Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Enclosed By the Infinitely Frail; Permeated By the Immanently Elusive--Part 3

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me,i and
my life will shut very beautifully,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
                                                                     --e.e.cummings



But why, why would the Beloved want the Lover to close? Is love not tender, giving and sweet?

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
                                                Corinthians 13:4-7


Love facilitates the successful and total expression of the Lover's being; naught but love's muse can truly inspire the full revelation of the Lover's life and talents. One truly in love is quickened, joyously accelerated in all activities, invigorated, powerful, real. He is able to do more than his contemplation ever perceived possible; wellsprings of his deepest greatness are through love allowed to gush excellently forth. Love is the soul's expansive force which impels and pushes it to touch and shape positively all of experienced reality.



Jacob said, “Behold, it is still high day; it is not time for the livestock to be gathered. Water the sheep, and go, pasture them.” But they said, “We cannot, until all the flocks are gathered, and they roll the stone from the mouth of the well; then we shall water the sheep.”
      While he was still speaking with them, Rachel came with her father’s sheep, for she was a shepherdess. When Jacob saw Rachel the daughter of Laban his mother’s brother, and the sheep of Laban his mother’s brother, Jacob went up and rolled the stone from the mouth of the well and watered the flock of Laban his mother’s brother. Then Jacob kissed Rachel...
                                                                         Genesis 29: 7-11


Even God only creates with love. Creation is not only an act motivated by divine love, it was actually carried out through the medium of His love. Love is the power and light that creates.

That is why Jewish mysticism reads the verse in Psalms 89:2

כִּי אָמַרְתִּי עוֹלָם חֶסֶד יִבָּנֶה


not just with its usual translation

I will declare that your love stands firm forever.

but also 



I will declare that the world was created with love.

As the Zohar calls love חסד יומא דאזיל עם כולא יומין , a day that accompanies all days. It was the Light that was created on the first day, and that with which all came into being all the other days. The first revelation of love, “accompanies” and radiates its light to all the other days and details of Creation, like the love in the soul arouses all the other expressions of emotive force which succeed it.


The attribute of Chesed (Love) and the spreading forth of the life-force into all the worlds and created things without end or limits so that they shall be created ex nihilo and exist...comes from the greatness of the Holy One, blessed be He, in His Glory and Essence...[and] causes life-force and existence ex nihilo to issue forth for an unlimited number of worlds and creatures, for “It is the nature of the beneficient to do good:”
Now, this manifestation of love is the praise of the Holy One, blessed be He, alone, for no other created thing can create a being out of naught and give it life. 
                                                   --Tanya, Shaar HaYicud 4

In the darkest hours, only one who knows love is strong enough to endure all.


As we stumbled on for miles, slipping on icy spots, supporting each other time and again, dragging one another up and onward, nothing was said, but we both knew: each of us was thinking of his wife. Occasionally I looked at the sky, where the stars were fading and the pink light of the morning was beginning to spread behind a dark bank of clouds. But my mind clung to my wife's image, imagining it with an uncanny acuteness. I heard her answering me, saw her smile, her frank and encouraging look. Real or not, her look was then more luminous than the sun which was beginning to rise.
A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth — that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way — an honorable way — in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment. For the first time in my life I was able to understand the meaning of the words, "The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory."
In front of me a man stumbled and those following him fell on top of him. The guard rushed over and used his whip on them all. Thus my thoughts were interrupted for a few minutes. But soon my soul found its way back from the prisoner's existence to another world, and I resumed talk with my loved one: I asked her questions, and she answered; she questioned me in return, and I answered.
"Stop!" We had arrived at our work site. Everybody rushed into the dark hut in the hope of getting a fairly decent tool. Each prisoner got a spade or a pickaxe.
"Can't you hurry up, you pigs?" Soon we had resumed the previous day's positions in the ditch. The frozen ground cracked under the point of the pickaxes, and sparks flew. The men were silent, their brains numb.
My mind still clung to the image of my wife. A thought crossed my mind: I didn't even know if she were still alive. I knew only one thing — which I have learned well by now: Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance.
I did not know whether my wife was alive, and I had no means of finding out (during all my prison life there was no outgoing or incoming mail); but at that moment it ceased to matter. There was no need for me to know; nothing could touch the strength of my love, my thoughts, and the image of my beloved. Had I known then that my wife was dead, I think that I would still have given myself, undisturbed by that knowledge, to the contemplation of her image, and that my mental conversation with her would have been just as vivid and just as satisfying. "Set me like a seal upon thy heart, love is as strong as death".


--Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning, Experiences in a Concentration Camp  
              
           

Why, then, would the Beloved ever possibly close the Lover?


or if your wish be to close me,i and
my life will shut very beautifully,suddenly,

                       TO BE CONTINUED


Thursday, February 12, 2015

Enclosed By the Infinitely Frail; Permeated By the Immanently Elusive--Part 2

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near
your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose
                                                         --e.e.cummings

Prayer can only be rectified when it comes through the thought that in fact the soul is always praying.
Without any stop at all, she soars to and leans on her Beloved. It is at the time of outward prayer that the perpetual prayer of the soul reveals itself in the realm of action.
And prayer's refinement and pleasure, its glory and beauty is that it resembles a rose, opening its elegant petals to receive the dew, or to face the rays of the sun as they shine over her with its light. 
                               --Rabbi Avraham Yitchak Kook

The glory of God is man fully alive; the life of a man is the vision of God.                  --Irenaeus of Lyons

Prayer is zivug (coupling) with the  Shechinah (Divine presence). Just as there is motion at the beginning of coupling, so, too, one must move (sway) at the beginning of prayer. Thereafter one can stand still, without motion, attached to the  Shechinah with great deveikut (cleaving).
As a result of your swaying, you can attain great bestirment. For you think to yourself: “Why do I move myself? Presumably it is because the Shechinah surely stands before me.” This will effect in you a state of great hitlahavut (enthusiasm; rapture).
                                     --The Ba'al Shem Tov, Tzava'at Harivash 68

Friday, January 16, 2015

Enclosed By the Infinitely Frail; Permeated By the Immanently Elusive

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near                                                                                                                                                                                                --e.e.cummings



How often do we yearn to feel Divinity...How frustrating for the seeker of Light to constantly be praying to a Being that seems so far, so aloof, so unreachable...It seems clear that if we could only hold the Ineffable tangibly, our lives would change; if we could only experience His embrace, never would we let it loose; we would open our whole selves and devote our hearts to Him. 

When I found him whom my soul loveth: I held him, and would not let him go...
                                                  --Song of Songs 3:4
                                                             

But maybe we need to better learn how to search, where to search, how to touch, how to hold...


Tanya Chapter 48:

Contemplating on the greatness of the blessed En Sof (Infinite), the intelligent person will realize that as His name indicates, so is He— there is no end or limit or finitude at all to the light and vitality that diffuse from Him...Had the worlds descended from the light of the blessed En Sof without "contractions," but according to a gradual descent, from grade to grade by means of cause and effect— this world would not, in such case, have ever been created in its present form, in a finite and limited order...[And so, His light is radically contracted to the extent that] only an extremely minute portion of light and vitality illuminates and reaches the lower creatures in a revealed manner, as it were, pervading them and animating them so that they might receive existence ex nihilo, and be in a state of finitude and limitation. This constitutes an exceedingly contracted illumination, and it is considered as virtually nothing at all compared with the quality of the limitless and infinite illumination...[which] "encompasses" them from above and is called "sovev kol almin", the light that encompasses the worlds.

The meaning of this is not that it encircles and encompasses from above spatially, G-d forbid, for in spiritual matters the category of space is in no way applicable. But the meaning is that it "Encircles and encompasses from above" in comparison with the so-called "revealed" influence, for influence which is in the category of "revelation" in the worlds, is referred to as "investiture", being "clothed" within the worlds, for the influence that they receive is clothed and comprehended by them; whereas the influence which does not come within the category of "revelation," but remains in occultation and concealment and is not apprehended by the worlds, is not described as being "invested" but as "encircling and encompassing." Therefore, since the worlds belong in the order of the finite and limited, it follows that only an extremely minute and contracted reflection of the flow of the light of the blessed En Sof clothes and reveals itself in them in a revealed form, and this, only to animate them in a finite and limited state. But the principal light without contraction to such an extent, is called makif ("encircler") and sovev ("encompasser"), since its influence is not revealed within them, inasmuch as they belong in the order of the finite and the limited.


In other words, His infinite light is present-it does not just encompass us spatially- but it is not revealed to us, for it is too great to be revealed within our perception. Whereas His contracted, permeating light is revealed within us, becomes us, bringing us and all of reality into existence.

Yet we see not any Godly light at all. We do not feel His Presence in us, permeating us, animating us, just as we do not feel his infinite light that is beyond our perception. How then could the finite, contracted light be termed "revealed"?


Imagine, a ten-year-old child walking into an auditorium where Albert Einstein is lecturing on the theory of relativity. He might sit there for hours, but is utterly "encompassed" by the lecture; they "circle" the vessels of his cognition; none of the words "enter" his reality and he is unable to perceive Einstein's greatness at all.

Later on, Einstein might grace this child with a private tutoring session. He will then explain to the 10-year-old basic mathematics. The 10-year-old will grasp everything Einstein will say-indeed, he will not feel any transcendence at all. Einstein's words and explanations will be so "revealed" to him, that in this case as well, none of Einstein's greatness will be felt. 

But for an opposite reason...Einstein has now contracted himself to "manifest" as a ten-year-old.


Do you understand why we have a hard time holding on to God, why we do not feel embraced by His infinity, and permeated by His vivifying, finite light? Can we now appreciate how easy it is to do so?





somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near                                                                                                                                                                                                --e.e.cummings

Bear in mind about the Creator that “the whole earth is full of His glory” (Isaiah 6:3) and His Shechinah (finite, indwelling light) is constantly at your side...And think that you are looking at the Shechinah which is at your side as you are looking at physical objects...Always be joyful. Think and believe with perfect faith that the Shechinah is at your side and watches over you. You look at the Creator, blessed be He, and the Creator, blessed be He, looks at you. 
                                                       --The Ba'al Shem Tov, Tzava'at Harivash 137