Praying to move things

Image courtesy of SoulHolder

One of the major aspects of Jewish spiritual growth is prayer. Our tradition is to pray three times a day. This builds discipline and focus. One way to spiritually make things move is based on strong focus. Concentrate on the object you want to move, send it love, and it will go in the direction it is supposed to go.

There is danger here in that one is often tempted to move it in the direction that one wants it to go, which may or may not be the direction it's supposed to go. Depending on your spiritual power, you may be able to move it towards your desire, but as any mechanic can tell you, if you push it in the wrong direction it will break and all your good intentions will take you or your patient to a worse place.

I think it's always best to connect oneself to God before trying to move anything, then reflect on your own motives for trying to move it, and only then send it love and power if your motives are for healing. I often find that once I've connected to God, I find I no longer have any desire to move the thing. I find that it is exactly as it should be even if I am not really happy with it. It's difficult to tell a patient that their illness or pain is where they need to be at the moment, but if it's true, all efforts to move it will backfire.

The waiting room of prayer

 Photo courtesy of Paul Denton Crocker

Gikatilla brings up a very interesting idea. Malchut is the gateway to the spherot. It's intimately connected with yesod. All of the higher spherot feed down into yesod which joins with malchut. Malchut, though it it thought of us as empty on it's own, distributes the shefa to the world that it received from Yesod.

The process also works in reverse. When a person prays by themselves, the prayers go up through malchut into Yesod. Yesod has gatekeepers who evaluate the prayers to see if they are worthy of going up to God. How are they evaluated? If the prayers are done with the proper intention and feeling. And if they are not deemed worthy? Then they go to the waiting room. The prayers are not thrown out or discarded, but placed in a special place, a Geniza,  a waiting room. When the person prays with proper intention the gates of prayer open and all of the prayers that have been in the waiting room get brought before God.

He also writes that the gates of heaven are always open to tears. When a person cries while praying, or prays while crying, the prayers go straight up to Heaven and are not held up by the gatekeeper in Yesod. Likewise, when we pray in a minyan, then the prayers go upwards. The gathering calls the shechina so the prayers are automatically thought to be accepted.

This is a fascinating idea.

Amidah - Blessing for the year

Following up to my thoughts on using the Amidah as a tool to feel fear. Tonight, the fear came up during the prayer for a good year. The fear I had was one of poverty. It gave me an opportunity to focus on the fears I have for my business and if I was going to earn enough to support my family. My fear during this prayer was all about livelihood. I'd be interested what other people feel during this part of the Amidah. Let me know.

Prayer stones

I don't usually remember my dreams, though I tend to have more vivid dreams here in Jerusalem then I had in Boston. I had a dream a few weeks ago which has stuck with me:

I was carrying some stones that had great importance. They looked like regular round stones that might be found anywhere in New England, but they had some significance which I couldn't quite grasp. I kept looking at them but they were just ordinary stones.

In my dream, I carried the stones with me and I met some people who did not pray. As I held the stones, I could see them through the eyes of the people I had just met and they looked just like regular stones.

I continued on my way and met some people who were praying, and I knew, prayed regularly. I again was able to look through their eyes and saw that the stones were glowing!

When I awoke, the lesson was obvious. I knew that if I prayed on a regular basis, the stones would glow again. That somehow the prayers would allow me to see the radiance of the world.

Preparation for Prayer

I've been to several Jewish Meditation groups where the meditation was a 15-20 minute silent meditation followed by regular prayers. My understanding is that the source for this (I'll try to find the actual source) is in the Talmud where it describes the first rabbi's taking an hour to prepare for praying.

This has never sat well with me, though I don't know why. It makes sense that someone wants to get in the right frame of mind to pray, but doing mindfulness meditation or just focusing on the breath didn't feel right for me.

Tonight, before devening evening prayers, I felt overwhelmed with fear. It's a fear I've been interacting with over the past few days, and it felt like I needed to sit with it for awhile before I prayed. I sat for awhile and then had particularly powerful davening, lots of energy, lots of souls.

And then it hit me, the line is "the first step in wisdom is fear of God", but I could never find any particular place in the liturgy that would give us a moment to feel our fear. So maybe this is what it's referring to: sit and feel your fear first, and then interact with God. Use that time at the beginning to be with your fear and that will open the way to use the prayers to talk to God.

I'm going to have to sit with this awhile longer and play around with it, but something feels right about it.

Calling Jewish Souls: Four angels and Patriarchs & Matriarchs

I have been thinking about how Jews call souls and two techniques came to mind.

The first is the four angels which is done at bedtime when reading the nighttime Shema. On the right is Michael, on the left is Gabriel, in front is Oriel, behind is Raphael, and above is the Shechina. The technique is to say the Shema, then call each angel to their proper position. This is also a technique that can be done for others in the same manner.

The second technique is the first paragraph of the Amidah when we call the fore-fathers. As each patriarch is names, bow. Abraham is in the middle, Isaac to the left, and Jacob to the right, then Sarah to the middle, Rebecca to the left, and Rahel and Leah to the right (I alternate who I call first but I always say God of one then God of the other). During morning prayers, the ancestors come down to us, but during the evening prayers, we are raised up to them. I also use this technique during treatments to invite them to come and help with the healing.

These are two ways of calling Jewish souls, and I hope to write about more as I learn and practice them.