Both Upstream & Downstream, Mine is Yours ~ a prayer of connection

B”H

25 Tishrei 5773, at a Starbucks in Philadelphia

Dearest Sweet Beloved Divine Parent,

Thank You for this amazing opportunity to commune with You that You so kindly provide me with today and every day. For my own sanity and health I need to bring my heart into close proximity to Your light on a very regular basis. Otherwise, I am out of touch with so much of myself; as most of me drifts into slumber away from my Life Source.

It might be claimed that if I need Your fire to be illuminated then I’m not inherently luminous and all the bright corners of my emotional caverns are really lit by You. On some level, I feel great! And that’s all that matters. The ownership of the lights in my heart is irrelevant. On a deeper level, You own everything anyways. Even what I delude myself into believing I own, is totally Yours. The ultimate expression of this is that the length of our lives is not in our hands. The stability of our possessions and our circumstances is not in our hands. Yes, You made us co-creators, but, only as a temporary situation. And even within this temporary situation our roles are limited and You call the shots. So since in the ultimate sense I can’t lay real claim to anything that conventions of speech call, “Mine!”, I might as well find true happiness in simply the spiritual connections You allow me ~ without attaching ownership values to them.

Yes, it’s true that after the spiritual work of our era is done, You’ll tell each human being, “You’ve earned so many and so many units of intimacy with My Light.”

However, this is like a king who decreed land to a beloved. Since it became the beloved’s by a decree, the land never really left the king’s ownership. The king merely allowed space for the beloved to express her will on the land.

So even if my inner light is really Your Light, I’m happy. It might be claimed that my insights and feelings aren’t my own, but, You override what’s my own. They come from what’s moved within [me] by Your fire. Still, all true creativity is channeled. It all starts from the fountain where You and I meet. There, at the meeting place, there’s no distinction between You and I. That distinction first begins further downstream. At first it’s blurry, then hazy, then sharper and then sharp. However, it’s never real. For I never really ventured downstream. I only dreamed the journey, while the whole time cradled in Your nurturing bosom; never separate, never distinct. You dreamed through me [while infinitely awake].

Thank You [for this session in communion] …

Love and Kisses ...

Pregnant with Blessing and Light ~ a contemplative prayer

B”H

24 Tishrei 5773, 8:20 AM, Wed., at a Starbucks in Philadelphia

Dearest Sweet Beloved Divine Parent,

Thank You for this opportunity to commune with You this morning. Thank You for the holiday season from Rosh Hashanah through Simchat Torah. Those tuned into the message of Jewish mysticism know that this is just one long holiday undergoing different phases. In the most general sense one can easily see that Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur comprise the upper three sefirot of the season that elicits blessings for the next twelve months. Succot with its seven days, comprises the next seven sefirot. Between Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Succot a complete structure of ten sefirot are formed ~ making the blessings of the year ripe to be harvested. Then on the holiday of Shmini Atzeret/Simchat Torah we pray for rain and dance the blessings down to the ground, to the earthly level. This is just on the very superficial level. So to say that there’s so much more going on mystically is truly a vast understatement.

There’s a passage I came across in “Tree of Life” which enhances this perspective even further. From this perspective the whole year is seen as a single unit to give birth to new blessings in a broad sense#. The book “Tree of Life” explains that the basic elements of a successful birth of anything (people, blessings, consciousness, souls, living beings, rocks, etc.) are lights, sparks and vessels. In a very generalized sense the lights are soul, the vessels are the body and the sparks are what connect the soul and body to each other. Every detail in the entire creation has some version of body, soul and connective sparks; regardless of what level the entity is on (spiritual and/or physical).

Each of the three has its own length of processing during pregnancy. The lights are processed in seven months, the sparks in nine months and the vessels in twelve months. Since humans are usually born after nine months, the first three months of nursing and nurturing complete the twelve months needed for bodily development in the pregnancy sense.

The year’s efforts to give birth seem to have a similar flow. From Passover season through Simchat Torah is seven months. These are (in the hemisphere of Jerusalem) the warmest months and [thus, suited to] develop the lights. From Passover through Chanukah is a blend of weather, which climaxes with the tiny flames of the Chanukah Menorah. This corresponds to the sparks. After this the weather gets coldest. The full twelve months climax with the Purim season, when our bodies were saved. This corresponds to the vessels.

So this season [we just celebrated] was to fill out the lights. May it be light!

Thank you [for the insights] …

Love and Kisses ...

Waters of Joy!

I was thinking this week about our festival Succoth and its focus on celebrating water. We take this celebration to a climax on the final day of Succoth by celebrating with a "water plant", the willow, which tends to grow near streams. To me it seems like the uniqueness of water and willows are a flexibility that comes with having so much potential, only loosely formed.

This is a lot like the blessings that come down from heaven - until they reach the earthly realm, they don't yet have concrete form. They can manifest in many different ways, with surprising flexibility. This season we are praying that these heavenly waters take on sweet forms. Concurrently, we are also praying that our inner waters, our personal reservoirs of unformed potential, also take on sweet forms. This way the waters from above will be greeted by waters from below - reuniting some of what the Creator split apart on the second day of creation when He separated waters.

A true reunion!

“Drawing Water” ~ an inner prayer journey into an ancient festival

B”H

18 Tishrei 5773, Thurs., at a Starbucks in Philadelphia, PA

Dearest Sweet Beloved Divine Parent,

Thank You for the kindness of a few moments to commune with You. Thank You for allowing humans to commune with You. It’s a tremendous gift. Without this gift I’d feel so isolated and lonely. This gift keeps reinforcing that no matter what, Someone really cares about me ~ Someone really loves me. You care for even the lowliest, even the simplest. Perhaps, it’s best to rephrase that and say that You care especially for the lowliest and simplest. I know that it says in the Bar Yochai song, “Let us make man...’ was said for your sake”. The Talmud also relates that it was worth creating the entire world just for [the saintly] Rabbi Chaninah ben Dosa.

Yet despite this, we find that Rabbi Shimon [bar Yochai] was sent back to the cave for disturbing the life pattern of the lowly and simple people. Rabbi Chaninah himself only reached his levels of saintliness for embodying the qualities of the lowly and simple people. [Our Master] Moses’ soul was exalted beyond all the people. Yet, he was only granted prophecy for their sake. The holy [Rabbi Israel] Ba’al Shem Tov spent a lot of time with the lowly and simple. He lauded their ways to his more sophisticated disciples.

We are now in the midst of the “Celebration of Water Drawing”. In the Torah portion of “Nitzavim”, which is always read on the Sabbath morning prior to Rosh Hashanah, Moses tells the Jews, “You are standing today before the Eternal Being, your Lord...”. The Talmud comments that “today” means the day of great judgment, i.e. Rosh Hashanah. Then Moses continues with a list of societal roles, “Your heads, your tribes, your elders … till your water drawers.”

The “water drawers” are mentioned as the very last role because they were the lowliest, the least appreciated. Yet what was celebrated on the festival of Succoth [in Jerusalem’s Holy Temple]? “Water Drawing”. It’s so joyous that we still celebrate it, even if it’s only a simulation of the original.

Gathered in this celebration were certainly many “water drawers” ~ the underappreciated common folk  forgotten in history, who came to celebrate the pilgrimage festival in the Temple. The great sages wouldn’t communicate to these people with sophisticated teachings, but, rather with gestures and antics. They brought them the Torah in the entertainment suited as a teaching tool for the common folk; [just] like the Ben Ish Chai whose every gesture during his Purim dramatization for his community was laced with the depth of Kabbalah. Yet, even a small child was transfixed.

Thank You [for this prayer journal session] …

Love and Kisses …

“Free to Shine” ~ a meditation over Psalms

B”H

5 Tishrei 5773, Friday, at a Starbucks in Philadelphia

Dearest Sweet Beloved Divine Parent,

Thank You for opening up for me the Book of Psalms like never before. In the past, I was blocked from appreciating it largely because it appeared to me like prayers of a warrior to inflict the worst on his foes, often with disregard that they are people too ~ who love life and yearn to love and be loved.  So I’d look at the work with pained misunderstanding, “Why do i want to pray for people’s demise? Shouldn’t I rather pray for their enlightenment and that they change their ways?”

Yet, for years I endured what to a large extent felt like dour recitations, often glossing over the meaning of what I was saying. I endured these recitations because the Lubavitcher Rebbe said to say them and generations upon generations of good and saintly Jews have recited them. Besides, there were some Psalms with a happy and even optimistic message. Some Psalms contained wise teachings. While these thoughts kept me going, they didn’t get at an answer to my core revulsion.

However, this Rosh Hashana something clicked inside. In the back of my mind I remembered something Rebbe Nachman [of Breslov] remarked about the mention of enemies in Psalms. He remarked that all the times [when] Psalms mentions enemies, the text is referring to our inner tempter, whose surface efforts are designed to destroy; though his inner design is to build us through free choice.

[Taken] in isolation this statement just meant to me that we need to imbue Psalms with a contemporary application, since many of us are not members of the Jewish military. I felt that this was a holy and creative way to answer this revulsion that others like myself must have felt. However, it didn’t hit home with the [kind of] universal messianic cosmic message that helps me internalize it. My spiritual appetite wasn’t yet aroused.

Upon entering Rosh Hashana, You expanded this message for me to the extent that I was able to appreciate that by praying for the demise of the “enemies” in Psalms, I am actually praying for souls to be free to shine, to fulfill their true potentials.

Yes, it's a problem of the inner tempter, but, it's also a problem of his larger context; the spiritual forces he uses to limit perspectives and cast a net of selfishness over souls. To one extent or another many souls are caught in the clutches of these forces. These forces are the ‘enemies” Psalms refers to. By praying for their demise, I’m praying for the freedom of all human souls.

Thank You …

Love and Kisses ...

Fascinated by Souls ~ a reflective prayer/meditation

B"H

8 Tishrei 5773, at a Starbucks in Philadelphia

Dearest Sweet Beloved Divine Parent,

Thank You for the opportunity to commune with You on this beautiful early Autumn morning. Thank You for the opportunity to be at a family occasion yesterday. It was nice to share space and celebration with so many people who have a space of love in their souls for me. In some way its the family that I don’t constantly see who reminds me most that the real human being is the soul. In them I see the changes of the human body over time most vividly. Since I don’t see them overly regularly, the changes that creep up unnoticed on those who see them day-in and day-out have a better chance of being noticed. I can more easily notice who aged, who grew, whose face subtly changed, who gained weight, who lost weight, etc. Yet, in the warmth of their greetings the same person shine through the changes in bodily garb. We pick up our conversations as easily as if it was 20 years ago or so, when we didn’t live so far apart and we imagined that life would always be that way. Sharing a room and celebration with such people yesterday was profoundly warm. Thank You for the experience. Thank You for the joy and celebration.

Yet, truthfully even the body’s ability to garb the soul has limits. If the mind/brain isn’t working properly then the soul can’t properly don her most basic garment to interface with the world. She struggles to fit into a tattered garment, depending on the circumstances, with mixed success. This is what I experienced visiting an elderly sick relative in the hospital yesterday. She literally had trouble entering her brain/mind to carry on a normative conversation. To me, she appeared bewildered by the whole encounter and was pretty soon struggling to find a way to ask me to leave. Please heal her mind and body soon, very soon. I profoundly miss the person who once comfortably inhabited that mind and body. I also feel sad for her, profoundly sad. She’s my last living grandparent. Please extend a special revelation of Your compassion to her.

Each human being is a true treasure of Yours, a soul extended by Your Love into the earth plane, garbed with garbs upon garbs to make the extension possible. You honor the soul with such profound garbs, that the best scientists are still finding her outermost simplest garb too deep a mystery to fully grasp. Your relationship with each of Your treasures is truly unique. No soul can step into the sacred space of Your relationship with another soul ~ just like no child can step into the emotional space of his/her sibling’s parent/child relationship. On a real sense, each soul is truly Your Only Child!

Thank You for this reflective meditation/prayer.  

Love & Kisses ...

Celebrating Otherness

Listening to an interview with the Chief Rabbi of England left me with the impression that the job of our age is not to determine which faith is right or wrong, but, simply to get along. Celebrating "otherness" and reaching out to our fellow human beings in love across the ethnic, cultural and religious divide is probably the exact medicine our age needs.

He explained that the Creator is far bigger than religion and just like I can’t understand the uniqueness of my brother’s relationship with my parents, I can’t understand another religion’s unique relationship with our Divine Parent.