Looking at God in the Eyes--PART 1 (B) *

I sink 'neath the river cool and clear

Drifting down I disappear

I see you on the other side

I search for the peace in your eyes

But they're as empty as paradise

They're as empty as paradise

       --Bruce Springsteen

After Jacob served his father, Isaac said to him, "Please come closer and kiss me, my son.”

Jacob came closer, whereupon Isaac exclaimed, "Behold, the fragrance of my son is like the fragrance of a field, which the Lord has blessed.”

From this we learn, that the fragrance of the Garden of Eden, of Paradise, entered with Jacob…. 

        --Genesis 27:27 and Rashi

Based on the above explanation of God's likening our manner of gazing at Him to that of the dove's, we can unlock the mystery of the universal symbol of peace.

The dove with the branch in its beak.

After the flood, Noah sent the dove three times to check the situation outside the ark. 

8 And he sent out a dove to see if the water had receded from the surface of the ground. 9 But the dove could find nowhere to perch because there was water over all the surface of the earth; so it returned to Noah in the ark. He reached out his hand and took the dove and brought it back to himself in the ark. 10 He waited seven more days and again sent out the dove from the ark. 11 When the dove returned to him in the evening, there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf! Then Noah knew that the water had receded from the earth. 12 He waited seven more days and sent the dove out again, but this time it did not return to him.

              --Genesis 8

In contrast with popularized opinion, Jewish mysticism does not view the flood as a wanton, meaningless act. Such destruction would contradict God's benevolent character. Similar to the depth of its waters, the flood symbolizes meaning far deeper than what initially meets the eye. 

All too often in life, we seem to face daunting floodwaters of of chaos, confusion, and angst. Nonetheless, our belief in God's inherent goodness strengthens our trust that somehow a higher order, keener clarity, and fulfilling solace will emerge from the flood's wake. Similarly, the Kabbalah teaches us that the flood waters of Noah's times represented a purifying, rectifying force for the entire world: God essentially purified the earth with a flood of spiritual Divine Light. However, the force of the revelation was too potent for the physical world to handle, so symbolically, the earth was "drowned." The mundane world could not sustain the magnitude of the divine revelation. It was thus overpowered and destroyed. 

The first time the dove is sent from the ark with the mission to scout the situation of the world, it finds the earth wholly devoured by the intensity of the Divine Light. There is no dry, mundane land upon which it may perch. It therefore returns dejected, with no possibility of peace or serenity. 

Interestingly, the dove does not bother to return from its third and final mission. At that point, the waters of the flood were completely dried and evaporated, and all that remained was the dry, physical earth- an earth devoid of the Godly waters that once inundated it. As such, the dove has no uplifting message to convey to Noah, for there is no inspiration to be derived from grounds that are divinely dehydrated and parched with spiritual thirst. 


Only during the intermediate state could the dove bring to Noah the sign of peace. For it was on its second mission that the dove beheld a world both visible and physical, yet simultaneously abounding in G-d's revelation. It was only during the second week that the waters of G-d's Light filled our world yet also enabled the physicality of the earth to tower above their gentle ripples. From the epicenter of the waters' glory shone the beauty of the humble but firm olive branches. And it was therefore only then that the dove found peace and brought the branch back to the ark.

Peace is not uniformity, when everything and everyone are the same. A dull lack of variety necessitates not the blessing of peace. 

Peace is not conformity, when one overriding authoritarian force inhibits multiplicity and individuality and stops people from being themselves. There is no harsher war than that.

Peace is not amorphousness, a dearth of creativity and of details. Failure to achieve meaningful content and form shows cowardice and smallness, not peace.  


Peace is, rather, the wondrous unity of differences- the harmony of many dazzling colors, sounds, sights, minds, souls, and all versatility. Peace encourages the myriad details of our world to retain their independence and diversity, yet flow in rhythmic consonance with each other. Peace is reveling in the joy of being different, while concurrently feeling incomplete without the other and his differences. 

Peace and harmony are in fact synonymous. A harmony is not just one sound or a lack of sound. It is the triumphant weaving together of many various sounds.

That was the state of the world during the dove's middle mission. The harmony of the mundane earth with the spiritual waters of the flood.

Many loathe the concepts of God and religion because they view them as stifling forces that crush all beauty and individualism into monotony, void of life and splendor. All too often, people incorrectly think that God prefers His world and its inhabitants to be uniform. They feel that connecting to God would necessitate losing one's selfhood and the ability to individuate.

They think that 'seeking the Divine' entails drowning in the waters of ascetic devotion to the ethereal. They fear that 'being spiritual' requires eschewing themselves and all they see as meaningful in the world, to "sink 'neath the river cool and clear/ Drifting down I disappear." 

Such a path of negation is not peace. It is indeed an empty paradise. "I search for the peace in your eyes/But they're as empty as paradise/They're as empty as paradise."

These people do not realize that God wants no such thing. God wants a beautiful, versatile world. He created it diverse, coupled with the endless potential to develop its variegated splendor even further. 

What He does long for, however, is to be seen: in the multiplicity, in the splendor, in the mundane. As a person that longs for his beloved to see him for who he truly is, his self, within the positive traits that he has, and not just be appreciated for his personality- likewise does God want to be appreciated. He does not want to be recognized as simply the Creator of heaven and earth, but rather as the One Who is manifesting His Light as heaven and earth. As all of us yearn to be seen and encountered fully. So does He. 

He wants us to see the richness of the details in all reality and look at Him in His eyes as we perceive it. He wants us to sense the ineffable Divine in all the aspects of our humanity. 

He wants us to achieve peace: the peace of dry, physical land that has the flood waters of Divinity seeping through it; that intermediate stage when the trees were projecting gloriously through the waters still flowing upon the land.

At that moment, it was the dove that perched itself peacefully on a wet, fresh olive tree, and brought this message of peace back to Noah. For such peace can only be achieved by a dove. As mentioned previously, doves stare at their mates. Their greatest bliss is steadfastly gazing at their beloved straight in the eye.

We are God's beloved mate, His dove. When we view the world as the way in which His Light lovingly manifests, we are passionately gazing into His pupils. 

It is we, therefore, who bring about peace- peace between the waters and the land, the spiritual and the mundane, the mystical and the human. For we, as His doves, perceive both as equally Him.

This is the pleasing fragrance of the real Paradise that entered with Jacob: a Paradise on dry land saturated with flood-waters. The fragrance of heaven that is indeed a place on earth. 

It is by smelling this fragrance and viewing the world with this dove-like perception that one can indeed find peace.

And hence, in the eyes of a dove, a lover of God, one can find peace.** 

* This post is dedicated to my friend Jorian Yonah Schutz. I thought of this idea as he was speaking at a very special gathering at his house.
** See also here that this is the culmination of the Messianic Era, brought about by the Prince of Peace.

Looking at God in the Eyes--PART 2

When our two souls stand up erect and strong,

Face to face, silent, drawing nigh and nigher,

Until the lengthening wings break into fire

At either curvèd point,—what bitter wrong

Can the earth do to us, that we should not long

Be here contented? Think. In mounting higher,

The angels would press on us and aspire

To drop some golden orb of perfect song

Into our deep, dear silence. Let us stay

Rather on earth, Belovèd,—where the unfit

Contrarious moods of men recoil away

And isolate pure spirits, and permit

A place to stand and love in for a day,  

With darkness and the death-hour rounding it. 

                 --Elizabeth Barret Browning

All actual life is encounter.

                  --Martin Buber

It is never easy to truly see someone. And few blessings in this lifetime can compare with the feeling that one enjoys when truly and completely seen by another.

It is noble to empathize with another person’s pain, joy, or experience. One needs to turn aside from his usual preoccupations, take a step from self, and focus on the other person’s life for a while. But that is still not completely seeing the other and standing in total relation to him. That is sharing your being with his.

The encounter of two people at the deepest level, to the extent of utter communion, is when they truly see each other...see all and unleash all that there is to be seen...see nothing else.

That encounter cannot be reached with a supercilious comfort and casualness. It is the labor of a lifetime; it is the deepest experience of life itself. It is the ability to be submerged in the other, to experience the other fully. Only "pure spirits" willing to lose all sight of any distractions that will hold them back from dissolving into the immediacy of the other and to become exclusively present in the one who they are deeply seeing can "stand up erect and strong/Face to face, silent, drawing nigh and nigher,/Until the lengthening wings break into fire."

One of the greatest humanists of our time, Martin Buber, wrote an entire work about this goal  - I and Thou.

He built an entire philosophy of relations between man and man, and man and God, by explaining that we are constantly faced with the choice of living in two radically different worlds--the "World of Thou" or the "World of It." This is based on his relating to other men and objects with two opposite attitudes. "To man the world is twofold, in accordance with his twofold nature." He can see them as objects to be viewed, observed, and utilized. As "It"s. Or--

"If I confront a human being as my Thou, and say the primary word I-You to him, then he is not a thing among things, and does not consist of things. He is no longer He or She, limited by other Hes and Shes, a specific point in space and time within the net of the world; nor is he a condition that can be experienced and described, a loose bundle of named qualities. Neighborless ans seamless, he is You and fills the heavens. This does not mean that nothing exists except him. But all else lives in his light."

"Every actual relationship to another being in the world is exclusive. Its You is freed and steps forth to confront us in its uniqueness."

"I-You can only be spoken with the whole being."

Buber then goes on to explain that in truth, every You experience, every seeing of the other with wholeness and devotion, is essentially an experience of God Himself. 

"Extended, the lines of relationships intersect in the Eternal You. Every single You is a glimpse of that." 


To the extent that even one who "fancies that he is godless--when he addresses with his whole devoted being the You of his life that cannot be restricted by any other, he addresses God."

And just as when submerged in a terrestrial You, all the rest of life and reality is viewed solely through his light and based on the exclusive relationship with him, so, too, with the Eternal You.

"In the relation to God, unconditional exclusiveness and unconditional inclusiveness are one. He who enters into the absolute relationship, nothing particular retains any importance--neither things nor beings, neither earth nor heaven--but, yet, everything is included in the relationship. For to step into the pure relationship does not involve ignoring everything, but seeing everything in the You, not renouncing the world but to establish it on its true basis. To look away from the world, or to stare at it, does not help a man to reach God; but he who sees the world in Him stands in His presence. "Here world, there God" is the language of It; "God in the world" is another language of It ; but leaving out nothing, leaving behind nothing at all, to include the whole world in the You, to give the world its due and its truth, to have nothing besides God but to grasp everything in Him-that is the perfect relationship. 

Men do not find God if they stay in the world. They do not find Him if they leave the world. Whoever goes forth to his You with his whole being, and carries to Him all the being of the world, finds Him who cannot be sought. 

Of course God is the "wholly Other";but He is also the wholly Same, the wholly Present. Of course He is the Mysterium Tremendum that appears and overwhelms; but He is also the mystery of the obvious, nearer to me than my own I."



To live life with intensity and meaning, to stand in exclusive relationship with God by seeing Him in all. To be like the cherubs that always not only face each other, but also see each other, with "lengthening wings [that] break into fire/At either curvèd point." Like two people content to revel in each other's being with devotion and wholeheartedness--to be like that with God, to see the Eternal You as one relates to reality with deliberateness and meaning.

The most important thing is to habituate oneself, to train the thought and mind to recall at all times, that all he sees in the heavens and the earth and all therein are but the outer garments of the King that is enclothed in them.

      

       --Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, Tanya 42 

Turn your eyes from me;
    they overwhelm me.

      -- Song of Songs 6

See that caravan of camels

      loaded up with sugar?

His eyes contain that much sweetness.

But don’t look into His eyes

      unless you’re ready to lose all sight of your own.

                             

       --Rumi

Looking at God in the Eyes

No wings have ever carried a greater weight of intrigue than those of the cherubs. Situated atop the Holy Ark in the Holy of Holies, the cherubs' winged embrace has fascinated millions.

In the Talmud, a classic discussion is recorded regarding the cherubs' stance:


The Torah (Exodus 25) dictates that the cherubs were to face each other, "The cherubs are to have their wings spread upward....the cherubs are to face each other," whereas Chronicles II 3:13 states, "And their faces were to the house" (i.e. the walls of the sanctuary)- implying that the cherubs stood back to back. The Talmud resolves the apparent contradiction by explaining that when the people fulfilled the will of God, the cherubs faced each other, reflecting the sacred intimacy between God and His devoted followers. But when men disobeyed God's will, the statues of the cherubs mimicked the worsened relationship by miraculously turning their backs to each other.  

Serious relationships have the frightening capacity to make our hearts soar to the zenith of ecstasy in one instance, and then fling our souls to the abyss of despair in the next. Toward the object of our love, we can at times feel love, hate, craving, disgust, and the plethora of ranges in between. While constant, drastic shifts of feeling can sour a relationship, any healthy attachment will at some point, in some form, experience the wide scope of varying human emotions.

In general- but especially when it involves a lover- no one likes to feel disappointed. No one likes to feel hated. No one likes to feel ignored. And yet, worse than all those things combined would be the ultimate rejection: indifference. After all, it is far better to be sick than to be dead. It is far better to fail than to not attempt. It is far better to receive negative emotions from a lover than to feel the biting iciness of none at all.

This is the inner symbolism of the cherubs' back-to-back pose. When the people would please God, the cherubs would face each other, gazing at each other like two lovers living the most intimate of moments. When they would sin, the cherubs reflected the tragedy by turning their backs to each other.

But there is a far deeper interpretation by the famed mystic, Rabbi Loew of Prague, the Maharal.

He resolves the contradiction between the verses (and rereads the words of the Talmud) differently and more profoundly. He says that the cherubs would not turn their backs to each other. They would always face one another.

And yet the verse in Chronicles states that "their faces were to the house (i.e. the walls of the sanctuary)."

The miracle was much, much deeper. The statues of the cherubs would not turn around. They'd always face each other.

But if sin occurred, their gazes changed.

Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair; thou hast doves' eyes.

            --Song of Songs 1:15

Why does God liken our eyes to those of a dove?

Doves only focus on one thing at a time, and usually, it is their mate. Because of this, they have the nickname "love birds." They are always watching each other, staring into each other's eyes like lovers who see all of life in their mate's eyes, and hence cannot stop staring. That is the gaze of love, with which we are wont to stare at the Divine when we are in love with Him.

My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,

And true plain hearts do in the faces rest;

Where can we find two better hemispheres,

Without sharp north, without declining west?

       --John Donne

But when the people shunned God, the cherubs' gaze changed. Whilst standing face to face as well, now the gaze would be blank, empty, and indifferent. They'd see through each other. They would be like lovers who could not summon enough care for each other to even show hurt or disapproval. Just blank stares...

The most hurtful thing is to be looked at....yet not seen....


And this is our true situation, our choice, with God, our Beloved. He is everywhere; we always face Him.

But are we seeing Him? When you see all the beauty and grandeur in the world around you-do you see His Light in it all? Do you see Him staring at you through the eyes of those that love you?

Or do you not see Him in all that surrounds you, though you face Him always?

The Hebrew word for "repentance" is Teshuva--Return.

Return to me, and I will return to you, says the Lord of hosts. But you say, ‘How shall we return'?
     --Malachi 3:7

Is He not everywhere? Why does one need to "return" to Him?

Returning to Him means....seeing the Divine in all and looking back at Him as He's always looking and seeing you.

The eyes of the saint make all beauty holy and the hands of the saint consecrate everything they touch to the glory of God.
                   --Thomas Merton
    

Those Unheard are Sweeter....PART 3

Never have I dealt with anything more difficult than my own soul, which sometimes helps me and sometimes opposes me.

                  ― Imam al-Ghazali

 It is foolish to think that we will enter heaven without entering into ourselves.
                        ― Teresa of Ávila

                            I Must Speak of Myself                                                                                                                                                                                                                           I must speak of myself a great deal.
          Matters of my essential being must become extremely clear to me.
          When I understand myself, I will understand everything—the world and life—until my understanding will reach the Source of life.

                        ―Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak Kook

1. Why are the mystics so preoccupied with themselves and their own souls?

     Should their eyes not be better lifted upward toward God?





   2.   One of the most enchantingly ambiguous verses in Psalms is from chapter 27:


                                    לְךָ אָמַר לִבִּי בַּקְּשׁוּ פָנָי, אֶת פָּנֶיךָ ה' אֲבַקֵּשׁ

It has been translated variously as:

-->  My heart says of You, “Seek His face!”
    Your face, Lord, I will seek.

--> When You said, “Seek My face,”
 My heart said to You, “Your face, Lord, I will seek.”

--> On Your behalf, my heart says, "Seek My presence." Your presence, O Lord, I will seek.

All the translations convey that our heart commands us to seek God's Face.

But there is an extraordinarily deep translation from Rashi. The Hebrew word for "face" has also the connotation "my interior", "my inner being." (For indeed, the face shows what a person is experiencing in his interior...)

Hence the translation can be read, "On Your behalf, my heart says "Seek my  interior", and by doing so it is Your Face, O Lord, that I seek."

In other words, by seeking the inner essence of one's own heart, one's own soul--one is indeed seeking the Source of life....One enters Heaven by finding the Heaven within....

What does that mean?

 3.  Let us return to the lovers' sweet silence.

Words like violence
Break the silence....
Words are very unnecessary
They can only do harm

What harm can words do?


Speech is a contracting of the soul to radiate a specific form and idea. The sum total of who I am includes countless thoughts, emotions, reactions, etc. When I choose to talk, I am emanating one particular aspect of myself to another. That is what communication and talking means. As a single ray shining from the orb of the sun, words are a radiation from my soul to another.


Awkward and empty silences ensue when there is no shining outwards from one soul to the other, and hence the others' looming presence is felt to be almost like a challenge and an uncomfortable encroachment upon one's being.

Frustrating silence happens when one can't find the means to bridge the gap that separates between two people, to radiate from myself to a willing receiver, though the desire to do so is very strong.

Comfortable silence is when two people enjoy each other's company, enjoy existing as parallel companion souls; the other's being is a comfort and a joy, and therefore no communication is necessary.

Painful silence is suffered when no other is found to receive a deep, raging soul's radiation.

What is the utter bliss and sweetness in lovers' silence?

True lovers are not looking to radiate any particular aspect of their souls. They also are not content remaining as two separate, parallel people, soothed by each other's presence. 

They are looking to fuse. They are yearning to fuse their essences to become one. They throw all pretenses to the sea, and with the wave of a magic wand dissolve all the world's boundaries to fuse and become as one.

Their silence does that. The silence itself is the vehicle that brings about the fusion. It is more than a communication. The two souls' merging together is the unheard melody, the voice of gentle quiet, the inner scream of the two hearts beating as one. The silence is the conduit through which the souls pass to fuse.

We had bliss of sheer knowing without any word.

In the stillness of voices, our souls spoke and heard.

That stillness still lives. It’s the only thing real.

I can sense it with shut eyes, and let my heart feel. 

                            --Anonymous



4.  That is the seduction of the shofar.

Usually, we speak and God speaks.

We speak to God words of prayer. And God, too, is constantly speaking.[1]
The reality we experience is His speech, as those that have listening ears know.

But once in a while, we need to seduce our Beloved. Enter a state of silence with Him, without talking. And He for a moment suspends creation from being.

And we become as One.

On Your behalf, my heart says "Seek my interior", and by doing so it is Your Face, O Lord, that I seek.

That is the shofar.

May we all be inscribed in the book of the living for a happy and sweet year. And may all sweet silences be empirically and sensually experienced with all the force and clarity of the shofar.

---

[1] Genesis chapter 1 teaches that God spoke the world into existence, "And the Lord said, let etc..." Kabbalah teaches that every moment He is still saying those words of creation. And the world and all of reality is really nothing other than His "speech." Just as human speech is the soul condensing itself into a particular, defined expression, created reality is Gods Infinite Light radiating a small emanation from Himself to become the world.

Those Unheard are Sweeter...PART 2

He said, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.”

Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind.

After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. 

After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire.

And after the fire came a voice of gentle quiet. 

When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave.

1 Kings 19:11-13

ואחר האש קול דממה דקה תמן קאתי מלכא

A voice of gentle quiet--in it, the King comes...

                                 ---Zohar

 Inside this new love, die.
Your way begins on the other side.
Become the sky.
Take an axe to the prison wall.
Escape.
Walk out like someone suddenly born into color.
Do it now.
You’re covered with a thick cloud.
Slide out the side.
Die, and be quiet.
Quietness is the surest sign that you’ve died.
Your old life was a frantic running from silence.

The speechless full moon 

comes out now.

                              ---Rumi

Nothing in all creation is so like God as stillness.

                                ― Meister Eckhart

There are many different types of silences in the world.


There is the silence of strangers that find themselves in close proximity to each other, but do not want to communicate. 

We call these awkward silences.



Then there is the silence of the simple and the shallow, who after some conversation have run out of things to say, or are at a loss to find anything at all to contribute.    

These are empty silences.


Friends or family that enjoy each other's company do not always talk. They don't feel the need to.

They enjoy a comfortable silence.


One trying to convey a profound thought will at times find it difficult to do so. The words with which to express the profundity elude him. Or at times, the chaos of emotions broiling within are too intense for words to facilitate their being shared.

A frustrating silence results.


None of these are as harsh as the silence of the lonely soul, the person who has ostracized himself, or has been ostracized from the company of men. He who cannot seem to find a true friend, who even in a crowd feels alone, who suffers from the inability to find the pleasure of deepest expression to another kindred mind and heart and spirit.     

He is doomed to experience a painful silence.      


But then there is the sweetest silence. The silence of two people that share an essential bond. The infinite silence of soul mates that do not need words to convey their essences to each other. The unheard sweeter melody of love that is not just a romantic, wistful, imaginary dream to which Keats referred, but is indeed the melody that is the stuff of life itself, the melody that remains unheard not because of fear of disappointment, but because the resounding roar of the essential bond is "a voice of gentle quiet". The speechless full moon comes out now.

This is the silence of lovers.[1]

                                                                                                          

On Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, we must become God's lover.

The shofar does that....

---

[1] According to Jewish law (Halacha), speech is actually forbidden during the marital union.

Words like violence
Break the silence
Come crashing in
Into my little world
Painful to me
Pierce right through me….

Words are very unnecessary
They can only do harm

Words are meaningless
And forgettable

Enjoy the silence

                  --Depeche Mode

TO BE CONTINUED....