The Lesson of Four Spirits

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Last night, I studied from the opening Zohar of “The Song of Songs”. Here, the Zohar explained that there are four spirits that the Messiah will have: (1) a spirit of God (2) a spirit of wisdom and understanding (3) a spirit of counsel and strength (4) a spirit of knowledge and fear of God. Yet, these four blend into a single spirit - giving the Messiah one spirit. 

How did they start off as four spirits?  The four are created by the kissing of the cosmic couple - the cosmic male and female. In kissing spirit is shared. So she takes in a bit of his spirit and he takes in a bit of her’s. Thus, each one now embodies two spirits, one’s own and one’s partner’s - making a total of four spirits. These four spirits then blend into individual souls born from their coupling - especially, the most ideal of souls, the soul of the Messiah himself. Thus, within him, these four spirits are actually a single spirit. However, within his singular spirit there remains a trace of the fourfold origin, which manifest as his four core divine expressions.

What fascinates me most, at this moment, might not necessarily be the central message of this Zoharic passage. It might be a bit off to the side. I am fascinated by how when the male spirit enters the female, it somehow becomes a distinct spirit. Similarly, when the female spirit enters the male, it too somehow becomes a distinct spirit. One would expect that the entering spirits either retain their identity of origin or take on the identity of their destination. I found their becoming counted as “distinct” a bit of a surprise.

There’s a great lesson here. Everything is shaped both by origin and destination, past and present, nature and nurture. This shows that if a person wants to change into a better ideal self and does not find the strength within to transform, it’s worth immersing oneself in an environment where the ideal is lived and breathed. Then the desired transformation is more likely to catch.

I know that this is a very humbling position and humility can be an emotionally painful place to be. Many enjoy the notion of being “self made” or “self perfected”. However, it appears that God wants humility on the journey. Therefore, He makes us need others who are already further along. 

However, lest one’s concerned that the new environment will dissolve all traces of individuality, this too is untrue. We see from this Zoharic passage that two of the spirits are first considered “distinct” because they are absorbed in a new environment. 

Let’s pray for the emotional wherewithal to be humble. So that we can go forth, find proper environments and spiritually grow.

Haman Tosh

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Today, I ate the very first “Haman tosh” cookie of the Purim season. Eating one reminds me that we’re in the season. It three corners are intended to symbolize Haman’s three cornered hat. I wonder why his hat had three corners, what could of it meant to him? 

In Jewish spiritual thought, a hat or crown, generally conveys a symbolism of something higher than oneself that s/he closely identifies with - something above one’s own head. In the case of Haman, what would have he held as higher than himself? It had to be a cause he was committed to. It was the destruction of the Jewish People and all Judaism stands for. It was to set up a “master race” of Amalek, a race where the powerful can exploit without the shackles of morality, justice and responsibility. This desire for ethnic supremacy is evident from the Prophet Samuel’s words to Agog, Haman’s ancestor, right before he sliced him up. He brandished Agog’s own sword and declared that as with this sword he made other women suffer childlessness, now “measure for measure” his mother will be childless among women. Where does dashing the dreams of mothers come into play with doing the Creator’s justice against an evil person? Obviously, a big part of his evil was that he was into ethnic cleansing.  He had no compassion for mothers of other nations.

The question is what does all this have to do with a three cornered hat? Amalek’s power comes from the absence of divine light. In the void created by the light’s absence, his lawlessness thrives, becoming the new law - a law that calls for the exploitation of the “weak” and the murder of any potential “dissenters”. He wanted to empty the three faceted framework of our universe, time, space and life, from all that truly makes it sweet - which are all manifestations of the divine light. He wanted the occult systems, which made no moral demands, to replace the Torah on the timeline of human history, in all places of human habitation and in all human hearts.

So as part of the Purim season celebration, we eat a three cornered cookie, to symbolize the three basic facets of our universe - time, space and life. We make sure that it’s filled with something “yummy” - like jam, prune, poppy seeds, pie filling, chocolate, etc. Yes, all sweetness comes from the divine light. So we fill it with something which manifested from the divine light. In contrast to Haman, we are committed to the cause of filling the universe with divine light. We then internalize it, by eating it. 

Yum!

Growth!

Freedom without direction is like soil without seed.
                          ~O~

"Aleph Dar" / Oneness Dwells

Yesterday, I was at a Carlebach styled Torah class. The teacher reminded that the word for this Hebrew month "Adar" divides into two words "Aleph" and "Dar". "Aleph" is the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet. It can mean "One" or "Leader". Therefore, it often refers to the Creator, as both terms easily suit Him. "Dar" is the Hebrew word for "dwell". Last Hebrew month, "Shevat" carried the theme of creating a vessel in our hearts. This Hebrew month,"Adar", carries the theme of filling the vessel with the Creator's holy light. During this month we use the vessel to create a dwelling place for His holy light. So "Adar" means "Aleph Dar" or the "Oneness dwells".  

The teacher went further to explain that the Talmud teaches there are four hearts that the Creator does not dwell in: a haughty egoist, a liar, a slanderer and a mocker. The implication is that if a person is clear from these undesirable traits, by default his/her heart is a vessel for the Creator's light.

When I reviewed this teaching today in contemplation, I realized that these four traits form a sequential chain: separation, distortion of truth, justification and rebellion.

A haughty egoist is not usually someone who has made a logical choice. Rather, s/he's usually emotionally disturbed by his/her vulnerability to the Creator and need to rely on others. Therefore, the egoist seeks separation and independence. S/he wants to stand out as flawless in some way in the eyes of others or at least feel like s/he's "ahead" of others.

Since this was an emotional choice and there's no real status given to choices made by emotion alone, the egoist seeks a justification - a “spin”, a distortion of truth, to make it look good. Here the truth is stretched, tailored, re-proportioned and often outright denied in order to provide justification for the position.

In the justification process, the “new outlook” casts ordinary people, very often doing ordinary things, in the wrong. All of a sudden, people who are merely humanly imperfect are “guilty” of ordinary and innocent acts which are now recast as socially “inappropriate” or even worse “crimes”. They are slandered in the court of social acceptance and find that for doing nothing other than struggling through life, the doors of human acceptance which should have been open for them are mysteriously closed.

However, there are circumstances where these measures don’t provide an egoist with sufficient justification. The truth of his/her dependency still nags deep within, refusing to be stifled, torturing with lashes of guilt . The egoist needs an even larger campaign of justification to deal with the voice that won’t stop crying. By reaching further out, s/he hopes at reaching deeper in. So the egoist takes up a campaign of rebellion. The rebellion begins by mocking the sources of dependency. By this, the rebel hopes to prove to self and all that the bonds of dependency are truly severed. But they’re not. The whole thing is a castle built on air. It’s a sham. No human is a self contained system.

This was what was at the core in the confrontation between Haman and Mordechai in the “Book of Esther”. Haman wore a mask of smug invincibility over his insecure weak and very dependent identity. Mordechai knew that he was vulnerable and knew whom he depended on. Never losing sight of this truth actually strengthened him. Meeting such a presence, threw Haman into uncontrolled fits of rage!

The story of the “Book of Esther” is the story of finding our true identities behind the masks we sometimes unconsciously put on. It’s in these true identities that the Creator seeks to dwell.

Time

Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto (18th Century Kabbalist) taught that time is caused by fluctuations in the universe's spiritual level.

~ "Divine Knowledge", page 115

Holy Party Time!

We are now at the beginning of Adar, the happiest month in the Jewish calendar - the month of Adar. Party time! Holy party time!

What's the difference between a party and a holy party? In general, a party is a celebration. A holy party is also a celebration, only it's a celebrates connection to the Creator. Truthfully, everyday should be a celebration of connection with the Creator, regardless of the month. However, Adar is the training grounds for constant joy. Indeed, the "Book of Formation" teaches that the character of Adar is "laughter". We laugh and laugh. We laugh caught up in the joy of the moment. We  laugh to train ourselves to laugh for through the upcoming monthly cycle, beginning with the month of Nisan.

Laughter and celebration is the great equalizer. Everyone, on every level, can enjoy a celebration. A wedding is the highest of celebrations. Opposites who were apart for so long, the couple, finally unite and finally  identity blend.  Male and female union on every level is the highest ideal of happiness and the source of every other kind of happiness. In language of Kabbalah the Ramchal expresses it such that happiness happens when the "kindnesses" sweeten the "severities", transforming them into "sweetness". This is a technical Kabbalistic way of saying that happiness happens when male and female unite, whether cosmically or personally. 

So if opposites equalize and unify in laughter and celebration at a wedding, so can everyone else. The couple sets the stage. The ripple effects of their unifying energy wave inspires people of all sorts and levels dance together and rejoice at their wedding. If this is so within the wedding hall of a human couple, how much more so is this true of the "wedding hall" of the cosmic couple - which is the whole of creation. Every kindness, every Mitzvah, causes the cosmic couple to unite. Their happiness and celebration ripples throughout the whole cosmos with bringing good cheer to all the inhabitants, the cosmic wedding guests. This is part of why there's an expectation that we perform our good deeds with much happiness and celebration - as we are bringing union to a couple so much more alive than a human couple. Can we even imagine what happiness and celebration means on that level? Wow!

From a certain angle of thought, it really could be said that the Creator created creation for the sake of happiness, celebration and laughter. There needs to be unifying for such amazing feelings to happen. Since the Creator is a perfectly seamless Oneness, in His Being alone all is already One. There's nothing to unify. So He made a creation where duality abounds. On every level, there's male and female yearning for union. Whenever He gives blessings to His creations unions happen and happiness, celebration and laughter follow. On the highest levels, it's deep cosmic laughter. On the lower levels, it's fragments of that laughter, more individualized. 

Keep laughing!

    

Holy Jealousy

The Zohar in this week's Torah portion (Terumah) discusses how the lower realms are jealous of the spiritual lights received by the upper realms. The Creator responds to the lower realms' lack with compassion and grants them more lights than they would have otherwise received.

The Zohar explains that this cosmic jealousy is the spiritual root of the Talmudic adage, which is usually translated as, "Competition among Torah scholars increases wisdom." The Zohar, however, reads this phrase a bit more literally as, "Jealousy among Torah scholars increases wisdom." The meaning is that somehow there's an increase in wisdom when Torah scholars are jealous of each others' spiritual attainments.

The Zohar explains that the "increase" happens because the jealousy evokes divine compassion, which moves the Creator to grant the scholars new gifts of wisdom. These new gifts mirror the new gifts of lights granted to the lower realms in compensation for their jealousy.

This passage in the Zohar teaches us that it pays to be jealous over another's spiritual attainments for a couple of reasons. Firstly, jealousy can encourage us about our own potentials, pushing us to grow even further. Secondly, like a silent prayer, the Creator's compassion can be stirred to help our spiritual growth along the way.