Flashes of the Divine Thought

The universe is immersed,
  In a Divine thought,

For it is less than
  Even a single Divine thought;

Not less fractionally, 
  But less in an ineffable sense.

What's at core a thought, 
  Seamless, Whole n' Infinite, 

Is caught by pieces,
  Of a fragmented world.

Imagine a picture,
  Projected on shreds of screen.

Fundamentally,
  The picture's whole, 

What's fragmented, 
  Is the screen. 

So too Divine thought,
  Remains undivided.

Yet, its manifest flashes,
  Provide a basis to appreciate. 

Appreciate that ...
  All you see, hear, taste, smell n' feel 

Are solidified flashes
  Of the Infinite Divine thought. 

Appreciate that ...
  All you read n' hear of Torah,

Are verbalized flashes,
  Of the self-same Divine thought.

Though a flash is not,
  The entirety of Divine brilliance,

It's still a precious drop,
  A derivative of the Infinite beyond.

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~ Dedicated to my daughter "See Em" in honor of her brilliant question which inspired the outpouring of this poem.

A "Gimmel Tammuz" Dream

Someone I know shared a dream:

A Caribbean man, from either Jamaica or Haiti, was a natural intuitive. He accepted his gift as divinely given and dedicated his life to using it to advise people - guiding them through their journey in time. 

He was the kind of person whom can be seen in town fairs offering spiritual services from a makeshift booth. His tools of trade were various, drawn from his culture: herbs, incense, cards, colored candles, etc. He'd travel from fair to fair; city to city, town to town, outpost to outpost - reaching as many people as he could.

One day, by the vibes of his very own intuition it dawned upon him that the next step on his journey was to join the Jewish People. Being already learned in the Bible and spiritually sensitive, his conversion journey under the auspices of Lubavitch was relatively smooth. Before long, he was a card carrying member of the Lubavitch community and devoted to the Rebbe.

With surprising ease, he adapted his vocation to Judaism as well. Gone were his previous tools of trade. He spoke the language of pure monotheism. When advising, he dressed his insights in words of Torah, mostly Scripture (as that is what he was most familiar with). 

When clients approached, he opened a partition, which opened rather dramatically. It opened as a widening circle, much like the aperture of a camera or the pupil of the eye. 

One sunny day, at a fair, he opened his dramatic partition. Confidence beamed from his face. Suddenly, he saw the Lubavitcher Rebbe approach his booth. The expression on his face went from confident to worried, as if a dark cloud swept across the bright sun.

He cringed and wondered, "Does the Rebbe not approve of my vocation? I tried to make it kosher. If I can't do this then what can I dedicate my life to doing?"

When the Rebbe came face to face with him, to his surprise nothing he was anxious over was even mentioned. The Rebbe asked pleasantly but with authoritative bearing, "Why aren't you quoting more from my teachings and from teachings about the Messiah?"

With that a wave of relief came over him. He realized that his Rebbe did not come to chastise, but to lovingly advise. The Rebbe dropped on his lap a very effective tool, one so obvious that it was utterly overlooked.

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The dreamer wondered, "Why the Lubavitcher Rebbe couched his message in a story and did not relate it to me directly?"

He wondered and wondered, but no immediate answer arrived. Then a few days later, a possible answer dawned on him.

The dreamer is a sensitive person who has emotional trouble handling criticism. For him, it comes off as rejection; either actual or potential.  Possibly, the Rebbe was being sensitive to his emotional needs and shielded him (a) by communicating the message to a third party, namely the dream character, and (b) by having the dream character model for him how to appropriately react.

Upon realizing why a dream character might have been used as his proxy, a wide smile broke out across his face.

---------------------O------------------

God’s Perfection - שלמות

The topic of God’s Perfection, שלמות, seems to have eluded philosophical treatment by the classic Jewish mystics and philosophers. It’s as if it were simply an accepted given, maybe even axiomatic. At times it was referred to as an idea lingering in the philosophical background. An example of this is Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto’s "The Way of God" where he mentions God is Perfect. Then based on this assertion builds his argument that God's benevolent giving must also be Perfect, for the Perfect One behaves perfectly. However, he never goes through the steps to prove that God is Perfect. Quite to the contrary, he uses it as the foundational axiom for what he’s trying to prove.

Surprisingly it seems like God’s Perfection was treated as even more axiomatic than other sensitive topics, such as His Oneness. Honestly, when I first realized this I found it quite puzzling. In truth, I cannot claim to have encountered every available page of holy texts dealing with the “Big Questions” nor can I claim memory of all that I have already read. Yet, somehow I am left with the general impression that God's Perfection has been simply assumed. If you, my reader, happen to discover a holy text where it’s proven, please let me know either via email or comment to this essay (on my blog).

Perhaps, the classic Jewish sages beheld an attitude of reverence that only Perfection truly befits God’s Holy Majesty. Still, even the most sentimental of attitudes bear a latent logic. Isn’t this part of what keeps the psychology profession busy?

It's possible that in the past when everyone identified with a religion of one sort or another, the Jewish sages felt no need to explain why God is considered Perfect. Nobody would imagine that they worshiped One less than Perfect. Among the masses, this attitude may have not been entirely driven by reverence. There may have been personal pride mixed in there too, as if their choice of worship reflected back on their own self image.

Yet, since there was universal agreement, there was no need for the idea to be proven. It was safe to philosophically let go of. Plus, if necessary, the ideas stood ripe to serve as the very basis of a theological argument – like Rabbi Luzzatto did. In contrast, there was a need to explain an idea like the Jewish version of God's Oneness. Both neighboring faiths were hawking their Jewish populations - seeking to wrest converts. The Christians tried to draw Jews towards their notion of a trinity and in Muslims countries the Jews had to demonstrate that they were on at least equal monotheistic footing. In such cultural climates, Jews needed to be well informed about their notion monotheism and trained to argue for it.

Today, we are no longer live in an age of universal religious affiliation. Accordingly, there’s not necessarily an automatic reverence for God’s Perfection. Perhaps, it’s time has to unpack the latent logic underlying the reverent assumption of God's Perfection.

The mystic in me asks, "Faith is so beautiful and precious. It often engages the highest and brightest of what it means to be a soulful human being. Why engage in the work of transforming a precious matter of faith into logic?"

There are two related reasons why. The first I heard from Rabbi Leibel Shapiro of Miami Beach, Florida. God wants us to serve Him with all of our faculties. This includes our minds as well. Therefore, we are encouraged to engage our minds in His service whenever possible to.

The second reason is because the mind is a vessel to receive illumination from the soul.  The more the mind is engaged in spiritual thought, the more illumination from the soul comes streaming into contact with the biological organism - fostering deeper contact and union between the spiritual and the physical.

One need not worry. The reservoir of faith will never be depleted by the transformation of cherished beliefs into concrete logic. It's not like a species in danger of extinction. If anything answers lead to more questions which bring humans face to face with new areas of faith, never before considered. So, paradoxically answering “Big Questions” can actually enlarge the reservoir of faith.

It's with this spirit that I engage in attempting to explain logically why God is Perfect. Reality is designed in a way that everything seems to have a polar opposite. Examples of such include male/female, day/night, light/dark, work/rest, proton/electron, matter/anti-matter, good/evil...I think you get the idea. Similarly, as part of this sweeping overall pattern, imperfection needs to have its opposite too - Perfection.

Since "Perfection is not of this world", one must conclude that flawless existence is elsewhere.  What we have in this world is, at best, a series of cause and effect events designed to compensate for flaws.   However, to immediately identify God as that "Perfect opposite" might be too fast of a jump.

So, let's slow down and consider a different question first. Is God Infinite? The standard answer for a believer is, "Yes". However, as Rabbi Moshe Schatz shared with me that there were some classical Kabbalists who felt uncomfortable calling God, “Infinite”. They felt that even such an expansive term for God might be inadequate because He is then being referred to as the opposite of something else, namely finite reality. And how can He ever be compared to anything else!

However, even some of these Kabbalists occasionally referred to God as Infinite.

What might have they meant? I do not think they were making reluctant concessions to the conventions of language. I think what they meant was that God is "at least Infinite", if not so much more than that. Another way to say this is that while Infinity might not necessarily be Him, it certainly is "of Him".

Similarly, to say that God is Perfect might run into the same problem as saying He's Infinite. At least, the word Infinity bears a silver lining, as it's not directly descriptive. The word Infinite means, “Not finite". It's pointing to God by way of elimination; stating who He's not rather than Who He is.

In contrast, the word Perfect, and its Hebrew corollary שלמות, are direct descriptions. One could in theory substitute the Perfect for Flawless – i.e. not flawed. However, it does not follow with the Hebrew word, שלמות, which the sages used.

In conclusion, my thoughts are that by the principle of opposites, imperfection has a polar opposite, Perfection, somewhere in reality. Is it God? I think that God is "at least Perfect", if not so much more than that. In other words, Perfection is "of God". However, for simplicity's sake conventional believers proclaim, "God is Perfect!"

---------------------O-------------------

Fabric of Space-Time

A Single Fabric

Time contains,

  All events,

  

Space contains

  All objects.

Time is space,

  Space is time,

One fabric,

  A continuum.

When containers,

  Are one, identical,

Could the contents,

  Be identical too?

Can planets n’ stars,

  Be events imprinted on space,

N’ can history,

  Be objects imprinted in time’?

--------Q--------

There’s a long tradition of relating the passage of time to the movements of the heavenly bodies; planets, stars and constellations. Sometimes I have heard people go as far as to ascribe time itself to the movement of the heavenly bodies. On the face of it, it seems like they’re confusing the measuring devices of time with the experience of time. Why should the heavenly bodies be considered as anything more than just a giant natural clock / calendar? Just as humans experienced time before the invention of mechanized clocks and written calendars, so it’s expected that they should be able to experience of the passage of time without recourse to the heavenly bodies as well. Essentially, when it comes to the human experience of time what difference does it make whether or not measuring devices are referenced?

I tend to agree that on the surface it seems like people with such beliefs are confusing the experience of time with its measurements. However, I honestly wonder whether some other dynamic is occurring here as well; namely, a psycho-spiritual one. Perhaps they are responding to a subconscious intuition that, as absurd as it seems, it’s somehow true that the two are related. Albert Einstein taught that time and space is a single indistinguishable unit, a continuum, which he called, “space-time”.

The result is that what happens in space has to have a parallel in time and vice versa. It’s as simple as the mathematical principle that what happens on one side of the equation needs to also occur on the other side of the equation. Let’s say for instance that A = QR.  If we add 2 to A, then 2 also needs to be added to QR.

In light of this, about five or six years ago, I realized that the shape and size of the universe must somehow be profoundly linked to our experience of time and vice versa. If space were differently shaped or sized then somehow our experience of time would also be different. Presently, I don’t know “how”?  However, just based on the equation it somehow has to be.

Similarly, just recently it dawned on me that, large bodies in space need to have their parallel in time. This is especially so considering that they significantly displace and curve the fabric of space-time around themselves and they move on coordinated paths in relation to each other, setting off a series of gravitational waves. They and their movements must be the parallel of events manifest in time; except as manifest in space. Perhaps this idea does not exactly prove astrology. However, it certainly supports astrology by offering an underlying basis for why it would be reasonable for what occurs in space to have parallels in time.  The ancients may have understood how placement and movement in space aligns with events in time; as they’re identical realities. Even if their match up efforts may have led to some imperfect or inaccurate results, they were thinking along the right track.

On a different but related note, it seems to me that science assumes that the fabric of space-time is uniform throughout the universe. Why should continuity be confused with uniformity? Perhaps, the fabric is denser in certain regions and thinner in others. If we hadn’t known better, we might have assumed that the ocean is a uniform mass, just because on the surface it appears to be solidly continuous. However, careful examination will likely yield that ocean water varies from region to region.

Interestingly, the ancients divided the universe into concentric zones. Perhaps, there’s some truth to that idea or at least, to something like it.

I think it is wise for science to develop a discipline devoted to the study of the very fabric of space-time. It might tell us at least as much about our universe as the advanced telescopes do.

------------------------O----------------------

Av

The Jewish month of "Av" is about relationships. This is a special month of the year. It's about hearing, deep hearing. It's the "Shema" affirmation prayer,  where we inwardly hear our own minds contemplate Your Oneness and by extension Your Infinity. We feel our connection with You, our Oneness in You and then pull away ever so slightly from that state to feel "love" with You; Your love, our love, the same love. We feel our relationship with You, with all others, with ourselves. It's the same relationship.

Can Your Infinity fit in our hearts, as some would claim? Does it matter? It only matters that I share love with You. In the experience of love one forgets levels. One forgets to bring along the measuring rod. One forgets what a measuring rod is or even what a measure is. I know not where Your kiss begins or mine ends. It's one continuous kiss.

This is what it's like to share love! Relationships may have and should have "Adar" moments,  giddy moments. But like the month of "Av", it's mostly serious business. It's commitment and work, but, also the very best of what it means to be human in every sense.

So, far from being frightened of "Av", I pray to embrace its gifts to build relationships, strong ones! Just like the high priest Aaron had. When we wholly accept the gifts, there are only blessings!

---------------O--------------

Grasping a Thought In Your Hand

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Trying to understand the Creator with a human mind is like trying to grasp a thought with a hand.

(Tanya II 9)
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Early on in my Kabbalah classes, I usually teach my students that Kabbalah does not teach us about our Creator. Rather, Kabbalah only teaches us about our Creator's revelations. Sometimes students react to this teaching with a puzzled look.
 
I remember the first time I myself encountered this teaching. It was a real let down! I engaged a Rabbi to teach me about my Creator and all he can offer me were teachings about something else.
 
To help my students rapidly get passed a moment where they might be experiencing an unsettled state of mind, I immediately do an exercise with them. The purpose of the exercise is to help them appreciate the limits of the human mind when it comes to grasping certain very elevated realities.
 
I’d select a popular student and ask him to try to grab a thought in his hand.
 
Typically, the student will shoot me this man, are you from out of space look.

Then in feigned seriousness I’d ask the student, “Why can’t you catch the thought? Come on ... maybe you just didn’t try hard enough. Please try again.”

To which the student wanting to duck out of an impossible task will respond, “Hands are not designed to grasp thoughts.”

Then I’d quip, “Neither are minds tools designed to grasp the Creator!”

With this exercise the student has come to appreciate on his own why he cannot grasp the Creator and comfortably self-adjusts his own learning expectations.

Appreciate and Enjoy!

Last night I curiously tried a "new fruit", a pamelo. It was large and looked luscious. I dug in my fingers and with great effort started peeling off the skin with the rind. There was such thick skin and rind that by the time I was done, about 10 minutes later, to my surprise the actual fruit was just about the size of a standard ruby red grapefruit - far smaller than expected. It also tasted like a slightly toughened ruby red grapefruit. The experience prompted the following thought, "I could have spent two minutes peeling a ruby red grapefruit with just as satisfying results. Why is all this extra effort necessary to achieve the same basic effect?"

Truthfully, the Creator has the ability to easily provide us with everything we need and want. Why do we have to exert effort, toil and often wade through a series of difficult experiences before attaining our goals? What role does human hardship play in the Creator's plan?

It seems likely that one of the answers is simply the word, "appreciation".

Appreciation is the fruit of hardship. When we experience difficulties along the way towards attaining our goals, we have also attained a deeper appreciation for those goals. A person who inherited a fortune usually does not appreciate it nearly as deeply as a person who toiled for his/her fortune. Similarly, a person who has found relationships easily usually, does not appreciate relationships on as deeply as someone who has been challenged in that area of life.

Part of any experience in life is the conscious appreciation of the experience. It could be said that what we did not appreciate we did not truly experience. A person who mindlessly ate ice cream doesn't truly experience the ice cream. However, if s/he ate the ice cream with deep appreciation then every morsal was bliss.

What difficulties and challenges add to an experience is the "appreciation factor". Without this detail every moment of life is literally tasteless, has no flavor.

Imagine an earthly visitation by a space alien whose species is naturally agile and acrobatic. Jumpinging 30 feet in the air followed by a series of mid-air flips and landing upright takes him about as much effort as it would take for a heathly human being to take a shallow breath.

It happens to be that his space craft lands discreetly in a forest besides a large circus tent. From behind the trees, he notices people filing into the tent. Feeling curious, he discreetly follows them and discovers a hiding place to view what's about to happen.

In this circus the acrobats are first to entertain the waiting crowd. A midst heavy clapping and cheering they perform their arial antic. The confused alien has no idea what the cheering is all about because for him these feats are nothing because he easily outperform the acrobats. He's clueless about how difficult acrobatic are for humans. Therefore, he has no "appreciation" for he just saw and certainly did not enjoy it.

On the other hand, the human audience was enthralled. They paid good money to see this performance. Their satisfaction comes from having some "appreciation" for just how difficult acrobatics truly are.

Appreciation allows us to taste the sweetness in an experience. Going back to the opening story, because of the effort it took to peel the pamelo I certainly enjoyed it a lot more than I would of enjoyed a ruby red grapefruit - even though for the most part both fruits are alike. My heightened enjoyment had nothing to do with the biology of taste. It was all simply in the appreciation evoked by increased toil.

With this background in mind, one of the greatest spiritual mysteries can be brought closer to human understanding. Why is it that though the Creator loves each of us infinitely more than we can ever love ourselves, we have such difficulty feeling even a glimmer of His love?

Perhaps an answer is that if we have automatic access to feeling the bliss of His love, we would probably never taste it because we would not have built up sufficient appreciation for it. So He made us toil for this experience through a variety of devotional activities: meditation, prayer, charity, kindness, commands, study, character improvement, etc. This way we've developed the appreciation necessary to taste the love, whether on earth or in paradise.

Letting in the Light

A drop of light, dissipates much darkness
(A Hasidic Saying)
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Tonight, while coming home from work on the train, I closed my eyes in meditation, only to discover my heart engulfed in a tormenting sea of uncomfortable desires. At first I was not sure what to do? Then I realized that this is my meditation time and I should not allow myself to be lured away from it. So I started contemplating on the Creator's Oneness and how everything is truly One essence.

Soon enough, the contemplation did not remain cerebral, but my heart also joined in on the action. I was feeling an emotional impact. It was like the contemplation was going on in two places at once, each in it's own way. It was going on both in my mind and in my heart.

On the emotional side, there was a sensation that all reality radiates with the Creator's love. Whether my feelings were real or not, I was feeling truly loved by my Creator. It was a deliciously supportive feeling. I felt like no matter what, He's holding my hand. He wants me.

In this state of love, the unwanted desires just disappeared. They took off like an unsuccessful salesman who has just been shown that the customer already own a better version of his product.

There was no conscious effort to quiet these desires. Simply letting in the light did the magic all on it's own.

The Universe Needs a Creator

The universe needs a Creator because nothing can create itself. Why?

This is because there are only two choices of when something can create itself, either before it exists or after it already exists. Before it exists, it’s not there to make itself. After it already exists, there’s no need to make itself.

(“Duties of the Heart”, Gate of Unity)

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Today, reviewing this concept was the highlight of my daily Torah study session. In the course of today's study, I have learned so many deeper concepts. I was baffled about why this teaching really stood out in my heart and imagination. Why wasn't it one of the deeper teachings that lingered on in my heart when I closed my books?

At first I thought maybe because this teaching comes as representative of a special time and place - the medieval Golden Age of Spain. This period was really the renaissance before the renaissance. It was a special time and place of high achievement, education, discovery and the arts. After musing a while, I felt that this could be a reason, however, I felt deep inside that there was something more ...

Finally it dawned on me that I was being subtly tickled by the underlying humor of the logic. I found it funny to imagine something that does not yet exist working to the point of exhaustion to create itself. I imagined the non-existent's gyrations and struggles as it engaged in the futile effort to exert and sweat itself into existence - like zero engaging in the impossible struggle to become one.

I also found it funny imagining something already existing struggling very hard at the redundant act of creating itself. The unstated silliness had silently reached me.

Humor makes a great teacher, even in disguise.

Cosmic Dreamer

A teacher of mine taught:

"As dream characters are one with the dreamer,
So is all creation One with the Creator."
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What I love about this teaching is that it really provides a clear example to appreciate our relationship with our Creator. Think about it for a moment. A character that you meet in your dream is made up of you. Even if s/he feels to you like a separate identity, s/he's not at all separate from you. S/he's one with you.

Your being runs right through your dream character. S/he's through and through you - inside and outside. The only reason why for the moment s/he feels separate is because you're asleep. The moment you awaken, the illusion snaps and character's whole "identity" merges into his/her source in your identity, exposing a oneness with your own identity - a state s/he never really left.

This is how our identities (and indeed the identities of all created beings) are in relation to our Creator. He's the only real existing being. There is nothing outside of Him. So how do we exist?

We're like dream characters, temporarily under the illusion that we're separate idenitities, when in fact there is only Him. The only difference is that we're the only ones dreaming, He's not! He's fully awake. From His perspective all the dream characters never emerge as separate entities. There's just Him and all is merged with Him in Oneness. Only the characters themselves are caught up in the great cosmic dreamscape.

Varying levels of reality, like paradise and earth are just the characters' own varied experiences of lighter or deeper dream states. The earth plane, is a state of mind where the dream feels very heavy. Characters caught in this state are suffused with the sensation that they're really separate beings. It's rare to have any sense of the existence of a Source Being, let alone of being connected to Him as an Ultimate Identity from Whom all other identities emenate.

Paradise is an experience where beings are beginning to sense the presence of their Source Identity and feel intense pleasure from this amazing connection. While the sensation of being a separate identity continues, it is softer and more faded.

This teaching has practical implications in our day to day lives. We are all characters sharing the same cosmic dream. This makes us one identity with each other. As our right hands treat our own left hands, so we should treat each other. There's really only One Identity coursing through all of us.