What Your Kindness does for my Heart ~ a prayer

Thursday 5 Elul 5772, 8:10 AM, at a Starbucks in Philadelphia

Dearest Sweet Beloved Divine Parent, Thank you for the opportunity to commune with You. Thank You for the constant kindnesses that I’m aware of and experience. My knowledge and awareness of them nourishes my focus on You. These kindnesses that You bring to my awareness nourish my faith in You. Of course as my Creator, You hide almost everything from for my own good. Just for starters: (A) it would be overwhelming (B) it may cause me to get in my own way (C) it will interfere with free choice. Yet, that little spark of awareness You allow me does so much for my relationship with You. It allows me to be inspired by You. It allows me to teach others Your ways. It reinforces for me that You are here and You care. It reinforces for me that You want a relationship with me.

Much of what a parent does for a child is behind the scenes. The child doesn’t know about it. In many cases, if the child were to overhear the parents’ plans on his/her behalf, the child still wouldn’t understand and trying to understand them would be confusing. Yet, every nurturing parent tries to do some things for a child that the child can relate to, understand and carry in his/her awareness. Why? To nurture a relationship with the child by managing the perception of the parent in the child’s mind and heart.

Similarly, Your kindness and Your ways [that] I can perceive, understand and relate to nurture my side of the relationship with You. Occasionally, there may be a very mature child who doesn’t require such a constant stream of reinforcement. This is compared to very high and big souls who don’t want spiritual pampering and view it as a sign of their growth and maturity that they no longer need such coddling and favors. However, I only relate to such a state as a metaphor. I don’t relate to it in a real way. So, I’m obviously a smaller and lower soul. I need spiritual treats and candies along the way to reinforce and nurture, to feel Your Involvement and Your Love.  Knowing that this is part of my needs, I thank You with a full heart for every drop of these perceptions of kindness You dote upon me. In fact, I beg of You to increase them - so I become more and more aware of You. It’s far more honest [for me] to be in Your Presence who I really am than to pretend a greatness, maturity and independence that’s not in me. In any event who can hide from Your all seeing and all knowing perception?

Thank You kindly for transmitting to me the words of this prayer. Love and Kisses …

Essential Attribute

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Recently, I read something interesting in Rabbi Bachya Ibn Pequda’s “Duties of the Heart”, section 1, chapter 9. It was a very elegant argument for the Creator’s Oneness based on ancient Greek philosophical notions, as echoed in the philosophy of Andalusian Jewry.

The argument is based on the notion of “essential and accidental attributes”. An “essential attribute” is a quality which is core to an entity. The entity simply cannot be without it and trying to remove it would remove the entity as well. Examples of essential attributes are wet to water or heat to fire. An “accidental attribute” is a quality which can be added to or removed from an entity without changing its core. It’s a secondary attribute, which an entity can exist with or without. An example is hot water. The heat is an accidental attribute because water is water, whether hot or not.

The argument:

Hot water acquires heat by being placed over a fire (or an energetic equivalent). In other words, fire supplies water with heat. Water does not have heat on its own. It needs to receive heat from an outside source - fire. Why? The answer is because for water, heat is an accidental attribute. Accidental attributes are never “native” to the entities which possess them. They need to be imported from essential attributes of other entities. Therefore, fire transmits heat to water and water transmits dampness to sponges.

Stylistically, accidental attributes are degraded versions of essential attributes. They are weaker than their corresponding essential attribute. Water can never be as hot as the fire that heated it up. Flawed attributes are clearly accidental, not essential. Throughout creation, the notion of oneness is flawed because it’s not real oneness. It’s unified multiplicity. Every oneness within the vast span of creation is composed of parts, multiplicity in space, and is subject to change, multiplicity in time.

These flaws of multiplicity cast all onenesses in creation as accidental attributes. Like “where there’s smoke there’s fire”, where there are accidental attributes there must be a transmitting essential attribute, feeding it with continuity. Therefore, there must exist a perfect Oneness which feeds all these imperfect onenesses with continuity. Since this Oneness is perfect, void of multiplicity, it can only belong to One Entity - namely, the Creator.


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Change

How come I see so many people trying to change the "systems" they live in?

Why not try to raise the energy level of "blessings" in our lives by doing more kindness and the "systems" will probably fall into place on their own.

Love Drunk - a prayer

B”H

A Written Prayer: 29 Menachem Av 5772, 8:05 AM, in a Starbucks in Philly

Dearest Sweet Beloved Divine Parent, Thank You for Your kindness of allowing me time to emote to You this morning. I’m truly thankful.

Last night I posted our session from the other morning, the one that points out that it’s the level of blessing and not the system’s style that determines success. However, I’m having some second thoughts about whether it was such a good idea to post a prayer where my heart truly went drunk. Will people understand that a prayer isn’t an essay?  One’s a spontaneous outburst of emotions. The other is logically crafted and woven. In any event, it’s up. This morning I need to drink from the waters of intimacy with You once again. If I get drunk in the light of Your Love, let it happen! It’s nourishing. It’s not an optional substance. It’s a nutrient of the soul. Actually, it’s a “nutrient infusion” the soul yearns for the heart to ingest. You are my life itself and I’ve been yearning for this moment in spontaneous heartfelt prayer since the conclusion of yesterday’s session.

In You and with You I feel comfortable crying, in every shade of emotion, in You alone! ...

(the central content of this prayer is too private to share) ...

Please in the sanctuary of this cafe’ hold me like a coffee cup and drink from my emotions. Do You feel my love for You, my voluntary love for You? Do You take in my fear of upsetting You? Do You feel how I yearn for You to be happy and pleased with me? Do You feel how I yearn to truly know what I can personally do to make You happier and please You further and how I wish for messages and communications from You, on the matter, [in a way] that makes sense to me?

It’s time for me to attend work. Please Lover come and accompany me. Thank You for Your Love. Thank You for this time with You.

Love and Kisses …

Higher and Sweeter - a prayer

A Written Prayer: 27th of Menachem Av 5772, 8:04AM in a Starbucks Cafe’ in Philly.


Dearest Sweet Beloved Divine Parent, Thank You for this beautiful and happy day. Thank You that I’m here communing with You. It’s really special to allow the spirit in my heart to emote to You in prayer. My heart is hollow for the blood that carries my spirit. With her beat, her walls vibrate a prayer to You, which pen or tongue place into words or better yet, "craft into words".

I am feeling a wish for the world to operate ... I mean for humanity to operate with greater kindness. I wish for war and conflict to disappear and for humanity’s whole focus to revolve around how can we share and do kindness for another. I know that the changes we are all hoping for has much more to do with receiving Your blessing than changing jobs, people in our lives, political systems, religions, economic systems, whose in control, how medical services are dispensed, etc.

Every situation has a higher and sweeter version. With Your blessing, situations can be transcended into that higher and sweeter version - simply as natural extensions of what they already are. There’s no real falsehood, only limited perspectives. So the real remedy is to expand the perspective. Once blessing flows in, the light on its own dispels rigidity, stubbornness and blockages.

The Alter Rebbe again and again reiterates that our emotional states are not in our own hands. They are transmitted to us by You. That’s why he enjoins us to elicit Your blessings  via the distribution of alms. As counter-intuitive as it may seem to the western mindset, the Alter Rebbe teaches that by this kindness a person will be able to receive a very kind gift from You - the ability to feel true love and reverence for You while in prayer.

It occurs to me that if doing kindness can elicit serious changes in the way the heart feels - couldn’t doing kindness elicit Your kindness to shine on other areas of our lives as well and lift up every situation to enter the space of its “better and sweeter self”?

This is why I am praying to You  to open people’s hearts to kindness. Please open us up to the “master key” to all that’s blocked and locked; namely, kindness. We need Your help to attain that “flexible heart of flesh” which emotes and vibrates us to pray and help. Please …

I specifically look back to my childhood religious upbringing which wasn’t too Zionistic, but, very much focused on Moshiach. What was the underlying inherent thought behind how the people I grew up around were expecting that a Moshiach which can arrive in a “flash”, at any second, was going to rebuild our Holy Temple on the site of what is essentially regarded as a central Moslem shrine and of Christian significance?

The answer is very simple. The Kotzker once said that Moshiach will show the idolaters that they basically had the right idea, they merely focused too low on their own self admitted heavenly hierarchy. The meaning is that if all religions ascend high enough in their perspective, they all become monotheistic - they all find greater truth. However, we need to be blessed with a higher more inclusive perspective. The human mind only arrives at that mental space via Your blessing. We need You to help us with the kindness that will elicit the blessings of opening our minds and hearts.

This will lead to the unity of all perspectives into a single highly flexible and compatible perspective, where everyone can meet each other.

Thank You for this prayer. Love and Kisses …

Presence / Revelation

This week’s Torah portion Re'ah begins with the Creator commanding the Jewish People to limit their devotional sacrifices to the place of His choosing; ultimately meaning the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. The common question is,”If the Creator is equally present all over, why doesn't He accept offerings from anywhere?”

The author of the work Tanya, Rabbi Shnuer Zalman of Liadi, offers a unique approach to this question by using the human being as his/her own parable. He explains that a human soul is equally present throughout the body. Yet, the soul’s main revelation is in the brain. Similarly, while the Creator is present everywhere, His main revelation is in the Holy Temple. The Creator’s presence and revelation aren’t necessarily the same. He could be present and yet, not revealed. That’s why sacrifices and certain other devotional services require that site.

On Earth !

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Heaven's agenda is on earth!