GOD AS LOVE

Mishpatim: Torah's Laws as God's Love

2012-02-12T00:00:00.002-08:00

The Giving of theTorah is the most important event in Jewish history as well as in worldhistory. The Torah is the identity and constitution of the Jews because wecan't exist without it, and at the same time it contains God's master plan forHis Creation. This plan is partially revealed to us as the code of ethicsthrough which we manifest and make tangible God's Love. In this sense, theTorah contains the ethical and moral ground rules and guide lines for humankindaimed to fulfill the Torah's main message for all: "Love your neighbor asyou love yourself, [because] I am the Lord."

The ground rules and guide lines of the Torah comprise what itcalls Commandments, laws, statutes and decrees, because we need to learn how towalk in God's ways by emulating His attributes as emanations of His Love fromwhere all that is comes to existence. Our Sages refer to statutes as the rulesaimed to direct and conduct ourselves as individuals, and to laws (mishpatim) as the rules to relate with each other. We have to understandboth as part of the same ethical foundation that God's Love wants for us inorder to manifest Love as our common Essence with Him.

We also have to be aware that every rule in the Torah must belearned because the purpose of human life is an educational experience based onan empirical approach to the material world. This means that we learn by trialand error, right and wrong, useful and useless, productive and destructive,positive and negative, and we learn this from Nature as the "intelligentdesign" that some call it in modern times. Our ancestors learned throughthis process and so do we. Animals also follow through this same pattern, andpart of our learning comes from the way they behave and approach theirenvironment. The main lesson we learn from animals is that they seem tounderstand Love as the Essence that gives life and protects life.

The Creator gave us human discernment to go beyond the obvious"basics" of Love (not obvious to many), and through Torah'seducational rules and guide lines (let's never forget that Torah means Instruction) we prepare our consciousness to assimilate God's Love by beingand manifesting Love as our Essence and identity. Our Sages explain that thefirst law presented in the Torah after it was given to Israel is related to howwe treat a Hebrew slave, and refer to his bondage not only as servitude but asan educational process. They say that such slaves were men who committedtransgressions such as manslaughter and robbery, and had to sale themselves inorder to pay for the damages that they could not compensate with money ormaterial possessions. In this context, bondage in the Land of Israel was partof Torah's laws not only as punishment rules but as educational and correctingguide lines for those who knew less and acted out of ignorance. In this samecontext we must understand the Cities of Refuge and the Levites as the placesand persons that teach the children of Israel the ways and means of the Torah.

Let's use an analogy to learn further the rules of the Torah. Itis like learning how to drive a car or vehicle. Most countries refer to drivingnot as a right but as a "privilege", because they consider that aprivilege implies not only responsibilities but obligations. Once we are on thedriving wheel the rest of the people do not expect less from us, and we arecompelled to drive carefully and comply with the universal driving laws andrules. There is a Spanish proverb, "there is no sane man on a horse"because it is presumed that a man behaves different on a horse by the fact thathe is not by himself but with something that demands his attention. Hence welearn how to drive by also learning the driving rules. The key words here are''privilege", "how", "responsibility" and"obligation".

As Jews we have the privilege to be the people of the Torah, which entitle us to learn God'sways and attributes as His Love for us and His Creation, which are how we fulfill His will. This is our main responsibility in order to know who we are and ourpurpose in life, and we come to know this by learning it. Our learning andknowing led us to respond to the material world, and the ways werespond make us responsible. As a comprising and encompassing process, in this awareness,Torah's Commandments, statutes and decrees as ground rules and guide lines areour ways and means to fulfill our obligations as Jews. In this sense we are naturally compelled and not forcedto exercise our true Essence and identity.

There is an old saying, "to whom a lot is given, a lot isexpected" and we are aware what the Torah is our Essence and identity asJews. We know that the Torah is God's Love for Israel in particular and for theworld in general, and this means that we are the embodiment of God'sInstruction as the messengers and the message for human consciousness as awhole. There is no Love without its ways and attributes, as there is no God'sLove without His Torah. We also know this by experience because we are taughtand instructed Love since the moment we are born.

We learn that Love is theEssence of all the Commandments, rules, statutes and decrees, because they allare Love's ways and means. Let's always be aware and mindful that all we are,have and do are meant to be the cause and effect of Love, in the same way thatGod's Love is the cause and effect of His Creation: "And you shall serve the Lord your God, and He willbless your food and your drink, and I [God] will remove [every] illness fromyour midst." (Exodus 23:25)

The Final Redemption in Judaism (II)

2012-02-12T00:00:00.001-08:00

In the first part of this commentary (Jan 22, 2012 in this blog) we referred to allegorical and concrete definitions of the Final Redemption according to our Prophets and Sages. This time we focus on the dynamics of Redemption in our consciousness. The first question to ask ourselves is, "Am I ready for Redemption?" and maybe before doing it, we may consider other issues prior to "readiness", such as what is the true meaning of it and if we really want to be redeemed. Many of us are comfortable with the material illusions that they chose to live in, and have no interest in changing anything because they are simply happy with their lot, whatever it is. We are referring here to those who are fed up with such illusions, and in their souls, hearts and minds they cry out to live in, with, by and for the Truth we call God's Love, His ways, and His attributes as He wants from us in His Torah. These are the premises to end once and for all our long exile in the darkness of ego's material fantasies and illusions.

We simply can't desire or cry out for true freedom if we have one foot on our illusions and another trying to step in what we imagine as the Messianic era or the Garden of Eden, lost when we chose to live in the material fantasies forged by ego's dream to become another god. This is what we mean when we say that Love doesn't dwell with anything different from its ways and attributes. Let's take an imaginary trip to Messianic times as our Prophets announced for "the end of times", particularly as suggested by Maimonides (Mishneh Torah, Laws of the Kings 12:5):

"In that Era there will be neither famine nor war, neither envy nor competition, for good things will flow in abundance and all the delights will be as freely available as dust. The occupation of the entire world will be solely the knowledge of God. The Jews will therefore be great Sages and know the hidden matters, and will attain an understanding of their Creator to the full extent of human potential; as it is written, 'For the world will be filled with the knowledge of God as the waters cover the ocean bed' (Isaiah 11:9)"

Basically a world where there will not be "evil inclination" or evil (as the reference that it is) in order to differentiate positive from negative, because goodness will be the only reference. This sounds like free will would be wiped out from consciousness, and this may not sound as "good news" for those who think that freedom is inherently founded on free will, hence the privilege to choose from "good" and "evil". In other words, if we come into this reality redeemed from evil and negativity, we may "miss" them and approach it as a passive, uneventful and ultimately boring reality. This approach is what we have to reconsider in order to fully understand what the Messianic era really means. As we mentioned in the first part of this commentary, we are talking about a complete change of consciousness in which there will not be any trace of the way we currently approach life and the material world. In conclusion, if we still believe that we need dualities, ambiguities, contradictions, and confrontations to feel "free" with a satisfied free will, we are not ready for Redemption as Judaism presents it.

We currently approach life and the material world based on ego's desires and illusions which confront, oppose and even fight anything that is different from them, in particular Love's ways and attributes that invite all of us individually and collectively to unite and harmonize our consciousness, in order to live individual and collective peace. Let's imagine it in a different way. How about eliminating the "good inclination" and goodness as a reference to choose between positive and negative? Imagine the world only with people totally engaged in evil with each other, in a competition to see who is worse than the other in a reality where all is about pain, suffering, destruction, disease, violence and their derivates. Nothing good whatsoever, to the point that there can't be desperation or any other reference to put an end to such predicament, what some may call "hell".

Which "reality" would we prefer? This may sound purely "black" and "white", but actually that is what in our current consciousness we have in order to make the "white" choice, while discarding the "gray" as the way that some "new agers" propose to end all contradictions and ambiguities. As we have said before, "gray" is the forced way to make Love cohabit with its opposites. In the name of the "gray", nations justify the current status quo that is destroying the world. They appease the radical Islamic fundamentalists with the failed motto of "live and let live", and allowing mass murder, oppression and exploitation as part of cultural "differences" and human "diversity". This is the way we allow genocide, corruption, despotism, and totalitarianism.

The questions remain. Are you really fed up with the fantasies and illusions of ego's materialistic approach to life, and truly prepared to embrace Love's ways and attributes as our true Redeemer from the long standing status quo? Are we ready to enter the Messianic era leaving behind what we don't need any more, that actually we never really needed and was there for us only as a reference to choose Love over ego's mirages? Are you ready to engage into the realm of new heights called the knowledge of the Creator, and experience what that really means, which your understanding can't assimilate now?

The starting point to enter Paradise while living in the material world begins when we individually adopt Love's ways and attributes as our true references to make a place for the Creator to live in and among us, as it was meant to be from the beginning of times. Those times when we made the choice to become a little god who wants to control all at the expense of his own Essence, his own Love. God's Love is our Creator, and such as His Love is our Essence, cause and effect. Once we recognize this, we will be in our way back to Him, and leave behind the illusions that we have created in detriment of our true identity. This is what we have yearned for so many centuries amid the darkness of exile in fantasies and illusions we don't want or desire anymore.

Yitro: Understanding God's Love

2012-02-05T00:00:00.003-08:00

Wefrequently say that our Sages equalize hearing to understanding and seeing toknowing, in order to teach us two levels of perception. Hence, we assimilatethe material world through our senses and knowledge through our understanding.In this context, "Yitro heard...", "and Yitro came…"(Exodus 18:1, 5) are two complementary stages that give sense to the fact thatthought precedes action. Our mystic Sages say that Yitro is a precondition for the revelationof the Divine Presence in the material world (as it happened in Sinai), andthey mention several reasons that we will consider later.

Yitro personifies the process that the childrenof Israel have to engage in our relationship with the Creator, because we haveto hear about Him and understand His Love before we come to Him. This means that we don't needor have to see Him and know Him before we embrace Him. Understanding is the first stage to assimilateknowledge, and in this sense our mystic Sages define the process starting withintellect as the ability to acquire wisdom, followed by discernment asunderstanding which lead us to knowledge as a bonding experience.

This is a universal process pertaining human consciousness whichwe also apply in our endeavor to know the Creator. Israel was chosen toexperience Him through every sense and level of consciousness during theplagues in Egypt and the split of the Red Sea in order to tell theirdescendants about the events that changed forever our relation with theCreator. Hence, we first have to hear about their experience with Him so wemay come to Him as Yitro did. This is why ourSages consider that Yitro also embodies the convert who comes to Judaism as the true way to return to God, and by true we refer to the discerning process that precedes the knowledge ofHim. In this process we Jews are all converts to the Torah as we were in Sinai,because we have to individually pursue this knowledge by first understandingits revealed and hidden messages by God.

Our oral tradition tells us that Yitro renounced idolatry by thetime that Moses came to Median fleeing from Egypt, and as a former high priestof idol worship he knew the ways and means of the forces of nature, consideredlesser gods by Pagan peoples. This knowledge made him an unequivocal examplefor other idolaters who want to abandon their cults and serve the will of theCreator. We must understand idolatry as something rather concrete thanabstract. Both the Written Torah and the Oral Torah refer to idol worship notas a delusional cult but as something real, because it is based on the beliefthat the forces of nature have power over life, as it indeed is. The distinctionthat the Torah makes very clear is that those forces are commanded by theCreator, because they serve His will as it was magnificently proven with theExodus from Egypt and the miracles that followed. This Exodus had the two-foldpurpose of freeing Israel from bondage and oppression, and to make the entireworld aware of God's ownership and control of His Creation.

Many of us think that sorcery, necromancy, divination, voodoo andother magic practices belong to the realm of fantasy and exist only in theminds of superstitious people, and that is a mistake. The Torah commands usJews to reject such beliefs and practices not because they are not"real" but because we owe ourselves to the Creator who chose us to be above the laws of nature, the lesser godsthat serve His will. This is what has made us different, and still makes us distinct from other nations: our belief in One and Only God and ourrelationship also exclusive with Him. Our Sages tell us that Yitropracticed and experienced all kinds of worships related to theforces of nature, and coming to Sinai to recognize the sovereignty of theCreator was a one of the conditions for Israel to receive the Torah.

In our times, primitive idolatry joins modern idolatry as ego'smaterialistic fantasies and illusions named addiction to fashion trends,"pop" and "light" culture, drugs, vanity, andenslaving lifestyles bound to consumer's society. Such idols seem to be harderto abandon than slavery in Egypt, and ego as the modern Pharaoh appears as theabsolute and unbeatable ruler of all levels of consciousness. Becoming thecontemporary Yitro seems to be near to impossible as long as we don't understand God's Love and come to His ways and attributes as theredeeming forces that are the true rulers of our consciousness.

Our total freedom starts when we hear andunderstand the voice of God's Love as our true Essence and identity. When we doit, our own Love puts in motion the connection with its source, which is DivineLove: "And the Lord came down on Mount Sinai... and the Lord called toMoses to the top of the mountain, and Moses went up" (19:20) because He comes down to call our understanding of His Love tocome up to the highest level of our consciousness to meet Him, and this levelbecomes our knowledge of His Love.

Yitro represents our awareness that no matter how "real"ego's fantasies and illusions may be in what we believe, think or feel withwhat we possess or are addicted to, they are temporary vanity and futility thatsooner or later will either change or end, if they don't destroy us beforehand.We have to be experienced practitioners of materialistic fantasies andillusions up to the point to become as experts as high priests of idolatry, andin the full awareness of their futility we can understand that only Love works wonders and miracles capable to bring us backto the knowledge of God's Love as our One and Only Creator and true Source of Life.Let's awaken to our discernment as understanding of God's Love to embrace Himas our Creator, Redeemer, and our true freedom.

Love and Life as Cause and Effect

2012-02-05T00:00:00.002-08:00

Let'ssummarize some of the principles that we present in "God as Love" asinherent to the soul of Judaism.

1-God's Love is the cause and effect of His Creation, and in our finiteand limited understanding we are able to conceive the Creator through what weperceive as His Creation. What we make out from the Creation is ourcreation and not His. This is important to remark because many people"blame" God for the choices and actions that we make and do insteadof taking full responsibility for the consequences of our deeds. We havelearned long time ago that we, as most of animal species, are designed tolive by caring for each other as the premise to survive in the material world,and we also know that this "caring" is nothing but Love. This is thereal and tangible Truth, not for those who know it but deny it, reject it, andeven fight against it. How is this possible? Why some of us can deny something asevident and obvious as Love, our true Essence and identity?

We probably mustask the question in a different way. Why some selectively acknowledge andexperience Love in certain aspects of their lives --with family, close friends,beliefs or ideologies-- and not in other circumstances? Like the people who arekind with some and cruel with others who don't represent a threat or danger forthem, as it happened with Germans and Jews in the first half of the XX century.What is the root of this irrational selective hatred? Is it ideology? Is it mentalillness? Is it possible to submit Love to ideology? Should we call insane thosewho "love" their families while hating others irrationally? Thesepeople hate at the expense of Love in the same way that some kill at theexpense of life. We need to be alive in order to kill, as we need to have Lovein order to be able to hate because Love is the Essence that sustains life, asthe material manifestation of God's Love in His Creation.

2-Love does not cohabit with anything different from its ways and attributes.In this sense we define Judaism as "the ethics of Love", because theWritten Torah and the Oral Torah, both as one, contain the ways to completelyfulfill the cornerstone of Judaism: "Love your neighbor as [you love]yourself, [because] I am the Lord." (Leviticus 19:18) and there are waysand attributes to love our fellow human beings that we learn from God by ourawareness of His Love in His Creation. It is fundamental to know and experienceGod's Love in order conceive and approach our Love in the material world. Welove because of God's Love, and we do it emulating the way He loves us and Hisentire Creation. This explains that the goodness we pursue for ourselvesindividually must be the same goodness that we pursue for others. This includesthe Talmudic warning that we must not do to others what we considerunpleasant to us, which implies a direct contradiction to doing good for oursake and simultaneously doing something unpleasant to others, as it happened by Germans against Jews and others during the Nazi regime.

3-Love is the awareness of our connection and relationship with God. Themore we are aware and mindful of God's Love in His Creation, the more we knowHim and the more we love Him. The more we think, feel and act in Love's waysand attributes, the more we are connected to God. The term"Commandment" in Hebrew literally means "connection", andour Sages explain that we fulfill God's Will (His Commandments) as the means tobe connected to Him. This makes perfect sense because by our good actions wemanifest our closeness to Him. In this context, doing the opposite is toseparate from Him, and this is what we mean when we say that Love does notcohabit with anything different from its ways and attributes. The Creator isalways with us, regardless what we may believe, think, feel or do, becausewe are creatures emanated from Him; and it is us who make the choice to"separate" from Him.

3-Love, as the material manifestation of God's Love, is our trueEssence and identity. In this awareness and realization, Love is also theways and means to redeem our consciousness from the negative approach to lifeand its negative results that we see in the world. The Creator endowed us withfree will for us to experience real and total freedom, and in this knowledgewe are entitled to make positive choices in order to harvest positive effects.God is not responsible for our actions, we are. If we know whatLove is, then we also know our true freedom and Redemption. Let's be mindfulthat it is up to us, individually and collectively, to redeem ourselves and fixthe damage we have caused with a negative approach to life and the world. Thisis our responsibility and not God's. In this sense, it is our duty tomanifest the Messianic era and the Redemption that our Prophets announced.

Maimonides and other Jewish Sages share the same view about "the end oftimes". As we often say, we were responsible for thedestruction of the First and Second Temples of Jerusalem, and it is also up tous to build the Third Temple as a final and perpetual place in our Land as wellas in our consciousness. In the same way that we have allowed negativethoughts, emotions, feelings, passions and instincts in our consciousness, weare perfectly capable to direct them in a positive direction and purpose, whichare Love's ways and attributes as cause and effect of goodness. Ego, along withall aspects of consciousness, is a driving force that also must be directed inLove's ways and attributes.

4-Love is inherent to life, and life is inherent to Love. This principleis derived in a deeper way from the first mentioned above. In the same way thatGod's Love conceived us, we are materially conceived by, through and for Loveas our Essence and identity. We know that life is the purpose of Creation. InJewish liturgy we recite every morning "You [God] are the life ofall worlds" and in our consciousness of being alive we must say "theworld was created for me", as our Sages teach us. We must approach life aswe approach Love, as Essential as simple, because there is nothing complexabout Love. We care for each other just because this is part of how we love.Love defines itself by its ways and attributes which all are about goodness.

Our Sages relate simplicity to humbleness and complexity to haughtiness, and wecan conclude that the simpler we are the easier we approach life. The less wehave to worry about what we believe, feel or possess, the easier we live.People too attached to their complexities in every level of consciousness findmore difficulty to adapt to simpler conditions or environments. Humbleness andsimplicity are the vessels for God's blessings which are His Love. Love flowseasier with simplicity, and usually is either rejected or conditioned bycomplexities, which are mostly derived by ego's materialistic fantasies andillusions.

Beshalach: Love as the Meaning of Life

2012-01-29T00:00:00.002-08:00

One of thefundamental principles that the Torah teaches, and the book of Exodus inparticular, is the fact that all emanates from Creator and is sustained by Him.Understanding this in a deeper level means that we are His invention and notall the way around. This also implies that in order to truly know who we are,first we have to know Him. The Hebrew Bible and our Sagesdefine the way to do it by what is called Judaism,which is the most important contribution to humankind since its beginnings.Human life without a positive direction for the sake of positive effects does not make much sense.Without a true meaning there is not point, thoughmost of us in this world live regardless true meaning or not. Life seems to bea random phenomena, and being born in a particular place and culture determinemost of one's destiny, making look "luck" as the deciding factor.Such existentialist approach ends when we find and experience a true meaning in life, and this meaning is Love.

We begin to understand and to know life and its meaning when we recognize Loveand not ego as the true driving force in life. This is the starting point toknow the Creator, because everything including Love comes from Him and throughthe awareness of Love we start knowing His Love. Exile under the darkness inEgypt was a negative experience from which our forefathers cried out for a truemeaning in life, a valuable purpose to exist in the material world, but thereal point of exile and darkness is to lead us to our Love and God's Love: "And the Lord went before them by day in a pillar ofcloud to cause it to lead them on the way and at night in a pillar of fire togive them light, [they thus could] travel day and night." (Exodus13:21) to teach us that we exist for the sake of God's Love. Teaching anddirecting ego in Love's ways and attributes is not an easy task, and we havelearned that the interaction between Moses (our highest knowledge of theCreator) and Pharaoh (ego) was not precisely a "piece of cake" as theTorah tells us.

Ego demands a minimum amount of control over most aspects ofconsciousness, and the lack of it generates conflict and confrontation betweenwhat is the positive right thing to think, desire, feel and experience, andego's fantasies and illusions that not necessarily aim for positive andenhancing purposes. Ego voices its fears when is not in control, and only inits silence our Love and God's Love can lead: "The Lord will fight for you, but you shall remain silent."(14:14) and our awareness of His Love must lead every aspect of consciousness(the children of Israel): "The Lord said toMoses, 'Why do you cry out to Me? Speak to the children of Israel and let themtravel.'" (14:15) and God's Love leads us when our own awareness ofLove also leads us.

Once we fully experience the knowledge of God through His Love, werealize that it has been ever since His Creation: "The Lord will reign to all eternity." (15:18) because He hasbeen, He is, and He always will be; and we assimilate this knowledge when wefollow His ways and emulate His attributes: "And He said, If you hearken to the voice of the Lord,your God, and you do what is proper in His eyes, and you listen closely to HisCommandments and observe all His statutes, all the sicknesses that I havevisited upon Egypt I will not visit upon you, for I, the Lord, heal you."(15:26) because when the awareness of Love leads our consciousness there's noroom for darkness or negativity.

Again let's be mindful that ego must be a complementary drivingforce along with Love, and not opponents of each other. One of the mostnegative effects of ego's feeling or sense of lack are doubt and uncertainty,especially if we don't believe or feel that Love is our true Essence and identity that sustains ussince our birth until our death: "He namedthe place Massah [testing] and Meribah [quarreling] because of the quarrel ofthe children of Israel and because of their testing the Lord, saying, 'Is theLord in our midst or not'?" (17:7) When Love is not in our midst,what --if not Love-- takes over? From these verses our Sages relate Amalek todoubt and uncertainty, which we must vanish from our connection andrelationship with God's Love, and also in our individual and collectiveexperience with Love in the material world: "TheLord said to Moses, 'Inscribe this [as] a memorial in the book, and recite itinto Joshua's ears, that I will surely obliterate the remembrance of Amalekfrom beneath the Heavens.'" (17:14)

As we mentioned above, we are God's creatures and we depend solelyfrom His Love. In this context we indeed live as the result of a miracle fromGod: "Then Moses built an altar, and henamed it 'the Lord is my miracle'. And he said, 'For there is a hand on the throne of theEternal, [that there shall be] a war for the Lord against Amalek fromgeneration to generation." (17:15-16) We are always in the hands ofthe Creator, and in the same way that His Love sustains us, His Love alsofights our wars against ego's fantasies and illusions. We must pursue andachieve our highest knowledge of the Creator in order to vanish doubts anduncertainties that only ego makes us feel with its false sense of lack, becausewhen we are fully aware of Love in all levels and dimensions of consciousnesswe never lack.

The more we live in Love's ways and attributes, the more we areclose to God's Love. Our inner enemies are the negative traits and qualitiesthat deny Love as our true Essence, identity and purpose in life, and theydisappear when we are completely aware of God's Love as the cause and effect ofHis Creation.

The Desert as a Field of Life

2012-01-29T00:00:00.001-08:00

The experience of ourancestors in the Sinai desert after the Exodus from Egypt set a principle forus, individually as Jews and collectively as a Nation. We understand theirjourneys in the desert as a transition process between slavery in Egypt andfreedom in the Promised Land, darkness and Light, exile and Redemption,ignorance and knowledge. It seems to be a process in which there are manyelements involved with total freedom as the common purpose. Life itselfencompasses a similar process as the vehicle that supposes to be the means andthe end for freedom. We have said many times that freedom is inherent to lifein the sense that freedom is the means to experience it in a meaningful way.For this we have to define "freedom" and "meaningful". Eventhough both terms seem to complement each other, they may mean somethingdifferent depending on who defines them and this also depends on the circumstancesand the borders within we live.

We also have saidoften that Love is what gives sense and purpose in life, while the opposite ofLove's ways and attributes deny any sense nor purpose in life. With thesepremises in mind we are going to approach "desert" and"journey" as well as "transition" and "purpose",among other terms relevant in the message that we aim to convey here. Thedesert is a place related to barrenness, lifelessness and something unable tosustain life. We can't live in a desert as a dwelling place unless we bringwith us what we are going to need there in order to survive. The material worldoffers more suitable places, and the last place we want or need to go is adesert, except if we can find in it an oasis or an enlarged version like the one called LasVegas.

It's amazing what ego's materialistic desires can achieve to the pointof building an entertaining city in the middle of the desert dedicated to fantasies and illusions. It sounds likedefying the whole point that the Torah wants to teach us about Israel'sjourneys in the desert, which was to be closer to the Creator and not closer toego's desires. The desert is theabsence of anything that invites our consciousness to desire or to possess,simply because there is nothing there. We leave behind the accessories for alife in comfort in order to find something that gives meaning to anypossible material asset to experience life in the best conceivable way. Thedesert, the land of nothing, the non-having and non-desiring place becomes thesetting as a precondition to start knowing the One who created all and ownsall.

As we reflect on this, we start realizing that we humans do not really ownanything, neither in the material world nor in the spiritual world. This iseasy to confirm this when we realize that we don't take with us what we havewhen we die. In other words, we must realize that the only"possession" is our consciousness as long as we live with it infreedom. This is one of the lessons about knowing the Creator when we"meet" Him in the wilderness of Sinai. We can stand before Him whenour consciousness is free from the bondage of material illusions we call"possessions" and other fantasies created by ego's desires.

Our mystic Sages saythat we have to empty our consciousness in order to make space for God'sblessings, which are His ways and attributes for us to experience and manifestin what we think, feel, speak and do. This conclusion is based on the Talmudicquote, "The Creator doesn't dwell with one who is full of himself", justbecause he leave no space for Him. Hence, the main obstruction to approach Himis the way we conceive ourselves individually, and what we do with our lifeaccording to such conception. Here we start to make the classical existentialquestions related to who or what we are, why are we here, etc. In the answerswe suppose to find the whole point.

Most people believe that we are the resultof our circumstances, and we act according to them without objections because"that's all there is". If we are not happy with that, we try as muchas we can to change things and turn our circumstances according to what or whowe think we are or "should" be. The other day an Israeli newspaper mentioned anew book of about a religious character whose life and deeds are based onlegends that have been modified or transformed according to the interests of aparticular religion. This book pretends to give a different perspective orvision about this particular character based on other legends and the author'sown interpretation of them. He is basically trying to change a myth with his ownversion of the same myth, a lie from another lie. Most of us do the same regarding beliefs, customs,habits and views about things and people, and we are (not all of us) changingthroughout our lives according to the times and circumstances.

We must assimilatethe "desert" as a state of consciousness in which we make a space tomeet the Creator. In order to enter this space we must reflect on our needs inevery aspect of life, and come to the awareness that all ourneeds are fulfilled by God. If we don't realize this, we are back into thebondage of an approach to life that commands us to live according to ego's "rules of the game" or "fair play" in the fields of thematerial world. This is when we rather return to the consciousness of"Egypt" than pursuing a consciousness of real freedom in the fieldsof God. We have to embark in a journey in a desert with many stops and turnsuntil we empty all levels of consciousness in order to let God fill them withthe Essence of who we truly are.

In this process God's Love is fully revealedto us in direct proportion to the space we allow for Him in our consciousness.The more we experience Love and manifest Love, the more we are able totransform darkness into Light. Our Sages say that a good deed is rewarded withthe opportunity to do another good deed, and it makes sense because once we seethe Light and hold it in our hands we are able to illuminate dark places. Theyalso refer to the light of fire as something that we give or share without losing it, asit also happens with Love's ways and attributes. We give Love without losingit. We understand Love assomething endless and infinite as God's Love, because it is our Essence andidentity as well as the source and sustenance of life.

We realize this when weentrust ourselves to leave behind the mirages, fantasies and illusions of whatwe are not, and the "desert" is the empty space in our consciousnesswhere this endeavor takes place. Here is where we stand before our Creator, whotells us that we are His and belong to Him, not to ego's illusions. Not toEgypt, not to Vegas, not to consumer society, not to "light" culture,not to vanity and glamour, not to futility, not to a meaningless life. In thedesert we meet our Creator and in the desert we build a Sanctuary for Him, aplace in the highest level of consciousness in which both our highest awarenessof Him and our highest awareness of our connection to Him are the main leadingand driving forces to approach life and the material world as emanations ofGod's Love.

In order to understand and assimilate the knowledge of life and theworld, first we have to know their Creator and His Love; and we do this throughLove as our common bond with Him. Let's leave behindour bondage to the material illusions fabricated by ego and engage in ourindividual inner journey to the place where only the Truth of who we aredwells, and let's dwell always in this Truth. This is Israel's legacy, inheritanceand destiny as the state of consciousness in which God's Love fills every spaceof who we are as His children and as His chosen people, because we chose backto embrace Him as our Father and our King. This is our true Essence andidentity, either in the desert or in any other place, to turn the desert into afield of life as He conceives it for us.

Bo: From Darkness to Light

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The last threeplagues prior to the Exodus from Egypt came with a deeper awareness of theCreator as the One and only cause and effect of His Creation. Each plaguecorresponds to a particular level of consciousness that we must awaken in orderto have a complete awareness of Him in our life and in the material world. Weare His creatures, and anything we may thinkor believe we are or have comes from Him and belongs to Him: "Naked I camefrom my mother's womb, and naked I will depart. The Lord gave and the Lord hastaken away, may the Name of the Lord be praised." (Job 1:21) and this isthe first step to start the process of getting to know Him.

The plague of the locusts represents the Creator's ownership ofour nourishment both material and spiritual, and the verse of its arrival isjuxtaposed to His Commandment for Israel to serve Him: "Let My people go, and they will serve Me. For ifyou refuse to let [them] go, behold, tomorrow I am going to bring locusts intoyour borders." (Exodus 10:3-4) and the awareness of His absoluteownership and control is a premise to relate to Him according to His will,which is to serve Him. The main obstacle to assimilate and adopt this premiseis ego and its desires, represented by Pharaoh and Egypt. The following plague,darkness, is the material and spiritual experience of the complete absence ofGod's Presence in our consciousness, which is also a direct consequence ofego's blindness to give in to God's Love as the Creator and sustainer of HisCreation: "They [the Egyptians] did not seeeach other, and no one rose [moved] from his place for three days; but for allthe children of Israel there was light in their dwellings." (10:23)This awareness (the Light in the dwellings of the Israelites) of God's Presencein His Creation makes the difference between darkness and Light.

In this context ego is one dimension of consciousness that we alsomust direct to our full awareness of the Creator's will: "And Moses said [to Pharaoh], 'You too shall givesacrifices and burnt offerings into our hands, and we will make them for theLord our God.'" (10:25) because in our positive actions and deeds("our hands") we serve and honor God's Love, and ego is successfullydirected not by good intentions but by good deeds. When we act in Love's waysand attributes, our positive actions don't leave any room for materialisticfantasies and illusions that seduce ego to take control of our life and lead us back to darkness. In darkness we can't see beyond ourselves, which is ego's aim tomake the world spin around its desires. Darkness seems to be the worst of allthe plagues because it prevents us to see beyond of who we think we are. In darknesswe are really lost, and in this predicament we have no choice but to seek theLight in order to be truly redeemed. This was the Creator's preordained experience for us tomove our consciousness towards the Truth. Our Sages teach that the darkness ofexile is the beginning to search for the Light of Redemption.

The tenth and final plague is the death of the firstborn of thosewho denied the Creator's ownership of His Creation. The firstborn representsour primary intention in life along with its values, principles and goals, likethe first fruits of the land that we must bring as offerings in the Temple. TheEgyptians' firstborns were inexorably dedicated to submit their lives tomaterialism without creating anything beyond the futility of ego's illusions.The firstborn is the first expansion of our human essence, as a reaffirmationof God's Love as the cause and effect of everything, including life. In thissense, we have to consecrate such expansion to Love's ways and attributes asthe material manifestations of God's Love: "Sanctifyto Me every firstborn, every one that opens the womb among the children ofIsrael, among man and among animals; it is Mine." (13:2) After all,everything belongs to Him. When we consecrate our extensions to ego's rule weare indeed "dead" before God's Love.

The experience of our closeness to God's Love is the beginning ofour freedom, and it is our first Commandment as Jews to commemorate the firstof the months as a memorial of our liberation from darkness, as well as the NewMoon as the beginning of the months (see our commentary on Hanukah in December2011 in this blog), because we realize our true Essence and identity when wereveal Light out of darkness: "And this dayshall be for you as a memorial, and you shall celebrate it as a festival forthe Lord; throughout your generations, you shall celebrate it as an everlastingstatute." (12:14) This is the experience and legacy of our exileand bondage in darkness: to live the blessing of revealing Light as our trueidentity when we cry out loud to God's Love to lead every aspect and dimensionof consciousness in His ways and attributes.

Mystic Sages explain that the seven-day period to celebrate Pesachand Succot represents a continuing process through which we correct and elevatethe seven primordial emotions known as loving kindness as compassion, power asself-control, truthfulness as enlightenment, perseverance as triumph, honor asglory, rightfulness as justice, and prevalence as sovereignty. When we arecommitted to practice these qualities on a daily basis as a moment to momentexpression or our true identity, we are serving the Creator in order to fullyreveal His Presence in the material world.

This knowledge we must have every moment, not only as aCommandment: "And it shall be for a signupon your hand (in what we do) and for ornaments between your eyes (in what we think and see), for with a mighty hand didthe Lord take us out of Egypt." (13:16) but also as the permanentawareness of God's Love as our Creator and sole owner of all that is, includingthe Light that He gives us to return to Him when we realize that we don'tbelong to darkness in the realm of illusion but to His Love as the realm ofTruth. As individuals we must have the courage to "come to Pharaoh(ego)" and confront it with the full awareness that Love is the real rulerof life from its beginning to its end, as God's Love is the ruler of HisCreation.

The Final Redemption in Judaism I

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Our Prophets andSages refer to theFinal Redemption both in concrete and allegorical definitions, and there isnothing obscure or unclear about their meanings. Maimonides says that theMessianic era, as the time for the Final Redemption, starts when we individuallyand collectively truly love each other, just because. He points outthat while the Second Temple was destroyed because of baselessand uncalled for hatred, the Third and permanent Temple of Jerusalem will bebuild because of selfless and unrestricted Love for each other. Again, wereaffirm the axiom that Love is the key to Redemption simply because Love doesnot coexist with anything different from its ways and attributes. It does notseem easy to love each other, otherwise we would have gained our Redemption longtime ago; and we have to reflect thoroughly on why we don't love each other in the same way that theCreator loves His Creation.

The Prophet Isaiah speaks aboutthe Final Redemption through impressive allegories such as the lion eatinggrass along with the lamb, in what our Sages call the total vanishing of the"evil inclination". In other words, our human free will is going tobe able to naturally choose goodness all the time. The challenge we seem toface is how we get to that level of higher consciousness. How can we be capableto disregard or ignore evil in order to choose goodness all the time? How can weturn the wild untamed lion that represents ego out of control into a docile andobedient driving force always willing to pursue goodness for the sake ofgoodness? The answer to both questions is that we achieve it in a gradualprocess of refining all aspects and dimensions of consciousness. We havelions and wolves as well as sheep and lambs, as allegories to negative andpositive traits that we must harmonize towards Love's ways and attributes. Wedo that precisely through Love's ways and attributes.

We mentioned before that ourSages say that those who want to be redeemed must prepare for their Redemption,in the same way that we do what we must in order to get what we need or want.There is no other way to do it. We prepare for what we desire with all oursoul, heart and might, and the Torah commands us to do that referring to theCreator. This is not about a blind love or desire to be close to Him and HisLove, but a genuine desire to know His ways and attributes as the means to loveHim. Our Love for Him does not come from thoughts, emotions or feelings butfrom our discernment and knowledge of Him. Isaiah indicates that the onlyinterest in the "end of times" as the Final Redemption will be theknowledge of God, which will cover the Earth as the water fills the bed of theoceans.

This is not an abstract knowledge of the Creator but a concreteawareness of His ways and attributes for us to emulate, and we achieve it whenwe act according to Love's ways and attributes. This is how we understand"loving each other" as the foundation of the highest awareness of ourconnection and relationship with God, represented by the Temple of Jerusalem. This is the context of our daily prayers when we ask theCreator to rebuild Jerusalem, because besides being the undivided capital ofIsrael it also represents a united consciousness in its highest knowledge ofGod.

We have said that thedestructions of the First and the Second Temples were the result of doing theopposite to Love's attributes, and we will build the Third Temple by honoringLove's attributes as the ways of God's Love. We mentioned that in agradual process we individually begin to ignore anything negative andfocus on the positive, as a natural way to perceive and approach life and thematerial world. Most of what we call or see as evil or negative is the resultof our own evil or negative approach. All the things we don't like in this worldare the effect of either what we or others have done with the wrong attitude.Wars, hunger, slavery, exploitation and their synonyms are the result of egocentricity,and their opposites are the effect of mutual understanding and cooperation outof the common knowledge that these are synonyms of selfless Love.

The good news about the FinalRedemption is that once we individually redirect all aspects of consciousnessin Love's ways, God's Love does the rest as He promised in the Torah in throughour Prophets. Once we choose to return to Him, He will release us from themirages and fantasies of ego's materialistic desires. Some Sages say that theFinal Redemption will come with a sudden and absolute change in humanconsciousness, in which we are not going to be able to tell the difference between beforeand after that change occurs. It will be as if evil and negativity have never existed, and we must prepare now in order to allow the imminent change to occursooner than later. We don't need to wait for the Final Redemption as a Divine decree, but asa mutual agreement between our Love and God's Love; and it's up to us to startfulfilling the agreement because it is us who yearn for Redemption.

Let's start not only to"visualize" Love, peace and harmony among each other but to make itreal through positive actions. In the same way that some say "let there bepeace and let it start with me", we must say the same about Love andits ways and attributes not only as the right and proper things to do, butbecause Love is our true Essence and identity. Love is our greatest legacy andinheritance because Love is the portion that makes us happy and fulfilled. OurSages say that "rich is the person who is happy with his/her lot". Wehave said many times that "lot" may mean who we are, what we have orthe circumstances in which we live, but we believe that our true lot is theawareness of how close or far we are from God. In this sense our lot isLove as whom we are, what we have and the circumstances in which we are whenLove is the guide and conductor of all aspects of our consciousness. This isthe greatest fulfillment and happiness we can ever have. Final Redemption is athand when Love is totally enthroned in our life.

The Jewish Spiritual Approach to Ego

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We all know thatego is one of the fundamental driving forces of human life, along withintellect, mind, emotions, passions and instincts. Ego actually belongs to adifferent category because it acts independently from the others, and use themto fulfill its agenda. In this sense, ego uses the other aspects ofconsciousness to satisfy its "desires", what we here usually callmaterial "fantasies" and "illusions". Our Sages define whatwe call ego in two interchangeable and complementary terms, which are what theycall the "animal soul" or nefesh and the "evil inclination"or yetzer ha'rah. In otherwords, they say that the animal soul is the source of the all potentiallynegative activity of human consciousness. They compare the animal soul to awild ox that either can destroy a field or build it, and indicate that its"seat" is the heart. Based on this allegory, some explain that theanimal soul has the potential to "good inclination" when one succeedsin directing it for a positive purpose.

This means that, besides being a powerful driving force, ego canhelp us build or destroy the field that we call life. In Judaism, thepersonages who chose to conduct their lives based on their personal,"selfish" agenda such as Cain, Ham, Nimrod, Esau, Laban, and Pharaohamong many others are by definition enemies of anyone or anything thatquestions their "ways", including their own Creator. Thisantagonistic attitude towards anything good and positive rejects and fights thepurpose of God's Love in His Creation, and by extension the goodness of Love'sways and attributes. This negative attitude turns life into somethingmeaningless and vain, resembling more to death. We have said that our humandiscernment understands that life is the purpose of God's Creation as anemanation of His Love, which must always prevail in spite of the oppositionfrom those who want to make suffering, hatred, hunger, pain, disease and deaththe rulers in the material world. Love always prevails because as the humanmanifestation of God's Love is the real source of life and the real driving force in human consciousness.We all know, including those who are against it, that none can live withoutLove.

In this context we have said (see commentaries on Bereshit andNoach in this blog) that the Flood, Babel's tower, Sodom and Gomorrah, andEgypt during the Exodus, where episodes in our history in which God's Love madeprevail real freedom for the sake of Love's ways and attributes over thedarkness of ego's idolatry. We must perceive what occurred in those times andplaces not as destruction but as transitions to make us value, cherish andprotect the freedom than only Love can give us. We as individuals and ashumankind have gone through more pain than fulfillment in the process of learningwhat is really important in our lives.

It seems certainly unbelievable that we still live like those inthe times of the Flood, when people didn't believe in anything but their ego'sillusions and lived to steal from others and kidnap others in order to havetheir possessions. Almost 70 years ago more than 55 million people died duringa war against the threat of totalitarianism as it happened in the times ofBabel's tower, when Nimrod was emulated by Hitler and the so calledfundamentalist radical Islamic "militants". We still suffer racism,discrimination, xenophobia, cruelty and torture as in Sodom and Gomorrah, notto mention the current sexual depravity and immorality of religious fanatics"marrying" ten year-old girls. And we still see slave trade andforced servitude in many countries, most of them under Islamic rule, andseveral other forms of slavery among the most conspicuous of all, consumer'ssociety.

The first four portions of the book of Exodus have two maincharacters which are Moses and Pharaoh. Each represent completely opposequalities. Pharaoh is the epitome of an egocentric approach to life and thematerial world, and Moses the highest awareness of God's Love in His Creation.Moses, the most humble of human being who has ever lived and Pharaoh as themost arrogant of all Biblical characters. One whose delusional desires pretendto subjugate and exploit all levels and dimensions of consciousness, and theone whose only mission is to direct them under the guidance of God's Love. Onefull of himself while the other is full of the awareness of Love's attributes.In this opposite traits we can have an idea of who is who.

Our oral tradition tells us that Moses lived 40 years in Egypt inthe palace of the ruler of the most depraved nation of its time, 40 years amongidolaters in Median, and 40 years as the man who was the closest to theCreator. These three periods mean that Moses went through several transitions in order to become the chosen redeemerof the children of Israel in Egypt. This teaches us that we all sooner or latergo through one stage to the other in the process to achieve complete awarenessof the Creator. At one point we get fed up with the futility of living ameaningless life under ego's fantasies and illusions. Then, we start reflectingand meditating on the things that are really relevant in life, as the shepherdsdo when they tend the sheep. Finally, when we are living free and far frommaterialistic illusions, we are ready to meet the Divine Presence concealed bysuch illusions.

Sages say that those who want to be redeemed must prepare forRedemption. In other words, as it always is, the choice is ours. Either Mosesor Pharaoh, the Promised Land or Egypt.

Vaeira: Love as Freedom from Ego's Dominion

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OurSages explain the hardships of the children of Israel under heavy bondage inEgypt as a learning and purifying process prior to standing before the DivinePresence. We have said many times that evil and negativity are just referencesfor our free will to make the positive choices that bring us goodness,prosperity and true fulfillment and happiness. The only way to make positivechoices is to have an absolute knowledge of what are their opposites.By absolute we mean a thorough and complete awareness of what we must avoid inorder to pursue our destiny as individuals and as humankind.

This approach is the opposite of a partial orrelative knowledge of evil and negativity, which justifies them as a"natural" part of our consciousness. The bondage in Egypt was theoverwhelming and unbearable immersion in the materialistic approach to lifeunder which ego (Pharaoh) is the god that dominates all levels ofconsciousness. When our attachment to ego's fantasies and illusions becomesunbearable, because they are devoid of true meaning and fulfillment, we canfinally recognize, value and cherish Love's ways and attributes.

The harsh suffering of living under a meaninglessand futile life is the darkness from where we seek the Light. God's Will is ourtotal happiness and fulfillment as it was originally meant in the Garden ofEden, and we are destined to return there by making the positive choices,though this is entirely up to us. This is how we understand the learningprocess mentioned above when the Creator answers Moses' complaint aboutIsrael's hardships in Egypt: "(…) and He said to him, 'I am theLord'." (Exodus 6:2) because He determines the way we stand beforeHim. We have to reiterate that He gave us free will to either choose His waysor not. We as His People are destined to choose as He commands us and, in fullawareness of our Covenant with Him, we choose His ways and attributes. Theseour Patriarchs saw in their relationship with Him: "I appeared to [lit. was seen over] Abraham, to[over] Isaac, and to [over] Jacob (…)" (6:3)

In the process of learning from the bondage toego's materialistic illusions we ultimately realize that Love's ways andattributes are our true freedom, out of God's Love: "And I will take youto Me as a people, and I will be a God to you, and you will know that I am theLord your God, Who has brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians." (6:7) As we mentioned in our commentaries on the book ofExodus (see 2010-2011 in this blog) Moses represents our highest knowledge ofthe Creator and Aaron the highest awareness of our connection to Him, and thesequalities are the premises to relate to Him: "Thatis Aaron and Moses, to whom the Lord said, 'Take the children of Israel out ofthe land of Egypt with their legions.'" (6:26) because these are the qualitiesthat empower us to break up materialistic fantasies and illusions through thefull awareness of Love's attributes as the true references to approach life and thematerial world: "They are the ones whospoke to Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, to let the children of Israel out ofEgypt; they are Moses and Aaron." (6:27) Love is entitled anddestined to direct and guide all the driving forces of life, ego included.

God's Love gives us life to empower it with Loveas our Essence and identity, and our highest knowledge of the Creator endows usto enthrone Love as the ruler over all levels of consciousness: "The Lordsaid to Moses, 'See! I have made you a lord [lit. a god] over Pharaoh, andAaron your brother will be your speaker'." (7:1)

If we know nowadays the hardships it takes to make ego subservientto our will, imagine how difficult was then under the bondage in the oneconsidered the most depraved society of ancient times. In this sense weunderstand the need to "hit" Pharaoh, the Egyptians and their landnot with one or two but ten plagues. Mystic Sages explain that each plaguerepresent a step to "sensitize" human consciousness by recognizingthe Creator's Will as the sole owner and conductor of His Creation.

Blood is related to warm and affectionate feelings as the bearerand nurturer of life, opposite to water as inorganic and cold as ourmaterialistic, egotistic approach to life. The river Nile was and still is thesource of life for Egypt, and Egyptians took it for granted as if the river didnot depend on the Creator. By turning its waters into blood, they had to digwells to drink from. Frogs also have cold blood, and coming from the water tojump into ovens was another lesson to learn that no matter how cold we may be,we must look for warming ourselves in the heat that represents our heart. Thelice as bloodsuckers also represent ego's ruthless use of the source of life tosatisfy its materialistic desires at the expense and suffering of others. Wildanimals represent harmful thoughts, vicious emotions, destructive passions anduncontrolled instincts which characterize the negative aspects of consciousnessraised by ego's selfish agenda. Pestilence is the result of the destruction ofego's misleading fantasies and illusions, and so skin eruptions as the effectof ego's heated desires when out of control. Hail mixed with fire descendedfrom the sky to teach us that opposite qualities such as water and fire cancoexist together under the Creator's Will, as well as fire that burns anddoesn't consume, which represents God's Love for us.

The plagues as lessons and steps to submit ego to thehigher consciousness of Love are reminders that God's Love is our Creator. Bybeing and manifesting Love as the ruler and conductor of our consciousness weleave behind our exile and bondage under a purposeless life, and be ready toapproach the meaningful and transcending destiny the Creator has for us. Ourindividual and collective Exodus starts when we make the choice to embrace Loveas our true Essence and identity, and God's Love as our Creator that sustainsus.

Shemot: Our True Identity as Redemption

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Slavery and freedomare two main subjects of the book of Exodus, both bound to our relationshipwith the Creator. Although our Sages refer to the usual translation as slavery,they point out that the Hebrew term suggests servitude or service depending onthe context that is mentioned. Hence we can serve God either as His servants orHis slaves, and most of our Sages prefer the idea of service when there is acommon agreement between the one who serves and the one who is served. Inservice one seems to have a relative degree of independence, and his work isthe result of his choice based on a mutually convenient accord. In contrast,slavery implies forced service or labor against the will of who provides hiswork. We all know the difference, and we must raise the distinction in order toapproach this crucial period of our Jewish history.

Slavery or servitude is mentioned as a curse when Noah declaredthat Ham will serve his brothers Shem and Japheth, and as prophecy revealed toRebecca regarding her sons, stating that the older will serve the younger.Regarding Ham, our Sages say that his attachment to negative emotions, lowerpassions and uncontrolled instincts made him enslaved to these, and thispredicament also made him subservient to those more capable to master the loweraspects of consciousness. Our oral tradition tells that Ham, the raven and thedog were the only ones who transgressed God's order to abstain from sexualintercourse inside Noah's ark during the Flood. Esau shared similar traits thatdestined him to serve the higher consciousness represented by Jacob. Theseprecedents of slavery or servitude are clear references to examine ourancestors' bondage in Egypt.

We learn from such Biblical accounts that identity defines in lesser or greater proportions how we exercise free will interms of what and who we serve, or for what and for whom we dedicate our life.In this sense we understand that the saga of the Exodus starts with the names (shemot) of the children of Israel as their identities. These names are mentioned to teach us that ourawareness of who we are and from where we come determines for Whom and for whatwe live in this world, either be in exile or in our Promised Land. The firstportion of Shemot reveals two aspects of slavery: the more we are assimilated into areality contrary to our true Essence and identity, the more we enslave ourconsciousness to values, patterns and lifestyles that deny our real purpose inthis world. Ironically, as we have said many times, in the darkness of exile'salien reality --equated to ego's materialistic fantasies and illusions-- is wherewe force ourselves to search for freedom.

Our Sages say that Egypt is the prototype of all Jewish exiles,and that is why we pray three times a day to be redeemed from there. Eventhough it happened many centuries ago, we still cry out to God's Love todeliver us from servitude under the illusions of the material world derivedfrom the egocentric consciousness represented by Pharaoh. Not many among sevenbillion people can boast about making a living according to what we like ordesire in terms of work. The ideal "best work is the best play" is aremote childhood memory when mowing the grass, painting the fence, and shinningdad's shoes were the most enjoyable works to play because we loved to do them.Love is what reminds us of our true identity and the reason why life and God'sCreation exist. We find no meaning in anything we do or may have if Love is nottheir cause and effect.

Moses and Aaron stood before Pharaoh asking him for permission tolet the Israelites go to the desert for a festival honoring their God. Hedenied the petition arguing that he didn't know God, because Pharaoh as theepitome of ego believed that he was his own god. Our Sages analyze the Hebrewword for festival, saying that its semantic root means to encircle or to gather aroundin a circle, in which the Creator sits in the center. This invites us todiscern again on the circle and the pyramid as opposite models about how werelate to each other as individuals, and in society as a whole. The circlerejects categories, levels, casts, upper or lower, because we are all equal inthe eyes of God, and we are commanded to follow His ways and emulate Hisattributes. This is one of the primordial principles of Judaism, and the Torahpresents the children of Israel as the family whose circle is the Light for thenations to imitate also as their model. The circle is the result of Love's waysand attributes as the material reflections of God's Love, and we understand HisLove by following His Commandments.

We have names that identify who we are as the children of Israelwherever we may be, and as long as we maintain this awareness we know by Whomdo we live and for Whom do we live. This is an essential part of Joseph'slegacy to us, because he not only affirmed that he was a Hebrew but acted asone while he was a servant and a ruler. By reaffirming his true identity he wasable to rule in his surroundings either as a slave or as a viceroy.The awareness of our true identity secures our autonomy, and this inner freedomleads us to Redemption. All we are and do with Love as our Essence and identityare the true service that we are destined to realize.

God's Love redeemed ourforefathers from their slavery under the lowest levels of consciousness, tomake them serve Him up on the highest levels of consciousness where real freedom dwells. From there we serve only with our Love,for the sake of Love as freedom. In this awareness there's no submission tonegative thoughts, emotions, feelings, passions and instincts, because Love isour freedom as God's Love is our Redemption: "They will make war againstyou but will be unable to defeat you, because I am with you, says the Lord to deliver you."(Jeremiah 1:19) and "Days are coming when Jacob will take root, Israelwill bud and blossom and fill the face of the Earth like fruit." (Isaiah27:6)

The Feminine Principle

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TheFeminine Principle of Creation is the revealed Presence of the Creator in thematerial world, while the Masculine Principle represents His concealedPresence. The mission of men and women as representatives of humanity isto fully reveal the Divine Presence in Creation, referred in the HebrewScriptures as the mission to create in this world a place where the Creator maydwell among us, in every dimension of consciousness. Let's start with Judaism'sfundamental principle of the Oneness of the Creator that we perceive partiallyin our human reasoning. This partial comprehension makes us perceive materialreality in terms of dualism, divisions or separations, and one reason forthis is to exercise the free will that the Creator gave us. In this sense we alsoperceive the unknown to us as somehow "separate" from the wholenessencompassed by Divinity. In the process of understanding Oneness we arecompelled to assimilate both revealed and unrevealed as part of the same.

Jewishmysticism explains Creation as the result of Divine emanations also partiallyrevealed to human perception and understanding. Due to their Divine origin,these emanations are factually incomprehensible to us. Mystic Sages illustratethem as "spheres" (sfirot) self-contained concentrically andat the same time projections of the previous ones, since all are part of asingle unit. We may also conceive them visually as planes in vertical sequence,and their base or lowest projection (malchut) corresponds to thematerial Creation that we know as physical realm or material reality. Inour perception all that our senses and intellect can grasp is nothing but theperfection of Creation, which as we said we can conceive only partially, andthis aspect of Creation is what we will try to define as Feminine Principle.All that the senses perceive is part of a Divine Plan in which life and theknowledge of the Creator are the main purpose. All the elements that comprisethe material Creation exist in order to generate life and sustain life.Mineral, vegetable, animal and human exist and interact to give expression tothe living, and that function is the material manifestation of the Principle weseek to define as Feminine. We call it feminine because, as we have realizedthrough human history, it is the generating force of life.

In thiscontext we can understand the Feminine Principle as the very Essence thatcreates, generates and sustains the material Creation as a result of God'sLove. Our perception and discernment help us determine what generates life andwhat doesn't. We can say that all existing life is the Feminine Principle asthe material expression of Divine Love, and the Woman is both the allegoricaland specific manifestation of this Principle. Allegorical because sherepresents the potential of life and conception of life, in the same way thatGod's Love is for His Creation. Specific because she gestates life and givesbirth to life. The Woman then is endowed to gestate the miracle of life,understanding life as the material effect of Love.

Thisverse refers to the Feminine Principle embodied in the Woman: "And the mancalled his wife Eve, because she was the mother of all the living"(Genesis 3:20) and the fact that she is all life is confirmed in the HebrewBible, which mentions for the first time the Feminine Principle in the verse:"(...) and God created man in His image, in the image of the Lord he wascreated; male [masculine] and female [feminine] He created them" (1:27) asessential elements for the revelation of the Divine Presence inCreation. "And the Lord God said, 'It is not good that man should bealone, I will make him [an] helper, [his] opposite to him.'" (2:18),"(...) but found no helper for Adam [his] opposite to him" (2:20)opposite in a complementary sense, since both were created initially as one(1:27) which is why Adam said, "This time [she] is now bone of my bonesand flesh of my flesh. For this shall be called woman, because from the man wastaken" and the narrative goes on saying, "Therefore shall a man leavehis father and mother and be united to his wife and they become one flesh"(2:23-24) because one is part of the other. This is also an integral andcooperative unity because that's how they fulfilltogether their mission in the world. Here is remarked the word"helper" as essential to the Masculine Principle in our commondestination to reveal the concealed Divine Presence in Creation. The overridingmessage of the Hebrew Bible is the cooperation and mutual aid among human beings,as the ethical and compelling Commandment to love one another.

Women inJewish history make us understand the mission entrusted to the Jewish people bythe Creator, and in particular to their men. Their mission as"helpers" is, as already mentioned, the vital expression of Love aswhat generates and sustains life. Hence women are the personification of theFeminine Principle: "The man [Adam] called the name of his woman [wife]Eve, because she was the mother of all living" (3:20) because life emanatesfrom her, in the same way that all existence emanates from the Creator. Thus weunderstand that she is "a crown to her husband" and "a pearl ofgreat price for his life" (Proverbs 12:4, 31:10). Our Sages say about herthat "the wife [woman] is the house" and in a deeper meaning throughher Man builds his consciousness to fulfill together their destiny to revealthe concealed Divine Presence.

Themajority of women in Jewish history have faithfully personified the help andsupport required to reveal the Divine Presence in the material world. Thissupport covers many and varied aspects that make up the attributes of Love asthe material manifestation of Divine Love. We know that filial love isunconditional, and the way it directs us in shaping human character andpersonality for the sake of ethical values inherent to Love. Sarah and Rebeccaare both archetypes of the same paradigm. Sarah was to Abraham and Isaac whatRebecca was for Isaac and Jacob. These archetypes become more complex with Leahand Rachel, along with Zilpah and Bilhah, because from them other traits andqualities derive to determine the identity of Israel as the Jewish people. Ouroral tradition emphasizes on the physical beauty of the Jewish Matriarchs toteach us that such quality is a reflection of their spiritual beauty. Hence,they were coveted by kings and enemies of our Patriarchs as well. In this sensewe must understand beauty as a spiritual quality rather than a physical trait,and not falling for exterior beauty devoid of spiritual substance. This definesthe Jewish conception of beauty in contrast to the Hellenic definition.

Tamar andRuth, converts to Judaism like all our Matriarchs, represent the same archetypementioned before, both with the specific destiny of the total and final revelation of the Divine Presence.This is the proclamation of the sovereignty of the Creator and Ruler of HisCreation. This proclamation is the mission and destiny of Israel as the Jewishpeople who mainly descended from Judah, seen as the quality of royalty required to enthrone the Kingdom ofthe Creator in the material world. We must conceive the Creator as Father andas King and it is essential to refer to Him and relate to Him with a Torahprotocol that contains 613 clauses, 248 that we have to fulfill and 365 fromwhich we must abstain.

As Jewswe have to relate to our women in full consciousness of our identity as afundamental premise to fulfill our destiny as men and as a people. The samegoes for Jewish women. We strengthen our Jewish identity with the attributes ofthe Creator that the Torah instructs us to follow and emulate, which alsoemanate from our own Love as the material manifestation of God's Love. Thus weunderstand the preeminence of Love derived from the Feminine Principle as areference to express the Masculine Principle.

Men andwomen share in different proportions both Principles and women further revealLove in the material world by their capacity to bear and create life. ManyAboriginal cultures equate the earth to Woman, and this equality is axiomatic.Therefore, in their traditions and rituals the Woman is the central figure asthe tangible expression of life, as well as Love as the Essence that begetslife. So it is understandable that the feminine in the arts has a prominentposition. Emotional and sensual attraction and dependency to the feminine fillmost of the language of popular music. This also confirms the strong presenceof the Feminine Principle which we must address as a means and not as an end inthe process to fully reveal the Divine Presence through the MasculinePrinciple. In this regard it is crucial that the Man receives the Woman'ssupport as a bearer and giver of Love as life in order to integrate it into themale consciousness. Once man enthrones in his consciousness Love as the guideof all its traits, qualities, levels and dimensions, the Divine Presence willbe fully revealed as the manifestation of our Final Redemption.

We mustlove as women do, and as men to lead our Love as the foundation of ourrelationship with the Creator, and likewise with our fellow human beings. Love,as our true Essence and identity, belongs to Man and Woman alike because bothwere created equal as the image and likeness of the Creator, and as a result ofHis Love. As complement and supplement for each other, Man and Woman are unitedby Love as their common Essence. In their union, Love revealed in the Womanencourages the Man to awaken and express his Love, and in that mutualcorrespondence Love as life is reproduced in its full capacity, power andstrength. Thus we see Love as the constructive force upon which we build lifeto generate life as the material manifestation of Divine Love. It is imperativethat men and women recognized each other in their common Essence.

Throughoutour history, the Woman has maintained her identity as the epitome of Love,remaining faithful and loyal to it. Thus we understand her faithfulness andloyalty to the Creator amid all the vicissitudes that the Jewish people livedduring their exile in Egypt, in their passage through the desert before andafter the giving of the Torah, in their settlement in the Promised Land, intheir wars and resistance to invaders, in exile in Persia and Babylon, and inthe Diaspora. We must pay attention to our history since the Covenant with theCreator until now, studied and evaluated as men and women heirs of theCovenant. Thus we begin to truly know who we were and we are as men and women,as a people, and as a Nation. Clearly, in our tradition, women have maintainedtheir Jewish female identity in greater proportion than Jewish men's identity.This makes us consider that the Feminine Principle has been prevalent andcrucial to maintaining and sustaining life in the material world. It is abouttime to start making prevail in our male identity the Feminine Principle thatfor many centuries we have turned away and relegated as alien to men andpeculiar to women, because it is the same Love that give us life, protects us,sustains us and seeks the best and most convenient for our survival under thedarkness of the illusions created by the ego as the false conductor of ourconsciousness.

In thisassessment we conclude that in greater proportion we as men have elevated egowith its fantasies and illusions as the individual god we each make of it.Fantasies and illusions inflated through ideologies, beliefs, ideas and fashiontrends filled with negativity to generate wars, conflicts and suffering becomethe carriers of desolation and death. They are the opposites of what Love andits attributes can generate as life and plenitude. Men and women unitedmust recognize and rediscover each other as complements to the same Principlewhich is the will of the Creator. Our Final Redemption comes when we rebuildwhat we destroyed with immorality, murder and idolatry, and baseless hatred toone another, by doing the opposite to these. This reconstruction happens bybeing and manifesting Love in order to replace immorality with integrity. Wemake murder disappear by protecting and nurturing life, and instead ofbelieving and worshiping ego's fantasies and illusions we follow Love's waysand attributes. As a result of this we replace ego's uncalled for hatred byloving each other, emulating God's Love for us.

We haveto forge this destination stored for us by the Creator, since the Redemption ofHis Love is a miracle that we must start in consonance withHim. Without His Love thereis no Love. Hence women aswell as men must reflect on their own identity, and in this awareness Man mayembrace his own. Then both together may start rebuilding humanconsciousness after its destruction for such a long time. As we do it, we beginto experience the other part of the Divine Plan mentioned above, which is to know the Creator as we have never done itbefore. Once we dissipate the negative aspects of consciousness by enthroningLove in all its levels and dimensions, our only interest and desire will be theknowledge of God. We have to make Love our individual and collectiveconsciousness with which together we can reveal the concealed Divine Presencein the material world, and proclaim that "the whole Earth is full of HisGlory", "the Glory of God will be revealed and all flesh together will see it."(Isaiah 6:3, 40:5), "For the Earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Glory of God, as the waters cover the sea." (Habakkuk 2:14), and His Glory is His Love.

Vayechi: The Blessing of Love's Unity

2012-01-01T00:00:00.000-08:00

Theunity of Israel as Jacob's family and as a Nation is the main message of Vayechi,and we must have full awareness of the qualities of this unity. Let's reflecton some verses that help us define such qualities."AndIsrael said to Joseph: 'I did not think possible to see you face; and, lo, Godhas let me see your seed also.'" (Genesis 48:11) Our Sages ponderon the meaning of the Hebrew verb translated here as "to think possible",which refers to praying. Although, "to pray" is a reflexive verb inHebrew, in this verse is not conjugated as reflexive and may indicate anincomplete thought due to Jacob's sadness for Joseph's disappearance. Thisbrief preamble takes us to consider the wholeness implied in the Hebrewreflexive form of praying. Our Sages teach that as our concentration inelevating all levels of consciousness to God, prayer replaces the offeringsthat our ancestors elevated in the Temple of Jerusalem. Still, why is it areflective action and not one directed to Him? It must be reflective because, byengaging together all aspects and dimensions of consciousness towards His Love, we (think possible to) achieve our connection, unity and Oneness with Him. Therefore,Jewish prayer is about engaging oneself together with the Creator, and not a methodto summon Him to grant us what we may need, want to require for our personalwell being.

Jacobwas concerned and worried that their children may not come together and unitedaround him and his legacy (Israel as God's People), and our oral traditiontells that all his sons together declared to him, "Listen, Israel, theLord is our God, the Lord is One" to demonstrate that they were aware ofthe true meaning of unity. He called them commanding themto be united: "And Jacob called unto his sons, and said: 'Gatheryourselves together (…). Assemble yourselves, and hear, you sons of Jacob;and hearken to Israel your father." (49:1-2) and this demand is thepremise, the condition, the prerequisite, the provision for them to receive hisblessings. Hence our Sages conclude that the blessing for each Tribe is alsothe blessing to all of them. We have to reiterate that the Tribes of Israel inthe same way represent traits and qualities of human consciousness, and defined toachieve God's Will in who we are and what we do. We said in previouscommentaries that Joseph became the Firstborn, Levi the Priesthood, and Judahthe Kingship, as the threefold paradigm of Israel while the rest of thebrothers are contributing aspects to it.

Inour consciousness this paradigm encompasses intellect, mind, thoughts,emotions, passions and instincts along with talents, skills, traits and qualitiesaimed to enrich the diversity that life is. The variety we see in the materialworld inspires us to be as diverse as creative in the common mission toproclaim God's Presence as His Love manifest in His Creation. In this senseGod's Love, as our true Essence and identity, is Israel's paradigm to beenthroned as the leading and commanding Ruler of who we are, what we have andwhat we do. Thus Love's ways and attributes are the only means to achieve unityin our consciousness as individuals, and consequently unity as a collective inthe material world. In our praying we evoke God's Love by elevating our Love toHim, and when both Loves unite we are ready to proclaim His Glory which coversthe Earth. In this awareness we go out into the world to fulfill our mission tounify what is separated, to fix what is broken, to rectify the mistake, to healwhat is ill, to ease what is burdensome, to untie the tied, to free thecaptive, to empower the weak, to educate the ignorant, to gather the exiled. Wedo all these through the unity that Love is.

Jacobblessed the goodness of who we are and the goodness that we can become, and hisblessings are such that they also refer to the negative traits that threatengoodness as our common and final purpose: "(…) instruments of violence are their weapons.Let mysoul not come into their council; unto their assembly let my glory not beunited; for in their anger they slew men, and in their self-will they hamstrungoxen. Cursed be their anger, for it was fierce, and their wrath because it iscruel (…)." (49:5-7) We have said often that Love does not cohabitwith anything different than its ways and attributes. Wrath and anger areinherent to violence. God's Love as the banner and Soul of Israel can'tassociate with the negative aspects of consciousness. Love's glory doesn'tunite or gather with the traits aimed to destroy God's Love as the Essence of HisCreation, and our Love as human beings created in His image and likeness.

OurSages remark that the letter zayin (which also means armament) does notappear in any of the words in Jacob's blessing to Judah, because in his missionto proclaim God's Sovereignty in the world we Jews don't need weapons; neitherLove needs them to bestow the blessings of God's Love. Our Patriarch Jacobcommands us to pursue unity in order to fulfill our mission as theJewish people, and also teaches us that our Love is what unifies us to enthroneGod's Presence in our individual consciousness as well as in the entire world.

Thelast four portions of Genesis start with Joseph and end with him: "These are thegenerations of Jacob: Joseph (…) "(37:2) and "Joseph died at the age of one hundred tenyears (…)" (50:26) closing the first book of theTorah with the Firstborn and inheritor of Israel's legacy as the paradigm ofGod's Love manifest in human consciousness. Fourteen chapters that teach us throughJoseph the qualities of the greatest blessing of the Creator for us: His Love.

Joseph and Judah: The Royalty of God's Love

2011-12-25T00:00:00.001-08:00

OurSages compare Joseph and Judah based on their individual experiences before andafter Joseph estrangement from his family, and on the blessings that Jacob andMoses bestowed for them as Tribes of Israel. They indicate that Josephrepresents the inner relationship we have with the Creator, and Judah thematerial manifestation of this relationship. In that sense both brothers arethe two sides of the same coin as specific aspects of a common royalidentity, and understanding royalty as the highest awareness with whichwe must relate to God. Our inner relationship with Him is the most sacredconnection we can ever conceive, and is the primordial foundation that supportsour approach to His Creation vis-à-vis the material reality where we live andrelate with our fellow man.

Wehave mentioned that our Sages regard Jacob and Joseph as reflections of oneanother, as if they were the same person, based on similarities both had incommon that the other brothers didn't share with Jacob. They also remark thatsuch similarities resulted from their higher awareness of the Creator, andconsequently their closer connection to Him. This is the context in whichsome of our Sages are called tzadikim (righteous), because that level ofconsciousness and demeanor is achieved only when we live every moment in closerelationship with God's ways and attributes. That's why Joseph was chosen tosave his family during the time of famine and protect them in the first stage oftheir exile in Egypt. Jacob made public his preference for Joseph not toinstigate hatred and jealousy in his other sons against his "chosen"one, but to make him an example for them to follow. They didn't accept Josephsuch as, neither his presumed royal destiny revealed in his dreams. We mustrecall again the episode of Cain and Abel to illustrate that hatred andjealousy eventually lead to murder. The difference between that story and thisone is that, unlike God's dialogue with Cain to amend his negative attitudetowards Him and Abel, Jacob apparently did not encourage his sons to recognizeJoseph's qualities and follow his example.

Wemust know and emulate the qualities of such characters that make them worthy ofbecoming God's vessels or "chariots" to entirely fulfill His ways andexecute His attributes. One unambiguous signal pointed out in the HebrewScriptures is that when God is with us, we become a blessing for thosearound us. We have to reiterate that first we must be with Him in orderto become aware of His Presence in our life. Thus we are able to realize thatthe blessings that others experience when touched by us, or by being around us,are actually God's blessings and not ours. We are simply the vessels asmessengers of His Love, and our Love also becomes the means to convey His blessings. It is important to remark here that the blessings are such as longas they benefit everyone. God's Love is not limited to some orexcludes others, and is not only for us as individuals because His Love pervadesall His Creation.

Thisprinciple is hard to assimilate when our consciousness is under the mistakenconception that it is a separate part of Creation, as a result of its falseestrangement from the Creator. This is an erroneous idea that confounds ourdiscernment when we lose the perspective of darkness and evil as plainreferences to pursue Light and Love. This confusion is typical of non-Judaicconceptions that good and evil are separate entities in constant conflict toprevail over one another, and that both "act" as separated andconfronted "forces" or "gods" under which humans arehelpless puppets, and ultimately victims of their whims. Those conceptions areregarded by Judaism as idolatry, as well as the generalized belief that humansare estranged entities in a world where "everyone's by himself",justifying exploitation, discrimination, segregation, exclusion, and slavery on the grounds that there are inferior and superior peoples, better andworse, perfect and imperfect, in different levels and categories. Under thesegrounds the relative conceptions that some value as social, cultural,educational, political, economical and moralistic patterns or systems, definethe levels of the pyramidal model within which most nations approach human lifein this world.

Theblessings of God's Love do not fall into that model because they are not"filtered" through levels and categories from particular views,conceptions and beliefs that oppose Love's all encompassing, all including, andall pervading ways and means. Love as our Essence and as reflection of God'sLove does not have limits or borders, and is not conditioned to individualisticinterests. We can't love a selected few in detriment of others, and we can'tlove someone at the expense of another. This reminds us the Nazi butchers whotortured and murdered millions of Jews in their utmost hatred while embracingand kissing their spouses, children and friends, arguing that there was norelation between ruthlessly murdering people and loving their families. Westill see people hating some while "loving" others. We mustreconsider the way we conceive "love", particularly when it hasbecome subservient to material fantasies and illusions, egotistic interests,and consumer society's values. Our Love of God is the same Love that wemanifest to our fellow man, and the Torah teaches that when we love God we arecompelled to love our fellow man.

Whenwe love as Joseph loved his brothers, we preserve the encompassing unity thatLove is, and Redemption follows. In order to achieve that kind of Love, firstwe build our inner relationship with God's Love as Joseph did, as aparadigm of Israel. In this inner building process we have to refine ourindividual traits and qualities as part of all levels of consciousness, byfollowing God's ways and emulating His attributes. Refinement is a defining characteristicof royalty, and we learn it from the Creator and King of everything, ourGod. In the context of Judaism, Judah is destined to royalty as the materialmanifestation of God's Kingdom in this world. Joseph as king is our Love in theinner relationship with God and Judah as king in our outer relationship with Him; understanding outer as the material manifestation of our Love of God.

Josephis entitled to royalty in his inner relationship with God, and Judah isentitled to royalty by proclaim God's Kingdom on Earth. As we said earlier,both royalties are part of the same majestic unity that we must achieve tohonor God's Presence in the material world. This unity is achieved bystrengthening our inner connection with the Creator, through our Love for Him, which means following His ways and attributes; and in this strength we will beable to manifest them in what we do. As our Sages point out, Joseph and Judahare the two levels of the true royalty that our inner Love and outer Love are asfaithful manifestations of God's Love in His Creation. We learn that spirit andmatter are parts of the unity that life is, and both work together as Love andthrough Love for the purpose of Love in all aspects of consciousness, with thecommon mission to honor God's Love as our Essence and identity.

Vayigash: Living in God's Will

2011-12-25T00:00:00.000-08:00

Regardless what we may believe or be certain about, as partof God's Creation our lives all belong to His Will. There's an endless debatearound this Fundamental Principle of Judaism in regards to free will. If weultimately fulfill God's Will regardless the choices we make, do we really havefree will? The answer is yes, because our choices --either be "right"or "wrong"-- ultimately lead us to the Truth of who we really areand our mission in this world. In other words, making positive or negativechoices makes us aware of them by their results, from which we learn to makethe next choice. This means that, at the end of things, sooner o later we willend up doing the right thing. Then it is up to us to either learn through positive or negative experiences. We have said before that Judaism considers evil as anegative reference to be avoided, and in the worst case scenario to learn form;and not to live for because we are not born to be masochists. Regrettably, mostof us in this world may not have it clear enough and to prove it wejust need to take a look around us.

We must reflect thoroughly about God's Creation and realizethat it is far bigger than ego's pretension to make us believe that we aregods in our material fantasies, desires and illusions. Once we get humbleenough it may be possible to accept God's Will and not ours. It took KingDavid's whole life and the 150 chapters of his Psalms to realize this, and isone of the main lessons we learn from the story of Joseph and his brothers: "Butnow do not be sad, and let it not trouble you that you sold me here, for it wasto preserve life that God sent me before you."(Genesis 45:5) and His Will is indeed His Love for His Creation to sustain itevery moment for the sake of the goodness that life is: "(…) And God sent me before you to make for you a remnant in theland, and to live for a great deliverance." (45:7) In our awarenessof God's Love there is always a land to sustain life, as our means topursue our deliverance when the material reality does not provide for our essential needs. We face famine not only when the land does not provide for oursustenance, but also when the material world (a "land") does notoffer us true spiritual fulfillment in the illusions we create from our "individual"reality.

Here we understand that ego (Pharaoh) must be directed by thediscernment and wisdom with which Love (Joseph) approaches God's Creation as anemanation of His Love: "And now, you did not send me here but God and Hemade me a father to Pharaoh, a lord over his entire household, and a ruler overthe entire land of Egypt." (45:8) We have learned from thesepassages of the Torah that Joseph is the epitome of Love ever since he waschosen by Israel to be his firstborn, and Love's attributes led him to ascendas the destined guide of all levels and dimensions of consciousness, ego included.Love's greatest and most formidable challenge is to direct our awareness amidthe hardships of the material world. These difficulties range from theadversity of natural phenomena to the negative aspects of thought, emotions,feelings, passions and instincts.

OurSages tell us that hatred against Hebrews, hostility, aggressiveness, depravity and immorality were the main traits of the ancient Egyptians, and comingdown to them was a threat for people with opposite qualities. Israel andhis children knew this in spite of Joseph ascent to power. In such predicamentIsrael prays to the Creator, and His Love answers: "I will go down with you to Egypt, and I will also bring youup, and Joseph will place his hand on your eyes." (46:4) andthis verse reminds us to be mindful about His Will. Our Sages teach us thatliving in the darkness of a negative consciousness (Egypt) is the premise torecognize the Light of Redemption. In this sense, as we mentioned above, ournegative choices sooner or later lead us to discern positive from negative,right from wrong, useful from useless.

Inthis process we have to know who we are, from where we come, and the destinythat we are commanded to fulfill: "And Pharaohsaid to his brothers, 'What is your occupation?' And they said to Pharaoh, 'Yourservants are shepherds, both we and our forefathers.'"(47:3) The children of Israel are descendants of people who were commanded bytheir God to lead as "the Light for the nations" those in need ofpositive guidance, a duty that was an abomination in those times among peopleswhose traits were far from positive. Let's bear in mind that anti-Semitism andJudeophobia are as ancient as Judaism, and the detractors of Jews were thosewho opposed the ethical principles that sustain and promote moral freedom inall levels of consciousness. In its quest and history, Judaism's existencereflects our Patriarch Israel's life: "The days of the years of my lifehave been few and miserable [lit. evil], and they have not reached the days ofthe years of the lives of my forefathers in the days of their sojourning."(47:9)

Onlyin our relentlessness will we be able to fulfill our destiny, no matter hownegative and adverse may be the illusions of the material world: "And Israel dwelt in the land of Egypt, in the land of Goshen,and they acquired property in it, and they were prolific and multiplied greatly."(47:27) We did it in Egypt and we have done throughout history with God's Presenceamong us. Even if most of our days and years have been amid evil, God's Lovenever abandons us. With our Love we will also reach out to our FinalRedemption, which is also everyone's Redemption, and then we will reach thedays of the years of our forefathers: "And I will form a Covenant of Peacefor them [Israel], an everlasting Covenant shall be with them; and I willestablish them and I will multiply them, and I will place My Sanctuary in theirmidst forever. And My dwelling place shall be over them, and I will beto them for a God, and they shall be to Me as a people."(Ezekiel 37:26-27) and for us this prophecy is fulfilled when we as Israel meetHis Will, which is the ways and attributes of His Love.

Hanukah and the Light of Redemption

2011-12-18T00:00:00.003-08:00

Let'sreflect on two things that are apparently unrelated but their commondenominator is that both challenge our understanding. One is the firstCommandment that the Creator gives to Israel in its birth as a Nation, theconsecration of the New Moon as the beginning of the months, and Nissan as thefirst of them in which Israel's freedom began. The other is Final Redemption aspredicted by our Prophets.

Wemay question why we start the months with the New Moon and not with the FullMoon, by arguing that we can begin with fully revealed light and end also withfull light after fading into darkness and later emerging to total brightness.However, our Creator commands us to start the months when the Moon iscompletely dark. Sages of the Chassidic tradition teach us one of the mostcomplex principles related to this matter, and we must break the limits ofdiscernment to fully assimilate it. Actually, it is one of the many Jewishmystic principles that we can only grasp beyond human understanding, such asconcentric circles or spheres that at the same time are separated from eachother. How can they separate if they are contained within each other? This isan example to guide our mind to assimilate beyond its limits of reasoning. Theprinciple that Chassidim bring up is that concealed light is more powerful orintense than revealed light, based on the premise that what we don't know or are about to know is more important than what we already know. Algebra is moreuseful than Arithmetic, Calculus is more important than Trigonometry, and theless relevant is the basic knowledge to assimilate the most relevant. Hence,what we are about to know is more transcendent than what we already know.

Likewise,we are taught in Elementary School that the light of the sun becomes moreintense during a total eclipse, and we must not watch it because the strongerlight may damage our eyes. This occurrence may not explain clearly how is itpossible that there is more light from an eclipsed sun than a normal sun, forin our sight there is more light in the normal sun. Astrophysics may explain theissue but still in our eyes we perceive it differently. Quantum physics alsoexplains parallel planes and other phenomena that a simple mind can'tunderstand, and we either believe it or not. All these references invite us toexpand our simple minds beyond their presumed borders, and in this regard ourancient Sages knew better and explain that the New Moon is the non-revealedlight that we are commanded to reveal. This means that we as individuals aremoons whose light are partially revealed, and we are to become aware of ourfull light when there is apparently none. They consequently say that indarkness we look for the Light because in darkness it is concealedwith all its intensity, as we have never seen it before as the light that wealready know. This is why they say that in the darkness of exile we must revealthe Light of Redemption. In this sense darkness as exile is the precondition toLight as Redemption.

Howdo we know that in our darkest moments the most powerful Light is concealed? Wecan simply say that darkness is what it is, and light is just absent in it. Theproblem is that with this approach there is no chance for Redemption. Thisbrings us to reflect in a broader understanding, starting with who we are, whatwe are, and what is our true Essence and identity. In the dynamics of identitywe solve all our confusions, and we begin with the "reason" of theentire Creation, its cause and effect, and the Creator behind it. He is theintense Light "concealed" behind what we see eclipsed or dark withour eyes, the New Moon that we are commanded to consecrate as the beginning ofthe months, as the beginning of everything.

Exileas darkness is the current state of affairs that we suffer when we choose tolive under the negative aspects of consciousness that impose individualinterests at the expense of the collective well being. Our oral tradition tellsthat in the plague of darkness prior to the Exodus from Egypt, four fifths ofthe Israelite people died because they couldn't "see" beyond their ownpersonal material interests. Only 20% chose to look after each other amid thedarkest circumstances, by loving each other and caring for each other. Onlythose were later exempt from the final plague of the firstborn and taken outfrom their slavery in Egypt. From them we must learn that Love is our true andonly Redeemer when we live in the darkness of ego's fantasies and illusions.God's Love is the hidden Light that creates and sustains His Creation, as ourLove is also the concealed Light that sustains us and liberates us from ourdarkest moments. Every negative situation that we face is dissipated when Lovemanifests fully as the most intense Light behind darkness.

Maimonidesquotes the words of the Prophet (Mishneh Torah, Laws of Kings 12:5): "Inthose times there will be no famine or war, envy or rivalry; for goodness willflow in abundance and delights will be freely available. Everyone will betotally engaged in the knowledge of God, as it is written: 'For the Earth shallbe full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea' (Isaiah11:9)'." Can we expand our mind and consciousness to be able to conceivethe material world without hunger, conflicts, greed, coveting, jealousy, lust,indolence and hatred? Maimonides follows up with goodness in abundance as theanswer, and all goodness come from Love. He also points out the cause of thegoodness in his next sentence, because our goodness is the result of our totalengagement in the knowledge of the Creator.

Nowwe may be able to discern the connection between the consecration of the NewMoon and our Final Redemption. Let's summarize: Darkness as exile leads us tofreedom as Redemption when we are guided by the strong Hand of the Creator,which is His Love, and we emulate Him with our Love for each other. The NewMoon is the remembrance that unrevealed Light is more powerful than revealedLight, hence we are commanded and compelled to acknowledge that God's Loveprecedes His Creation. We overcome darkness as the negative aspects ofconsciousness when we enthrone Love as the Light that clears negativity throughthe goodness of Love's ways and attributes. Finally, we live in abundantgoodness when we engage completely in the knowledge of God's Love as the causeand effect of His Creation, and also as our true Essence and identity.

InHanukah we light up eight candles in the darkest days of the year around theWinter solstice. We learned that in the darkest moments the most intense Lightis waiting to revealed, and that is the Light of Redemption. We revealthis Light in each of the seven days that represent God's Creation of Heavenand Earth, plus an additional eighth day that symbolizes our permanentunity with Him, in which the ultimate Redemption takes place, the day when it is completelyrevealed with all the intensity of His Light.

Wecan conclude that our limited intellect and discernment still can't grasp howlight may be concealed in darkness, but one thing we can assimilate withoutdifficulty and it is Love as the most powerful Light capable to transform anythingnegative into something good, because Love is the source of goodness, as God'sLove is the source of His Creation and the sustenance of all life. The New Moonand Hanukah are reminders that we have to enlighten our lives every day untilwe reach out to the day when our Light and God's Light become One, and our Loveand His Love are One. This is the moment when we are totally engaged in knowingour Creator.

Mikeitz: The Creator with us

2011-12-18T00:00:00.002-08:00

"And Joseph said to Pharaoh, 'Pharaoh's dream is one; what Godis doing He has told Pharaoh.'" "(…) 'It is this matter that I have spoken to Pharaoh; what God isabout to do He has shown Pharaoh.'" (Genesis 41:25, 28) TheCreator sustains and controls His entire Creation, and He is the One whoactually does His doings. He tells the driving force in human consciousness(ego) Who is really in charge, and the messenger of this Principle is Joseph asthe epitome of Love in all levels of consciousness. Joseph as the one who isable to convey God's Love manifest in his Love: "And Joseph replied to Pharaoh, saying, 'Not I; Godwill give an answer [that will bring] peace to Pharaoh.'"(41:16) and peace is the result of Love as the harmonizing and galvanizing firethat unifies all levels and dimensions of consciousness, ego included.

Thisthe only episode of our history in which a powerful ruling character isvirtually submitted to someone clearly superior in traits and qualitiesdestined to save and nurture millions of lives: "So Pharaoh said to his servants, 'Will we find [anyone] likethis, a man in whom there is the Spirit of God?' Then Pharaoh said to Joseph,'Since God has let you know all this, there is no one as understanding and wiseas you.'" (41:38-39) and in these words we see that Josephis not only a righteous, discerning and capable man but something more,because the Spirit of God is with him and He lets him know. We arereminded three times in Vayeishev that "the Lord was with him"(39:3, 21, and 23)

Thismakes us reflect on what is the meaning of God being with us. It maysound arrogant to say it in that way, because it is us who suppose to be withHim. From this we deduce that Joseph was indeed following God's ways andattributes to be rewarded by the Torah's words saying that the Lord was with him.That's the dynamics of our relationship with the Creator, by which we explainHis "jealousy", "wrath" and "vindictiveness" asindications of His exclusivity for us. We can't relate to Him when we do notfollow His ways and attributes. As long as we follow ego's materialisticdesires and illusions we are making the choice to separate from the path thatHe wants for us, and our choice imposes its vengeance and wrath on us as theconsequences of our negative behavior.

Joseph'sgood actions brought goodness to the people around him, because goodnessgenerates goodness, and his actions were inspired by his Love to the Creator.Joseph's Love led him to do goodness, and his Love reached out to God's Love. Thisis how we can have God's Love with us. Joseph truly is the epitome ofLove as the ways and means to harmonically lead all aspects of consciousness: "You shall be over my household, and through your command allmy people shall be nourished; only [with] the throne will I be greater thanyou." (41:40)

Itwas probably not an easy task to impose the decency of Love's ways andattributes in a land distinguished by depravity and immorality, according toour oral tradition. It is hard to imagine that a righteous foreigner and slavecould have ascended to prominence and power among people whose traits are allagainst anything righteous. Hence, the Torah repeats that God was with Josephto explain that only the Creator could have made such miracle, and we learnfrom this that anything is possible when we walk with Him.

Joseph'sgoodness was a blessing for those around him, fulfilling God's promise toAbraham that his seed (Israel) would be a blessing for all peoples. Theblessing is the goodness of Love when we live in its ways and practice itsattributes no matter how dark and depraved our circumstances may be, as it iswritten: "And the second [son] one he [Joseph] namedEphraim, because 'God has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction.'"(41:52) We expect that only in positive circumstances our good actions willflourish but when we entirely trust God, in any situation, our goodness prospers.

Wehave said that true Redemption is available for anyone who is willing to reachout to it, regardless his condition. As long as there is free will and freedomto choose, we can choose Redemption over estrangement. Only when we lose ourdiscernment to determine if we have or not free will, we are unable to chooseour return to Love. It takes a great courage to be constantly aware of Love asour true Essence and identity, and as our Source of Life and total freedom.

Where do we go when we want to really live in this materialworld? To the goodness of Love as the material manifestation of God's Love, andLove will tell us what to do. Even an ego open to learn from Love also knowswhat to do: "When the entire land of Egypt hungered, the people cried outto Pharaoh for bread, but Pharaoh said to all the Egyptians, 'Go to Joseph;what he tells you, you do.'" (41:55) "(…) for they sawthat the wisdom of God was within him to do justice. So, King Solomon was kingover all Israel." (I Kings 3:28, 4:1)

Vayeishev: Israel as the Firstborn

2011-12-11T00:00:00.000-08:00

Vayeishev is the firstof the last three portions of the book of Genesis, and the main character ofthem is Joseph. There are extensive and intensive debates about the storiestold in these portions, because their intricacies shaped the destiny of Israelas a people and as a Nation. These debates and discussions among our Sages are mostlycentered in the relationship between Joseph and his brothers, and why theevents occurred the way they did. The general conclusion is that, no matter howthe events took place and their ethical and moral implications, they happenedaccording to God's Will. We all agree on this because it is one of theFundamental Principles of Judaism, and there are no "buts" for them.

The events happened to teach us that the free will theCreator gives us, along with individual discernment and the Torah, is intendedto make positive choices to honor His ways and attributes as the commonlikeness between us and Him. Israel's children indeed knew better under theteachings and guidance of their father, and dealing with lower emotions andpassions such as hatred and jealousy is something that we all must face withthe best of our ethical knowledge (Torah learning) and discernment in order toexercise our free will. We have said that the negative aspect of thoughts, emotions,feelings, passions, and instincts are represented by the "nations"that we must conquer, eliminate and subjugate through our higher awareness ofGod's Love as our true Essence and identity.

The Torah tells us that our forefathers were not "perfect",and they came to be a Nation under the guidance of the Creator by following HisWill. This is the "perfection" of Israel, and it means that as longas we try to be good human beings, according to what the Creator defines for us as good. This definition is widely explained in His Torah, and reaffirmed inGod's attributes of compassion. Discernment was the least of qualities in thedevelopment of events between Joseph and his brothers, and there was no clear anddirect communication for the sake of the truth. We learn from this that jealousyand envy lead to hatred, and hatred can lead to murder. The same predicamentgoes for greed, lust, indolence, impatience, cruelty and their derivatives (Seeour commentary "Conquering the 'nations' with Love" in this blogon 6-26-10)

Let's reflect on the Torah's narrative based on our Sages'debates and conclusions. "These are the generations of Jacob: Joseph(...)" (Genesis 37:2) Joseph is all the descendants of Jacob as theprototype for Israel, because he personifies the qualities that Jacob want for his children. These qualities must rule over the remaining traits ofconsciousness. In every circumstance experienced by Joseph, he was a ruler (inthe house of Potiphar, in the prison where he stayed 12 years, in the house ofPharaoh, and over the land of Egypt) as it was predicted in his dreams beforehe was sold as a slave by his brothers. The controversy over the destined kingshipof Judah as one of the reasons to murder Joseph to end his "ruler dreams"must be cleared up under a different perspective. If Joseph is Israel, all theTribes must conduct themselves under his traits and qualities, either bepriests, kings, warriors, scholars, judges, artists, etc.

We are reminded about the similarities that only Jacob andJoseph shared in their lives and experiences, for us to understand that theirphysical resemblance was not the only thing that made them equal to each other.This is also the reason why Jacob considered Joseph's sons his own, and madethem into two Tribes. In this sense we understand Joseph as theFirstborn of Israel: "And Israel loved Joseph more than all hissons" (37:3), "And his brothers saw that their father loved him morethan all his brothers" (37:4), "So his brothers envied him"(37:11)

Theseverses make us recall the episode of Cain and Abel, and also the dialogue betweenthe Creator and Cain that teaches us to strive to be better particularly when weare destined to be the Firstborn. As Israel, we are destined to be theLight for the nations, a Nation of priests, and a Holy People simply becauseour Creator is Holy. If we chose to be the heirs of His ways and attributes, wehave to be and manifest them in order to honor our heritage. We don't do it bybeing envious, jealous, coveting or greedy, neither with cruelty, hatred andnegative traits that murder Love's ways and attributes. We must discern aboutright and wrong, true and false, useful and useless, and choose Love becausethat is the legacy of the Creator, tangible and experienced in all HisCreation. Our job is to dissipate the darkness that we have created in ourmaterial reality, and replace it with the original Light with which the worldwas made. This Light is God's Love, and as our true Essence we must make itprevail.

Our Sages say that Jacob loved Joseph with this kind of Love: "Loveis strong as death" (Song of Songs 8:6), andthat his brothers envied him as "Envy is harsh as the grave" (8:6) then the Sages ask: What can Love achieve in the face of envy? From thiswe realize what leads to life and what leads to death; what leads to Light andwhat leads to darkness.

We know that in the future, which is today, Judah is Israel and this is why we are called Jews. As Jews we fulfill the destiny that the Creator decreed for us to proclaim His Kingdom: "For Judah prevailed over [from] his brothers, and the prince comes from him, but the birthright is Joseph's." (I Chronicles 5:1) As Judah we are the crown and the scepter to enthrone the Creator; and Joseph is Israel's essence as our true identity. We can't fulfill our destiny as a people and as a Nation without honoring God's Love as our Creator.

Vayishlach: The Prevalence of Love

2011-12-04T00:00:00.000-08:00

We continue in Vayishlach with our line of thoughtfrom Vayeitzei regarding angels as the epitomes of Love, and as our waysand means to life and the material world, and to our relationship with the Creator:"Jacob sent angels ahead of him to his brother Esau, to the land of Seir,the field of Edom." (Genesis 32:4) because it is throughLove that we conceive and approach everything, as the encompassing Essence ofGod's Creation emanated from His Love. This includes negative circumstancesthat challenge our determination to make goodness prevail in the midst ofadversity. This also implies that we must take a practical approach to negativeand potentially harming situations and people, as Jacob did when he met Esau twentyyears after parting from each other at the verge of mortal confrontation. Esau,Seir and Edom are synonyms of the same emotional trait that leads us to actwith a negative approach to material reality, and in this sense it is theopposite approach represented by Jacob's qualities.

Theverse refers to Esau as a space (land, field) in consciousness that we mustdraw near with the best traits and qualities endowed with Love as our trueEssence and identity, the angels as messengers which we also send to theCreator when we want to be close to Him. This land by definition is hostile toLove's attributes because it is a field of consciousness that does not discern,listen or understand according to intellect but to passion and instinct. As wesaid about Vayeitzei, there areHeaven and Earth as two apparent separate camps that are actually one, and Israel'smission is to unify them in our individual and collective consciousness. Thisis how we turn the material world into a place for the Divine Presence to dwellamong (in) us.

Whenour ordeals or fears overwhelm us, we tend to feel divided and separated fromthe camp of God's Love: "(…) now I havebecome two camps. Now deliver mefrom the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau, for I am afraid of him,lest he come and strike me (…)" (32:11-12) because we feelabandoned in our doubts and uncertainties regarding the strength we need tomake Love's ways prevail over the apparent power of ego's desires andillusions. Ego does not have any power unless we provide it; hence it dependson us to empower either aspect of consciousness toward the right purpose. Weknow quite well that our mission is not easy and history reminds us of that. Mostof our ancestors failed or died in their endeavor to sanctify God's Name and tohonor His Will. We must understand that such mission carries difficult battles thatstart first within our individual consciousness.

Wehave to be not only willing but ready for a lengthy struggle to subdue themessenger of doom that our Sages call "the angel of Esau". The battle eventuallycan be won, but victory also demands eternal vigilance to secure Love'sattributes as the ruling means to redeem the material world from darkness and ego'snegative illusions. We prevail in that struggle guided by the highest awarenessof our connection to God's Love, which in return elevates us closer to Him. "And he [Esau's angel] said, 'your name shall no longer becalled Jacob but Israel, because you have commanding power with [an angel of]God and with men, and you have prevailed.'" (32:29), "God said to him, 'Your name is Jacob. Your name shall nolonger be called Jacob, but Israel shall be your name.' And He named himIsrael." (35:10)

Thename Israel is composed of one specific imperative quality complemented withGod's Will or submitted to Him. Either way, this name represents a unifyingbond with the Creator. Jacob's prevailing determination to subdue the negativeaspects of human consciousness represented by Esau's angel turns Jacob into acommanding and ruling power sustained by God. Obscure translations defineIsrael as "the one who struggles with God", based on the fact thatJacob fought with one of His angels, but we must clarify that Israel'sstruggles are destined to fulfill God's Will through His Commandments, in order todissipate the negative aspects of our consciousness when we approach thematerial world. We fulfill God's Will by emulating His attribute of lovingkindness (rav chesed) with which His Creation is sustained.

Whenwe approach everything in time and space with His Love as ours, Love prevails: "And Esau ran toward him and embraced him, and he fell on hisneck and kissed him, and they wept."(33:4) Rashi quotesRabbi Shimon Bar Yochai saying that, in spite of the widely known belief thatEsau hated Jacob, at that time his compassion was moved and he kissed him withall his heart, because Love always prevails. When we trust and honor Love asour true Essence and identity, we proclaim God's Love as His Glory thatpervades His Creation: "There he [Israel]erected an altar, and he named it 'God is the God of Israel.'"(33:20)

OurSages say that Jacob built this altar in gratitude to the Creator for savinghis life during his encounter with Esau, which he considered a miracle becausewhen His Love is manifest through our loving actions, all we experience momentto moment is a miracle: "Make Your faceto shine upon Your servant; save me in Your loving kindness. (…)Blessed be the Lord, for He has shown me His wondrous lovingkindness in an entrenched city [adversity]." (Psalms 31:17,22)

Vayeitzei: The House of God's Love

2011-11-27T00:00:00.000-08:00

One of the essential passages of the Torah related to Israelis, "And he dreamed, and behold! A ladder set up on the ground and its topreached to Heaven; and behold, angels of God were ascending and descending uponit. (Genesis 28:12) and "This is none otherthan the House of God [BetEl], and this is the gate of Heaven."(28:17) and is about a place in time and space that comprises our connectionwith the Creator, and exists permanently in the highest levels ofconsciousness. It is where we realize the bond that holds the unity of Heavenand Earth, the spiritual and material dimensions of God's Creation. In thisawareness Jacob as Israel realizes his Oneness with the Creator.

Wehave to know this House where God's Love gives lodge to Israel in the journey to fulfillhis destiny as the People of the Covenant. The Torah tells us that Jacob dreamed,which means that Israel's awareness of God's Presence is beyond conscious materialperception. However, there is a ladder set on our material consciousness(our "stepping ground"), that its top reaches up to the highest levelswe are able to conceive. In this ladder angels (messengers) of God ascend anddescend upon it, and let's inquire about who these messengers are. The Torahindicates that angels' function is to fulfill God's Will in the diversedimensions of His Creation, and some of our Sages define them as theCommandments that we perform as part of His Will. Others define them as thesouls that descend from His heavenly dwellings to the material world, andascend back to Him.

Wecan say that angels are, in some extend, the ways we communicate with theCreator. They descend as the messages of His Will to us, and they return as ourmessages to Him. We are taught that angels perform their missions without questioning them because they don't have free will. Do we dare to question God's Will outof our the free will that He gave us? We have mentioned many times that our free will is the livingproof of God's unconditional Love to us, and the least that we must do is toreciprocate that privilege by complying with what He wants from us. Still, itis our choice. Jacobwas fully aware of this, and his choice is unambiguous because he knows that ispersonal integrity depends on his service to God, after having the greatesthonor to dwell in His House.

Angels are mentioned at the beginning and at theend of Vayeitzei, and this recurrence means a lot to us because they appear asheralds announcing points of convergence between Heaven and Earth. In thissense, the Temple of Jerusalem is the fundamental link that unites both levels,also as our highest awareness of God's Love. This is, as Jacob says, "The Houseof God and the gate of Heaven", and although it sounds that there is aseparation from here and there, the realization of BetEl becomes our awarenessof the unity between both.

Angelsare the messengers and the messages that we have to convey in our communicationwith the Creator, and they are our common Essence with Him. In this context,angels are the manifestation of His Love to us and when we live in Love's waysand attributes, our positive actions are the messengers and messages that weelevate to Him to reciprocate the Love that He bestows on us. There are twodefined "camps" that we know as the spiritual and the material, andthey are meant to meet, embrace and kiss each other when we honor Love'sattributes as our true Essence and identity, and also as our ways and means to connectand relate to God's Love. Walking in His Commandments is the way we go in thematerial world, and in our way we meet His Love: "And Jacob went on his way, and angels of God met him.And Jacob said when he saw them, 'This is thecamp of God,' and he named the place Mahanaim [fields]."(32:2-3)

Weknow that there are two camps, mahanaim, and Jacob turned them into onebecause he is aware that ultimately there is only one, the camp of God. We haveto achieve this final realization, but first we must place our heads on therocks that encompass every aspect of consciousness, that God's Love turn theminto one stone where the ladder of our Love stands to reach out to Him, and whereour Love and His Love ascend and descend to unify Heaven and Earth. Aswe have said many times, Love is the messenger and the message, is own cause and effect, as God's Love is manifest as the cause and effect of His Creation.

Wejust need to realize this as Jacob did as his greatest legacy for Israel, hisdescendents: "In BetEl he (Jacob, Israel) finds Him, and there He shallspeak with us. And the Lord is the God of the hosts; theLord is His Name. And you shall return to your God: [by] keeping lovingkindness and justice, and trusting in your God always." (Hosea 12:5-7).

Toldot: Unifying Consciousness

2011-11-20T00:00:00.000-08:00

Consciousness involves differentaspects, levels and dimensions that, if we are no able to integrate as aharmonized and functioning unity, we may have difficulties to face theworld where we live. Most people can't achieve such harmonized unity because itis not easy to conciliate mind with emotions, discernment with passion, or feelings with instincts. It becomes even more difficult when ego's desires andillusions occupy most aspects of consciousness. Sometimes life is reduced asthe field of an endless battle among the elements that comprise humanconsciousness.

"And the children struggled withinher" (Genesis 25:22) Rashi comments on this verse saying that they werefighting over the inheritance of both Heaven and Earth. We understand this inthe context of their adult life when ultimately Jacob wins the blessings thatmake him the inheritor of both. It seems that the fight with his brother is forall or nothing, as indeed was. The struggle of Esau and Jacob begins evenbefore they were born, which makes us reflect on the deeper meanings regardingwhat the twin brothers represent. It is evident that they are opposed to eachother because they have different views about the material world (Earth) andthe World to Come (Heaven).

We can infer from this fight about"all or nothing" that "all" implies a unity,something in its totality. Hence, Heaven and Earth are the two parts of the wholeness that the brothers were fighting for. This is an essential premise to assimilate that there is no separation in God's Creation orin our consciousness, even if we know that different aspects, levels anddimensions are part of them. This helps us understand why, without a developedconsciousness, the twins were struggling in their mother's womb for inheritingthe blessings of the entire Creation. Our awareness of unity is easierto understand from a spiritual awareness than from a material perspective.

"And the Lord said to her, 'Twonations are in your womb, and two kingdoms will separate from your innards, andone kingdom will become mightier than the other kingdom, and the elder willserve the younger.'"(25:23) Separation and opposition set the tone of two different conceptions andapproaches to God's Creation. They are not meant to compromise with each other,except for the Divine decree that one has to serve the other. Here is the keythat makes us assimilate what we questioned before. In order for one to inheritboth worlds, the other consequently must serve him. In other words, we prevailin a conflict if the opposite part agrees to our views and cooperate with them.We achieve a functioning, harmonizing unity when all the parts involved areintegrated in a common cause, in which all win and there are no losers.

This means that if we face a situation that is either"black" or "white", we don't look for the "gray"to reconcile the opposites but we engage in a discerning process to bring thegoodness of "positive" to the badness of "negative". Oncewe all experience "positive", we all abandon "negative" byour individual and collective experience of what is right and wrong, true andfalse, etc. We have said that good and evil are just references to exercise ourfree will, and by our experience of both we make our choices.

In this sense we discern what we call a functioning, working,harmonizing unity when we deal with the wholeness of our consciousness.We realize that every aspect of it must work in a common direction in order toexperience life in the material world a reflection of life in the World toCome. This is how we win in our struggle to inherit the blessings of bothworlds. It is indeed a struggle, a moment to moment endeavor to make prevailthe positive over the negative, good over evil, useful over useless. This isthe legacy that Jacob embraced even before he was born, fighting all his lifeto make Truth prevail, and it is also the legacy for his descendents calledby his prevailing name, Israel.

We have to rectify our divided awareness of the material world byunifying our divided consciousness, and this task may take us many lifetimes.We are aware of this when we review our Jewish history since Abraham and Sara.So many falls in our endeavors during slavery, in long exiles, under longpersecutions, an endless struggle. Jacob as Israel is destined to fulfill theCreator's Will to make the material world a dwelling place for Him, so that Hemay live among (in) us. Thus we unite this world and the World to Come as theindivisible Oneness of His Creation.

In this process we must know who Esau is and who Jacob is. TheTorah defines for us who is who, and the bearer of God's blessings. Loveand goodness win the struggle because hatred and evil are destined to surrenderto Love and goodness, as the prevailing qualities that unify Heavens and Earth,as parts of the Creation of God's Love.

Chayei Sarah: The Jewish Identity

2011-11-13T00:00:00.000-08:00

One of the mostprofound statements by Abraham recorded in the Torah is "I am a foreignerand a resident amongst you." (Genesis 23:4) and we have to understand it,not only as a gesture of Abraham's humbleness towards his neighbors, but as acharacterization of the Jew based on his relationship with the Creator, inregards to the material world. Our identity as Jews is broadly defined in theTorah as the Chosen People, and Abraham's neighbors recognized him as the seedof the great Nation whose mission is to be God's People: "Hear us, my lord:You are a prince of God in our midst" (23:6)

We must consider ouridentity, not only as a definition by the most important Testimony everwritten, but as a meaning for us as Jews. Both "foreigner" and"resident" seem to complement each other in the context of living ordwelling in a particular place, but we must see them in relation to ouridentity defined according to our bond with God. This bond consequentlymakes us foreigners in any place where God's Presence has not been totallyrevealed. We are foreigners in the sense that we are entitled, and commanded byHim, to create a place for Him to dwell in the material world. In order toaccomplish our mission and fulfill His Commandment, first we must becomeresidents in the world.

As the first Jew, Abraham wasrecognized by his neighboring nations as the man who was with God in theirmidst. This recognition is essential for us to assimilate the Jewish identity.We know that we are God's People not only because the Torah says so, butbecause since our origins the nations also acknowledged it. They knew that we areforeigners and residents in their midst because, after all, we are theemissaries of God amongst them. It sounds like we can be settlers in the landas long as we remain God's People in the eyes of the nations. This predicamentmakes us reflect thoroughly in the essence of the Jewish identity.

We indeed (as it is also forthe rest of the non-Jewish mortals) are temporary residents in this world, butwhat makes us different is our mission to be the Light for thenations, a sacred Nation because our God is sacred, and a Nation of priests whosanctify His Name with their actions. Our place is with God, and this alsomeans that wherever we are our lives are entitled to fulfill His Will. We dothis by making the world a better place for all, according to the ways theTorah instruct us to follow. For this mission God gives us the Promised Land.We may be foreigners and residents in the midst of other nations, but we alsohave a Land assigned to us. In this Land we are able to develop the fullpotential of our identity to fulfill our mission.

We have indicated in previouscommentaries that the Promised Land, besides being a specific geographiclocation known as the Land of Israel, also represents the individual and collectiveawareness of our connection with the One who gave us this Land. Possessing theLand is the direct consequence of manifesting our identity as Jews. The Torahstates this fact, and also warns us countless times about the consequences of losingor despising our connection with God by the choices we make with free will.

Our condition of foreigners and residentsamid the nations also means that we do not become part of them and their ways,because our ways are defined by our relationship with God. We also have mentionedthat the Canaanite nations represent negative traits and qualities that we haveto conquer, defeat and subjugate in order to settle in the Promised Land. TheTorah and God's Commandments are the ways and means to overcome the potentiallynegative aspects of human consciousness. When we accomplish that task, we areable to dwell in the awareness of God's Love, hence living in such PromisedLand here in the material world.

Ultimately, our final destiny isbesides the Creator, and we see our passage through this world as the time tofulfill the Covenant with Him. Though we know that our spiritual destiny is to dwellwith Him, we also know that our lives on Earth are bound to our mission toreveal His Presence, and proclaim His Glory. We do this by removing theillusions and fantasies of ego's materialistic desires, along with the negativetraits that have kept humankind in darkness.

We are indeed strangers and aliens inthe lands of negative thoughts, emotions, feelings, passions and instincts. Butall these aspects of consciousness can also recognize the positive traits and theblessings that walk hand in hand with God's Love. If we Jews, the Abrahams oftoday, manifest our identity as emissaries of God's Love in order to awaken others to theawareness of Love's ways and attributes, in the midst of material illusions, wewill have accomplished our destiny as God's People.

Vayeira: Living in the Unity of God's Love

2011-11-06T00:00:00.000-07:00

We have said that God'sLove encompasses everything, including its inherent goodness and also those whoemulate His ways and attributes. In this unity there is no concealment from Him:"And the Lord said, 'Shall I concealfrom Abraham what I am doing? And Abrahamshall become a great and powerful nation, and all the nations of the world beblessed in him.'" (Genesis 18:17-18)The unity of the Covenant between the Creator and Abraham is a unity thatcomprises the Creator, the Torah, the Shabbat, and Israel.

"For I have known him because he commands his sons and hishousehold after him, that they should keep the way of the Lord to performrighteousness and justice, in order that the Lord bring upon Abraham that whichHe spoke concerning him." (18:19)Our Sages explain that this principle is juxtaposed to "And the Lord said, 'Since the cry of Sodom and Gomorrahhas become great, and since their sin has become very grave'" (18:20) inorder to make a clear opposition between what Abraham is and represents, andwhat the people of those two cities were and represented. Again,we are before the duality of good and evil, right and wrong, true and false,from which we have to choose.

TheTorah recreates times and places where peoples and individuals had to make achoice. Free will is the fundamental premise to safeguard moral freedom. It isthe starting point of whatever is about to come to us. We have heard that"what starts well ends well", and "what starts bad endsbad". It is not necessarily so, because we still can divert from good tobad and from bad to good. However, making positive choices is a beginning inthe right direction. The whole Hebrew Scriptures narrate all kinds of eventsrelated entirely to choice, and the whole point of such recurrent situations isto teach us to make the right decisions. In order to do that, our Sagesengaged in lengthy discussions to build the ethical foundations of Judaism asthe true Light for the nations, for the material world. From theseethical principles we learn that negative and destructive choices lead to deathin the plain sense of the word. We are dead when we do not live in the positivedecisions that we must make.

Intheir corruption, the generation of the Flood was already dead; and the waterscleaned the world from what was already dead in the eyes of theCreator. The generation of the tower of Babel was nearly dead by attempting tokill the diversity of the human spirit, as one of God's most precious gifts tous. Reassuring such diversity safeguarded the vibrancy of human life. Thepeople of Sodom and Gomorrah killed all traits of goodness in their humanness,and were also dead before the Creator. Their destruction was just themeans to end the lives of the "living dead". We have said in "Godas Love" that we do goodness not only because it is right and the ethicalthing to do, but we do it out of Love. We do it because we are aware that Loveis our true Essence and identity; therefore, our real reason andmotivation is to be good and do goodness.

OurSages teach that, while the social pattern of the nations is modeled as a pyramid,Israel's principles are modeled as a circle. Among the nations, society isbased on the levels of who have more and who have less, in relation to theircultural or ideological values. Those levels are determined by possessions, andthe capacity to acquire more is proportional to having a higher or lowerposition in the pyramid. In Judaism, we Jews are all equal in the eyes of God,as parts of the same circle in whose center He sits. In that structure we allbelong together in oneness.

Intoday's world there is unrest and even social turmoil as a result of thenations' pyramidal model. Fundamentalist leaders promote the destruction of such model and replacing it by another pyramid that denies the basic humanrights. On the other hand, those who defend the old pyramidmodel don't know how to keep it above the ground. The solution is to implementthe circle model of Judaism. This is not an easy task because, inorder to it, the nations must change their values based on their false conception ofsuperior and inferior humans. As it is said in these times, they need a lot of"soul searching", and quite a great deal of it. Hence, all this isabout coming back to what the soul is as our true Essence and identity.

TheTorah teaches us clearly that Creation is the result of God's Love. Love isfrom what we all are made. Love is what we are and must manifest based on our freewill, which is also a gift of God's Love. In this awareness we have to approachour Creator and also His Creation, including every single human being. This isthe united circle model of Judaism that teaches us to love each other, simply because that is the will of the Creator as He commands us in His Torah (Leviticus19:18) Humankind needs to be aware of this Truth, so that at last we can createa place for Him in this world to dwell among us.

Lech lecha: The Blessings of our True Identity

2011-10-30T00:00:00.000-07:00

"Go for[to] yourself from [out of] your land and from your birthplace and from yourfather's house, to the land that I will show you [make you see it].And Iwill make you into a great Nation, and I will bless you, and I will aggrandizeyour name, and [so that you shall] be a blessing. And I will bless those whobless you, and the one who curses you I will curse, and all the families of theEarth shall be blessed in you." (Genesis 12:1-3) These versesare about one single Commandment containing several blessings that bear moreblessings, all in regards to the knowledge of something in particular: theawareness of being and doing who we truly are. This awareness is theresult of a process by which we have to see (or being shown) in order to know.Our Sages say that hearing relates to understanding, and seeing to knowing. Wecan understand what we are told, but we know it when we see it. Hence, the keyof the process is for us to be shown or to make us see about who we really are.

Wecan be mistaken if we are not previously taught how to see in order to properlyknow what we have before our eyes. We need references to acquire knowledge inthe proper context. In this sense, our references are contained in the Torah incontrast to the references in the non-Jewish world. In the narrative of these verses, the land that the Creator will make Abram see is thePromised Land that the Torah reveals to us. This land is the place andtime combined where the Creator's blessings are completely manifested as apurpose, as a destiny, and as an end.

TheCommandment to Abram sounds conditional as if he complies with it, he will berewarded with such blessings. Not quite. This Commandment is about theindividual challenge to know who we truly are amid a myriad of illusions andmirages that we have created as references to understand and to know what wesuppose to be in the material world. These illusions exist as the result ofego's desires and fantasies that we turn into references as idols that dictatewho we suppose to be and what we suppose to do. That fantasy island is theplace that Abram had to abandon in order to go to his true self, as the landthat is our true individual and collective identity. The Commandment was givento him as the chosen seed of the Jewish people whose destiny is to possess thatland and dwell in it: "To your seed I will give this land,(…) forall the land that you see I will give to you and to your seed to eternity."(12:7, 12:15) Therefore, this Commandment is also given to every Jew as well,so that we may choose to be the blessing, as Abram did. Our Sages say thatwhile the nations prefer to be blessed by the Creator, Israel prefers to be Hisblessing.

Wehave to abandon the idolatry of ego's illusions through understanding andknowing what the Torah tells us in order to partake of the blessing of beingthe great Nation destined to be the Light for the peoples. In these verses Abram's name shall become enlarged as he becomes the blessingthat is receiving, and consequently a blessing for those who bless him. Cursingcarries back its own curse, and blessing carries its own goodness. By being inthat blessing, everyone who chooses to receive it is therefore blessed withwhat it represents. If we want to partake in these blessings, we have to go towho we truly are instead of what ego's illusions tell us to be and do. We getthe awareness and knowledge when we listen to the Essence that created us,which is God's Love, that is also the land that He shows us when we choose tohear and follow His ways and manifest His attributes.

As we mentioned,this awareness requires a process in which we must confront the materialillusions that blur all levels and dimensions of consciousness, as a result ofmisconceptions created by those illusions. As a state of consciousness, thisPromised Land needs to be cleared from the nations that represent suchmisconceptions. They are regarded as the Canaanite nations (see in this blogour commentary "Conquering the 'nations' with Love" on June 26, 2010)that Israel has to subjugate in order to dwell in this land. We, as ourforefathers did, must confront and defeat kingdoms that deny the moral freedomthat only God's Love, as our Essence, can redeem and preserve. TheCommandment to Abram carries the blessings when we fulfillit. Through Love, as the material manifestation of Divine Love in humanconsciousness, we clear thoughts, emotions, feelings, passions and instinctsfrom their negative misconceptions. Love is its own cause and effect, and also the catalyst to dissipate ego's illusions and direct our consciousness topartake in the blessings of God's Love.

Abram listened toGod's voice and Commandment and he chose back to His ways and attributes, whichare His blessings: "I chose you and I did not despise you. Do not fear for I amwith you; be not discouraged for I am your God: I encouraged you, I also helpedyou, I also supported you with My righteous hand." (Isaiah 41:9-10), becauseGod's blessings are His Love.

Noach: Life as Diversity

2011-10-23T00:00:00.000-07:00

The ten generations between Noach and Abraham give testimony of the diversityinherent to humanity. We refer to a wide spectrum that we call traits,qualities, talents, skills, etc. along with the also diverse aspects, levelsand dimensions of human consciousness. This array with all its potential is a reflection-- within the limitations of materiality -- of the infinite and endless diversityof Divine creation. We just need to look around to realize that we do not livein a dull world, and that we are here to relate with a multidimensionaldiversity. We can understand it as "I am diverse, hence I am"because we live simultaneously with thoughts, emotions, feelings, passions, andinstincts. Noach had three sons that our Sages teach that they represent thefoundations or roots of intellect (Shem), emotion (Japheth), and sensuality(Ham), with which we approach a large range of possibilities to be experiencedas cornerstones of the building that we call life.

TheTorah's approach to life is unequivocally ethical, and the most adequateconductor to this approach is our intellect as the discerning power ofconsciousness. Our Sages equate intellect to Soul; thus the more we discernabout our circumstances in the material world, the more we live in consonancewith our Soul. In this sense, as they say, Soul is to the body as the Creatoris to the world. This means, among other things, that the Soul is what connectsus to Him. Living and approaching life from the place of the Soul is the onlyway to transcend the mirages and illusions of materiality. In a practicalcontext, the Soul encompasses the Divine attributes that the Torah instructs usto emulate. In sum, the more diverse and complex material reality appears tous, the more we need strong foundations to approach it in the most positive,constructive and uplifting ways and means.

Mostof Noach's descendants rejected the diversity that the Creator bestowed in theworld. This rejection was also manifested by their previous generation whoperished in the Flood as a consequence of corrupting life, and making it meaninglessin the eyes of the Creator. It seems hard to believe that after such a shorttransition, the "new" generation wanted to commit the same mistake bybuilding the tower of Babel. As a Divine creation, we humans have the potentialto reach out to our Creator by following His ways and manifesting Hisattributes. By following ego's materialistic desires and illusions, and feelingthat we are self-providing and self-sustaining entities are the bricks of thetower that makes us believe that we are our own god. Our Sages say thatarrogance is the worst of kind of idolatry, because it does not allow one tosee beyond himself. Egotism becomes the easiest way to deny anything different,and consequently diverse, from our own perception.

Theworst transgression of the generations previous to Abraham was not defying theCreator's rule over His Creation by proclaiming man's dominion over his own lifeand fate, but their denial of the diversity and multidimensional potentials ofhuman life as the most precious Divine gift. A gift to be appreciated, valued,cherished, rejoiced, and to be delighted with. In this sense, the worst sin isto deprive human consciousness of its potential to encompass and approach lifeand the material world with all their revealed and concealed diversity.

Afterthe Flood, the Creator still endowed us with free will to choose not only fromwhat we know as good and evil as it was so in the Garden of Eden, but from amyriad of possibilities within every aspect, level and dimension ofconsciousness. Thus, in the awareness of God's Love as our Essence and trueidentity, we are fully able to discern and choose Love's attributes amid thewide diversity of possibilities that the material world offers us. Thegeneration of the tower of Babel came together united to circumscribehuman life to a single ideological, cultural and social pattern; in "onelanguage" able to turn man into a god for himself, and the rest ofCreation was meant to be an accessory for man's "greatness" (see ourcommentary dated on 02-10-2010 in this blog) The Creator's response wasn't moredestruction, as with the Flood, but to give us the knowledge and awareness thatevery individual is as diverse as there are ways of conceiving, thinking,feeling, sensing and responding to the also diverse world where we live. Hence,the challenge for humankind is to also respond with an embracing, unifyingand harmonizing approach to diversity as a Divine gift for us.

Amongthe many messages from this Biblical portion, we can learn that indeedhumankind has the potential to be united around an ideology, paradigm orbelief as we see it with politics, religion, and even fashion trends. Eitherfor good, as we experience it when natural disasters happen and we rush to helpour fellow men in need; or for bad with suffering of those who are victims ofreligious fanaticism or under totalitarian regimes that desecrate the sanctityof human life. Time and again, the choice is ours. Either we build towers forego's desires and illusions of grandeur, or we build towers in ourconsciousness to be closer to the Creator. Towers not built with bricks of claybut with God's Love. This Love is our Essence and identity, with which wechoose the goodness in the multifaceted diversity that He gave us.

We must hear our Creator and reach out to Him withthe expansion of our awareness of His Love (represented by Jerusalem and itsTemple) in the diversity of its aspects and dimensions: "Broaden the placeof your tents, and stretch out the curtains of your dwellings, stint not;lengthen your cords and strengthen your pegs. For southward and northward youshall spread out mightily, your offspring will inherit nations, and they willsettle desolate cities." (Isaiah 54:2-3)

Bereshit: In the Beginning

2011-10-16T00:00:00.000-07:00

Wehave a beginning, as it is written, "In the beginning of God'screation of the Heavens and the Earth." (Genesis 1:1) and we have to faceour individual beginning in terms of the choices that we have made in every aspectof our conscience, ever since we acquired knowledge and awareness of who weare. We can identify our choices based on our social environment, educationalupbringing, and the moral and ethical influences that shaped our approach tolife and our surroundings. Our discernment tells us that there is darkness:"and darkness was on theface of the abyss" (1:2) when we don't have clarity in ourperception and we are confused: "the Earth was unformed and void" (1:2) however, inspite of that we are experiencing being alive because "the Spirit of God hovered overthe face of the waters" (1:2) In this awareness we are able torealize that we are an extension of the Creator, His emanation and part of HisCreation. This is our beginning, the principle that we have to bear inconsciousness all the time.

Theelements and circumstances of this beginning seem negative in our humanunderstanding: formlessness, void, darkness and abyss. These are terms thatsuggest confusion, hopelessness, negativity, and downfall; and we see them andexperience them all in the material reality that have managed to create ever sincewe live in this world. These are also the elements that preceded us in ourbeginning when we were in the maternal womb, until we were born and"given to light": "And God said: 'Let there be Light.' And there was Light."(1:3) then we realize that our beginning in darkness was the preamble to livein the Light, by the Light and for the Light, because "God saw the Light, that it isgood" (1:4) and the consequence of this assessment is that "God divided the Light from thedarkness." (1:4) Also this is the starting day in which we wereconceived united with our Creator in the "one day": "And there was evening and therewas morning, one day." (1:4)

Thisis our beginning, our principle, the foundation of God's Creation, and also ofour own existence; that we come from our oneness with Him. Hence, all our choicesdepend on either living in darkness or living in the Light. In "God asLove" we say that Love and Goodness, and their attributes, are allsynonyms of Light because they are as good as the Light. The Torah, the book ofJewish ethical instruction, starts with this primordial foundation: thebeginning in which Goodness is the moral imperative in God's Creation, includingour lives and the reality that we build in the world that He created for us.This means that even if we are born under the apparent negative circumstancesof darkness, Light is always present for us to choose her as the Love that wepursue for our fulfillment and delight, as the Goodness that we want to be andmanifest. The beginning of God's Creation is also our beginning, our embracement ofLight as the Divine reference for us to choose; and be able to separate from thedarkness of the unnecessary for our lives and the world.

Thisbeginning with its ethical approach continues in the remaining days of God'sCreation of the Heavens and the Earth, where He established an order that wemust sustain in the same way that He sustains all that comes from Him. Thisduty is what honors us to be His image and likeness. These are notrelated to physical appearance but to ethical principles revealed to the way Heacts towards His Creation. The more we live according to His ways, the more weare "like" Him. God's Love is present and tangible in all HisCreation, and so it is the Light that He calls good. In this approacheverything is perfect, because in the goodness of Light there is noformlessness, void, darkness, or abyss.

Let'sface our beginning by discerning what is the value of chaos and disorder informlessness, the emptiness and futility of illusions; the darkness weexperience in negative thinking, feeling and behavior; and the hopelessnesswhen we fall in the abyss of the absence of Light, the absence of the goodnessthat Love is: "I am the Lord; I called you withrighteousness and I will strengthen your hand; and I formed you, and I made youfor a people's Covenant, for a Light to nations. To open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners from thedungeon, and them that sit in darkness out of the prison." (Isaiah42:6-7)

Parshat V'zot HaBeracha: The Blessing of God's Love

2011-10-09T00:00:00.000-07:00

"(…) Moses, the man of God, blessed thechildren of Israel before his death" (Deuteronomy 33:1) OurSages remark that this is the only verse in the Torah where Moses is identifiedas the man of God, with itsimplications particularly related to his blessing to Israel as a Nation. Theyalso note that he gave not only one blessing but many, and question why thefirst words of this portion (V'zot haberacha, "And this is the blessing") refer toone. One of the answers is that Moses wants to encompass one blessing for oneNation, as if both are part of the same united Israel. Being the man of God,Moses is the messenger of the Creator to deliver His blessings to Israel, thus Moses'blessing and God's blessing are the same in these final chapters of the Torah.After all, for the last forty years of his life Moses certainly was themessenger and deliverer of God's legacy to Israel, the Torah, including His blessings.

In this sense, these blessings encourage usto emulate God's ways and attributes through His Torah and Commandments, asMoses did for us with his actions, teaching us to also be men of God, thePeople of God. Moses' blessings to the Tribes are not meant to be individualblessings but one single blessing for the whole Nation. We have to emphasize onthis because there are no divisions in Israel's identity but unity in ourmultifaceted diversity. We are merchants and Torah scholars as well as warriorsand priests; leaders and shepherds as well as masons and silversmiths; judgesand undertakers as well as artists and scientists; rich and poor as well asdreamers and storytellers. We are all facets of the same identity directed tohonor God's Love by being and manifesting Love's ways and attributes in thisworld. This is how we defeat the negative thoughts, emotions, feelings andpassions represented by the "nations" that we conquer in order todwell in the Promised Land, the land of Israel.

The foremost manifestation of God's Love inthe world is His Torah (Teaching, Instruction), the ways and means to make HisLove tangible in the material reality. The verse, "(…) from His right handHe presented His fiery Torah to them [Israel]" (33:2) is translated in a clarified fashionfrom the original Hebrew version interpreted as "from His right hand, fire[turned into] teaching for them", where "fire" and "teaching" are tied up in one. The reference to fire is importantbecause this is the most essential element that represents Divine action, fireas the symbol and means of the transforming dynamics of God's Love. Fireappears in many passages not only in the Torah but in the entire Hebrew Biblein transcendental moments like the first encounter of Moses with the DivinePresence, the column of fire that protected and guided the Israelites during theirjourneys in the desert, and the fire that consumed the offerings in theTabernacle and Temple of Jerusalem.

In "God as Love" we said that fireis more than a material element or a catalyst to transform matter from onestate to the other. It also bears and sustains life, and protects life with theproper intensity. These qualities are analogical to Divine Love as Godly fire,as the dynamic and transforming force that not only moves the whole universebut also able to sustain all things, including changing their existence towardlevels and dimensions beyond our grasp. That power is the Law, the Torah, the teachingthat harmonizes our lives in consonance with the will of the Creator, which isGod's Love revealed in the material world as Love's ways and attributes.

We must understand fire as the symbol ofLove in its transforming and elevating qualities towards our closeness with theCreator, as well as the purifying element that refines our thoughts, emotions,passions and instincts for the Divine Service, the ministering ways andattributes of Love. This is the Divine legacy and inheritance of Israel fromthe right hand of God, from God's Love to us. This is the greatest blessingthat precedes the blessings that God gives Israel through Moses in the finalverses of the Torah.

Our Sages say that God's will is fulfilledby all animal creatures through their instinct, and plants through theirfunction. Only humans fulfill His will out of their free will, and Israel as aNation made the choice to do so as the chosen People who received the Torah.This is our greatest blessing: being able to live in order to proclaim God'sLove as the only Truth amid the fantasies and illusions of the material world:"Fortunate are you, OIsrael! Who is like you, O people whose Redemption is through the Lord, theShield who helps you, your majestic Sword! Your enemies will lie to you, butyou will tread upon their heights." (33:29) Amen.

Parshat Haaizinu: The Sheltering Love of God

2011-10-02T00:00:00.000-07:00

The ardent plea of Moses in this portioncontains the words of our highest knowledge of the Creator, summoning Heaven andEarth as the two dimensions that comprise human consciousness: "Listen, OHeaven, and I will speak! And let the Earth hear the words of my mouth!"(Deuteronomy 32:1) because within these two dimensions we approach life in thematerial world. The essential message of this portion summarizes one of theprimordial principles of our Torah and hence in Judaism, the Oneness of theCreator from whom everything emanates, and the way it happens: "The deeds of the Rock [the Almighty] areperfect, for all His ways are just; a faithful God, without injustice He isrighteous and upright." (32:4) These are the qualities of God'sLove, and Love as we experience Him in His ways and attributes. In this sensewe understand that anything different from His ways are our own choices, eitherbe ego's illusions or lower passions derived from uncontrolled desires: "Destruction is not His; it is His children'sdefect you crooked and twisted generation." (32:5)

Moses,representing our highest awareness of God's Love, questions our choices when weseparate from His attributes: "Isthis how you repay the Lord, you disgraceful, unwise people?! Is He not yourFather, your Master? He has made you and established you. (…)You forgot theRock [the Almighty] who bore you; you forgot the God who delivered you."(32:6, 18), and we are reminded again that Love does not dwell with anythingdifferent than His ways and attributes: "[So] the Lord guided them alone, and there was no alien deity with Him."(32:12), and this is reaffirmed time and again: "See now that it is I! I am the One, and there is no god like Me! I causedeath and grant life. I strike, but I heal, and no one can rescue from My Hand!"(32:39)

Thevast majority in this world lives in and for our material illusions derivedeither from ideologies, beliefs, culture, fashion, or most commonly from consumersociety's trends. We literally live and die for them, sometimes regardless ifthey don't make sense, or we prefer to ignore if they are right or wrong. We can call it ourcontemporary idolatry. The question that Moses asks us is if these idolsreally nurture our life and save us from their negative predicament: "Then He will say, 'Where is their deity, therock in which they trusted, whoate the fat of their sacrifices and drank the wine of their libations? Let themarise and help you! Let them be your shelter!" (32:37-38) and wealso can ask ourselves if there is anything of true value in ego's illusions,what is left after they consume the vitality of our minds and bodies.

Theportion continues with the consequences of living in the realm of illusions,the separation from our own Essence that emanates from God's Love, as thereiterated warning against separating from His ways. Our Sages wisely chooseone of the most beautiful reflections of King David, inviting us to heal ourordeals in the mirages of the material world by trusting and embracing God'sLove, in the accompanying haftarah for this portion:

"God is my rock, under whom I take cover; my shield, and thehorn of my redemption, my support, and my refuge; [He is] my savior who savesme from violence." (II Samuel 22:3), "WhenI am in distress, I call upon the Lord, yes I call upon my God: and out of Hisabode He hears my voice, and my cry enters His ears." (22:7),"He sent from on high [and] He took me; He drew meout of many waters. He delivered me from my mightyenemy; from them that hated me; for they were too powerful for me. They [myenemies] confronted me on the day of my calamity; but the Lord was a support tome. And He brought me forth into a wide place; He delivered me because He tookdelight in me." (22:17-20)

ThePsalmist praises the Creator and His ways always in the right context,because he is aware that the only way to dwell with Him is by thinking, feelingand acting according to His ways: "The Lordrewarded me according to my righteousness; according to the cleanness of myhands He recompensed me. For I have kept theways of the Lord and have not wickedly departed from [the Commandments of] myGod." (22:21-22) because Love does not dwell with anythingdifferent than His ways and attributes: "With akind one, You show Yourself kind. With an righteous mighty man, You showYourself righteous. With a pure one, You showYourself pure; but with a perverse one, You deal crookedly. And the humble people You do deliver; but Your eyes are uponthe haughty [in order] to humble them." (22:26-28) and humblenessis the yoke that directs ego into Love's paths of righteousness, and out of the illusionsof grandeur and fantasies of the material world.

May God bless all women

2011-09-26T00:00:00.000-07:00

Inthe heavenly fields of the Lord there are two classrooms, one for women soulsand one for men souls, and He is the Teacher in both. The course that Heteaches lasts one year, and the final exam takes place in the Earth andthroughout a lifetime. It is not a final exam that may take only an hour, butthe entire life. The year-long study in the heavenly classrooms is about theTorah and the Commandments, and the way we implement them in the material worldduring our lifetime as Jews.

Inthe women's classroom, all the students without exception got an A+ in all theweekly quizzes given by the Teacher throughout the school year. The Teacher wasvery happy and pleased with them, and at the end of the course He gathered themaround Him, and told them: 'You are my best students. I have seen that you arenot only smart but totally committed to My Torah and My Commandments, and I amnot the only One who confirms this but My Torah, the writings of My beloved Kings,Prophets and Sages, as well as the history of My People throughout thecenturies. I am so pleased with you all, that you deserve to be exempt from thefinal exam.' After hearing these words, the women were so happy that theystarted to celebrate and danced around their Teacher, singing praises andexultations in His honor.

Thenext day, the Teacher went to the men's classroom and in a circumspect moodaddressed them in this way: 'Among all of you, I see that the best students arethe Kohanim and the Levites. All of them got A+ in all the weekly quizzes andbecame the "honor students". The Tribes of Joseph, Judah and Benjaminfollowed with an A, and the rest of the Tribes shared B, C, D, and F; and mostof the underachievers among the Tribe of Shimon. My expectations from all ofyou were to get A+, but I can see that it did not happen. Then He addressed theLevites, and asked them how they achieved such excellence with their grades.They said, 'Because we are smarter than the rest'; and the Kohanim added, 'Andmore committed, too'. The rest of the students yelled at them saying, 'How dareyou to call us less smart than you? What make you think that you are betterthan us? In the eyes of the Teacher we all are the same! Besides, we all studyas much and understand everything the Teacher says!' Then, the Kohanim replied,'Well, you may be smart as well but it is clear that you are not committedenough!'

TheTeacher asked the whole classroom to be quiet, and He said: 'I am aware thatyou all will not get me the A+ that I want in the final exam, but I will bepleased if, at least, you pass the test even with a D-. What matters to me isthat you all pass the test, and it should matter to you, too. I am also awarethat you need help from those who got the best grades', and He turned His eyesto the Levites and Kohanim who said, 'Teacher, we can appeal to theirintelligence and wit, but not to their commitment to Your Teachings because itis an issue related to their free will. We can't force them to make a choicethat is entitled to them. For that they will need more help. Our teaching and guidancemay not be enough, as You will understand.'

TheTeacher closed His eyes and the classroom was in a deep silence. After a fewlong seconds, He opened the eyes and said: 'I shall give you the helpers thatyou will need to study My Torah and fulfill My Commandments while you live onEarth. Tomorrow we will have a general meeting in the open field, and I willmake My announcement.

Thenext morning there were two groups gathered in the field, the women on theleft, the men on the right, and the Teacher in the middle. Both men and womenwere looking at each other, like trying to find their soul mates among them. Itwas happening one after the other, knowing that they will be united in marriagewhen the time would come. The Teacher looked at them with His infinite Love andkindness, and told them:

'Iwill share with you some very good news. First of all, with all My heart Icongratulate the women for their individual and collective excellencethroughout the year in their studies of My Torah and My Commandments. All ofthem got A+, and because of that they deserved to be exempt from the finalexam.' Some crying sighs were heard among the women, and the Teacher looked atthem and asked, 'Why are you sad and crying? You must be rejoiced, because you havedemonstrated that you are, and will be always with Me, and this is true to Meas it is for you. You are and will be always by My side, then be happy andrejoice!' There was one woman who asked the Teacher, 'If we are exempt, doesthat mean that we are not going to Earth as part of the final exam?' TheTeacher replied, 'Indeed, you do not need to go to Earth to prove your loyaltyand committed to My Torah and My Commandments. However, I must tell you thatthe men in the other classroom did not get your grades in the quizzesthroughout the year, and actually some failed many of them. This means that Iam not completely sure about sending them to take the final test, because Idon't want them to fail. I want all of them to pass, even with the minimumpassing grade. They don't have the faithfulness and devotion of the Levites andKohanim, neither the women's. Therefore, I want to ask all the women here ifthey want to help the men here to pass the final exam.

Thewomen looked at each other, and then looked at the men on the other side of thefield. They looked at each other, and the men asked, 'Do you want to help usgoing through a lifetime of Torah study and fulfillment of all the Commandmentsthat our Teacher taught us? Would you be our helpers in the adversity of thematerial illusions in the world? Would you help us living in the Truth of theTeacher moment to moment, day by day, year by year, until we complete His examassigned to us? Would you?' All the women in the heavenly field responded witha unanimous 'Yes!'

TheTeacher smiled and blinked His eye to the women, and He told them quietly intheir ears, 'Always keep in your heart that you are beside Me, that I listen toyou first, that I hear your prayers and praises first, and that I fulfill yourrequests first than from anybody else. Remember this, because you are exempt,and as I said to you before, that means that you already are by My side.

Only the women in the heavenly field heard thesewords of the Teacher in an invisible dialogue that the men in the field couldnot hear. The women said to Him, 'If we are exempt to study the Torah as commandedto men, then we need Commandments in order to live on Earth and to help themfulfill their part.' The Teacher said, 'As I said earlier, I will listen to youfirst and this means that, through your prayers, I will give you the assistancethat you may need in your Commandments to help your men. Also, light theShabbat candles to illuminate your homes, bake the challah to renew My Covenantwith you, your men and your children, and most of all give birth to childrenwho will honor My Name. When the men forget My Covenant, you will remind themand your children of this alliance that will keep us united forever.'

May God bless all women.

Parshat Vayalech: The Choice to Return to God

2011-09-25T00:00:00.000-07:00

Ourhighest knowledge of the Creator (represented by Moses) is our naturalguide toward our permanent connection with Him (represented by Aaron,the High Priest). Moses sets up the Tabernacle for Aaron to officiate in it,and in this sequence of action we allow God to direct every aspect of our lifebecause He is the means and the end in which we must conduct ourselves; asMoses teaches us: "The Lord, your God, He will cross before you; Hewill destroy these nations from before you so that you will possess them. TheLord He is the One who goes before you; He will be with you; He willneither fail you, nor forsake you. Do not fear, and do not be dismayed."(Deuteronomy 31:3, 8) The Psalmist and all our Prophets remind us of thisDivine truth, which we must enthrone in all levels and dimensions ofconsciousness, and it is our choice either to do so or follow ego's illusionsand fantasies as the idols that we create out of a false sense of lack.

TrustingGod's Love is trusting Love as our true Essence and identity, as well as thepower and strength that fights for us against the idols of materialism: "Andthe Lord will do to them, as He did to the Amorite kings, Sichon and Og, and totheir land, [all of] which He destroyed." (31:4) and in thisawareness we understand that only by living in Love's ways andattributes we indeed are delivered from ego's illusions: "And[when] the Lord delivers them before you, you shall do to them according to allthe Commandment that I have commanded you." (31:5)

Ifwe can't trust God's Love as our Creator and our Essence, we are probably trustingillusions that ultimately lead us to our estrangement from who we truly are, alongwith its negative consequences. Therefore, we must be unshakeable: "Bestrong and courageous! Neither fear, nor be dismayed of them, for the Lord yourGod, He is the One who goes with you. He will neither fail you, norforsake you." (31:6) Fantasies and illusions, by theirnature, always forsake us because they are as insatiable as ego's desires, likethe eyes that are never filled with what they see. We have to unite all traits,qualities, levels, aspects and dimensions of consciousness around Love's waysand attributes, and harmonize them toward the Divine Service that Love is: "Assemblethe people: the men, the women, and the children, and your stranger in yourcities, in order that they hear, and in order that they learn and revere theLord, your God, and they will observe to do all the words of this Torah."(31:12)

Wehave to reiterate again that Love does not dwell with anything different fromHis ways and attributes. This is an immutable principle that we must beaware of every moment in what we think, feel, sense, and do: "AndI will hide My face on that day, because of all the evil they have committed,when they turned to other deities." (31:18) and when thisawareness is not present anymore (represented by Moses' death) we are at themercy of our own materialistic illusions: "For I know that after mydeath, you will surely become corrupted, and deviate from the way which I hadcommanded you. Consequently, the evil will befall you at the end of days,because you did evil in the eyes of the Lord, to provoke Him to anger throughthe work of your hands." (31:29) our actions, "the workof our hands", illustrate what we believe and what we follow. If they are notLove's ways, they are probably something that does not dwell with Love.

Weknow quite well that we love selectively, and according to our ownego's agenda. We condition Love to be what we want it to be, and not what itis; in the same way that many condition God to be their own"personal" god. They usually call it "my God" at theirservice, without ethics or moral values attached to it, a god of fanaticism. Weall know that it doesn't work like that. Love inherently means and implies ethics,as God's attributes also imply ethics. He is the God of the Torah and theJewish Holy Scriptures, the God whose Creation is an emanation of His Love. TheGod who knows and loves His Creation, including our human nature, the way Hemade us. In His Love, He gives us free will to choose between Love and our illusions.He loves us unconditionally because He gives us free will; and, in Hisunconditional Love, He awaits our return to Him as the Essence of who we trulyare.

OurProphets reiterate this truth in the haftarah for this portion: " Return,O Israel, to the Lord your God, for you have stumbled in your iniquity. Takewords with yourselves and return to the Lord. Say, "You shall forgive alliniquity and teach us [the] good [way], and let us render [for] bulls [theoffering of] our lips." (Hosea 14:2-3), and "Who is a God like You, whoforgives iniquity and passes over the transgression of the remnant of Hisheritage? He does not maintain His anger forever, for He desires loving kindness.He shall return and grant us compassion; He shall hide our iniquities, and Youshall cast into the depths of the sea all their sins. You shall give the truthof Jacob, the loving kindness of Abraham, which You swore to our forefathersfrom days of yore." (Micah 7:18-20)

Parshat Nitzavim: God's Love as our True Identity

2011-09-18T00:00:00.000-07:00

Whydo we have to love God? The answer is a matter of identity, meaning that it ismore about us than about Him. After all, we are unable to conceive Him, understandHim or comprehend Him; hence, whatever we conceive and comprehend about theCreator is what attach us to Him. It quite sounds as a common senseapproach, and that is exactly what it is. The more we know who we areand understand what we are and do, the more we are able to know Him, because inour true Essence we indeed know Him due to the fact that we are His Creation.If we come from Him, what else can we be but His Essence! Yes, there are issuesrelated to good and evil, right and wrong, true and false, free will stuff thatactually enables us to discern what we may be. Our choices may not entirely definewho we are, but indeed what we think, believe, feel and do. This is the contextof the verses: "For this Commandmentwhich I command you this day, is not concealed from you, nor is it far away.It is not in Heaven, that you should say, 'whowill go up to heaven for us and fetch it for us, to tell [it] to us, so that wecan fulfill it?' Nor is it beyond the sea, that you should say, 'who will crossto the other side of the sea for us and fetch it for us, to tell [it] to us, sothat we can fulfill it?" Rather, [this] thing is very close to you; it isin your mouth and in your heart, so that you can fulfill it."(Deuteronomy 30:11-14)

Canwe hide our true Essence and identity from ourselves? Only if we give powerto such illusion! Situations and circumstances sometimes lead us to believenegative traits and qualities about ourselves, and again we must ponder if ouractions define who we truly are. This also can turn into a matter of choicebetween living in negative illusions or in the positive reality that Love is.Love is not concealed or far way because Love is who we are. We just have to beaware of this Divine gift that we can enjoy by being, experiencing, doing,manifesting His ways and attributes: "Inasmuch as I command you this day to love the Lord, your God, to walkin His ways, and to observe His Commandments, His statutes, and His ordinances,so that you will live and increase, and the Lord, your God, will bless you inthe land to which you are coming to take possession of it."(30:16) because loving God is the way that we become aware of our own identity,our reason to be.

Theblessings of Love are not just a Divine promise but their own effect: "And the Lord, your God, will bring you tothe land which your forefathers possessed, and you [too] will take possessionof it, and He will do good to you, and He will make you more numerous than yourforefathers." (30:5) we may wonder why Moses says that God'sblessings "do good" to us if it is quite obvious that such is alwaysthe case. Why it is primordial to emphasize that over and over again? Theanswer is the same indicated above as a reminder to embrace all that make usgrow, develop, improve, and be happy, fruitful, abundant, prosperous, and allthe attributes that only Love can give, that which will make us "morenumerous" that the ones who forged the legacy of Love as our trueidentity. How great or big could ever be the goodness that Love brings to us,can we really quantify it? No wonder the sand of the seas and the stars in thesky are only a pale illustration of it because, as the Essence that created us,Love is endless.

Inthe awareness of this Essence in all levels of consciousness, we stand up beforeour Creator (29:9-10) to reclaim and reaffirm Love as our common bond with Him:"that you may enter theCovenant of the Lord, your God, and His oath, which the Lord, your God, ismaking with you this day" (29:11) and let's bear in mindthat both our spiritual and material awareness are the dimensions for which weare accountable for the choices that we make: "This day, I call upon the Heaven and the Earth as witnesses [that I havewarned] you: I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse."(30:19) and the well know the results of either choice.

TheProphet reminds us that Zion and Jerusalem represent this sublime awareness of God'sLove as our identity that we have to claim out loud, confronting and overcomingthe material illusions that keep us in the dark, because His Love is ourRedeemer: "For the sake of Zion, I will not besilent, and for the sake of Jerusalem I will not rest, until her righteousnesscomes out like brilliance, and her redemption burns like a torch." (Isaiah62:1), and "The acts of loving kindness of the Lord Iwill mention, the praises of the Lord, according to all that the Lord bestowedupon us, and lots of goodness to the house of Israel, which He bestowed uponthem according to His compassions and according to His many acts of loving kindness."(63:7) because the goodness of the Creator is the goodness of Love.

Parshat Ki Tavo: The Heritage of God's Love

2011-09-11T00:00:00.001-07:00

The second verse of this portion commands "(…) that you shall take of the first of all the fruit of the ground which you will bring from your land, which the Lord your God is giving you." (Deuteronomy 26:2) Our mystic Sages refer to two levels of awareness represented by the plant and animal realms. Contrary to what we may think, they explain that the former depicts sensuality and sexual activity (symbolized by the perennial blossoming and fruitfulness of some trees), and the latter purposefulness and movement (symbolized of the instinctual animal behavior to act according to their purpose in nature). In this sense we may have a better understanding of the sacrifices (offerings) made by Cain and Abel. In the context of this portion, the "fruit of the ground" (the expression of our individual creative process in every aspect of consciousness, particularly those related to the senses, sensuality, passions, and instincts) must be elevated towards the mission that the Creator has commanded to Israel.

The previous verses in Ki Teitzei and the followings in Ki Tavo are related to the ethical values aimed to promote individual and collective harmony among different social levels and economic conditions amid the People of Israel. Hence, the verse above is just another reminder that we have to direct all aspects of consciousness toward Love's ways and attributes, because we have to be aware that all Creation, our individual lives included, belong to the Creator; and, by acknowledging this, we are indeed willing to fulfill His will: "I declare this day to the Lord, your God, that I have come to the Land which the Lord swore to our forefathers to give us." (26:3) and this Land is the awareness that God's Love made us, and we also must be and do according to Love's ways as individuals and as the Nation we are. Our true freedom takes place in this level of consciousness opposite to the slavery under ego's materialistic fantasies and illusions. These are the mirages for which we enslave our life to "work hard" to keep them as "real": "And the Egyptians treated us cruelly and afflicted us, and they imposed hard labor upon us." (26:6) That is why we have to remember every day our Exodus from Egypt, in order to make the choice every moment, either to live in the slavery of ego's illusions or in the freedom of Love's attributes.

After all, God's Love is our true Essence and Redemption from the miseries of living by and for the illusions of the material world: "So we cried out to the Lord, God of our fathers, and the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression." (26:7) and we become free in the Land that He offers us: "And He brought us to this place, and He gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey." (26:9) where we all are happy: "Then, you shall rejoice with all the good that the Lord, your God, has granted you and your household you, the Levite, and the stranger who is among you." (26:11) where every level and dimension of consciousness dwell in the transcendence of Love as our identity, and for this we ask Him constantly to keep us aware of Love as His heritage for us: "Look down from Your holy dwelling, from the Heavens, and bless Your people Israel, and the ground which You have given to us, as You swore to our forefathers a Land flowing with milk and honey." (26:15)

"And the Lord has selected you this day to be His treasured people, as He spoke to you, and so that you shall observe all His Commandments, and to make you supreme, above all the nations that He made, [so that you will have] praise, a [distinguished] name and glory; and so that you will be a holy people to the Lord, your God, as He spoke." (26:18-19) Hence, we have to choose back to Him by exercising and manifesting the identity that He has bestow upon us, the honor and privilege of being and manifesting Love's ways and attributes: the inheritance of the greatest Love of all, God's Love.

The Prophet again recalls for us the awareness of our heritage in the haftarah for this portion: "And nations shall go by your Light and kings by the brilliance of your shine. Lift up your eyes all around and see, they all have gathered, they have come to you; your sons shall come from afar, and your daughters shall be raised on [their] side. Then you shall see and be radiant, and your heart shall be amazed and become enlarged, for the abundance of the sea shall be turned over to you, the wealth of the nations that will come to you." (Isaiah 60:3-5) because in this awareness "Violence shall no longer be heard in your Land, neither robbery nor destruction within your borders, and you shall call Redemption your walls and your gates praise. You shall no longer have the sun for light by day, and for brightness, the moon shall not give you light, but the Lord shall be to you for an everlasting Light, and your God for your glory." (60:18-19).

Reflections on Elul

2011-09-11T00:00:00.000-07:00

Our Jewish tradition tells us that Elul is the month of returning to our Creator. Some of our Sages call this process "repentance", a term that implies a return to the way things were before we made the choice of separating from Him. Some of our contemporaries compare it to rebooting a personal computer, and it may be so. After all, life as with computers, work with a "program" designed to function according to the information that it contains or that is provided. But we know that life is more complex than that, otherwise we would live as androids; though many people live like preprogrammed, preconditioned machines. The issue here is what kind of program or conditioning are those that make irrelevant free will and freedom, due to the fact that they turn people into responding and reacting entities based on how they were told to think, feel, behave and act.

This preamble is an invitation to reflect in who we really are, in our true identity as reasoning, thinking individuals endowed with emotions, feelings, passions and instincts. Where have we gone that we need to return to the Creator? How far are we from who we truly are? These are the questions that we ponder in Elul prior to stand before the One who created all there is. What "reality" is that which takes us away from Him, that makes us doubt and be uncertain about who we are? What is the original "program" set in the Essence of who we are? In the book "God as Love" we say countless times that God's Love is our Essence because we, as well as all His Creation, are an emanation of His Love; and Love is the ways and means to relate to Him and His Creation. Love is the program, the input and the outcome, the cause and the effect. Anything different from Love is what separates us from Love itself; and therefore from our Creator and all there is, because all comes from Him. Only with our full awareness of Love as our cause and effect in our lives are we able to stand up before God.

At this point in our reflections we realize that what is different from Love are the fantasies and illusions of ego's materialistic desires, the wrong "data" and the "viruses" that harm and damage the original program of human life, and life in general as well. In this sense, "repentance" implies a thorough, thoughtful and mindful process of detailed inventory of the things that harms and damages our life, the lives of others, and our environment. These things encompass thoughts, ideas, beliefs, social-cultural values, behavioral patterns, emotions, feelings and psychic/physical addictions. After we are done with the inventory of discerning the negative things that we do not want in our life and our surroundings, we must have the courage and determination to separate from them; simply because they were the choices made out of ego's illusions and feelings of lack. On one hand, we realize that lack is the belief and feeling of incompleteness; and on the other, that Love is what keeps our cup always full. This is the awareness (the anointment) that we need to bear constantly in our mind and heart, so our life (the cup) will be constantly full of Love: "You have anointed my head with oil, my cup overflows" (Psalms 23:5) after all, if God's Love is our sustenance and guidance, what shall we lack? "The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not lack" (23:1)

It is not an easy process after an entire lifetime of conditioning based on the wrong education we have received throughout thousands of years. Neither easy to wipe out within a month. However, if we have the courage not only to face our ego's fantasies and illusions but also to endure their outcome, there is indeed a blessing in our pain and suffering because through them we realize that negativity is what we don't need in our individual and collective lives. How much pain and suffering, sadness and depression have we created and still create in the world as if it is not already enough? In "God as Love" we say that we believe that life and the world are to be lived and enjoyed as the original Garden of Eden that was meant to be and it is meant to be, and Love is the way to return there.

Let's then return together as the Psalmist reminds us how in the six verses of one of his praises to the Creator:

"The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not lack. In lush meadows He lays me down [in the abundance of His Love as our Essence and identity]; beside tranquil waters He leads me [Love's thoughts directing our actions]. He restores my soul [Love sustains and nurtures our consciousness of God's Love even when we separate from Him]. He leads me on paths of righteousness for His Name's sake [Love's ways are all righteous because they are inherent to Him]. Though I walk in the valley overshadow by death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me [even if we walk in the darkness of negative desires and illusions, Love as our true Essence does not forsake us because Love is who we are]. Your rod and your staff [Love's ways and attributes], they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in full view of my tormentors [we are able to recognize that Love is greater than any material illusion, because Love transcends the material world. Love is the table full of His attributes in contrast to the lack derived from negativity, our tormentor]. You anointed my head with oil, my cup overflows [when we become aware of God's Love as our own Love we are totally fulfilled]. [And in this sublime knowledge may we always live in the awareness of Love in every dimension of our consciousness:] May only goodness and kindness pursue me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the House of the Lord for long years" (Psalm 23)

May our reflections on returning to God's Love, to Love as our true identity lead us to remove all negativity from our lives and our surroundings, and from that which is unnecessary in the world we live in. And may only Love and His attributes fill the world with His Glory, as it is and as it always has been. Amén.

Parshat Ki Teitzei: The Ethics of Love

2011-09-04T00:00:00.000-07:00

"When you go out (ki teitzei) to war on your enemies, the Lord your God shall deliver them into your hands" (Deuteronomy 21:10) contains the assurance that when Love is the ways and means to confront ego's materialistic illusions, Love as the attitude and altitude from which we approach the pain, and suffering as their result, He delivers them in our hands. In our hands, because in the same way that our negative behavior takes our hands to do and experience harmful thoughts, hurtful emotions, and destructive passions, also with our hands we rectify and enhance our deeds and actions under the guidance of Love's attributes. As we said in "God as Love", Love is the catalyst to transform and refine the negative traits, conceptions and habits when we live under ego's dictatorship.

This transformation starts when we are able to see the potential goodness, righteousness and virtues of our thoughts, emotions, feelings, passions and instincts; the beauty we can embrace when we live in Love's ways: "If you see among the captives a beautiful woman, and you desire her (…)" (21:11) because the same emotions, feelings, passions and instincts that we experience negatively such as depression, sadness, anger, greed, indolence, etc. we also can experience the opposite when Love fills all of them. We start doing it with our own life, and once we are strengthened with the complete awareness of God's Love in our consciousness we help those in our immediate surroundings, our loved ones including our fellow Jews: "You shall not see your brother's ox or sheep straying, and ignore them. [Rather,] you shall return them to your brother." (22:1) we must not be indifferent to our brother's ego's lower desires and passions (their strayed "ox" and "sheep").

Regarding the issue of gender identity, we are by birth endowed with two polarities, male and female, that we are summoned to develop and direct under the Commandments that the Creator gives us in His Torah, the Commandments of God's Love for Israel and His Creation. These two polarities must coexist in a working and purposeful harmony. We know that we all strive to balance them the best way we can in order to live individually as well as collectively in harmony. Both polarities, as well as the rest of our levels and dimensions of consciousness, must be guided and directed by Love's ways and attributes and not to be led strayed by ego's fantasies and illusions. Masculine and feminine are the two fundamental principles of material creation, and we have to "dress" them with their own respective inherent traits and qualities, in order to cultivate them as the enhancing complementing energies that keep the balance of our material existence: "A man's attire shall not be on a woman, nor may a man wear a woman's garment because whoever does these [things] is detestable to the Lord, your God." (22:5)

The ethical lessons continue in this portion, and compassion among them as one of the essential ways and attributes of Love: "You shall send away the mother, and [then] you may take the young for yourself, in order that it should be good for you, and you should lengthen your days." (22:7) and remark that the Commandments (the rational and the supra-rational as well) are given for us to refine and enhance our individual and collective lives, as ethical and moral principles that ensure a life dedicated to justice, peace, and happiness for all, and not simply to please the Creator. After all, "If you sin, how have you affected Him? If your transgressions multiply, what do you do to Him? If you are righteous, what do you give Him? What can He possible receive from your hand? (Job 35:6-7)

Our Sages say that even if (God forbid!) He is not with us, we have to live by the truth of justice and righteousness for our own individual and collective sake. In this sense, life is a matter of ethics in order to coexist and survive as loving human beings and not as wild beasts. We are talking about the ethics of Love in His ways and attributes, that we must preserve and protect by being and manifesting Love as our identity: "When you build a new house, you shall make a guardrail for your roof, so that you shall not cause blood [to be spilled] in your house, that the one who falls should fall from it [the roof]." (Deuteronomy 22:8) In the process of building Love's values in our consciousness (the house) we have to make them prevail in every aspect of what we are and do, thus we guard and protect ourselves from falling down into negative illusions that end up destroying the foundations of Love's ways and attributes by letting the illusions take over our consciousness, and bringing disgrace to what we consider the most cherished asset of all.

We must walk in the ways of the blessings of Love, God's Love in our consciousness, and separate from the curses of a loveless life represented by Canaanite nations: "But the Lord, your God, did not want to listen to Balaam. So the Lord, your God, transformed the curse into a blessing for you, because the Lord, your God, loves you." (23:6) And, as we already know, His Love is with us as long as we allow Him in all aspects of consciousness: "For the Lord, your God, goes along in the midst of your camp, to rescue you and to deliver your enemies before you. [Therefore,] your camp shall be holy, so that He should not see anything unseemly among you and would turn away from you."(23:15), hence selling our awareness of Love to materialistic illusions is how we separate from Him.

This portion, with its 74 Commandments, ends reminding us to destroy the memory, the thought, the feeling and the emotion of doubt, uncertainty and hesitation regarding the only true choice of all that is living in Love's ways and attributes: "[Therefore,] it will be, when the Lord your God grants you respite from all your enemies around [you] in the land which the Lord, your God, gives to you as an inheritance to possess, that you shall obliterate the remembrance of Amalek from beneath the heavens. You shall not forget!" (25:19)

Let's be aware always that God's Love is our Creator, and His Love is our Essence and identity for which we have to live every moment. Love is what we are made of, Love is who we are, and Love is what we have to manifest: "For your Master is your Maker, the Lord of Hosts is His name, and your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel, shall be called the God of all the Earth." (Isaiah 54:5) "'For the mountains shall depart and the hills totter, but My loving kindness shall not depart from you, neither shall the Covenant of My peace totter,' says the Lord, who has compassion on you." (54:10) While our mistaken values and beliefs (mountains y hills), as well as ego's fantasies, are ephemeral and they abandon us in their illusion, Love and His peace always remain and waiting for us to embrace them.

Parshat Shoftim: Living in Love's Judgments

2011-08-28T00:00:00.000-07:00

The best guidance and counsel we have in consciousness is our judgment, and we have to endow it with the highest awareness of Love's ways and attributes. Our consciousness encompasses multiple facets, layers, dimensions and expressions that in the Torah are represented by our Tribes (the best human traits and qualities to fulfill the Creator's will), the Promised Land (our individual and collective lives with their entire potential in Love's ways), cities (material knowledge, habits, customs, ideologies, beliefs, convictions, tendencies) that we must direct with the wisdom that Love teaches us when we follow His ways. This direction is the judgment, the discernment that only the righteousness and justice of Love must be the conductors of all aspects of life in plentitude, abundance, happiness and peace: "You shall set up judges (shoftim) and [law enforcement] officials for yourself in all your cities that the Lord, your God, is giving you, for your tribes, and they shall judge the people [with] righteous judgment." (Deuteronomy 16:18) Hence, the best judges in our consciousness are Love's ways and attributes, not only to guide all dimensions of life but also the way we approach our surrounding material reality: "Justice, justice shall you pursue, that you may live and possess the land the Lord, your God, is giving you." (16:20) and this is the justice of Love, the only one that we must pursue in order to live in our Promised Land.

In the book "God as Love" we explain that Righteousness, Justice, Truth, Peace and Loving Kindness are all inherent qualities of themselves, as it is reminded by our wisest Kings and Prophets: "Loving kindness and truth have met, righteousness and peace have kissed" (Psalms 85:11), "Righteousness and justice are the foundation of Your throne; loving kindness and truthfulness go before You." (89:15), "Let love and truthfulness never leave you; bind them around your neck, write them on the table of your heart." (Proverbs 3:3), "The fruit of righteousness will be peace; the effect of righteousness will be tranquility and confidence forever." (Isaiah 32:17), "He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act with justice and to love loving kindness, and to walk humbly with your God." (Micah 6:8), "Thus said the Lord of hosts has said: 'Administer true justice; do loving kindness and compassion to one another." (Zechariah 7:9) and we have to understand them all as the primordial ways and attributes of Love, as well as clear reflections of God's Love in us.

The portion continues emphasizing the inspiring, guiding and teaching role of our highest awareness of Divine Love, represented by the High Priest and the Tribe of Levi, as our best judgment to approach life and the world: "According to the law they [The Priests and Levites] instruct you [and] according to the judgment they say to you, you shall do; you shall not divert from the word they tell you, either right or left. (…) For the Lord, your God, has chosen him [Levi] out of all your Tribes, to stand and serve in the Name of the Lord, he and his sons, all the days." (Deuteronomy 17:11, 18:5) because we need the best judgment when we have to confront ego's materialistic desires in the battlefield of illusions: "And it will be, when you approach the battle, that the kohen [high priest] shall come near, and speak to the people." (20:2) and this discernment also reminds us that when we live in Love's ways, God's Love is also fighting in our wars to freedom from the attachments to ego's fantasies and illusions: "For the Lord, your God, is the One who goes with you, to fight for you against your enemies, to redeem you." (20:4) because He is our sole Redeemer from the traps of the illusions that we create with our feelings of lack. These wars and battles are about regaining Love in every aspect of our life, Love as our Essence and identity. In order to set up Love in all dimensions of consciousness we first must work with the traits that have taken us down into the darkness of negative thoughts, emotions, feelings, passions and instincts.

These traits are the cities that represent our mistaken beliefs and ideas, negative thoughts and emotions, lower desires and passions, and instincts out of control. We have to confront them not necessarily as mortal enemies that we must destroy, but as traits that we can transform or redirect in the positive and constructive ways of Love's attributes: "When you approach a city to wage war against it, you shall propose peace to it. And it will be, if it responds to you with peace, and it opens up to you, then it will be, [that] all the people found therein shall become tributary to you, and they shall serve you." (20:10-11), and we must be persistent until we refine them enough to make them part of our intellectual, mental, emotional and physical strength: "(…) and you shall build bulwarks against the city that makes war with you, until its submission." (20:20)

Again, the Prophet recalls in the haftarah that God's Love is with us in our wars to regain the freedom that Love is, in order to leave behind the negative consequences of ego's materialistic illusions, the nothingness for which we sale our true identity: "Shake yourselves from the dust, arise, sit down O Jerusalem; free yourself of the bands of your neck, O captive daughter of Zion. For so said the Lord, 'you were sold for nothing, and you shall not be redeemed for money'." (Isaiah 52:2-3) God's Love teaches us that though we sale our consciousness for the nothingness of illusion, not with another illusion ("money") we regain it, in order to return to Love. Thus, we know that it is up to us our return to His Love we know, because He always speaks to us even in our darkest illusions: "Therefore, My people shall know My Name; therefore, on that day, for I am He who speaks, here I am." (52:6)

Parshat Re'eh: Seeing God's Love

2011-08-21T00:00:00.000-07:00

The purpose of the three major Jewish festivals (Pesach, Shavuot and Succot) is to see the Creator to whom we bring our offerings in the Temple of Jerusalem. We have said in our commentaries on Vayikra (the book of Leviticus) that the offerings are the ways to elevate our main human traits and qualities in order to devote them to His service. Only throughout this Divine service we achieve our Unity with Him. The name of this portion, as well as its first word, reminds us that by choosing His blessing we indeed see Him: "See (re'eh), I set before you today a blessing and a curse." (Deuteronomy 11:26) The following verses make clear that we are blessed by cleaving to His ways and attributes, and the curse is the consequence of cleaving to the idols that we make out of ego's fantasies and illusions. The Commandment to destroy such idols is unambiguous: "You shall utterly destroy from all the places where the nations, that you shall possess, worshipped their gods, upon the lofty mountains and upon the hills, and under every lush tree." (12:2)

We have to make our individual inventory of the material illusions in which we live and to which we dedicate every aspect of our consciousness. These aspects are the "places" that encompass our higher awareness (the top of the mountains and hills) and our lower traits (the underground) where we have to examine what compels us to think, speak and act the way we do. The goal of this inventory is to transform and redirect our thoughts, emotions, feelings, passions, and instincts into Love's ways: "And you shall tear down their altars, smash their monuments, burn their woods with fire, cut down the graven images of their gods, and destroy their name from that place." (12:3) and this transformation occurs when we refine the ways we approach life in the material world through the blessings of God's Love: "And there you shall eat before the Lord, your God, and you shall rejoice in all your endeavors you and your households, as the Lord, your God, has blessed you. (…) and He will give you rest from all your enemies surrounding you, and you will dwell in safety." (12:7, 10)

As we said above, the ways to see the Creator and dwell in His Love are our willingness to assume Love as our true identity, and to live in His ways: "And you shall eat them before the Lord, your God, in the place the Lord, your God, will choose you, your son, your daughter, your manservant, your maidservant, and the Levite who is in your cities, and you shall rejoice before the Lord, your God, in all your endeavors."(12:18) because we have to implement and incorporate ("eat") the best of who we are in the presence of Love ("the place" of God's loving kindness) all aspects of consciousness (us and our creations [oneself, sons, daughters], our motivations [servants] to deeds and actions, and our highest awareness of Divine Love [the Levite priesthood]) in order to exult with Love in all we are, have and do. This is the blessing, our blessing: "For you are a holy people to the Lord, your God, and the Lord has chosen you to be a treasured people for Him, out of all the nations that are upon the Earth." (14:2)

The portion ends reminding us again to see the Creator in our festivals: "Three times in the year, every one of your males shall appear (lit. shall see) before the Lord, your God, in the place He will choose: on the Festival of Matzot and on the Festival of Weeks, and on the Festival of Succot, and he shall not appear before the Lord empty-handed." (16:16) because we come to see Him and be united to Him with our Love that is also His Love, the Essence with which He created us. We see Him when we elevate all dimensions of consciousness with, in and for His Love because God's Love is what is revealed in His Creation, and His Love is what we have to reveal from its concealment under the darkness of the negative aspects and expressions of our consciousness. Let's keep in mind that the portion, the lot that He has given us individually is measured and limited by our own awareness of His Love, and this lot is also our relationship with Him. Let's not be mistaken thinking that He gives more to some and less to others, because the Love we have is directly proportional to the Love we want to have in our life. In this sense we understand that "[Every] man [shall bring] as much as he can afford, according to the blessing of the Lord, your God, which He has given you." (16:17)

In the haftarah for this portion, the Prophet invites us again to fulfill the Commandment to cleave to the Creator: "Hearken to Me and eat what is good, and your soul shall delight in fatness. Incline your ear and come to Me, hearken and your soul shall live, and I will make for you an everlasting Covenant, the trusted loving kindness David. Incline your ear and come to Me, hearken and your soul shall live, and I will make for you an everlasting Covenant, the trusted loving kindness of David." (Isaiah 55:2-4) and David represents the loving kindness of Messianic consciousness that God's Love offers us to redeem ourselves individually and collectively from the negative situations that we have created by living in ego's materialistic illusions. Once we realize that we all depend on the blessings of Love ever since we are born until we die, we will be in our way out from the darkness of exile and in our way in to Redemption.

Parshat Eikev: Because We Have to Love

2011-08-14T00:00:00.000-07:00

In previous commentaries we have insisted that there is not such a thing as the apparent conditionality of God's Love, because all conditions exist on our behalf. We also have repeated that Love is its cause and effect, its instant reward, and in this sense we understand the first verse of this portion: "(…) because (eikev) you will heed these ordinances and keep them and perform, that the Lord, your God, will keep for you the Covenant and the loving kindness that He swore to your forefathers." (Deuteronomy 7:12) and also the meaning of His Covenant and His loving kindness, with which "(…) He will love you, and bless you, and multiply you (…)" (7:13) Thus, as long as we walk in His ways and attributes, Love is also with us. The Covenant is always present, as God's Love is omnipresent and omniscient, and it's up to us to be aware of this Truth. That's our choice.

We are Israel and such as we are bound to fulfill our part of the Covenant, because it is our alliance with Him that gives our identity as Jews, and this is our greatest blessing: "You shall be blessed above all peoples" (7:14) because as we live with, in and for Love: "There will be no sterile male or barren female among you or among your livestock." (7:14) meaning no lack, no inadequacies: "And the Lord will remove from you all illness, and all of the evil diseases of Egypt which you know, He will not set upon you, but He will lay them upon all your enemies." (7:15) because the lack and emptiness of ego's materialistic desires and illusions (Egypt) are the diseases that we live in, and Love makes us aware that those illusions live from their own lack.

For most of us, living in ego's illusions is easier than accepting the truthfulness of Love. Thousands of years conditioning our intellect, mind, emotions, feelings, passions and instincts under the mirages of an egotistic approach to life can't be overcome overnight. It may take also many centuries to overturn the negative patterns ("the nations") imprinted in humankind's genetic memory. The good news is that Love is the cure for all kinds of our illnesses: "And the Lord, your God, will drive out those nations from before you, little by little. You will not be able to destroy them quickly, lest the beasts of the field outnumber you." (7:22) and it is the fire of Divine Love in us that can transform darkness and negativity into Light and Love in all levels and dimensions of our consciousness, hence in our surroundings: "The graven images of their gods you will burn in fire (…)" (7:25)

This is the way to return again to the kind of life that God's Love wants for us, a life that affirms that we are Love in His image and likeness: "a Land in which you will eat bread without scarcity, you will lack nothing in it (…) And you will eat and be sated, and you shall bless the Lord, your God, for the good Land He has given you." (8:9-10) Time and again we are warned in the entire Torah about the consequences of separating our consciousness from Love's ways and attributes. This separation only happens when we let ego's materialistic agenda to rule our lives: "and you will say to yourself, 'My strength and the might of my hand that has accumulated this wealth for me.'" (8:17) Also, time and again the way to return to Love is always paved and cleared for us: "But you must remember the Lord your God, for it is He that gives you strength to make wealth, in order to establish His Covenant which He swore to your forefathers, as it is this day." (8:18) Such a simple and plain Truth overshadowed by our false sense of self-sufficiency.

We have to be aware that, while ego quenches its thirst with the waters of materialistic illusions, Love sustains us directly from our Creator. As our true Essence and identity, Love settles us in the delights of His ways and attributes: "For the Land into which you go (...) drinks water of the rain of Heaven" (11:10-11) and once we enthrone Love in all levels of consciousness, we are fully satiated with prosperity, joy, happiness, and abundance: "I will give grass in your fields for your livestock, so that you may eat and be full (11:15), and let's never forget that loving our Creator and our attachment to Him are two of His Commandments for us to keep His Covenant: "(..) to love the Lord your God, (…) to cleave to Him." (11:22, 10:20)

The Prophet also reminds us that God's Love, also in our own Love, is our sole Redeemer in all times: "For the Lord shall console Zion [our awareness of Divine Love], He shall console all its ruins, and He shall make its desert like a Paradise and its wasteland like the Garden of the Lord; joy and happiness shall be found therein, thanksgiving and a voice of song." (Isaiah 51:3) Amen.

Parshat Va'etchanan: Our Bond with God's Love

2011-08-07T00:00:00.000-07:00

In the book "God as Love" we say that loving our Creator is the Essential Commandment to fully understand our relationship with Him, our Oneness with Him, as we realize the most important statement for Israel in the Torah: "Hear [understand] Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord is One" (Deuteronomy 6:4) and this realization is our heritage, our identity and the source of all our blessings. We have to reaffirm again this Truth, the primordial message of "God as Love", every moment of our lives and we do it by constantly loving Him, because Love is our common bond with the Creator and this is why we have to be aware of Love always: "And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might." (6:6)

This is not an entirely mystic or spiritual bonding with the Creator, but a very real and concrete experience in the material world, because being and manifesting our true Essence and identity are the ways to reveal His Presence in us and around us. The first verses of this portion are an invitation to live such experience: "And I implored (va'etchanan) the Lord at that time, saying, "O Lord God, You have begun to show Your servant Your greatness and Your strong hand, for who is [like] God in Heaven or on Earth who can do as Your deeds and Your might?" (3:23-24) and our true reason to exist in this world is to experience our Creator and His Love for all His Creation. This happens when we, as part of His Oneness, approach Him. Thus in that awareness we realize that we are truly alive: "And you who cleave to the Lord your God are alive, all of you, this day." (4:4) and this day is the permanent time and space of the knowledge that His Love is the creator and sustainer of our life and everything that exists.

In this awareness we see and experience the blessings of Love in who we are and how we approach life and the material world. Hence, we have to be vigilant against the ego's fantasies and illusions, the idols that deny the preeminence of Love: "And you shall watch yourselves very well, for you did not see any image on the day that the Lord spoke to you at Horeb (Sinai) from the midst of the fire." (4:15) because Love does not cohabit with fantasies or illusions, and Love is the Divine fire that transmutes them for us to see and live in His ways and attributes completely free from ego's materialistic approach to life. This vigilance must be permanent: "Beware, lest you forget the Covenant of the Lord your God, which He made with you, and make for yourselves a graven image, the likeness of anything, which the Lord your God has forbidden you." (4:23)

In this context, we have to reiterate the inherent exclusivity of Love: "For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a zealous [exclusive] God." (4:24) as the fire that consumes not only materialistic illusions but their negative expressions. Our mystic Sages say that instead of fighting darkness we rather bring about Light, because with it we turn darkness into Light. This statement is deeper than we think. Darkness indeed is the necessary condition in order to make Light prevail. If there is no darkness, then what is it to be lighted up? We call darkness the negative conditions and situations that we must transform with the fire of Love, and this means that we have to add Love in order to subtract egotism. In this sense, we do not have to fight or kill our egos but to redeem them from the negative effects of their attachment to lower thoughts, emotions, passions and instincts.

Let's remind ourselves again that our choices either get us closer to God's Love or separate us from Him, because He never abandons us. When we disregard Love as our true Essence and identity we are who withdraw our consciousness to the realm of potentially negative emotions: "And the Lord will scatter you among the peoples, and you will remain few in number among the nations to where the Lord will lead you." (4:27) In the absence of Love in our lives, our positive traits and qualities are the minority amid the overwhelming power of lower emotions under ego's desires and control. But as we know, God's Love is always present and available because He is the Source and sustenance of all: "And from there you will seek the Lord your God, and you will find Him, if you seek Him with all your heart and with all your soul. When you are distressed, and all these things happen upon you in the end of days, then you will return to the Lord your God and listen to His voice." (4:29-30) and let's never forget this, "For the Lord your God is a compassionate God; He will not let you lose or destroy you; neither will He forget the Covenant of your fathers, which He swore to them." (4:31) and this is the Covenant of Love that He gave us as our legacy, our heritage, and our identity for which we live to reveal Him in every dimension of our consciousness and in all His Creation.

The haftarah for this portion reaffirms it in these two verses: "And the Glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh together shall see that the mouth of the Lord spoke." (Isaiah 40:5), and "Lift up your eyes on high and see, Who created these, Who takes out their multitudes by number; all of them He calls by name; because of His great might and because He is strong in power, no one is missing." (40:26)

Parshat Devarim: Dwelling in God's Love

2011-07-31T00:00:00.000-07:00

Every book of the Torah is important as well as every word contained in them, and their messages are directed to all aspects and dimensions of our consciousness in order to understand, to grasp and to assimilate those messages. We know that some of the Commandments of the Torah are beyond our comprehension. This makes sense because God's Word as well as God's Love and His attributes ultimately are beyond our comprehension. We only "understand" and "feel" as long as our souls allow us to. Our Sages say that the soul is to our body as the Creator is to the world, meaning that the soul makes us aware of Him in the body as God makes the world aware of His Presence. This means that the soul is the place of the body, and God is the place of the world; and neither the body nor the world is the place of the soul or the place of God. We understand this principle by making ourselves aware that our mission as individuals (bodies) and as collective (world) is to reveal Love as God's Presence in our lives and in our surroundings, because He is our Essence, and our sustenance, and our life.

In the last book of the Torah, Devarim (Things, Sayings) there is a repetition of many of the Commandments already given and reiterated in the previous four books, and also prophecies that have been fulfilled throughout our Jewish history. Let's reflect on some of these revisions: "The Lord our God spoke to us in Horeb, saying, 'You have dwelt long enough at this mountain. Turn and journey, and come to the mountain of the Amorites and to all its neighboring places, in the plain, on the mountain, and in the lowland, and in the south and by the seashore, the land of the Canaanites, and the Lebanon, until the great river, the Euphrates River." (Deuteronomy 1:6-7) In this two verses we are reminded again that once we dwell long enough in God's Love, under His care, protection and guidance as the permanent awareness of His Presence in our lives, we must pour this awareness into all levels and dimensions of consciousness to be able to "settle" in the Promised Land, where we live in Love's ways and attributes.

These levels and dimensions are the higher knowledge of loving kindness and its manifestations ("mountains"), of the emotions and passions ("plains"), of our instincts ("the lowland"), of the ways (south, north, east, west, up and down) where we direct our thoughts ("the sea"), of how we subjugate, control and direct our negative emotions ("the Canaanite nations), of how we consecrate our duties and deeds in life ("the Lebanon" as an additional symbol of the Tabernacle or Temple), and of the flow of our individual living identity ("rivers"), as the premises to live a life in the plentitude of Love: "And they took some of the fruit of the land in their hand(s) and brought it down to us, brought us back word, and said, 'The land the Lord, our God, is giving us is good.'" (1:25) simply because life, in Love's ways and attributes, is always good.

Again, we are also reminded to be bear in mind that our highest knowledge of the Creator (represented by Moses, our teacher) is indeed our true guide, but it needs the remaining positive traits and aspects of consciousness (the tribes of Israel) in order to fully accomplish our mission to reveal (for us and for the nations) God's Love in His Creation: "How can I bear your trouble, your burden, and your strife all by myself? Prepare for yourselves wise and understanding men, known among your tribes, and I will make them heads over you." (1:12-13) and this highest knowledge of Love as our Essence can elevate our entire consciousness to be able to reveal Him in our lives and in the world: "And I commanded Joshua at that time, saying, 'Your eyes have seen all that the Lord, your God, has done to these two kings.' So will the Lord do to all the kingdoms through which you will pass. Do not fear them, for it is the Lord, your God, who is fighting for you." (3:21-22)

Here we learn that Joshua and Moses represent the same awareness for us as individuals and as a Nation. Once we are aware (we "see") that God's Love is our Creator, our life and our sustenance, we can also redirect our thoughts, emotions, passions and instincts, through which we pass when we manifest who we are and what we do. In this "passing through" we do not have to be afraid of falling into negative emotions and lower passions, because Love is paving the way, filling the roughness of our consciousness with His attributes. This is how Love "fights" for us when we make the choice to let Him lead our lives to live in His attributes: His Promised Land to us.

Parshat Massei: The Journeys to God's Love

2011-07-24T00:00:00.000-07:00

This portion recalls the journeys of the children of Israel since their Exodus from Egypt under the guidance of the Creator: "Moses recorded their starting points for their journeys (massei) according to the word of the Lord, and these were their journeys with their starting points." (Numbers 33:2) In "God as Love" we have said that life itself is a journey in which we have many turning points. Our Sages teach: "Know from where you came, where you are going, and before whom you are destined to give a judgment (discernment) and accounting (to account for)." (Pirkei Avot 3:1) This is to be aware that we, as well as all Creation, come from God's Love; and, as our Essence and identity, we must be going in His ways. Hence, with Love we discern life and the material world because to Love we are accounted for.

In the journeys of life we follow the words and deeds of Love as the starting points to discern ego's fantasies and illusions in which we stumble, fall and must get up to continue learning the ways and attributes of Divine Love. These are the illusions that we have to clear from all levels and dimensions of consciousness in order to live in the Promised Land, which is life in Love's ways and attributes: "You shall clear out the Land and settle in it, for I have given you the Land to occupy it." (Numbers 33:53) and we are also reminded earlier: "And let the Land not vomit you out for having defiled it, as it vomited out the nation that preceded you." (Leviticus 18:28, 20:22) because God's Love does not dwell with anything different from His attributes. This is the most important principle that we have to be mindful about in the choices that we make every moment in life. We have to understand that "expulsion" not from God's Love but as the consequence of following ego's materialistic fantasies, and not His ways. If we choose to live with Love as our true identity, as the Promised Land where we all yearn to live as our Divine inheritance, we have to be worthy of Love.

We are also reminded that our highest awareness of God's Love (the Levite priesthood) has to lead, guard and protect our connection with Him: "Command the children of Israel that they shall give to the Levites from their hereditary possession cities in which to dwell, and you shall give the Levites open spaces around the cities." (Numbers 35:2) because every essential aspect of consciousness (the children of Israel) must be guided under this highest awareness capable of redeeming and redirecting our life when we transgress Love's attributes. This is the meaning of the cities of refuge (lit. absorption), the place in consciousness where we atone (transform) for our transgressions against Love, the Essence of life. This is why the cities of refuge are related to the unintentional murderer, the one who desecrates life by ending it. Again life, and human life in particular, is remarked as the most important manifestation of God's Creation, to the point that it is defined as image and likeness of the Creator. In this context, life and God's Love are closely related because His Love is the source of life.

The haftorah for this portion reiterates Love as the primordial likeness between the Creator and us, as His Creation, and denounces the materialistic illusions that separate us from His Love: "So says the Lord: What wrong did your forefathers find in Me, that they distanced themselves from Me, and they went after futility and themselves became futile?" (Jeremiah 2:5) because in ego's illusions we live in futility and become futile, as the idols that we follow and in which we become: "Because My people have committed two evils; they have forsaken Me, the spring of living waters, to dig for themselves cisterns, broken cisterns that do not hold water." (2:13) and again we are reminded that Love awaits us when we make the choice to return to His ways and attributes: "If you return, O Israel, says the Lord, to Me, you shall return, and if you remove your detestable things from My Presence, you shall not wander. And you will swear, 'As the Lord lives,' in truth and in justice and in righteousness, nations will bless themselves with Him and boast about Him." (4:1-2)

Our Sages reaffirm the words of the Prophet: "The world stands on three things: Torah, the service of God, and acts of kindness." (Pirkei Avot 1:2) and they also say that "By three things is the world sustained: Torah, truth and peace." (1:18) and, as we have mentioned in "God as Love", all these traits and qualities are all inherent to God's Love, and they are intertwined as Love's ways and attributes, our true Essence and identity.

Parshat Matot: Love as the Foundation of Life

2011-07-17T00:00:00.000-07:00

The previous three biblical portions (parshiot) are related because every event is the consequence of the preceding. In Balak, the transgression of harlotry with the daughters of Moab had negative results which led the children of Israel to realize that the zeal of the permanent awareness of our closeness to God's Love must be present always. As we mentioned in our commentary on Pinchas, this zeal is fundamental to embrace Love's ways and attributes as the means to free our consciousness from ego's materialistic desires, fantasies and illusions. This zeal is also the foundation of our loyalty, faithfulness and devotion as the vows that we make in order to approach the material world with the truthfulness that Love is. Vows are the main subject presented in Matot to the people of Israel: "Moses spoke to the heads of the tribes (matot) of the children of Israel (…)" (Numbers 30:2)

Again, the heads of the Tribes are pointed out as the most refined traits and qualities that enable us to conduct all dimensions of consciousness in Love's ways and attributes. Refinement is acquired through experience, by trial and error, by discerning true from false, good from evil. The following section of Matot precedes the Commandment to "Take revenge for the children of Israel against the Midianites (…), afterwards you will be gathered to your people." (31:2) and it is given to Moses as the highest awareness of the Creator, because in this knowledge we can gather all our levels of consciousness in order to lead them in Love's ways with which we dissipate the negative traits and qualities that curse life. And this knowledge must be directed by Pinchas, the zeal of God's Love: "And Moses sent them (...) Pinchas the son of Elazar the priest…" (31:6) Our Sages teach that Moses sent him because one who starts a Commandment (in this a case a positive action) must finish it.

We have said that Midian means strife, dispute as the result of poor clarity in our individual awareness of God's Love in our life. In this sense strife is the antagonist of our zeal of Love's attributes in our consciousness. Our Sages also define strife as the root of separation and division, and in this sense both are ego's typical expressions to reaffirm its "independence" from the Oneness that Divine Love is. Hence, the war against Median means to re-direct our thoughts, ideas, beliefs, conceptions, emotions, feelings, and passions into the unifying and harmonizing ways of Love as our true Essence and identity. After we win this war led by our highest awareness and zeal of the Greatest Love of all, the entire Israel is gathered together with their natural leader, which is our individual and collective knowledge that Divine Love encompasses and pervades all His Creation.

Our awareness of Love is the one and only leader that takes us back to our true identity: "Moses said to them, 'If you do this thing, if you arm yourselves for battle before the Lord, and your armed force crosses the Jordan before the Lord until He has driven out His enemies before Him" (32:20-21) The message is clear, and the "if" means that it is up to us to battle the dark side of our consciousness with Love as the "armed force" that we have before the Lord, because it comes from His Love: "And the (Promised) Land will be conquered before the Lord, (…) and this land will become your heritage before the Lord." (32:22) because when life is led by Love's ways and attributes, it becomes our Promised Land.

If we act against our true Essence and identity, we are simply acting against He who created us and sustains us: "But, if you do not do so, behold, you will have sinned against the Lord, and be aware of your sin which will find you." (32:23) Again, the choice is only ours. God's Love is unconditional because He gave us free will to make up to us the choice between Love and ego's illusions. Love is the choice of Israel as the chosen People to reveal the Presence of the Creator in the world, which is His Love.

Our mission is to be Light for the nations, as the ones who live with, from and by the Love of God; and this Love is mutual, as it is reminded by the Prophet in the haftorah for this portion: "Israel is holy to the Lord, the first of His grain; all who eat him shall be guilty, evil shall befall them, says the Lord." (Jeremiah 2:3) Love is the foundation to build on, to enhance and to elevate live for His sake, as the cause and effect of all that is. If we don't see or experience this fundamental principle in our individual and collective consciousness, then our duty is to reinstate it by clearing the darkness that became cause and effect of all our miseries in the material world.