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Integral Kabbalah for the Days of Awe
Class #2: Hokhmah – Spaciousness “Hashiveinu – Return AGAIN”
Friends – as we count down to this year's High Holy Days with Torah of Awakening and Urban Adamah, we are planning an audio component to capture the music and feel of how we normally gather.
Check out this rough mix of the Hashiveinu by Shlomo Carlbach, sung by Jeannette Ferber, Kohenet Yael Schonzeit, myself and all of BRIAH, featuring Jason Ditzian on clarinet, Josh Miele on bass, Yari Mander and Craig Miller on drums and percussion: 
Some disciples of Reb Pinhas of Korets once asked him why, when he prayed, was he not wildly ecstatic in his devotions the way many other Hasidim were. Reb Pinhas replied, “As you know, the point of prayer is to divest oneself from all separateness, to merge with the Divine, and this is a kind of death. Our sages tell us that there are two kinds of death – there is the kind of death that is as hard a rope being pulled through the ring of a mast, and there is the kind of death that is as easy as removing an eyelash from a glass of milk. It is the second kind of death that I have been granted in my prayer.”
The Reality that we call “Divine” is nothing but the “Being-ness” of things; it is the basic “Is-ness,” the Mystery of Existence Itself. As such, we are never and can never be separate from It. But, we generally remain unconscious of this fact, because the “Is-ness” of our own being – that dimension of our experience that is devoid of specific quality yet glowing softly behind all qualities – is consciousness itself, and consciousness tends to be aware of objects rather than its own subject-hood. This is not to say that we are not aware of our “selves” – just the opposite. As we move through the world, we tend to split reality into two parts – “me” and “everything else.” The problem is that we don’t know who “me” really is; we assume we are our thoughts, our feelings, our stories. We feel we are a spirit trapped in our bodies, looking out. We identify with one small aspect of ourselves – the aspect of thoughts and feelings – and call that “me.” But this ordinary “me” is actually just another object among objects, perceived by and living within the vast field of awareness that we are. This field of awareness, formless and borderless, is the true “I” hidden within plane sight, the vast inner “heavens” within which the “earth” of all particular experiences come and go: בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית בָּרָ֣א אֱלֹהִ֑ים אֵ֥ת הַשָּׁמַ֖יִם וְאֵ֥ת הָאָֽרֶץ׃ In the beginning (Bereisheet), Elohim created the heavens and the earth… (Genesis 1:1) This first pasuk of the Torah hints at this fundamental duality of our experience – the shamayim, the “heavens” of consciousness and the aretz, the “earth” of everything else that is perceived by consciousness. And yet, within this hidden duality there is actually an even more deeply hidden unity, because everything we perceive is literally a form of consciousness. For example, look at your hand. Ordinarily you might think that you are perceiving something that exists separate from the perception, that the hand exists whether you are looking at it or not. And this is most likely true. But, the image of the hand that you perceive is something that lives entirely within your field of awareness. The real hand might be separate, but your perception of the hand is an image that is literally made from the ethereal substance of consciousness itself. On this level of actual experience, the duality of perception and perceived collapses into one – there is only consciousness, taking on different forms and perceiving those different forms. This is hinted at by the Divine Name: בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית בָּרָ֣א אֱלֹהִ֑ים – Bereisheet Bara Elohim – In the beginning, Gods was creating… Elohim means “gods” – it is a plural word, conjugated in the singular: bara – “was creating.” This fusion of plural and singular is an expression of this basic fact of experience, of the multiplicity of experience all being part of one reality we call consciousness. In Kabbalah, this field of awareness within which thought arises is called Hokhmah, “Wisdom,” and is the second sefirah of the Tree of Life. The connection between hokhmah and our opening pasuk is further expressed in this verse from Psalms: רֵאשִׁית חָכְמָה יִרְאַת יְהֹוָה, שֵֽׂכֶל טוֹב לְכָל עֹשֵׂיהֶם, תְּהִלָּתוֹ עוֹמֶֽדֶת לָעַד: The beginning of wisdom (reisheet hokhmah) is awe of the Divine, good comprehension comes to all who practice this; praise of the Divine endures eternally… (Psalm 111:10) That is, if we wish to recognize hokhmah, the field of awareness that is the reisheet, the “beginning” or root of all experience, we should begin with yirat Hashem – that is, respect and awe for the Mystery of Being that is behind all existence, from which nothing is separate. Why? Because our consciousness is a microcosm of Reality as a Whole: Just as the entire content of our experience is not separate from the consciousness that perceives it all, so too all things are not separate from the “Is-ness” from which and within which everything springs and eventually returns. The Divine is Elohim, encompassing the multiplicity of all things, and is also Yod-Hei-Vav-Hei, the underlying Being-ness of it all. This is why God is also HaMakom – the “Place” within which everything is happening. This realization is both the method and the fruit of meditation. There is a hint in the parshah: אֵ֣לֶּה הַדְּבָרִ֗ים אֲשֶׁ֨ר דִּבֶּ֤ר מֹשֶׁה֙ These are the words that Moses spoke… (Deuteronomy 1:2) “These” is eleh, and “words” is devarim, which also means “things.” When we place together the last part of devarim (im) with eleh, we get Elohim, the Divine Unity that expresses Itself in all multiplicity. All words (devarim) arise first as thoughts within the field of consciousness, just as all things (devarim) arise within the open field of Existence. These two fields, the micro and the macro, are represented by “Moses,” which is Mosheh – מֹשֶׁה – mem, shin, hei. Each of these three letters represent a particular quality of consciousness (micro) and Being-ness (macro): מ Mem is mayim, water, effortlessly taking the shape of whatever vessel it enters, just as consciousness takes the shape of whatever is perceived, and Being takes the shape of all things. ש Shin is fire, making light which radiates light infinitely outward and meets whatever it falls upon, just as consciousness perceives whatever it meets without discrimination, and the underlying (Divine) “Presence” of Being give existence to and shines from all things, without discrimination. ה Hei is the “H” sound, the sound of the breath, which is air – the medium within which our lives unfold. The breath is also the medium of words (devarim) as speech, just as thought arises spontaneously in the field of consciousness, and all things arise within the “space” of Reality. There is also a hint in the haftora: שִׁמְע֤וּ שָׁמַ֙יִם֙ וְהַאֲזִ֣ינִי אֶ֔רֶץ כִּ֥י יְהוָ֖ה דִּבֵּ֑ר בָּנִים֙ גִּדַּ֣לְתִּי וְרוֹמַ֔מְתִּי וְהֵ֖ם פָּ֥שְׁעוּ בִֽי׃ Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth, For the Divine has spoken: “Children I have made great and exalted — And they have rebelled against Me! (Isaiah 1:2) Not only do the “heavens” of awareness “hear,” but “earth” as well – because the “earth” of our perceptions are also made from awareness; the realization of this is the bringing together of heaven and earth within our own being, a small but crucial and irreplaceable step in the bringing together of heaven and earth in the world. How do we do this? The key is to return frequently to the Truth of who we really are. It is natural for the momentum and drama of life to pull us away from this Truth, and there is nothing wrong with that. Just as we must stop breathing for a moment to swallow food and water, so too we must temporarily turn away again and again from the Truth of our being to accomplish things in time. The crucial thing, however, is to start breathing again after we swallow – that is, to Return, and to Return frequently. How do we do that? הֲשִׁיבֵֽנוּ יְהֹוָה אֵלֶֽיךָ וְנָשׁוּבָה חַדֵּשׁ יָמֵֽינוּ כְּקֶֽדֶם Hashiveinu Adonai Eilekha V’nashuvah Hadeish Yameinu K’kedem Return us, Hashem, to You, and we will return; renew our days as in the beginning… (Lamentations, Eikha, 5:21) Expressing the desire of the heart to return is itself to return. The traditional practice is to daven three times per day, plus the many small prayers and blessings that are said throughout the day. The point is to frequently leave behind the time and mind-bound separate self-sense, and to “remove the eyelash from the milk” again and again, thereby stitching together the world of time with the Eternal Present, binding words to the wordless, connecting our deeds back to the silent field within which they unfold…
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More on Devarim...
The Lifeguard – Parshat Devarim
8/7/2019 0 Comments I have a memory of being very young, maybe three or four, and my parents (probably mistakenly) took me to some kind of vacation resort. We were by the pool, and I saw someone running. I had heard that running wasn’t allowed, so I went up to the lifeguard in his tall chair and yelled up to him: “Is it true that there’s no running allowed around the pool?” “That’s right,” he said. “Okay,” I answered, and proceeded to dart off past him. In an instant, he tossed his whistle up in the air, caught it in his mouth, and emitted a piercing whistle blast that caught me in my tracks. I froze. “Don’t you run,” he said. I had been thinking about the other person I saw running, and my brain hadn’t applied the rule to myself. How similar it is with remembering not to “run” away with our own thoughts and feelings… It’s relatively easy to see when someone else is trapped by their thoughts and feelings. We see someone being defensive, angry, or complaining, or blaming, and it’s easy to diagnose. But when we become annoyed with that person for getting caught, how easy it is to get caught ourselves; we resist the resistance of others, and can’t see that we ourselves are resisting. While it would certainly be desirable for everyone to wake up from the dream of ego, we can only ever wake up ourselves. Yes, there is a synergy between people; awakening begets more awakening, and unconsciousness begets more unconsciousness. But at the end of the day, the choice to awaken – meaning, the choice to receive and accept this moment as it is – is an essentially individual matter; you can only do it for yourself, right now. So, in the moment that we perceive the ego of someone else and forget to be aware of our own, we must remember: there is only one time to be awake, and that time is always now. This can be difficult because now is constant; we tend to be unconscious of things that are constant, like our breathing, for example. But how can we constantly remember? The key is to use that which is not constant to remind us of the constant, to use time and change to stay awake to the Changeless and the Timeless. וֶהֱוֵי זָהִיר בְּמִצְוָה קַלָּה כְבַחֲמוּרָה Be careful with a light mitzvah as with a grave one… -Pirkei Avot, 2:1 There are lesser and greater mitzvot; obviously, the mitzvah to light a Shabbat candle is not as great as the mitzvah of not murdering someone, for example. And, yet, this mishna is saying we should be just as careful with the lesser ones as with the greater ones. How can this be? If we should be just as careful with the lesser ones as with greater ones, doesn’t that destroy the whole idea that are lesser ones and greater ones? The word for “careful” is zahir, which can also mean “watchful” or “attentive.” Understood this way, it is not saying that it is just as important to observe the lesser mitzvot as the greater ones; it’s saying that no matter what mitzvah you are doing, you should be just as zahir – you should be just as attentive, just as present. And furthermore, it is our awareness of the very fact that not all mitzvot are equal that reminds us: even though the mitzvot are not all equal, we can bring equal presence to them all. And, as different as the various mitzvot are, even more varied are our moments in life; you cannot compare a moment of childbirth or a moment of death to a moment of putting toothpaste on your toothbrush. And yet, the message is: hevei zahir – be present in all moments, great and small. And, use your awareness of the great and small to remind you: the moment to be zahir is always this moment. לֹֽא־תַכִּ֨ירוּ פָנִ֜ים בַּמִּשְׁפָּ֗ט כַּקָּטֹ֤ן כַּגָּדֹל֙ תִּשְׁמָע֔וּן Don’t show favoritism in judgment; like the lesser as the greater, you shall listen. -Deuteronomy 1:17 In this verse from the Parshat Devarim, Moses is telling the Israelites how the judges should behave: they shouldn’t show favoritism, but they should judge fairly, not giving preference to either the poor and powerless or to the great and powerful. But on a metaphorical level, kakaton kagadol – regardless of whether the moment is mundane and insignificant or crucially important, tishma’un – listen! Be fully present. Why? Because in being fully present, you are being what you truly are, beneath and beyond the small, partial self that is constructed of thoughts and feelings, the self that judges lesser and greater, the self that prefers this over that. At the core of your being and beyond the border of all that you perceive, you are presence, vast and unconditionally free. And even more, that presence is truly the One Presence, the One Reality present in all things, awake right now through your own senses, ever creating and perceiving Itself, That from which all arises to Which all will return. When Rabbi Yitzhak Mer of Ger was a boy, someone said to him: “My boy, I will give you a gulden if you can tell me where God lives.” The boy replied, “I will give you two gulden if you can tell me where He doesn’t!” The Waiting Room– Parshat Devarim 7/18/2018 0 Comments A friend once asked me, "I don't understand this stuff about being present. What if the present sucks?" There's a dimension of our experience that is beyond the particular experience we're having– beyond our feelings, thoughts and sensations. That's our consciousness that's aware of the feelings, thoughts and sensations. That consciousness is similar to the empty physical space that allows us to exist physically. We're often not aware of the physical space, but without it, we couldn't be here. Similarly, without the space of awareness, there can be no experience. Being present doesn't just mean to be aware of what's going on in our experience, but more importantly, it means to be aware of the space within which it's happening. As you become aware of the space of awareness, you come to know yourself as this space, rather than as the content of the space– your particular thoughts and feelings. And as you come to know yourself as this space more and more deeply, your thoughts and feelings and sensations begin to resonate with the space, and that creates a feeling-sense of freedom, bliss and joy. But this all requires some trust in the process, because sometimes the experience of the present can be horrible, and you'll want to resist, to run away and hide or fight tooth and nail. But if you treat the present moment as an opportunity to be Presence, then every experience becomes a steppingstone to greater freedom and joy. This is reflected in Pirkei Avot, 4:21: "Rabbi Yaakov says, 'This world is like a waiting room before the World to Come. You should work on yourself in the waiting room, so that you can enter the banquet hall.'" The common understanding of the "World to Come" is that of the afterlife. But the hint here is that there's an eternal dimension of experience that's available now, though you may not yet be aware of it. If you're not yet aware of it, you have to "work on yourself in the waiting room"– meaning, treat your temporal experience as an opportunity to practice being present, and you will come to enter the "banquet hall"– that eternal dimension of experience that is the space of your own awareness. In this week's Torah reading, Parshat Devarim, Moses begins recounting the journey of the Israelites. Much of the actual story is simply skipped over, but then Moses emphasizes the incident with the spies: The spies go to investigate the land. They bring back the report that the land is great, but their are "giants" in the land and they should turn back. Hashem says that because of their cowardice, they will never enter the land, and only their children will enter. Then the Israelites say, "No no! We were just kidding!" They run up the mountain to do battle with the "giants" and are slaughtered. Talk about being out of sync! But what a wonderful metaphor for such a common disfunction– the disfunction of not being in alignment with the reality of the moment. One moment calls us to fight, the next calls us to retreat, If we're not in alignment, if we're spending energy wishing that things are other than they are and responding to how we think things should be rather than how they are, we get in trouble. But if we know ourselves as the space within which our experience is arising, we can easily align with the needs of the moment and act appropriately, fearlessly going to battle when we must, and surrendering when we must, rather than the other way around. There's a story of Rabbi Yitzhak Eisik, who had a condition that caused him extreme pain his whole life. His doctor asked, "How can you take all that pain without grumbling or complaining at all? "You would understand if you knew how I see pain," replied the rebbe. "I regard pain as a scrubbing of the soul, like putting a coin in a strong cleaning solution." "But how can you take that level of pain for so long? You've had it nearly all your life!" "It's not a question of how long. Whatever pain I've had in the past is over; it doesn't hurt anymore. Whatever pain is to come is in the future doesn't yet exist, and so I don't have to bother with that. I only need to be aware of the pain that's happening right now, and that's totally doable!" As we approach Tisha B'Av, the holiday of pain and destruction, may we be cleansed by whatever pain arises, making way for something beautiful and new to emerge from the depths of our souls, healing ourselves and the world... The Great River- Parshat Devarim 8/10/2016 6 Comments Have you ever had the experience of finding yourself in conflict with someone, and then realizing that the same conflict has happened a thousand times before, in different forms? It is as if the conflict is a virus, a replicating pattern. It has no real life of its own; it is just a dead, repetitive, automatic story that lives off your life energy, playing itself out again and again. Once there was a scorpion who was looking for a way to get to the other side of a river. As he searched up and down the banks, he came upon a fox who was about to swim across. “Please let me swim on your back!” implored the scorpion. “No way!” replied the fox, “You’ll sting me!” “Why would I do that?” argued the scorpion, “If I stung you, we would both drown.” After thinking about it, the fox agreed. The scorpion climbed up on his back, and the fox began to swim across. But, when they were about half way across the river, the scorpion stung the fox. As the poison began its work, the fox started to sink. “Why did you do it?” said the fox, “Now we’ll both drown!” “I couldn’t help myself,” said the scorpion, “It’s in my nature.” Is it in your nature to always react in the same old ways, perpetuating the same old conflicts? Or is there a way out? Of course there is a way out, but it can be difficult because the old patterns are usually motivated by the desire to escape pain, and it’s totally natural to want to escape pain. Something happens, someone does something, and it triggers a painful emotional response. You naturally want to avoid this pain, so you lash out unconsciously or passive aggressively or whatever, in an attempt to vent the pain and punish the one who caused it. But, it doesn’t work, because it just perpetuates a dynamic that guarantees the cycle will continue… that is, until you wake up. To wake up means to see the pattern, and to stop feeding it. This usually means feeling the triggered pain on purpose, without doing anything about it... just being with it. You might think that a lot of meditation can help you “just be with it,” but sometimes the opposite is true. Meditation can give you beautiful and blissful experiences. If you get attached to those experiences, then the pain that life brings can sometimes be even harder to endure. I often hear people lament about having to come down from the lofty mountain of the spirit to deal with the pain of life. It reminds me of a passage I read in one of Ram Dass’ books, where he talks about coming down from a spiritual high and literally “seeing” a tidal wave coming toward him- a tidal wave made out of all the broken relationships, tedious responsibilities, unconscious expectations- the whole mess. It’s natural to resist the pain of that tidal wave! And yet, what are you resisting? What are you holding on to? There is nothing but the Divine, unfolding in ever-new ways through time. If you cling to the spiritual experience of a moment ago, you lose its most important message: God is speaking in and as everything. The unfolding of life in time is God’s Speech. Open to it, as it is. This week’s reading- Devarim, the beginning of the Book of Deuteronomy- gives some beautiful hints of this truth. “Devarim” means “Words”- the words spoken by Moses to the Israelites. They too stand by a river, preparing to cross, and Moses tells them the story of their journeys. He begins by recounting the highest moment, when they stood at Mt. Sinai and heard God speak to them. But does he tell them about all the Torah they learned there? No! He tells them only one piece of Torah- “Rav lakhem shevet bahar hazeh! “It’s too much already for you to still be dwelling by this mountain! Turn and journey for yourselves!” In other words, don't be the scorpion! Life is change. The world is turning; you must turn with it. The journey is “for yourselves”- it is for your own happiness and fulfillment that you have to not cling to your idea of happiness and fulfillment! Then it says, “Uvo’u har ha’emori- and come to the mountain of the Amorites…” On the surface, this is talking about a tribe called “Amorites” that live on a mountain in the Promised Land. But the word for “Amorites” has the same letters as the verb “to speak”- aleph-mem-reish. The hint here is that you must leave the “mountain” where you hear God’s “speech” so that you can come to a new mountain, where there will be new “speech.” Don’t cling to the old speech; it’s dead. Then it goes on to say, “… on the mountain, in the plain, in the lowland, in the desert, and on the seacoast…” The point is not only the next “mountain” experience you will come to. There is also the “plain- aravah”- the ordinary, daily work of life, a mixture (erev) of many different kinds of experiences. Then there is the “lowland- sh’felah”- times of sadness, of tragedy, of failure- all part of God’s speech! These times are medicine for the distortions of ego. Then there is the “desert,” or the “south- negev”- times when your life and work don’t seem to be yielding anything good, but you must persevere through these stretches! These times train us to stay focused and true to our goals. Then there is the “seacoast- hof hayam”- like when the children of Israel stood at the Sea of Reeds, with the Egyptian army behind them. These are times when the outcome is unknown, when we are tempted to fear and despair. This is training for the supreme quality of Trust, to take the leap into the unknown. (Of course, all outcomes are always unknown, but only sometimes does this become obvious!) Finally, it says you will come all the way to “Hanahar Hagadol- the Great River!” The Great River is at the end of the journey, because if you can learn to work with life in all of its manifestations, you will see that life is the Great River. God incarnates in the form of your mind and your body, for just a brief time, to take a little journey on the Great River. This moment is the arena within which we are learning to journey. The Baal Shem Tov taught: “In the Amidah prayer, we say: ‘God of Abraham, God of Isaac, and God of Jacob,’ and not: “God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob,’ because Isaac and Jacob connected to the unique form of God’s speech as they heard it; they didn’t rely on what Abraham heard.” As we enter Shabbat Devarim, the Sabbath of Words, may our words be ever fresh and alive, free from old and dead patterns. May we hear the Living Words that are spoken anew, flowing as the Great River, always in this moment.
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7/21/2020 11:42:30 am
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