Surrendering to the Bus Buzz

Photo by sicoactiva

I was waiting at the bus stop downtown yesterday needing to get home in a hurry. There are two buses that I can take: one which runs more frequently but takes longer, and one that runs less frequently and is much quicker. Just as I got the stop, the bus that takes longer pulled in. As I often do, I "vibed" the bus. Energetically, I placed the longer bus to my right and the quicker bus to my left. I shifted my attention between them and the quicker bus buzzed, so I chose not to get on the longer bus. After about two more minutes of waiting, the quicker bus pulled up and got me home without a problem.

I've been using this technique for a long time and find it very helpful. My interpretation is that I'm doing a small check in with the flow of the world to see where I should be at the moment. It's always important for me to remember that where I should be is not always where I want to be.

There are times when my buzz has been to take the longer bus which got stuck in a bad traffic jam. As I'm sitting there grumbling to myself, I have to remember that there is some reason that I'm on this bus and not the other. Sometimes it's a reason I can see: when I get off the bus I bump into a friend who I haven't seen for awhile. Sometimes it's for a reason I can't see: so I didn't run into the friend who really isn't good for me. And sometimes, it feels like the reason is that I'm being reminded to trust my reasoning, and not place blind faith in this  energetic trick.

There are times when I feel like my life is just going with the flow of the world. The things I desire for myself seem to be in concert with my place in the world. And there are times when I'm far from the flow, nothing seems to be going smoothly or well, and I need to do something to get back with God. I know that there are certain activities the usually get me back into alignment, though I sometimes have to go through several different ones before I feel fully aligned. Everyone is different, so it's important to know for yourself what brings you back in alignment.

Being close to God involves a great deal of surrender without collapse. When one is aligned, one's desires match those of Gods, and the movement is akin to swimming with the current. But there are occasions when the messages we receive do not match up with our own conclusions, and these often make me hesitate. If I know that my energy is aligned with the world's, then I trust that the message is correct. But if my energy has been "off" then it's hard to know what to do.

This is especially true when receiving messages through others. I know people who see into the spiritual world very clearly. I always an tempted to just call them for the answer rather than trying to work it out for myself. The danger is that I am receiving a message through someone else's eyes. I don't know if they are aligned with the world when they are giving me the message, and depending on my own alignment, I can wildly misinterpret the message even if it is correct.

This is why it's important to know for yourself how you connect to God and what makes the connection more powerful. When you are connected, your impulses and the flow of the world will be the same.

One of my favorite biblical passages can be found in Ecclesiastes 7:14: When times are good be happy, but when times are bad, reflect. In this instance, one can read that as when one is connected, be happy, but when one is not, reflect and reconnect.

Removing the Evil from the decree

Again something I wrote a few months ago:

During Yom kippur services, I was struck by Unatana Tokef. The power and the words of the prayer spoke deeply to me.

The second paragraph, which begins "On Rosh Hashanna it is written..", is a fairly standard shamanic incantation. Calling on the ancestors who have died in various ways: "who will live and who will die... who by water, who by fire, who by the sword, who by a wild animal..." When I recite the prayer, I feel the souls of Jewish ancestors fill the room. It is a very powerful prayer and can be used as a calling the souls meditation.

It then outlines the goals of Jewish Shamanic Healing:

ותשובה ותפלה וצדקה מעבירין את רוע הגזרה
And repentance, prayer, and charity removes the evil of the decree

The word "decree" is generally used in kabbalistic texts to refer to judgments of heaven that effect our lives. In the context of this blog, it refers to illness. Repentance, prayer, and charity do not remove the heavenly decree, but remove the evil from it. This manifests in three ways: they heal, they change their attitude to the illness, or the change happens without illness. For some people, the person gets sick, but heals completely. For others, their attitude towards the illness changes and they no longer view it as so damaging to their lives. For others, the change or energy that causes the illness manifests in another way which is not destructive to the person. This allows them to manifest the decree without damage or illness.

People often ask me if they will heal completely from whatever is ailing them. My answer is that they need to change with the illness, and they will feel better, even if their symptoms persist. But, more often than not, their symptoms disappear as well.

Noah's Ascension

  בראשית כ וייבן נוח מזבח ליהוה וייקח מכול הבהמה הטהורה ומכול העוף הטהור ויעל עולות במזבח  כא וירח יהוה את ריח הניחוח ויאמר יהוה אל ליבו לא אוסיף לקלל עוד את האדמה בעבור האדם כי יצר לב האדם רע מנעוריו ולא-אוסיף עוד להכות את-כל-חי כאשר עשיתי  כב עוד כל-ימי הארץ זרע וקציר וקור וחום וקיץ וחורף ויום ולילה לא ישבותו.

Genesis 8:20 And Noah built an alter to God. He took from all of the pure animals and from all the pure birds and raised them as an ascension offering at the alter. (21) God smelled the pleasant fragrance and God said to his heart, I will not continue to destroy the earth because of man for his heart's inclination is bad from his youth. And I will not again destroy all life as I have done. (22)To the end of the days of the land, during seed-time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, will not cease.

The next time sacrifices are mentioned in the Tanach is during the story of Noah (Genesis 8:20-22). After the flood is over, Noah comes out of the ark and builds an alter (מזבח). He takes one of each of the pure animals and sacrifices them in/at the alter. The word for Sacrifice is olah עולה, to go up. The scent of the sacrifice (and possible Noah) go up to God, and in response God says to his heart that he will not destroy the world again in response to man's evil inclination.

This is a very different type of sacrifice then Cain and Hevel. Their sacrifice was a mincha (rest), and the result of the sacrifice was that God gazed upon Hevel. In this sacrifice, the goal of the offering was to ascend, and the result was that God made a change. One question I had was what exactly ascended? In the text, God smelled the "pleasant fragrance". My general assumption is that God is so far beyond us that we can't even begin to understand or explain God, but how does one make sense of God "smelling"?

I think the answer lies in a closer reading of the text. The word for pleasant odor is ריח הניחוח reach hanichoah. The first word can be read as רוח or spirit/wind, and the second is a variation on his name: נח Noah. When God smells (וירח), his spirit (רוח) meets with Noah's. This reading is that the spirit of Noah ascended up to God, God "spirited" Noah's "spirit", and it effected God's heart.

The Mincha sacrafice is a type of offering that results in a connection with God. It seems that the person offering the sacrifice brings God into the world. An ascension offering is more active and one that makes a change in the world. Here, the person goes into the spiritual world to make a change.

I'm excited to see how these types play out as we go further into our study, and what we can learn from how sacrifices were used biblically.

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.

Repairing the Intentionally Broken world

 R' Chayim Moshe Luzzato writes:

כלל ראשון: כוונת הבריאת

מה שנודע לנו מכוונת המאציל ב"ה בזה, הוא, כי ברצותו להטיב רצה להמציא נמצאים שיקבלו טובו. וכדי שיהיה הטוב שלם, צריך שיקבלוהו בזכות ולא בצדקה, שלא יהא הבושת פוגמו, כאוכל את שאינו שלו. וכדי שיוכלו לזכות, המציא מציאות אחד שיהיה צריך אליהם להתקן, מה שאינו צריך הוא, ובתקנם אותו – יזכו. והוא מציאות הספירות, כי הם מציאות אחד כמו מחברת צינורות, שבעמדה על תיקונה כראוי, ממשיכים השפע מן המאציל אל המתקנה. וזהו זכותו – שהקים חפץ המאציל ב"ה, שחפץ שיקבלו נמצאיו את טובו.

כללי פתחי חכמה ודעה
רמח"ל – חיים לוזאטו

What we know of the intention of the creator, blessed be he, is this: in his will to give goodness, he created the world in order for it to receive his goodness. In order for the created to receive the full measure of his goodness, they had to receive it on their own merits and not by means of charity, so shame will not blemish the receiving, like eating food that belongs to someone else. In order to be worthy, the creator created a world that needs repair, but it is not for God that we do the repair. In doing the repair, the created become worthy. The world that needs repair is the world of the sephirot. They are one system like the joints of a pipe, which, when repaired, draw down the shefa from the creator to the repaired (person). And this is what is meant by merit, that he fulfils the will of the creator, blessed be he, that desires that his creations receive his goodness.

- RaMCHaL - Moshe Chayim Luzzato - Principle Elements.

The simple interpretation of this text is that God wants to give us his goodness, but he requires our personal effort to make ourselves worthy. He created the world "broken" in order to give us the necessary challenges for us to earn the merit of his goodness. Essentially life is one big test, and if we pass, we enjoy God's goodness. If we don't do the repair, we presumably are cut off from God's bounty.

I really like that he frames the issue in terms of personal effort. It's not a gift from above or an innate talent, but our personal actions that determine our connection to God. God is always waiting there for us, but it's up to us to make ourselves worthy of the connection. In my mind, this is what Tikkunei Avon (repair of sins) are all about. When we first start to do spiritual work, the first step is to begin working on our own blockages between us and God. It's a continual process, something that we are never done with, and requires constant care and attention. This process is both internal and on our relationships in the world.

This worldview also gives us limitless possibilities. Every difficulty is an opportunity for a repair, and there certainly is no shortage of difficulties in this world. It also shows us how to have mercy on ourselves. If we come up short or miss the mark on today's repair, there will be another chance tomorrow. When the yetzer harah asks us to beat ourselves up for our failures, we just have to wait until the next test when we can try again.

One note on the translation: the word for goodness is הטיב or טוב which is accurately translated as good, but in this context, it could also mean Love. When I first read this passage, I thought that his worldview required an enormous amount of faith to believe that the world was intentionally broken just to give us an opportunity to be fix it. It means that the problems of the world are inherent in it's basic structure and can never be truly solved.

But it also means that God wants us to succeed because someone who loves us doesn't give us a challenge which is beyond our capabilities. I think my first impression was completely backwards: this worldview shows how much faith God has in us. He wants us to do the work on ourselves so that we can bring God's love into the world, which, as far as I'm concerned is the point of it all.

Cain wasn't Abel

Photo from Okinawa Soba

I've recently started studying with a new Hevruta who also has a shamanic background and is a cohen. We've decided to try to explore the practice of sacrifice in Judaism and to see if we can apply what we learn to our practices. We're beginning with the story of Cain and Hevel (Abel), who gave the first offerings to God. The story can be found in Genesis 4:1-16.

The names are very significant: Cain, קין, means acquired, and Hevel, הבל, means vapor or breath. Cain is the farmer, the worker of the land, which is cursed at this point, and Hevel is a shepherd. These facts set up the dichotomy between the two: Cain is a person who must always be busy tending to his fields and to his crops. The life of the shepherd is very different. It's mostly a quiet, meditative life. Cain is very tied to the physicality of the land, while Hevel is able to concentrate on more spiritual pursuits.

In my paradigm, Cain's gift is doing: working and producing. He is most connected to God when he is farming. Hevel's gift is being: meditation and quiet observation of the world. He is most connected to God during "spiritual" times and rituals.

Interestingly, it is Cain who first makes the offering of first fruits to God, and only then does Hevel follow. The word for offering is מנחה (minchah) which derives from לנוח (to rest), and in this form, can mean "to cause to rest".  The purpose of the sacrifice was to cause Cain to be able to rest from his work. My understanding of this is based on my experience when I connect to the souls. I feel very peaceful and relaxed, even to the point where I forget my words or my questions (if I had any). Perhaps Cain was seeking a similar experience.

But God accepts Hevel's sacrifice and Hevel himself, but not to Cain or his sacrifice. The word for accept is וישא, which means to Gaze (steadily with interest) or to turn towards and pay heed. Hevel sacrifices and connects to God. Cain sacrifices and neither he nor his sacrifice connect to God.

In our reading, this makes perfect sense. Hevel connects to God through ritual and through spiritual means. Cain connects through working and producing. When Cain sacrifices, he is trying to connect to God through Hevel's gift, which, of course, doesn't work for him.

It's noteworthy that Cain figured out a good way for Hevel to connect. It's a reminder not to spend all our time with people who have similar gifts to ourselves. Often, the outside perspective enables another to see how we can use our gifts more effectively. It's also important to live in community so that when we are faced with a task that is outside of our power, we have others who can do it for us. Cain's response might have been to ask Hevel to do the sacrifices for him. In turn, Hevel would be probably be unable to do tasks that would require him to be fully in the physical world and would need Cain to do them for him.

And here is where Cain goes astray. He gets angry and disappointed that God wouldn't gaze upon him when he sacrificed, and God chastises him for it. God tells him that "if he does right, there is uplift" (literally exalted and majesty). Doing right, in my reading, is doing and living according to his gift. But God continues, "if you do not do right, Sin crouches at the door". Any time that we try to live according to someone else's gift, we run into trouble.

Cain then kills Hevel. God asks Cain "where is your brother Hevel?", and we get the famous reply "Am I my brother's keeper?" God replies that "Your brother's blood cries out to my from the ground (אדמה)." The ground was Cain's source of power. He was a farmer who derived his power, and connected to God, through working the land. But the murder of his brother poisoned Cain's power so that he would never be able to access it again.

God's punishment to Cain was twofold: destroying Cain's connection with his power and cursing him to Hevel's power which would never really work for him. God tells Cain directly that if "you till the soil, it shall no longer yield it's strength to you." He then curses Cain has to wander the land, which is what a shepherd does, not what a farmer does.

Cain replies "My punishment is to great to bear. Since you have banished me this day from the soil and your presence will be hidden from me..." Cain is aware that he can no longer connect to God as he has been separated from his gift. Cain continues "...anyone who meets me may kill me." God then puts a mark on Cain's forehead as protection.

Why does Cain need protection only at this point? My approach to spiritual protection has always been awareness, love, dealing with fear, and staying within your power. It's a much longer discussion, but my view is that when Cain was no longer in his power, he was vulnerable. Hevel had no trouble wandering the land and living. Cain is unable to do that.

There are some people who naturally avoid fights, and some people who can't seem to go anywhere without having someone start a fight with them. Hevel might have been a person who did not naturally get into fights or quarrels, but Cain, being more in the world, might have. Now Cain is wandering the world with Hevel's power but people are still fighting with him, and he now has no defenses so he needs God's protection.

This story sets up one of the basic polarities in Human existence: those who are more in the physical world and those who are more in the spiritual world. Each has a unique gift that enables them to connect to God and only run into trouble when they try to be someone who they are not.