Chukat: Living God's Commandments

We have said frequently that the Torah defines our Jewish identity, which is about who we Jews are and what we do, and these also determine our relationship with the Creator. This relationship is shaped by our connection with Him, which depends on His commandments, decrees and statutes delineated in the Torah.

We have indicated that in Hebrew the semantic root of the term “commandment” means connection, and this connection is determined by His rules, not ours. We have to understand and assimilate the ways, means and attributes with which God relates to His Creation, us included, according to what the Torah instructs us.

These are the foundation for us to comprehend His commandments, despite our limitations to know Him, because He does not have definition. This is why our sages teach us that we only can know Him through His ways and attributes, and yet we will never get to know Him at all.

We must insist that our Jewish identity is the sum of all the 613 commandments in the Torah, because they not only define who we are but our connection with the Creator. The underlying essence of this connection is love as our common bond with Him. God's love is present in His (thirteen) attributes as the Torah tells us (Exodus 34:6-7).

As we mentioned in our book “God's Love” the repeated attribute of the Creator for His Creation is compassion as the material manifestation of His love. These attributes indicate our bond with Him and to approach and perform His Commandments, because these are the only ways to assimilate His love as also our essence and identity.

The psalmist reminds us about this.

“The Lord is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abundant in loving kindness. The Lord is good to all, He has compassion on all He has created.” (Psalms 145:8-9)

Therefore, God's love is our reference in all levels of consciousness. This is how we must approach life and what we are and do.

Recently we commented on the priestly blessings recorded in the Torah and, in the context of our relationship with God, we have to understand them not only as something we receive from Him but as a commandment to fulfill as part of our connection with Him.

He blesses us and protects us as long as we also bless with His love whatever we do. In this action we are indeed protected because love is our protection.

He shines His countenance (His love) on us as long as we also shine (manifest) love with our deeds. Thus His grace is in us when we act with love. He elevates His countenance (love) on us and puts peace on us, as long as we let love elevate our consciousness. In this process peace is unto us and those we approach with loving kindness.

In other words, God's blessings are not for us to enjoy as a gift that makes us feel fulfilled and satisfied at a personal level. His blessings indeed have a purpose, which is for us to manifest them in what we are and do. This is the way His commandments work in our relationship with Him. As long as we perform them, we are connected to Him and this is a practical and concrete process.

We can't afford the luxury of living in ego's illusion that we are blessed by God because we deserve His blessings. We ask for them in order to manifest them in all dimensions of life, including our relationship with others and our surroundings. Being blessed is not a personal o selfish endowment. It implies the same meaning of “to whom a lot is given, a lot is expected”.

One of the major differences between Judaism and other beliefs is that we Jews are entitled to manifest God's will out in the material world, and not in our self. God's commandments are not directed to benefit us individually but collectively. Our personal redemption must be part of the collective redemption. 

In Shelach we recall the episode of the spies as the personal neglecting approach to God's will, meaning that they rather stayed under the protecting and nurturing divine cloud in the desert than going out and conquer the Canaanite nations in order to settle in the Promised Land.

In our current times, we understand this as going out in the material world and conquer the negative aspects of our consciousness that don't allow us to settle in love's ways and attributes.

The psalmist helps us understand this.

“All the paths of the Lord are loving kindness and truth for those who keep His covenant and [His] commandments.” (Ibid. 25:10)

This teaches us that His commandments indeed are the loving kindness and truth inherent to His love, and the ways He loves us. In this sense we must assimilate love as our protection.

“May your loving kindness and truth protect me constantly.” (40:12)

“The Torah of the Lord is perfect, it restores the soul; the testimony of the Lord is faithful, making wise the simple. The commandments of the Lord are righteous, they are joyful for the heart. The commandment of the Lord is clear, enlightening the eyes.” (19:8-9)

In love's ways and attributes all is righteous, joyful and enlightening.

In our daily prayers we bless God and thank Him for His commandments.

“(...) for with the light of Your countenance [in His love], Lord our God, You gave us the Torah of life and loving kindness, goodness, righteousness, blessing and compassion, life and peace.”

These are the attributes of the commandments He gave us as part of the identity He wants us to have as His chosen ones. Such attributes are the decrees, the statutes and testimonies that define our connection with Him because they are also His attributes and our common bond with Him.

Korach: The Separatist Agenda of Ego's Fantasies and Illusions

The whole idea of living in the material world is to make it a place where the Divine Presence may dwell with us. We do this when we first create that space in our own consciousness. What would be the point of living if we don't do it with the One who created us and all that exists?

There is a major void in our consciousness when we are not aware of who we truly are, and we become fully aware of our identity once we realize that we emanate from the Creator and His love. We have said this many times to emphasize that all that exist came from God's love, therefore His love is our true Essence and identity. The unawareness of this universal and transcendental truth is what we call “living in ego's fantasies and illusions”.

In the split consciousness we have, in which we are “divided” into the duality of good and evil, true and false, right and wrong, positive and negative, etc., the Creator endowed us with free will to enable us to choose what is the most convenient for us to do. He gave us His Torah to instruct us that “convenient” means the best for us as long as it is also good for others and our immediate surroundings.

In this primordial principle we assimilate God's Presence in our consciousness, hence in our lives. Good, right, true and all that is positive are the essentials to live in the unity and oneness that love is, because love unites us through its ways and attributes.

As long as we live in, with and for them we are never separated, neither from each other or from God because love is our common bond with each other and also with Him. Not living in this awareness is the clearest indication that we are separated from love and living in ego's separatist agenda.

Ego defines our sense of individuality because we perceive each other as individuals, and this does not mean to pursue individualistic agendas by separating ourselves from others. Separation is the worst of all illusions, simply because we can't live separated or isolated from each other.

We learn this since we were born in this world. We can't live alone because we were created by God to be united by love as our common Essence and identity, and also united to Him because we are here by His love for all His Creation.

Within our “divided” consciousness (we put it on quotation marks because this is how we are conditioned to perceived ourselves and the material reality) we have all potential archetypes, negative and positive, to choose from.

This means that we have the potential to become like Moses and Aaron, or like Korach and his proxies. Ego, as our powerful sense of individuality, can lead us either to Love's ways and attributes that unite us with each other and with God, or to illusions and fantasies that separate us from each other and from God.

At this point in the history of our collective consciousness we must be aware of what unites us and what separate us. We have learned this by our own experience throughout history, and we have the Torah to instruct us and to remind us about the means to do it in our Creator's ways, not ego's ways.

Let's insist again and reiterate that our “separation” from God's ways -- His Love as He wants us to understand it through His attributes stated in the Torah -- is the most illusory of all illusions we may have.

Indeed, this is the greatest dilemma as confusion we have, and it requires as well the greatest certainty and clarity of all. We end our separation from the Creator when we become fully aware of love as our uniting and bonding connection with Him and the rest of His Creation.

Korach is the individualistic separatist that we must remove from our consciousness in order to fill his space with the collectivist unifying awareness represented by Moses and Aaron. We have to be watchful and mindful in all our discernment, thoughts, ideas, feelings, emotions, passions and instincts in order to lead them in Love's ways and attributes, and maintain our consciousness united in the potential goodness of their purpose (see our commentaries on Parshat Korach: “Overcoming Ego's Illusions” of June 9, 2010 and “Discerning Truth from Illusion” of June 19, 2011).

God gave us the precious gift of life to be experienced as individuals who depend on the care for one another, and this care is love. As He cares for us providing our daily sustenance and nurturing us with His grace, He also wants us to care for each other and provide for each other.

We know this by experience, by empirical evidence, and the Torah instructs us and reminds us about this. We live in times that compel us to eradicate the separatist mentality and replace it by the unifying consciousness that love invites us to live for the goodness of it.

Expecting others to change their separatist mentality first and then we change ours is part of Korach's approach, while Moses' and Aaron's approach is first to start the process to transform our individual consciousness. After all, it is about our individual and personal Redemption from ego's fantasies and illusions. Once we all do it, collective Redemption will come. May it manifest fully and promptly in our days!

Shelach: Discovering our Relationship with the Creator

We have reflected on two aspects of our relationship with God in our previous commentaries on Shelach. One is our trust in Him and His Love (Parshat Shelach: Trusting God's Love on May 30, 2010), and choosing with our own free will to walk in His ways and attributes (Parshat Shelach: Directing our Life in God's Love on June 12, 2011).

These two aspects are essential to realize our connection with Him. The events recorded in this portion of the Torah are indeed timeless because then and now we face the same dilemma and challenges in regards to knowing who we are and the purpose of our lives as Jews.

We have said that the Jewish identity encompasses multidimensional facets contained in the twelve Tribes of Israel, and these facets are aimed to manifest all the potential goodness in human consciousness. This process must occur as a united and cooperative endeavor, and this is why our Creator instructs Moses (our highest awareness of Him) to guide and direct all dimensions of consciousness in the journey to settle in the potential goodness of who we are, the Promised Land.

In the awareness of our individual and collective diversity, we know that such diversity is expressed differently regarding their purpose. The way a warrior expresses himself is quite different from the healer, the priest, the merchant, the judge, the artist, the shoemaker, and the wanderer, to mention only a few. This does not mean that the warrior can't dwell with those who don't do what he does. As a united Israel, we all are part of the multidimensional identity that defines us as Jews, and as such we are destined to fulfill our unity as the Creator wants us to.

We must explore the qualities or “territories” of our Tribes, their potential and resources to manifest God's ways and attributes as Love's ways and means to create a place for Him to dwell with us. In the material world, under the dictatorship of ego's fantasies and illusions and their negative trends, we find that our territories are occupied by “peoples” and “nations” that deny the goodness that we want to sow and reap in every aspect of consciousness.

Interestingly, we have a similar situation nowadays seeing declared enemies occupying our Land and virtually living in our home. Our benevolence and tolerance for our enemies are actually considered by them as aggression and oppression. This is the consequence of letting our consciousness cohabit with enemies. Once we eradicate them from our Land, our home, we will be able to fulfill our destiny. The only way to do this is by being together and united for the common purpose of realizing our Jewish identity as the means to proclaim God's will in the material world.

Caleb from the Tribe of Judah was the only one who, by his own conviction, faithfulness and loyalty to the Creator, realized the extraordinary goodness of the Promised Land and confronted his peers with their negative report on the Land.

“The Land that we passed through to explore, the Land is very, very good!” (Numbers 14:7)

We must approach the material world with the potential goodness we can manifest from it and for it, because this is the approach that God wants from us. This is what identifies us as Jews, as the Chosen People. If we have a negative conception and attitude about life and the world, we certainly deny any goodness in them.

This is the reason that made Judah prevail over the other Tribes. The descendants of Judah chose to remain loyal to the identity that God gave to Israel in His Torah. This faithfulness and loyalty also compelled another descendant of Judah, Nachson son of Amanadav, to become the first to jump into the divided waters of the Sea of Reeds, taking himself into a journey in which the only guide is God's Love.

This is the awareness needed to settle in the Promised Land, in the extraordinary goodness of Love's ways and attributes as the only means to remove darkness and negativity from human consciousness. Caleb was aware of the weakness that ego's fantasies and illusions produce in our consciousness. In illusions all becomes uncertain, vain, ephemeral and futile, because that is their nature.

We must clear our consciousness from darkness in order to allow Light to occupy all dimensions of life, and we do that by embracing Love as our Essence and true identity. Caleb knew the dangers of material illusions and he needed to reaffirm his Jewish identity in order to remain strong in his awareness of God's Love, hence he went to pray on the graves of our Patriarchs in Chevron. There he infused himself with the meaning of his identity as the legacy of the Covenant of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob with the Creator; because we must know from where we came and our history in order to fully realize who we are.

We are weak when we ignore who we are, and our strength depends on what we are, have and are able to accomplish. Negative thoughts, emotions, feelings and passions can become real giants that may overpower us at the time when we have to choose between them and Love's attributes.

It can be easier to become indifferent, greedy, coveting, lusty, envious, indolent, and neglecting, when the feeling of lack takes over our consciousness. Then we find extremely hard to recognize and embrace our identity. In our identity lies our Essence and strength to elevate ourselves to the high level of extraordinary goodness in life.

“Caleb silenced the people towards Moses and said, 'We shall surely ascend and conquer it, for we can surely do it!' But the men who have ascended with him said, 'We can not ascend to that people for it is too strong for us!'” (13:30-31)

The negative aspects of consciousness indeed can be stronger than our will to defeat them, and it depends on us to change that predicament. Negativity can destroy the best in us: “(...) is a land that devours its inhabitants!” (13:32)

We discover our relationship with the Creator in the identity that He forged for us as His People. We come to know who we are in His ways and attributes, because He want us to emulate them. God's Love is the source and strength of our life, and with Love we empower all levels and dimensions of consciousness to conquer the hardships and difficulties from ego's fantasies and illusions. Love is our Promised Land.

Shelach: Discovering our Relationship with the Creator

We have reflected on two aspects of our relationship with God in our previous commentaries on Shelach. One is our trust in Him and His Love (Parshat Shelach: Trusting God's Love on May 30, 2010), and choosing with our own free will to walk in His ways and attributes (Parshat Shelach: Directing our Life in God's Love on June 12, 2011). These two aspects are essential to realize our connection with Him. The events recorded in this portion of the Torah are indeed timeless because then and now we face the same dilemma and challenges in regards to knowing who we are and the purpose of our lives as Jews.

We have said that the Jewish identity encompasses multidimensional facets contained in the twelve Tribes of Israel, and these facets are aimed to manifest all the potential goodness in human consciousness. This process must occur as a united and cooperative endeavor. This is why our Creator instructs Moses (our highest awareness of Him) to guide and direct all dimensions of consciousness in the journey to settle in the potential goodness of who we are, the Promised Land.

In the awareness of our individual and collective diversity, we know that such diversity is expressed differently regarding their purpose. The way a warrior expresses himself is quite different from the healer, the priest, the merchant, the judge, the artist, the shoemaker, and the wanderer, to mention only a few. This does not mean that the warrior can't dwell with those who don't do what he does. As a united Israel, we all are part of the multidimensional identity that defines us as Jews, and as such we are destined to fulfill our unity as the Creator wants us to.

We must explore the qualities or “territories” of our Tribes, their potential and resources to manifest God's ways and attributes as Love's ways and means to create a place for Him to dwell with us. In the material world, under the dictatorship of ego's fantasies and illusions and their negative trends, we find that our territories are occupied by “peoples” and “nations” that deny the goodness that we want to sow and reap in every aspect of consciousness.

Interestingly, we have a similar situation nowadays seeing declared enemies occupying our Land and virtually living in our home. Our benevolence and tolerance for our enemies are actually considered by them as aggression and oppression. This is the consequence of letting our consciousness cohabit with enemies. Once we eradicate them from our Land, our home, we will be able to fulfill our destiny. The only way to do this is by being together and united for the common purpose of realizing our Jewish identity as the means to proclaim God's will in the material world.

Caleb from the Tribe of Judah was the only one who, by his own conviction, faithfulness and loyalty to the Creator, realized the extraordinary goodness of the Promised Land and confronted his peers with their negative report on the Land: “The Land that we passed through to explore, the Land is very, very good!” (Numbers 14:7). We must approach the material world with the potential goodness we can manifest from it and for it, because this is the approach that God wants from us.

This is what identifies us as Jews, as the Chosen People. If we have a negative conception and attitude about life and the world, we certainly deny any goodness in them. This is the reason that made Judah prevail over the other Tribes. The descendants of Judah chose to remain loyal to the identity that God gave to Israel in His Torah. This faithfulness and loyalty also compelled another descendant of Judah, Nachson son of Amanadav, to become the first to jump into the divided waters of the Sea of Reeds, taking himself into a journey in which the only guide is God's Love.

This is the awareness needed to settle in the Promised Land, in the extraordinary goodness of Love's ways and attributes as the only means to remove darkness and negativity from human consciousness. Caleb was aware of the weakness that ego's fantasies and illusions produce in our consciousness. In illusions all becomes uncertain, vain, ephemeral and futile, because that is their nature. We must clear our consciousness from darkness in order to allow Light to occupy all dimensions of life, and we do that by embracing God's Love as our Essence and true identity.

Caleb knew the dangers of material illusions and he needed to reaffirm his Jewish identity in order to remain strong in his awareness of God's Love, hence he went to pray by the graves of our Patriarchs in Hebron. There he infused himself with the meaning of his identity as the legacy of the Covenant of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob with the Creator. Thus we must know from where we came and our history in order to fully realize who we are.

We are weak when we ignore who we are, and our strength depends on what we are, have and are able to accomplish. Negative thoughts, emotions, feelings and passions can become real giants that may overpower us at the time when we have to choose between them and Love's attributes. It can be easier to become indifferent, greedy, coveting, lusty, envious, indolent, and neglecting, when the feeling of lack takes over our consciousness. Then we find extremely hard to recognize and embrace our identity.

In our identity lies our Essence and strength to elevate ourselves to the high level of extraordinary goodness in life: “Caleb silenced the people towards Moses and said, 'We shall surely ascend and conquer it, for we can surely do it!' But the men who have ascended with him said, 'We can not ascend to that people for it is too strong for us!'” (13:30-31). The negative aspects of consciousness indeed can be stronger than our will to defeat them, and it depends on us to change that predicament. Negativity can destroy the best in us: “(...) is a land that devours its inhabitants!” (13:32).

We discover our relationship with the Creator in the identity that He forged for us as His People. We come to know who we are in His ways and attributes, because He wants us to emulate them. God's Love is the source and strength of our life, and with Love we empower all levels and dimensions of consciousness to conquer the hardships and difficulties from ego's fantasies and illusions. The goodness of Love's ways and attributes is our Promised Land.

Behaalotecha: Living in God's Ways and Means

“So it was, whenever the ark [of the Covenant between God and Israel] set out, Moses would say, 'Arise, O Lord, may Your enemies be dispersed and may those who hate You flee from You.' And when it came to rest he would say, 'Repose O Lord, among the myriads of thousands of Israel'.” (Numbers 10:35-36).

The ark is where the Torah is stored, and we can say that both share the same place in Jerusalem and its Temple, which also represent the highest level of consciousness. It is where we keep God's Torah and His Commandments, and from there we guide all dimensions of life. The Prophet reiterates this.

“For from Zion shall go forth the Torah, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.” (Isaiah 2:3)

In this sense when we get up in the morning our awareness must be in convergence with God's will. We are entitled to express our gratitude to God since the moment we open the eyes, acknowledging Him as the Owner of His Creation, including us. We get up by setting out the ark of the Covenant to face the new day that God creates for us, another journey full of challenges in which we have to make choices every moment.

We are thankful to be God's chosen to make the right choices, through and for Love's ways and means, instead of through and for ego's fantasies and illusions (see our previous commentaries in this blog on Parshat Behaalotecha: “Lighting up our Consciousness” of May 22, 2010 and “Enlightening Ourselves with God's Love” of June 5, 2011).

We have said that Moses represents our individual highest knowledge of God's ways and attributes. In this foremost awareness we manifest them in what we discern, think, feel, speak and do.

King David reminds us this.

“All the paths of the Lord are loving kindness and truth for those who keep His Covenant and His testimonies.” (Psalms 25:10)

And he puts it in context.

“Righteousness and justice are the foundation of Your throne; loving kindness and truth go before Your face.” (89:14)

These qualities belong to Love's ways and attributes for us to permeate what we are, have and do at all times. These derive from God's Love for us to emulate in the material world.

We just need to bring our permanent awareness that God's Love, His Glory, is present in all His Creation.

“He loves righteousness and justice, the Earth is full of the loving kindness of the Lord.” (33:5)

We must be mindful of this when we meet the mirages of ego's illusions within ourselves and in others. We get up every day in the battlefield of the negative tendencies of consciousness and the positive qualities of Love's ways and attributes.

In this scenario Love is our strength and armor as the material manifestation of God's loving kindness. In this strength we overcome our most difficult problems and negative situations, the enemies of easiness, goodness, simplicity, humility and the positive traits we want to make prevail in ourselves and our individual circumstances.

“God, whose loving kindness shall come to meet me, God shall let me see my desire upon my enemies.” (59:11)

We have said in many of our study gatherings in Israel that king David is the Biblical character who best understood the Torah and God's ways, and the proof of this are his book of Psalms and his sayings recorded in the books of Chronicles in the Hebrew Bible.

His reflections encompass the primordial messages of the Torah to bring us a practical and easier comprehension of God's Love, and our Prophets reiterate the wisdom of our beloved king of Israel.

“And you, return to your God: keep loving kindness and justice, and wait on your God continually.” (Hosea 12:6)

“Thus spoke the Lord of hosts saying, 'Execute true justice, and show loving kindness and compassion to one to another'.” (Zechariah 7:9)

Thus we reflect on Moses' words above. In full awareness of Love's ways and attributes, as the material manifestation of God's Love, we face our enemies not only those who want our death and the destruction of Israel but also defamers and detractors who hate us because they don't find anything else to pour down their frustration and hatred.

Tough times we and our ancestors have faced, and still face every day, to defend our right to exist and to proclaim the true Essence and identity that God gave us in His Torah.

Let's also be mindful that similar enemies threaten to take over our consciousness to undermine our loving kindness, justice and compassion when we allow ego's negative fantasies and illusions to control our thoughts, feelings, passions and instincts.

Our Sages point out that when one lets himself be submitted to negative traits, he  submits himself to people with similar traits. In other words, when one become slave of destructive addictions, bad habits and negative attitudes, he enslaves himself to the rules of those who share the same traits.

Some people call this predicament “living in hell”, and portray “hell” and “purgatory” as places or situations in which everything is negative to the point of saturation, in order to learn completely what “negative” means.

We have mentioned in other commentaries that some people say that the evil in the world is enough, but in some places it seems to get worse every day. They wonder if there is such a thing as the Final Redemption as promised by God and the Prophets in Judaism. We tell them that indeed there is a Final Redemption, and it begins when we choose Love's ways and attributes instead of the negative and destructive ways ego wants to rule in our consciousness.

Now we say, “Let Redemption be, and let it start with me!”. We do it by letting Love direct and guide all aspects and dimensions of consciousness, one individual at a time.

Let's be mindful that Redemption starts first within us as individuals. We can't demand change for good in others if we don't change first for good in ourselves. First we have to raise all levels of consciousness up to the guidance of Love's ways and means. Thus we dispel and eliminate our enemies. Thus we understand “Arise, O Lord, may Your enemies be dispersed and may those who hate You flee from You.” because in the awareness of Love we are united with our Creator; hence our enemies are also His.

After we finish the day, our journey of challenges and choices in which we choose Love instead of its opposites, we may say happily, “Repose O Lord, among the myriads of thousands of Israel”. And remain with us, Father, with those who know You through Your loving kindness, justice, truth and compassion, which are Your endless Love.