wisdomhearttorah

Be A Disciple Of The Rain

2006-11-07T13:32:00.000-08:00

Be A Disciple OF The Rain

All the big time mystics tell us to surrender. I’m certainly not going to contradict them. But a lot depends on what is meant by surrender.

To surrender to the place of the Infinite can be a frightening statement. When people hear it, it often implies to them a loss of themselves. When the teachings speak about a loss of ego, people often translate this as a destruction of something they have become very fond and familiar with.

But in essence what is frightening is the implication that we may find ourselves and know ourselves. The spiritual path is not really talking about the loss of anything except the loss of those things that create ‘hell’ in our consciousness. Specifically the angers, the covetings, the hatreds – everything that creates hell in our heart.

For it is the small ‘I’; the place of ego, (called the ‘ani’) where hell resides. When it is gone, even for a minute, we are in paradise.

Only when we surrender ourselves, only when we become a disciple are we truly knocking at the door, are we entering the garden. This is the key. When we feel that the garden is gone, where can it be found? It is found here, in the heart. It is found, in the interaction of person to person and in the compassion and love we are able to feel and make in our daily life. As our teachers give over:

Love one another from the heart, and if anyone sins against you, speak to them in peace. Expel the venom of hatred and do not harbor deceit in your heart. If anyone confesses and repents, forgive them.
Testaments of the Twelve Fathers. Gad. 6:3. Apocrapha.

Life is not something that can be understood, it must be lived. It is not a problem to be solved, but an adventure to savor. But parables, stories and jokes help. Imagine life like a wheel. There are spokes, an inner circle and an outer circle, all tightly held in place by a rim. The rim holds it all together. The rim for us is the rigid circle of custom and genetics. The assumption of self – this is the hub. But at the center of the hub is - nothing. The void. Yet this emptiness is the very center and essence of the wheel.

Ultimately to surrender to the spiritual, is to surrender to this center which has no definition. This is the matrix through which all the hubs of self and the world, pass through.

I have heard a story:

Once a woman went on a search for truth. She ran into a fellow sitting under a tree and asked him where she could find a teacher. He told her that her teacher would have a certain aura, and would be sitting under a certain tree, and he would say certain things. She thanked him. And she began exploring. 30 years later she came that way again and saw he was under the tree, he was teaching these teaching and he had that aura.
“Why didn’t you tell me before?”she said. “ This past 30 years, what a nightmare it has been!”.
He replied: “I explained it perfectly to you, in great detail. But you didn’t look at the tree.You didn’t listen to the teachings, you didn’t look at me. You were not ready. Everything was HERE, but when I looked into your eyes, You were not There.”

It is important to surrender for to experience life fully requires this. And as we are co-creators wit the divine, we are asked and desired to move ever forward into greater joy, greater consciousness.

This is what is means to be a true disciple. Always we must look and remember, what are we a disciple of? Not of anger or despair. Not a disciple of the obsession for acquisition. But of sun and rain. Sky and dance. Song and peace. Joy and forgiveness. Be a disciple of the seasons as they pass. Be a disciple of hope in each situation that arises. Be a disciple of each other and community. Be a disciple of the suffering that all of our fellow creatures endure. Be a disciple of alleviating that suffering. Be a disciple of grace and generosity.

My beautiful friends, indeed, be a disciple, but be a disciple of the spirit of ever enduring, ever expanding, compassionate truth.

2006-11-07T13:04:00.000-08:00

2006-11-06T17:17:00.000-08:00

DEVEKUT IS THE ONLY LAW

Devekut is the only Law (Halacha).
All the laws, customs and admonitions of the Torah are ultimately meant to liberate us. The central metaphor of the Torah can be framed as a question: How can I as an individual, how can we as a tribe, and how can we all, as a species, move from the constriction of slavery, from mitzraim, to freedom?
Toward this end the Torah lists many different types of methodologies and behaviors. Additionally, in the long evolution of the Torah path, through the temple and the prophets, through the early Tannas and the settling of Europe, through persecution and precious peace, there have been many good and useful commands and admonitions and additional methodologies all beautiful and fertile. But all stem from this central premise: how do we move from slavery to freedom? Several answers are possible, but one reappears again and again like a thread of gold running through a mountain of commentary: devekut. Be attached to the Infinite. Be so attached that there is no separation—and no difference, ultimately—between you and the Holy One. Know the One. When we come to this deep knowing, we realize that we too are part of the Infinite Unity, created as we are in Its image.
Devekut. If a law helps us to achieve this state, then it is good. If it does not, then at that moment it is not useful. Devekut. The embrace of the Beloved. The kiss of the Ayn Sof.
The philosophy that underpins our inherent yearning for freedom is the principle of unity. All things are God, ultimately. All reality, seen and unseen, is indivisible and part of that totality.
Though we live lives that seem governed by multiplicity and fracture, though our hopes seems consumed by despair and our equanimity wrecked by confusion, yet this Unity is unwavering in its love and compassion for the world, like a mother’s heart as she nurses her baby. All of creation, seen and unseen, is woven together in a great tapestry. Each thread of the tapestry touches every other, and each of them has a face turned toward the other.
And this divine face has a human countenance.
To recognize this is to gain insight into the ordering of the universe, both natural and supernal. Knowing this in the deep heart’s core, we know all things worth knowing (in the soul sense). Not knowing this, all of the learning of the scholastics and the ever more stringent halacha of the legalists are dust that masks the light of the sun and ink that clouds the pure water of life. Torah is not a book of logic.
It is a book of stories.
Torah is not a description of the rational,
It is a description of the relational.
It is the path of the awakened heart yearning for the Beloved.
The divine is an ocean and we the fish that swim in Her.
The divine is the air, we the birds that fly in Her.
Open your mouth and drink deeply of the liquor of this ocean!
There is only one way to know the Torah path,
For nature itself is her poetry.
Experience is good, my friend. It springs from the divine abundance. From experiencing the unity of God comes inevitable love. From experiencing the unity of God comes inevitable compassion and passion, comes mercy and wonder.
In our simple experience of the self we experience great separation. We think that this is representative of all life, this duality—Heaven and earth, light and darkness, good and bad. We think that this is the cause of all our woe. And in a simple sense it is, but more deeply, it is not so. What gives rise to our brokenness is the constriction of soul and its yearning to be liberated. Our deepest consciousness can become caught in endless loops of dogma (whether religious, economic, political or interpersonal makes little difference), and the deep, inner wisdom heart, the song of our deeper selves, becomes muted and unheard. But Shiviti Hashem L'Negdi Tamid. Devekut breaks out of the endless loop. It is the sound of rain giving life to the earth and the touch of food for the desperately hungry. It is the Shofar of the Messiah echoing in jubilation in each person's expectation and fulfillment.