Currency of Love

Love has a currency. 

 It's called,"Kindness". 

  Spend it generously, 

    but wisely.

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Reflecting Back, Thinking Forward

I have spent years writing on the subject of God’s Oneness/Infinity and our world’s relationship with the spiritual. Much of what I wrote is designed to provide a Jewish mystical answer to some of the difficult questions of existence, the kind of questions people typically call “existential”. My blog is laden with at least ten years worth of such writings: essays, stories and poems. It’s a collection of literary output designed to prompt and possibly guide.

In a soul searching moment, I have decided to begin adding a practical dimension to my writings going forward. However, in response to those who are apt to value the practical at the expense of the intellectual or the artistic, I proclaim that I fully value what I wrote until this point. I am not repenting nor recanting. I am simply layering value upon the already valuable.

Exploring existential and spiritual questions has inherent value for a variety of reasons. Among them includes that such study itself ...

1. bridges at least some small part of the soul/body divide.

2. extends positive vibes out into the universes; introducing positive changes to the course of human destiny.

3. shapes our “life perspective”, to improve our overall approach to life.

I credit Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, whose writings and recorded lectures have evoked in me a consciousness that it’s time to take my writings to a new level. It’s time to write about how these spiritual teachings awaken us to develop a more compassionate society. 

Like Rabbi Sacks, I do not think such teachings can directly affect the arena of politics. Besides, most of us are much more influential in our social sphere than we are in politics. In any event, our society is primarily built upon social units. At best, politics follows behind the advances of society like the trailing edge of a bridal gown. Each of us, in our own ways, participate as builders of society. Our individual stories blend together into everyone else’s to finally become the building blocks of a single sweeping grand story, the story of the society we all share.

So, here starts my new direction:

Nothing in our world, nor even in the highest of spiritual worlds, can be truly One as God is. Nothing emanated or created can retain its individual existence in the naked revelation of God’s Oneness. However, we can openly manifest blessings which flow from His Oneness. True, they are not literally His Oneness. (How can they be?) But, they are "of His Oneness". 

These blessings can reach us individually and collectively. They can improve our spiritual, mental, emotional, biological and financial well being. The way to elicit such blessings is to come close to God. Since physical space does not apply to our relationship with God, this “closeness” is accomplished by becoming as “similar” as possible; meaning, by “imitation” or “alignment”.

We “imitate” God’s Oneness on our level by unifying society to the point where people truly care for and help each other. Since we are composite beings, the state of Oneness is reflected in us as a force which binds us. When we’re “one” we’re bound together. When we’re “multiple” we’re just a jumbled mass, tripping over ourselves and each other. 

The story of the society we build as a reflection of God’s Oneness depends on our attitudes. Our attitudes are arrows which aim our behavior either towards manifesting a society of oneness or separation. A selfless attitude aims us in the direction of binding people together. A selfish one aims us to set people apart. These attitudes are contagious. They influence. Love inspires hearts to love. Self interest weaves sticky webs of self interest.

God encourages us to imitate His Oneness on our level by forming loving bonds of unity within our families, social groups, communities and across society at large. Love’s currency is kindness. Extending kindnesses, extends the “soul glue” which binds. With so much need out there, everyone can do a favor. Everyone can use a favor. 

Selfless acts of kindness can take on several forms. Among them are random acts of kindness, volunteer work or donations to the needy. Helping those in need can travel miles towards one’s own spiritual growth and healing a broken world. It matters not whether it’s with an organization or as an individual. What counts is to re-glue and new-glue the frayed fabric of humanity.

Society typically offers accepted modes of spiritual connection, such as: attending places of worship, engaging in devotional studies and settling into meditation. All of these practices are designed as engines of spiritual growth and healing. However, in tandem with these practices, likely the most powerful engine of spiritual growth across humanity at large is simply to engage in selfless acts of kindness. Such behavior glues us together as a oneness on earth. So, we’re aligned with God’s own Oneness and can manifest abundant flows of blessings in all areas of life.

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Fascinating Paradoxes !

The Infinite One exists beyond distinctions;

  Uniform, undifferentiated and seamless. 

He faces creation and presents Himself,

  As a vastly illuminating Infinite Light;

Which is as Infinite, as vastly Alive,

  As Light/Life could ever possibly be.

Thus, Infinite Light presents similarly as,

  Uniform, undifferentiated and seamless. 

There, surface and depth merge in sameness,

  Effect becomes cause, cause becomes effect.

And as life source of all that's created,

  No creation is or can be more highly Alive!

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The Teaching

The other day, I reflected back on a Torah teaching of the Lubavitcher Rebbe I learned about 1998 or 1999 on a Shabbat morning with Rabbi Yossi Marlow (see Sefer Hama’amarim MeLukat, vol. v, p. 281). The teaching is designed to provide an answer to one of the most enduring questions of Lurianic Kabbalah, “The Infinite Light is seamlessly undifferentiated. Accordingly, it has no gradations or distinctions. If so, how do the Ten Sefirot stored within the Infinite Light exist?”

The gist of the teaching is as follows:

Largely, it comments on the verse, “As waters reflect face to face, so does the heart of one man to another”. (Proverbs 27:19)

The Rebbe explains that the reason why a body of water can reflect images like a mirror is because its surface has an undifferentiated quality of uniform simplicity. In Hebrew, this quality is called פְּשִׁיטוּת . Just like a body of water, the Infinite Light has this quality too. That’s why it reflects images back to us. Our earthly deeds set off spiritual vibes which ascend up the spiritual levels into the higher realms. There, the vibes of all human deeds coalesce to become part of the configuration of the “Supreme Man” (which is a Sefirotic template of humanity, existing in the highest reaches of the spiritual realms). Then, like a beam of light the image of “Supreme Man”, it’s Ten Sefirot, projects upward upon the Infinite Light. And then the image reflects back down infusing all the realms with light and blessing, until reaching our earthly realm. It’s like a person’s image cast upon a smoothly still body of water, which instantly reflects it back. What’s reflected back from the Infinite Light, is called, the Ten Sefirot stored within the Infinite Light. In the original Hebrew that’s, עשר ספירות הגנוזות באור אין סוף.

Like a surface which mirrors, what’s reflected back is ultimately a result of our own behavior.

In the days following this teaching, I strolled along various trails hugging the gladed banks of the Oleta River in Greynolds Park in North Miami Beach, Florida. There, I contemplated this teaching while entranced by the reflection of the sky, trees and birds upon the slow moving, nearly still, water. Part of the Rebbe’s teaching is that though the Infinite Light has these Ten Sefirot, the Infinite Light remains unchanged; just like the water is unchanged by the reflection it bears. Gazing upon the water, I tried to identify with how the water simultaneously bears all these picturesque images and yet remains utterly unchanged.

A Paradox of Space - עולם

However, I had a problem. It’s true that the reflected images did not change the Oleta River. However, that’s because the particles/waves of light bounced off the surface of the water. That’s what a reflection is. Thus, the reflected light could hardly be said to be part of the water. Yet, the Ten Sefirot are part of the Infinite Light. Then I thought to myself, “Yes, but something of the light definitely penetrates further in. After all, with this light aquatic creatures see and water plants carry on photosynthesis.”

Then my inner truth seeker came back, “Fine. Light mixes into the water. However, the Rabbe’s parable is only referring to the light which is reflected back; as that is what’s image producing.”

Truthfully, I lived with this question for years. No amount of further meditation along the banks of the Oleta River seemed to provoke a satisfying answer.

One day, it dawned on me that the term the Ten Sefirot stored within the Infinite Light includes the words "stored within", which connotes a "depth". Storage usually occurs in the depth of a structure; particularly, if what's stored is at least, a bit valuable.  

Taken together in the literal sense, the terms "reflection" and "stored" would seem to indicate that the Infinite Light has both a "surface" and a "depth". However, both of these are terms which relate to space. In space, to say that something is at once “on the surface” and “in the depth” of the same structure is a blatant contradiction. Yet, that is what’s communicated when the Rebbe’s reflection parable is applied to the Ten Sefirot stored within the Infinite Light. These Ten Sefirot are portrayed as having equal presence on the surface and depth of the Infinite Light.

However, to apply terms appropriate for space to the Infinite Light is laughable. Space is something which the Infinite Light is clearly beyond. Accordingly, the Infinite Light's total grasp of everything, spiritual and physical, exists neither in a state of "surface" nor of "depth". If so, how can there be Ten Sefirot which are referred to as either stored in or reflected from the Infinite Light?

Perhaps, that's exactly the point. The Infinite Light is beyond space. Accordingly, any depth (of storage) is simultaneously a surface (of reflection) and vice versa. Where there's no space, surface is depth and depth is surface. Such distinctions do not even begin to take form.

  

A Paradox of Time - שנה

While gazing at the banks of the Oleta River, I was mystified by the fact that the standard texts of the Lurianic schools of Kabbalah discuss the Ten Sefirot latent within the Infinite Light as the very first cause of all creations and not as an effect later produced by the creations themselves. The only way I was able to think myself out of this problem was to say that since the Infinite Light is beyond time, sequence does not yet exist and an “effect” can be “cause”. In that reality, the “effect” is already present prior to being activated by its earthly “cause”. Thus, it’s available to serve as a “cause” of its own “cause”. What a fascinating paradox! It’s really a loop. Our original cause of being is the cumulative effect of our own deeds. Every positive deed we do is retroactively part of the very cause of our existence; thus, blurring the distinction between cause and effect.

I’ve read in Tal Orot that Rabbi Dov Ber of Mezeritch (1704 - 1772) advanced the following reason for why God created the world: God saw the deeds of the saintly and was aroused with desire to create the world. In other words, the deeds of the saintly already existed beyond time. This inspired their creation, as well as the creation of the world to serve as their home. Years earlier, in his own style of expression, Rabbi Dov Ber encapsulated the above teaching of the Lubavitcher Rebbe; which is that the pre-existing deeds caused the creation.

If this logic seems circular, that’s fine. In Kabbalah, the circular came before the linear. Plus, even in physical nature we observe many processes which are circularly logical.

A Paradox of Life - נפש

Unless the reflection parable is thought through it can be confusing. Why? In our world a reflection is never more alive than what it reflects. This is because both reside in the same realm. However, going up and down realms also means changes in levels of life; drastic ones. The higher the realm's level, the more alive. The lower the level, the less alive. 

To explain, for the sake of simplicity, the Infinite Light can be seen as a Being of Infinite Life - Infinitely alive! He then shares a mere droplet of His life with a vertical chain of lower realms or worlds. Those closer to Him (to the top) get more of this droplet of life, both in quality and quantity. Those further away (lower down), get less of it. 

Since the image of the "Supreme Man" is beamed upward, his reflection resides on a vastly higher level of life than he does. Hence, it's more alive than he is. Residing higher up, the reflection can now serve as a template source for all lower reality; including the "Supreme Man" himself. Paradoxically, the reflection is more alive than the reflected.

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Rebbe Rashab

A prayer of thanks:

Thank You so much for the new discourses I am studying from the Rebbe Rashab, particularly “Hemshech Ayin Beit” with the interwoven commentary. I’m so taken with his slow presentation of nuances. Even if they may be inherent to the point of almost obvious, without his help they’re so easily glossed over and missed.

In real truth, he’s like an artist who makes his performance seem so easy that all youngsters in the audience harbor the silly thought of, “Oh yeah, I can get right on stage and do the same thing!”

Though the simplicity they see is there, it’s still not theirs. It’s something which requires much work and refinement to even approach. Inherent talent is not enough.

Case in point, I was very taken yesterday by his distinction between “forcing” (כְּפִיָה) and “controlling” (שְׁלִיטָה). The Rebbe Rashab explains that “surrounding light” (אוֹר מַקִיף) “forces”. That’s because it’s external to the recipient. By contrast “inner light” (אוֹר פְּנִימִי), since it’s within the recipient does not need to “force”. It simply “controls”. By “control” the Rebbe Rashab does not mean in a harsh demanding way, the way the word is often used. Rather, he means a situation where a bond of trust and love have already been established and feedback is welcome. Otherwise, that would simply be what he means by “forcing”.

It’s similar to the difference between being motivated by the raw demand of a royal edict or by the guidance of a dear teacher. The king “forces”, while the teacher gently “controls”. The king feels distant, outside, while the teacher feels intimate, within; has a place within the recipient’s heart.

Now, this teaching is just a logically inherent part of what it means to be “surrounding light” or “inner light”. However, for all my previous study, this distinction did not fully occur to me beforehand. Hints of it had dawned on me, with my studies on the Sefirah of Keter. However, those hints too were from Chabad teachings. It took the subtle and mentally patient approach of the Rebbe Rashab to tease out such breathtaking and refined details.

Thank You for giving us the Rebbe Rashab and all the teachings he left for us.

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Ruach/Spirit Within = Paradise Without

The Talmud tells of the four companions who ascended up into paradise through a mystical practice known as the "workings of the divine chariot". The following is a translation of certain key parts of their story.

Four entered paradise: ben Azai, ben Zoma, Acher (alias for Elisha ben Abuya) and Rabbi Akiva.

[Before entering] Rabbi Akiva cautioned them, "When you approach the pure marble stones, do not say, 'Water, water'; as it states, '... those who speak falsehood cannot be established before my eyes.' (Psalms 101:7)

Ben Azai gazed and died. Concerning him it states, 'Precious in God's eyes is the death of His devout ones.' (Psalms 116:15) Ben Zoma gazed and went insane. Regarding him it states, 'You discovered honey. Eat moderately. Lest you over-satiate and vomit it up'. (Proverbs 25:16) Acher cut the plantings (i.e. become a heretic). Rabbi Akiva exited in peace...

What happened [to Acher]? He saw the Angel Metatron ... who was given permission to sit ...

Acher reflected, 'We have a tradition that [besides for God's revealed presence] there is no sitting in the higher realms ... Perhaps, [if another entity is also capable of sitting then] there are two authorities (i.e. a duality)?'

[To demonstrate to Acher that despite sitting, this angel is subordinate to God's higher authority,] they brought Metatron out [in Acher's presence] and lashed him with sixty pulses of fire ...

~ Chagigah 14B - 15A

Reviewing this story inspired the following question.

We are taught that a person can only perform sins and good deeds while in this physical world, while occupying a biological body. Once disembodied, the soul may do many things, go through many journeys, but it is no longer capable of sins or good deeds. The reason is because such behavior requires free choice. The gift of free choice is only given to a combined body and soul. Once the two separate, the gift vanishes. If so, how exactly did Elisha ben Abuya sin, while seemingly disembodied on a visit to the spiritual realms?

There are several answers which have been advanced to me. However, they all seemed to address what he did on earth either before or after his walk in paradise, not during. These answers left me feeling unsatisfied for several reasons:

A) The Talmud seems to indicate that he sinned while in paradise itself. Though certain prior life choices may have predisposed him to falter in the moment, they weren’t the sin itself. 

B) Somehow, while in paradise he had to have free choice. Otherwise, what occurred could not have been considered a sin. 

C) What he did afterwards wasn't the sin itself, but a new accumulation of sins - even if they were built upon the foundation of his discouragement over what happened in paradise.

Accordingly, I prayed in my heart for an answer to explain how he could have possibly sinned for entertaining the notion of a duality, while in the delightful environs of paradise itself. Then what dawned on me is that his entry into paradise might not have involved becoming disembodied at all. However, to understand this paradox in paradise, it’s important to first introduce a long cherished Kabbalistic concept which Rabbi Yehuda Ashlag had later on named “Hashva’at HaTzurah”, i.e. “similarity of form”.

Jewish mystical teachings often rely on the usage of spatial imagery. Though possibly convincing, such descriptions are not intended to be understood literally as referring to physical space. For greater accuracy, such images need to be divested from their physicality.

Our experience of space centers on notions such as closeness and distance. Accordingly, Kabbalah too often employs the terms of closeness and distance in its discussions of spiritual entities. One way to divest such descriptions from their physicality is to understand them as referring to the measure of how similar or dissimilar the entities are in relation to each other. Spiritually speaking, entities which share similarity are close and entities which are dissimilar are distant. Of course, between the extremes of absolutely similar or dissimilar there are many gradations along the spectrum, which allows for a very wide range of variation of distance or closeness.

Kabbalah’s notion of space is closer to what we relate to as “psychological space”. Psychologically speaking, people who share many similarities have the capacity to be very close even if they live at opposite ends of the globe. In contrast, those who are very dissimilar would be distant even if they lived right next door to one another. Clearly, spiritual space and physical space operate very differently. As psychology involves the human soul, it’s not at all surprising that it extends a taste of spiritual space to those enclosed in the bubble of physical space.

It’s logical that spiritual space bears an interesting implication. Imagine, two spiritual entities becoming progressively more and more similar to each other, drawing progressively closer and closer to each other. Then at the moment of complete similarity, they suddenly converge into a single point. Accordingly the notion of “being identically similar”, in spiritual space ends up meaning, “being identical”. There’s no such a thing as exact duplication, like the kind industrialists strive for during mass production. 

Based on this understanding, likely the four sages transported themselves on the principle of similarity. They moved into paradise by somehow increasing their personal resemblance to paradise. Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan teaches in his work “Meditation and Kabbalah”, that the mystics of that period first purified themselves with the still extant ashes of the red heifer. Upon separation from impurities, they then meditated over a series of divine names to enter into a deep state consciousness; i.e. to access a deep level of soul. 

It seems likely that their goal was to access their ruach level of soul. At the point of ruach consciousness, they would each experience themselves as a ruach, a spirit. All their sense perceptions would be filtered through ruach senses. With “ruach eyes”, everything they saw around them would be what a ruach normally sees, namely the Yetzirah level of paradise all around; more specifically “the chambers of Yetzirah”. To move around, they’d meditate bonds of similarity with whatever they sought to approach. They did not have to leave their bodies to do this. They would simply be present in paradise by virtue of the soul level they accessed.

Thus, Elisha ben Abuya was simultaneously in his body and walking about in paradise. Since the connection with his body was still intact, he had an earthly anchor and the free choice which came with it. That’s likely why he held responsible. (Also, being simultaneously embodied and not embodied, a dual experience, might have exposed him to the risk of perceiving a duality.) 

In absence of the ashes of the red heifer and the likely lack of spiritual masters initiated into such techniques, I would expect that such ascensions are impossible today. However, even without the experiential access, we can still be open to understand how some of this mystical process might have worked. Plus, it bears valuable lessons for us today. 

It's quoted from the Baal Shem Tov that a person is wherever his/her mind is; which means to whatever s/he connects to mentally. This statement is loaded with implications for what mental tools we can muster in directing our lives to fulfill our positive potentials. For example, it explains a basis for what some refer to as the “law of attraction” and why some engage in exercises of creative visualization. Most importantly, it’s a way to explain the value of each Mitzvah; as in some sense each Mitzvah forms a bond of similarity with God.

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