“Free to Shine” ~ a meditation over Psalms

B”H

5 Tishrei 5773, Friday, at a Starbucks in Philadelphia

Dearest Sweet Beloved Divine Parent,

Thank You for opening up for me the Book of Psalms like never before. In the past, I was blocked from appreciating it largely because it appeared to me like prayers of a warrior to inflict the worst on his foes, often with disregard that they are people too ~ who love life and yearn to love and be loved.  So I’d look at the work with pained misunderstanding, “Why do i want to pray for people’s demise? Shouldn’t I rather pray for their enlightenment and that they change their ways?”

Yet, for years I endured what to a large extent felt like dour recitations, often glossing over the meaning of what I was saying. I endured these recitations because the Lubavitcher Rebbe said to say them and generations upon generations of good and saintly Jews have recited them. Besides, there were some Psalms with a happy and even optimistic message. Some Psalms contained wise teachings. While these thoughts kept me going, they didn’t get at an answer to my core revulsion.

However, this Rosh Hashana something clicked inside. In the back of my mind I remembered something Rebbe Nachman [of Breslov] remarked about the mention of enemies in Psalms. He remarked that all the times [when] Psalms mentions enemies, the text is referring to our inner tempter, whose surface efforts are designed to destroy; though his inner design is to build us through free choice.

[Taken] in isolation this statement just meant to me that we need to imbue Psalms with a contemporary application, since many of us are not members of the Jewish military. I felt that this was a holy and creative way to answer this revulsion that others like myself must have felt. However, it didn’t hit home with the [kind of] universal messianic cosmic message that helps me internalize it. My spiritual appetite wasn’t yet aroused.

Upon entering Rosh Hashana, You expanded this message for me to the extent that I was able to appreciate that by praying for the demise of the “enemies” in Psalms, I am actually praying for souls to be free to shine, to fulfill their true potentials.

Yes, it's a problem of the inner tempter, but, it's also a problem of his larger context; the spiritual forces he uses to limit perspectives and cast a net of selfishness over souls. To one extent or another many souls are caught in the clutches of these forces. These forces are the ‘enemies” Psalms refers to. By praying for their demise, I’m praying for the freedom of all human souls.

Thank You …

Love and Kisses ...

Fascinated by Souls ~ a reflective prayer/meditation

B"H

8 Tishrei 5773, at a Starbucks in Philadelphia

Dearest Sweet Beloved Divine Parent,

Thank You for the opportunity to commune with You on this beautiful early Autumn morning. Thank You for the opportunity to be at a family occasion yesterday. It was nice to share space and celebration with so many people who have a space of love in their souls for me. In some way its the family that I don’t constantly see who reminds me most that the real human being is the soul. In them I see the changes of the human body over time most vividly. Since I don’t see them overly regularly, the changes that creep up unnoticed on those who see them day-in and day-out have a better chance of being noticed. I can more easily notice who aged, who grew, whose face subtly changed, who gained weight, who lost weight, etc. Yet, in the warmth of their greetings the same person shine through the changes in bodily garb. We pick up our conversations as easily as if it was 20 years ago or so, when we didn’t live so far apart and we imagined that life would always be that way. Sharing a room and celebration with such people yesterday was profoundly warm. Thank You for the experience. Thank You for the joy and celebration.

Yet, truthfully even the body’s ability to garb the soul has limits. If the mind/brain isn’t working properly then the soul can’t properly don her most basic garment to interface with the world. She struggles to fit into a tattered garment, depending on the circumstances, with mixed success. This is what I experienced visiting an elderly sick relative in the hospital yesterday. She literally had trouble entering her brain/mind to carry on a normative conversation. To me, she appeared bewildered by the whole encounter and was pretty soon struggling to find a way to ask me to leave. Please heal her mind and body soon, very soon. I profoundly miss the person who once comfortably inhabited that mind and body. I also feel sad for her, profoundly sad. She’s my last living grandparent. Please extend a special revelation of Your compassion to her.

Each human being is a true treasure of Yours, a soul extended by Your Love into the earth plane, garbed with garbs upon garbs to make the extension possible. You honor the soul with such profound garbs, that the best scientists are still finding her outermost simplest garb too deep a mystery to fully grasp. Your relationship with each of Your treasures is truly unique. No soul can step into the sacred space of Your relationship with another soul ~ just like no child can step into the emotional space of his/her sibling’s parent/child relationship. On a real sense, each soul is truly Your Only Child!

Thank You for this reflective meditation/prayer.  

Love & Kisses ...

Celebrating Otherness

Listening to an interview with the Chief Rabbi of England left me with the impression that the job of our age is not to determine which faith is right or wrong, but, simply to get along. Celebrating "otherness" and reaching out to our fellow human beings in love across the ethnic, cultural and religious divide is probably the exact medicine our age needs.

He explained that the Creator is far bigger than religion and just like I can’t understand the uniqueness of my brother’s relationship with my parents, I can’t understand another religion’s unique relationship with our Divine Parent.

Vast & Varied; Ensouled Beings ~ two related prayer sessions

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19 Elul 5772, 8:10AM, Thursday, at a Starbucks in Philadelphia

Dearest Sweet Beloved Divine Parent,

Thank You for this opportunity to commune with You. The day looks dreary and darkened. However, this doesn’t have to be how I feel. I can feel elated and inspired. The outer weather doesn’t need to rule the inner weather.

This morning I was contemplating how this world is literally a meeting place for souls from so many different levels. Souls come from different soul families. Often, it’s possible that the higher realms are so vast and multi-dimensional that they don’t meet. How matters go on the earthly level often influence the flow of blessing and illumination to a soul family in a particular region of the spiritual realms. So certain souls will be “released” or “sacrificed” to be sent to this realm in order to effect the flow of blessing [to that celestial region and by extension to the resident soul family].

Yet, here on the earthly realm, there’s limited dimensionality. The directions one can go are too few [limited by the dimensions of space and time]. So all souls who occupy bodies, regardless of soul family, are forced into a shared dimensionality. At best, a soul family can claim a region on earth that’s a parallel to it’s region in the spiritual realms. Still, it can’t fully claim exclusivity in it’s region because people belonging to other soul families often come and go; through trade often leave their cultural influence, through media get to speak directly to the inhabitants. Certainly, as technology makes the world smaller and smaller a choke hold is cast over isolationism. This is part of what’s causing what we see today called “extremism”.

Extremism is an internal isolationism. When a soul wants what’s spiritually and culturally familiar to her, without the full support of the outside world to provide her with her “matching environment”, she tries to create that environment internally, in her being, which often leads her to become and appear out of sync with her external environment.

However, such measures are only temporary because as the earthly realm becomes more integrated so do the heavenly realms. This is the process of “tikkun” or repair. Of course, this process is reflective. As the vastness of heaven becomes more unified, even more unity reaches earth; further, “tikkun”.

The reason why the process of unification [first] begins with earth, and earth was made with limited dimensions to facilitate the process, is because earth mostly relates to the Oneness exemplified by the “afterglow” and heaven mostly relates to the Infinity of the Infinite Light. [Oneness is togetherness - as reflected in the limited dimensionality of the earthly realm, which gathers together embodied souls and other spiritual lights, who would normally be spread out over the dimensional vastness of the spiritual realms in their disembodied states.]

Thank You … Love and Kisses ...

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23 Elul 5772, 8:13AM, Monday, at a Starbucks in Philadelphia

Dearest Sweet Beloved Divine Parent,

Thank You for this opportunity to reach out to You. Thank You for this opportunity called, “life” - an opportunity to be surrounded by so many ensouled beings. I’m not the only ensouled being, but, surrounded around and around ~ interacting with ensouled beings. It’s so beautiful to be in a sea of so many “walking candles”, each carrying a “soul flame”, a consciousness. It’s so beautiful, so cozy and cuddly.

The human soul is very very special, as Rabbi Ya’akov Meir Shpielman teaches in “Tal Oros” that the consciousness of a being depends on the level its drawing from cosmically. A rock draws from a lower level than a tree. A tree draws from a lower level than an ox and an ox draws from a lower level than a human. It really depends on what level the particular consciousness branches off into a recognizable being. So for example, a human soul branches off much higher cosmically than an ox’s soul. As a result, it’s already available higher up to extend her identity into an earthly body.

Therefore, every human being is a window through which higher realms peer into our earthly realm. Vice versa, every human being is a window by which the earthly realm can peer into the heavenly realms. However, the beauty of a window is that it’s a spot of transparency which allows lights to flow through. Open a window shade and the room is lit. So every encounter with every human is potentially so beautiful. Please help me do a much better job of opening my own window shade to see this. In most cases, it’s not the other person’s blockages that interfere with this transparent connection, soul to soul, but my own. So please help me open my own window shade, even more, even higher.

This world is populated by people whose souls come from so many cosmic levels. Paradise is vast and varied. Yet, as a marketplace is a gathering point for people far and wide, so too the earthly realm is where souls from the vast and varied spiritual realms converge to interact and transact in varied currency ~ thoughts, ideas, perspectives, designs, song, music, goods, etc.

In a market place, one is dazzled by the array of cultures that pass one’s eyes. So too in this realm, I am dazzled by the array of soul styles that I encounter. It’s beautiful. Thank You for this amazing experience. Thank You for making me alive to it. It’s a true celebration!

Love and Kisses ...

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A Drop of Paradise ~ a prayer

B”H

24 Elul 5772, Tues., at a Starbucks in Philadelphia

Dearest Sweet Beloved Divine Parent, Thank You for helping me find a place to commune with You. Thank You for the opportunity to commune with You. Thank You for last night’s class. Thank You for this morning’s Torah study. I guess the concept that struck my chord most is the notion that a tiny drop of a higher realm has so much more to it than the entirety of a lower realm. This is why all the pleasures of the world combined don’t even attain to the pleasures of a drop of paradise. The popular conception of paradise is that its a place of peace, serenity, weightlessness, love, deeper understandings, etc. However, these are only earthly attempts to approximate paradise. What paradise really is can’t be grasped by a human mind attached to flesh. The reason is because every pleasure the world offers combined together is still less than a drop of paradise. That’s why to some extent it still needs to be earned. Otherwise, it’s painful absorbing. The highest pleasure can soar into the most intense pain; again, a pain of a proportion unmatched in our physical world, “bread of shame”. This might actually be what the opposite of paradise is; enduring the “bread of shame” until the intensity of such pain itself earns the paradise for the person within the year (in spiritual terms).

This also explains why it shouldn’t be a surprise that the seven spiritual days it took to create the residence of Adam and Eve in Eden flattens out into billions of earthly years. That’s what it take to translate the same phenomena in a far more limited medium with inferior time units.

This whole difference is one of quality. It’s what’s often referred to as a paradigm shift. Even in the best attempts to translate from higher reality into lower reality, the highest and finest is usually lost in translation ~ serving as a transcendent light to the newly translated reality, influencing, guiding, but, not quite grasped.

So even with billions of years on the earthly realm, not everything quite translated from Eden into our realm. It’s like a shattered mirror trying to reflect the image of a full face. That’s what our realm is relative to Eden. This is why eventually there needs to be a new heavens and earth, a better vessel to process the light.

What this all means to me is yet another signal to be humble, patient, full of faith and love for You; There are very good reasons why I can’t wrap my mind anchored in flesh around the real truth of what’s going on around me. My very best response is to simply to place myself emotionally in Your “Hands” and trust You to carry me along. 

Thank You. Love & Kisses ...

Vast & Varied; Ensouled Beings ~ a Prayer

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B”H

23 Elul 5772, Monday, at a Starbucks in Philadelphia

Dearest Sweet Beloved Divine Parent, Thank You for this opportunity to reach out to You. Thank You for this opportunity called, “life” - an opportunity to be surrounded by so many ensouled beings. I’m not the only ensouled being, but, surrounded around and around ~ interacting with ensouled beings. It’s so beautiful to be in a sea of so many “walking candles”, each carrying a “soul flame”, a consciousness. It’s so beautiful, so cozy and cuddly.

The human soul is very very special, as Rabbi Ya’akov Meir Shpielman teaches in “Tal Oros” that the consciousness of a being depends on the level its drawing from cosmically. A rock draws from a lower level than a tree. A tree draws from a lower level than an ox and an ox draws from a lower level than a human. It really depends on what level the particular consciousness branches off into a recognizable being. So for example, a human soul branches off much higher cosmically than an ox’s soul. As a result, it’s already available higher up to extend her identity into an earthly body.

Therefore, every human being is a window through which higher realms peer into our earthly realm. Vice versa, every human being is a window by which the earthly realm can peer into the heavenly realms. However, the beauty of a window is that it’s a spot of transparency which allows lights to flow through. Open a window shade and the room is lit. So every encounter with every human is potentially so beautiful. Please help me do a much better job of opening my own window shade to see this. In most cases, it’s not the other person’s blockages that interfere with this transparent connection, soul to soul, but my own. So please help me open my own window shade, even more, even higher.

This world is populated by people whose souls come from so many cosmic levels. Paradise is vast and varied. Yet, as a marketplace is a gathering point for people far and wide, so too the earthly realm is where souls from the vast and varied spiritual realms converge to interact and transact in varied currency ~ thoughts, ideas, perspectives, designs, song, music, goods, etc.

In a market place, one is dazzled by the array of cultures that pass one’s eyes. So too in this realm, I am dazzled by the array of soul styles that I encounter. It’s beautiful. Thank You for this amazing experience.Thank You for making me alive to it. It’s a true celebration!

Love and Kisses ...

Strolling Along ...

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Today, strolling along the rainy banks of the Delaware River, I saw the battleship New Jersey in the near distance. As I beheld this magnificent testament of human ingenuity and achievement, I was momentarily spellbound with awe. 

Then it dawned on me that one tiny molecule of this huge ship displays incredibly more ingenuity and wisdom than the whole structure of the ship put together - a mark of the vast disparity in wisdom between man and his Creator. 

Then I was spellbound with happiness. :)

"New to Me" ~ a prayer

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12 Elul 5772, Thursday, 8:19 AM, at a Starbucks in Philadelphia

Dearest Sweet Beloved Divine Parent, Thank You for the opportunity to commune with You. Thank You this early morning opportunity to dawn with the unfolding of emotional sincerity. To You I am drawn, like a lost child who's just discovered his/her parents, like soul mates whom upon reaching adulthood, after years of separation, finally meet ~ what a celebration!

Yet with You, I’m within You 24/7. In fact, my whole existence is within You. My whole existence is You. I’m a character inside Your dream. I’m simultaneously, within You & You. In a deeper sleep, I feel within You. However, my ultimate wakeful state is my seamless absorption into Your Being. Ah! The human words don’t do the reality of our relationship justice. It’s so so deep!

Yet, despite the inherent constancy of connection to You, I still feel like at every session like I’m encountering my long lost Parent or Lover. The freshness and renewal in our relationship dazzles me, surprises me and inspires me. Perhaps, the reason is because we’re interacting over endlessness. Relative to my human experience, my states of heart seem endless and certainly what You flow into me in response to my states of heart seems endless to me.

If I had a very good friend whom I can count on for freshly new and inspiring insight every single day, I’d look very much forward to our daily deep meaningful discussions. It doesn’t matter if he or she is the same friend I met everyday, day in and day out. It does not even matter if the meeting place is overly familiar. What matters is that the content of our discussions are fresh and new ~ not old and worn.

This is what I can count on in our daily communion. Therefore, the same Creator feels new to me in every session. There’s a passage in the Zohar which states that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, our Biblical Patriarchs, each had four wives. Abraham and Jacob had four wives in four different people. Isaac had four wives in one person - Rebecca. Who was luckier? I think Isaac was. Why? Because he was able to have a multitude of freshly new experiences simply by accessing one source. If the connection is right, the variety needed to sustain, nourish, grow, stay excited, awake and full of longing for what comes next can come from one source.

Thank You for this beautiful session. Help me carry it in the most sensitive pocket of my heart. Love and Kisses …