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Old City, Jerusalem — Shavuot,
5772 / 2012 |
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This
teaching is dedicated to the ilui neshama (soul
ascent) of Shmuel ben Leib. He should experience
wave after wave of delight and elevation from the eternally
unfolding repercussions of his good deeds and in particular
from the light and merit generated by his holy
progeny.
This
teaching is also dedicated to the aliyat haneshama
(soul ascension) of Tirza bat Leah, a dear friend and
teacher and light in the world. She should bask in the
radiance of the Shekhina and enjoy the revelations of truth
for which her soul
yearned. |
Torah
(PDF
attached along with original Hebrew text)
Shavuot,
5772 / 2012
Inspired
by Meor V’Shemesh1 by Sarah Yehudit
Schneider
Jacob’s
ladder reaches up through the worlds to the inwardness of G-d called
the Infinite Light. The point of our religion (with its 613
commands) is to bring us up those rungs to meet HaShem there face to
face, core to core. That is what our First Commandment asks of us,
to behold the simple oneness that Hashem refers to when He says, “I
am….”2,3
It’s a
multi-millennial journey with milestones along the way. Meor
v’Shemesh divides the path into three stages based on the Torah’s
account of the revelation at Sinai. The sequence is: 1)
hearing the truth, 2) seeing the Light, and finally 3) beyond mind
and sensory experience, just being with the One. His teaching
has practical implications for us today.
Meor
v’Shemesh derives the first two stages from the Torah as
follows:
1)
HaShem
proposes that Moshe receive the revelation as an exclusive encounter
between himself and HaShem, inviting the people to witness, from
afar, their private exchange.
“And
HaShem said to Moses, ‘Behold, I will come to you in a thick cloud
that the people may hear when I speak with
you...’”4
2)
a) The people reject their spectator role and insist upon a direct
experience of the revelation.
“We wish
to hear the revelation directly from the mouth of our King. To hear
from an intermediary is not like hearing from the king himself…And
furthermore, our wish is to see our King. For hearing is not
like seeing.”5
b) HaShem concedes to their request:
“All the
people saw the sounds…” “They saw what is
otherwise only heard.”6
(Rashi)
3)
This prophetic seeing overwhelms them. Their souls fly from
their bodies at every word. HaShem resuscitates them again and
again. Finally, after the first two commands, they ask HaShem to
reinstate Moshe as their intermediary.
“…And
when the people saw it, they were shaken, and stood far away. They
said to Moses, 'You speak to us, and we will hear. But let
God not speak with us any more, for if He does we will
die.7
4) Moshe
assuages them:
“Do not
be afraid for G-d is only testing
you…8
Meor
v’Shemesh explores what this test is about. He explains that our
journey up Jacob’s ladder to fulfill the First Commandment requires
us to become ever more immune to strange fire9 (a
Biblical term that has come to include all manner of tainted
pleasures).10 At each forward step, our awareness
includes more and more of the hidden realms. Yet there are
hindrances along the way that distract us with a bribe of some
(perhaps quite subtle) ego gratification—another term for strange
fire. The higher we climb the more subtle the lures. On the physical
plane we get hooked by food and riches and lusts of every sort, yet
it’s pretty clear what’s holy and what’s not. Though we might not
muster the strength to resist, we know when we’ve done wrong. But on
the inner planes truth gets fuzzier and the standards of integrity
grow more precise. The focus shifts from rightness-of-action
to purity of intent.
And so,
says Meor v’Shemesh, even at the rarefied levels of Hearing
Truth and Seeing the Light Hashem tests our resistance
to strange fire which appears there as spiritual materialism. Can we
enjoy the gift of revelation without puffing in self-importance? Do
we fixate on the messenger and end up distorting the message? Can we
resist the urge to freeze the frame and instead meet the future with
proactive wisdom? Are we even aware that these problems
exist?
Sinai was
both a test and an initiation. HaShem made it clear what He expects
from us—we must grow immune to the lure of strange fire no matter
how subtle its bait. Life is our training ground.
On the
physical plane it certainly makes sense to avoid temptations when
possible. But the effort to eliminate stumbling-blocks must be
accompanied by inner work. Otherwise it will not succeed and
is likely to even backfire, in part for the following reasons.
·
When a
person succeeds in removing lustful enticements he starts to become
more sensitive to what were previously neutral stimuli. He discovers
a new set of more subtle triggers that must now be avoided as well.
The list of culprits grows longer while his zone of comfort shrinks
to the size of a prison cell. His life is controlled by the very
scourge he sought to avoid.
·
It
doesn’t serve us in the long term. If our only solution for lustful
thoughts is to banish whatever triggers them, we never develop
mastery over our inner world. Our immediate enticements can
(perhaps) be managed this way, but we don’t develop the skills to
pass the tests that await us on the higher rungs of Jacob’s
ladder—tests that require a practiced ability to gauge our purity of
motive, to admit where it is lacking and to endure humiliation for
the sake of truth.
The
reason that avoidance of temptation must be supplemented by
meditative work is because the problems don’t originate with the
enticements themselves. The outer stimuli are simply triggering
impurities of soul we’ve all inherited from primordial times, no
blame. And now that our weak-spots are visible we can begin to
repair them. And the tool for that work is a particular form of
meditation called התפשטות הגשמיות (disengaging from material
distractions) that our Code of Jewish Law (Shulchan Aruch)
considers a necessary preparation for prayer (and actually for
fulfilling the even more basic obligation to “keep HaShem’s
presence with us at all times.”)11
Hitpashtut
hagashmiut is a
method of not just quieting thoughts but of mastering them. The
practice is simple. First choose something as the focus of
your meditation (which could be a verse, a name of G-d, a holy word,
or a prayer). Next, try to hold your mind on that focus for
ten minutes or more. When your attention wanders, which it surely
will, return to your focus and let the distraction go. You don’t
fight it. You don’t suppress it. You don’t condemn yourself for its
presence. You just shift your attention back to your focus. And so
it goes, again and again, throughout the period you’ve designated
for this work. The thoughts arise (which they inevitably
will)12 and you let them go (reinforcing your
independence from them). That’s it for starters.
Each time
you dismiss the distraction and return to your focus you strengthen
the muscle of self-determination. The distraction loses its power to
intimidate and your nerve net absorbs the skill (and the habit) of
holding its focus. Hitpashtut hagashmiut breaks the link
between reactivity and action. An impulse arises and I can
choose not to let it distract me. This muscle develops through
daily meditation and strengthens year after year.
One who
meditates KNOWS that the blame for wayward thoughts is partly from
outer stimuli and partly from not taking responsibility for his or
her inner world. If we don’t add meditation (hitpashtut
hagashmiut) to our tool belt and deem it as essential as the
strategy of avoidance, we will not advance beyond the lower rungs of
Jacob’s ladder.
HaShem:
Let it be that on this Shavuot, when the highest lights of Torah
stream through the universe, that we remember who we are—masters of
our inner world, guardians of the outer one, and a light unto the
nations. May we internalize Your Torah to the depths of our being so
that we become transformed by Your will and its truths. Let us
become ever more immune to the lures of strange fire that distract
us from You, compromise our integrity and keep us sidetracked from
the real work (and blessings) at hand.
-----------------------
ר' קלונימוס קלמן הלוי עפשטיין, מאור ושמש, רמזי
שבועות, ד"ה ויאמר ה' אל משה הנה אנוכי בא אליך... וגם ד"ה וכל העם
רואים...
2 The first
commandment of the Torah begins with the words: “I
am the Lord
your God, who have brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the
house of bondage.”
3 Pesikta
21; Zohar 2:85b. “We have
been taught that when the “I” was proclaimed, all those commandments
of the Torah…were comprised in it…”
4Ex.
19:9.
5Mekhilta,
Tractate BaChodesh, Chapt. 2; Rashi on Ex.
19:9
6 Ex. 20:15
and Rashi there.
7 Ex.
20:15-16.
8 Ex.
20:17.
9 Meor
v’Shemesh doesn’t actually use the language of strange fire.
He speaks more abstractly but it is clear that this term faithfully
conveys his intention.
0 Lev.
10:1; Bmidbar 3:4; 17:2; 26:61
1 Tur,
Orech Chayim, 98; Shuchan Aruch, Orech Chayim
98.
2 Trying to
prevent spiritually unproductive thoughts from arising is a losing
battle (See Tanya, chapt. 26 & 27). Expecting them to
stay pent up and invisible, is a HUGE energy drain that will never
succeed. In hitpashtut hagashmiut you don’t try to
prevent their arising, you simply direct your energy away from them
and back to your meditative focus and they dissipate. It
depressurizes the psyche, releasing its energies for more productive
use.
.
Blessings
galore…A Still Small Voice
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