I was asleep, but my heart awake: It is the voice of my beloved that knocketh, saying, Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled; For my head is filled with dew, My locks with the drops of the night.


I have put off my garment; how shall I put it on? I have washed my feet; how shall I defile them?
                                           --Song of Songs 5:2,3




When I was a child
I caught a fleeting glimpse
Out of the corner of my eye.
I turned to look but it was gone
I cannot put my finger on it now
The child is grown,
The dream is gone.
I have become comfortably numb.
                                               --Pink Floyd

Looking at God in the Eyes--Part 3

[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

Resting in God--PART 2

There's no place like home

There's no place like home!

                               --Dorothy (L. Frank Baum), The Wizard of Oz

How lovely is your dwelling place,

Lord Almighty!

My soul yearns, even faints,

for the courts of the Lord;

my heart and my flesh cry out

for the living God.

Even the sparrow has found a home,

and the swallow a nest for herself,

where she may have her young—

a place near your altar,

Lord Almighty, my King and my God.

Blessed are those who dwell in your house;

they are ever praising you.

                                Psalm 84

But how can one's yearning soul find a home with God, in His courts, in Him? Where must we go?

"Thou art higher than my highest and more inward than my innermost self..."

                          

                                                                    --Augustine of Hippo



"Thou art close, O God..."         
                                                                --Psalms, 119:151

"Closer than anything that is close..."
                                                               --Ibn Ezra

Resting in God

And may we take refuge and rest in the shade of Your wings, as on the day when "The LORD came down in a cloud"  (Exodus 34:5)
                                                      --Siddur, Daily Prayer Book

How can we possibly rest in God here, now, today, just as on the day He descended upon Sinai? But that, indeed, was what was revealed on that day. The truth of what we are.

The ultimate purpose [of creation] is...that the Divine light of the blessed En Sof (Infinite) shall shine forth...throughout this world...The Divine light will be revealed...without any cloak, as it is written, "No longer shall thy Teacher hide Himself...but thine eyes shall see thy Teacher..." The Messianic Era...is the fulfillment and culmination of the creation of the world, for which purpose it was originally created...Something of this revelation has already been experienced on earth, at the time of the Giving of the Torah, as is written, "Unto thee it was showed, that thou mightest know that the Lord He is G-d; there is naught else beside Him"... And the Rabbis, of blessed memory, explained, "They looked eastwards and heard the speech issuing forth: 'I am the Lord your God,' etc., and so [turning] towards the four points of the compass, and upwards and downwards...there was no place from which He did not speak unto them...."

                                                             --Tanya, chapter 36

                                                                             

Allowing yourself to rest in God is like a wave resting in its essential nature, the water. Imagine a wave rising and falling on the surface of the ocean. Observing the wave, we can see it has a beginning and an ending; it comes up and it goes down. The notions of beginning, ending, going up, and going down may scare the wave and she may think, "Before rising up as this wave, I didn't exist, and soon I will become nothing again." It seems as if before the wave comes up it's not there, and after it goes down it no longer exists. How could a wave be a happy wave if she's caught in these notions of birth and death, beginning and ending, going up and going down? But there's a way out, an opportunity for her to be saved. When she bends down and examines herself, she discovers that she is water. She's a wave, but she's also water. As a wave she may be described in terms of being and nonbeing, coming and going,. But water cannot be described in these terms. The moment the wave realizes she's water, she's free- free from such notions as birth and death, coming up and going down. The wave is water right in the here and the now.

Just as the wave doesn't need to go looking for water, we don't need to go around seeking God. Just as the wave can rest in water, we can rest in God. In the here and the now. With mindfulness and concentration we are able to touch our true nature of no birth and no death. .

                                                                  --Thich Nhat Hanh

I lie on the seashore, the sparkling flood blue-shimmering in my dreamy eyes; light breezes flutter in the distance; the thud of the waves, charging and breaking over in foam, beats thrillingly and drowsily upon the shore---or upon the ear? I cannot tell. The far and the near become blurred into one; outside and inside merge into one another. Nearer and nearer, friendlier, like a homecoming, sounds the thud of the waves; now, like a thundering pulse, they beat in my head, now they beat over my soul, wrapping it round, consuming it, while at the same time my soul floats out of me as a blue waste of waters. Outside and inside are one. The whole symphony of sensations fades away into one tone, all senses become one sense, which is one with feeling; the world expires in the soul and the soul dissolves in the world....



Perception is a breaking apart, a forming, a separating, and then again a joining together. The unity of the spiritual and the sensual, of the subject and the object, is experienced in feeling. The divisiveness of perception is broken by the welling up, even the overflowing, of feeling. Whoever eats of the tree of perception divorces himself from the paradise of feeling.



                                                                                      --Karl Joel

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; What is essential is invisible to the eye.
                              
                                                --Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince




My heart has seen much wisdom...

                                                 --Ecclesiastes 1:16




With the eye of the intellect, which is in the heart, one can see everything....
                                             
                                                 --Zohar, 116b



But we need to change this...



Our Sages describe the Messiah as waiting anxiously to come.  In previous generations, his coming was prevented by the fact that the Jews had not completed the tasks expected of them. At present, those tasks have been accomplished; there is nothing lacking.  All we have to do is accept the Messiah, and to create an environment that will allow his mission to be fulfilled...

In the Talmud (Pesachim 119b), our Sages described the Redemption as a feast.  The table has already been set...everything has been served...and we are sitting at the table together with the Messiah.  


All we need to do is open our eyes.


                                          ---The Lubavitcher Rebbe

To Heal the World

Matzah is the Bread of Healing.


                                                 --Zohar II:183B

What is it that needs to be healed?

Like lovers’ quarrels are the dissonances of the world. Reconciliation is there even in the midst of strife and all things that are parted find one another again. 

                                                            --Holderlin, Hyperion


But with the world so terribly chaotic, so utterly permeated with all the vicissitudes of life, how, indeed, can there be assurance that a congruous harmony will eventually emerge?

And what is it about the matza that hastens that promise of recovery?





The Shechinah (the indwelling, immanent Presence of God in the world) is suffering in the exile.                                                        --Zohar

     
Metaphorically speaking, (the Zohar is saying that the Shechinah's state) is like a bodily ailment. The cause of illness or health lies in the extension and flow of the life-force vested in the blood of life which flows from the heart to all the limbs; and turning round and around, goes the spirit of life and the blood into all the limbs, through the veins that are absorbed in them, and returns to the heart. Now, when the circulation and flow of this spirit of life is always as it should be, in its proper order arranged for it by the blessed Fountainhead of life, man is perfectly healthy. For all the limbs are bound together and receive their proper vitality from the heart through this circulation. But if there is any disorder in any place, restraining, hindering or reducing the circulation of the blood with the spirit of life vested in it, then this bond [which binds all the limbs to the heart through this circulation] is broken or diminished, man will fall ill and sick, may the Lord have mercy.

Precisely so, metaphorically speaking...the Shechinah is called the "heart," as it is written: "The Rock of my heart;" (Psalm 73:26) and as it is written: "And I will dwell amongst them." (Exodus 25:8) That is, the term Shechinah denotes the light of the Lord that dwells in the worlds....in order to vivify them....and the souls are referred to as "limbs." When all the souls are attached and bound together, the circulation and flow of the vivification and of the effluence "turns around and around," and "their culmination is wedged in their beginning" to bind and join them all to "the Lord (who) is One," to be attached unto Him, blessed be He... 

And hereby will be understood the saying of our sages, of blessed memory, that the destruction of the Second Temple and the fall into exile, and the withdrawal of the Shechinah and its descent into a state of exile, as it were; all this was because of the sin of groundless hate and a division of hearts, the Merciful save us. And that is why (the Shechinah) is referred to as ailing, metaphorically speaking...

                                        --Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, Tanya 




The fundamental concepts with which Spinoza sets forth a vision of Being, illuminated by his awareness of God...may seem strange at first sight. To the question "What is?" he replies: "Substance, its attributes, and modes".

                                                               --Karl Jaspers

When you pray, have in mind to arouse the letters with which were created heaven and earth, all creatures above and below, and all universes. If you do this, then all the universes and all creation will join you in your worship.
When you do this, you arouse these letters, which are the life-force of all creation, and they join your prayers. Thus your thoughts can elevate all creation, and earth alike...
The Baal Shem Tov once told his disciples, “You must even pray for a bird that might be flying by and singing.”

                                                   --Rabbi Zechariah of Jaroslaw, Darkei Tzedek




Bread is the sustenance, the life-force of man. Matza, whose dough is thrown into the fiery oven before given a chance to rise, is the Bread of Healing: it is internalizing the realization that all reality is forever within "the Lord your God, an all-consuming fire" (Deuteronomy 4) and therefore not "rising" to an illusory feeling of independence from His Infinite Light.

That is why on Passover we read the Song of Songs. 

"Like lovers’ quarrels are the dissonances of the world. Reconciliation is there even in the midst of strife and all things that are parted find one another again." 

We fall in love with Him all over again. And get healed.