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!

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Delight in Love

The Dreamer and the dream are One.
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There is no separation between a Dreamer and his/her dream. Every detail in the dream from mental space, the dreamscape, the characters are really crafted out of the Dreamer’s own mental forces. They are One with the Dreamer, despite often seeming like they are separate entities with their own identities. This experience is only a passing illusion. As the Dreamer awakens, their “identities” disappear; merging back into their Source - the Dreamer’s own mind.

Perhaps, this relationship between the Dreamer and his/her dream exists in our lives to serve as a tiny reflection of a much grander reality – the relationship between the Creator and His creation. In the Creator’s kindness, He allows us a parable in our daily (or nightly) experience to help us climb up to the more abstract notion of His relationship with the creation.

However, the Creator does not “sleep”. In His case, only the characters feel the dream. He feels awake. While the characters are caught up in illusion of identity separation, He experiences everything as a single merged identity – Himself!

As earthlings, we do not easily access a sense that our identities are really part of His greater identity. In order to even begin, we need to feel beyond our boundaries of self – another being beyond own skins. Loving another human being is the beginning of this growth. We can feel our identity enlarged and enriched by its merger with another identity.

In essence, love is not about merging living space, bank accounts or even bodies. It’s about merging identities. A good question to mentally ask your self on a date is, “Would I be happy to become this person?”

It’s best to resolve this question before “getting involved”. Once “involved” you’re passed the stage of this question. Now you’re working to become one with each other.

By becoming one, a couple draws down a revelation of the Creator’s own Identity. They do this by drawing down their shared point of identity merger within the Creator. The couple’s field of love forms a crack in the illusory wall of distinct identities - allowing each other a tiny peek beyond the wall into the real Oneness.

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.