Live From Your Depths- Parshat Vayelekh

A few days ago, my wife Lisa and mother-in-law Bonnie (aka BB) were giving a bath to our three-year-old daughter. A few minutes after she got in the water, she looked up at Ima and BB and said, “Um, could you guys please put some toys in here so I don’t have to play with my feet?”

The mind loves things to play with. As children we call those play objects toys. As adults, we have different names for them, but they are essentially the same. They are stimulation. They are external content that we become fascinated with.

We don’t want to just “play with our feet”, or even worse, have nothing to play with at all. What could be worse for a child than to have to sit still, be quiet and do nothing? The mind craves and needs stimulation. For children, this stimulation is essential for the healthy growth of their brains, and so some kind of stimulation must be almost constant.

But at some point, that changes.

At some point, you might notice: all the stimulation, all the thinking, all the experiencing, wonderful and essential as they are, can be like the flaming sword of the keruvim, guarding the entrance to Gan Eden- the entrance to paradise.

At some moment, and maybe that moment is now, you notice:

There is an inner depth so vast, so beautiful, so alive, if you would only put down your toys and open to it.

That vastness is your own inner Divinity- Eloheikhem- it is awareness meeting the truth of the present moment- Eloheikhem Emet.

But many people never discover this, and remain identified and entangled in the noise of mental toys, in the mind’s perpetual narratives. This creates an experience of separateness, of craving for the wholeness that is actually there all along, beneath the mind. That craving can lead to great inner disturbance, and ultimately, all of the horrors that still plague humanity.

What is the remedy?

In the Talmud, Rabbi Levi Bar Chama says in the name of Rabbi Shimon Ben Lakish that when you feel yourself gripped by unwholesome motives, you should study some Torah (Berakhot 5a).

In other words, study some spiritual teaching that puts you in touch with your inner Divinity, just like you are doing right now! For the aim of spiritual teaching is not just to convey information, it’s to awaken your higher potential.

But, if that doesn’t work, he says to chant this verse:

“Sh’ma Yisrael Hashem Eloheinu, Hashem Ekhad-
Listen Israel, Existence Itself is your own inner Divinity; there is only One Existence.”

In other words, stop and become aware that God is not something “out there” or separate. All you need do is “listen” because this moment is nothing but God, if your thinking mind would relax.

And if that doesn’t work, there’s one more trick: Think of your own death.

The irony of children is that, on one hand, they are such bright little explosions of life, free and unencumbered by the heaviness that so many adults carry around with them.

And, at the same time, they are so utterly obsessed with things that are really trivial, as anyone knows who has had to negotiate “sharing toys” with three-year-olds.

But as adults, despite the years of psychic crust we accumulate in our nervous system, there is this tremendous opportunity for depth when we let go of everything. That is the contemplation of death. We will all die, but we can die before we die, surrendering into the reality of this moment, letting go of the story of “me”.

This week’s reading begins shortly before Moses’ death:

“Vayelekh Moshe-
Moses went and spoke these words...

‘Hayom lo ukhal…’-
‘today it is no longer possible for me to go out and come in…’”

When you live on the surface, in the mind’s narratives, there is this sense of “me” going here and there, doing this and that.

But in the “hayom”- in the “today”- there is no longer a “me” coming and going. In the present, you live from your depths that are far beyond your personal story. This is the death before you die.

It is told that a heavenly voice told the Baal Shem Tov that he would be denied life in the World to Come for some small sin he commited. When he heard this news, he jumped for joy and danced.

“Why are you so happy?” said the heavenly voice.

“Because now I can serve God for its own sake, without ulterior motive.”

In these days of teshuvah, leading to Yom Kippur- The Day of At-One-ment, may our commitment to live from our depths become ever more deep, and may that depth be revealed in our thoughts, words and actions. May we speedily see a day when all of humanity lives and loves from its true depth and potential!

Good Shabbos, and g’mar hatimah tovah-
May you be inscribed for all good things!
-b yosef