[Continued from here and here]
Lift up your eyes to the sky: Who created all these?
--Isaiah 40:26
Must I really be turning my head upwards to look at Him in the eyes? The world has such beauty and is teeming with ineffable grandeur...must I really escape from it to behold His Presence?
It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.
--Henry David Thoreau
[Contemplate in the mind as follows:] "The light of the blessed En Sof (Infinite), which pervades all the worlds...including also this place where I stand...was the only existence before the world was created, [so is It now] without any change, as is written, 'For I, the Lord, have not changed,'...Everything [is] in His presence, and is truly nothing at all other than Him."
Allow the soul to enlighten her eyes with the truth of the unity of the light of the En Sof, with a perceptive vision and not merely by cognition alone...this is the core of the whole [Divine] Service.
--Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, Tanya, Chapter 29
The sky is not a place; it is a way of perceiving reality. Lifting one's eyes up to Him means focusing on His Light pulsating through the details right in front of you, within you, around you. It means utilizing every wonderful experience of being as a window through which you see Him smiling at you.
This is the secret of the redemption of our world. Making Heaven a place on Earth...
How many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?...
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind
The answer is blowin’ in the wind.
--Bob Dylan
The wind of our nostrils, the Messiah of the LORD...
Lamentations 4:20
