruel and heartless.  

The whole Jewish nation mourns our loss of a loving Jewish family who tried very hard to live the most beautiful possible Jewish life available today. Please bring healing and let what this family stood for grow, blossom, and flourish for the whole world to see and appreciate.

Sweet Divine Parent  there's unspeakable suffering today in Japan. In many ways even harsher than the actual tsunami, which was the worst in Japan's recorded history, is the occurring and  pending nuclear hazards. There are thousands, maybe even millions of humans whose life, health and property hang in the balance over these tragedies. Please have compassion and play the role of Divine Parent, Supernal Father and Mother, and help all these people. They are in need of Your sweet nurturing. You had compassion on the city of Nineveh on the basis that it was a large inhabited city populated by people who didn't know any better. Please also take compassion on Japan.

All over the Middle East there are Arabic countries where people suffer from grinding poverty despite being bright and educated. Besides this, to add to the pain, many of these countries are dictatorships that oppress their own citizens. Please take compassion on these countries inhabited by people who worship You, to the best of their understanding, and please send them the prosperity they need to calm down, feel good, and focus on truly healthy and productive achievements - the way it was for them under Caliph Abdul Rahman of Al Andalus.

Please help the economy of the United States and the neighboring countries. These are countries that stand for human rights, freedom of religion and in short, being nice and fair to others. As nations they are strong in the area of "between human and fellow human". Please have compassion on the so many people who are unemployed, underemployed, underpaid, etc. So many of these people would love to work if only the opportunity is presented. Please have compassion on this great region of basically good people and return the jobs, even in greater abundance then they used to be when times were considered "good".

Most importantly, I beg You to please bring the Messiah. No resolution to any problem is ever complete without the Messiah. Please send him ! However, I'm not just begging of You to send him to solve the world's problems. I'm begging for him, so that we humans can learn how to have a deeper and more open relationship with You.

Thank You for the words of prayer. May they be sweetly accepted before You in love. Thank You for my health. Thank You for giving me the co-creative role of being a human in prayer. Thank You so much for being You. Love and kisses ...

Dance !

When nature moves, she dances.
Her every step is a circle dance.

The four seasons dance around,
As do the stars filling the sky.

They dance beautiful patterns,
As if swept up in musical bliss.

What melody do they dance to?
They must hear music we don’t.

They're constantly celebrating,  
At the Musician’s free concert.

   ~

You

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Everything’s connected to You.

This is an unchanging reality.

So what changes? Our sight!

Our blindness is cosmic exile.

Seeing is cosmic redemption.  

You play hide n’ seek with us,

This is how You show us Love.

  ~