Haazinu: We are God's Lot

This portion contains the poem or song that summarizes the relationship between God and Israel. The Torah defines this relationship as it has occurred throughout our past, as well as it is in the present and will be in the future. Again, the main obstacle for the harmonic fulfillment of our bond with the Creator is idolatry, the recurring subject that tampers our individual and collective awareness of our Essence and true identity.

Ego's fantasies and illusions as idols and wrong beliefs, ideologies, customs, habits and behavior patterns as false gods are the main obstructions for allow our consciousness to approach God and His Love as the Source of our existence. Our knowledge of the Creator is the awareness of who we really are because we all come from Him.

“My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distill as the dew; as the small rain upon the tender grass, and as the showers upon the herb.” (Deuteronomy 32:2)

This awareness is the beginning to grasp God's ways and attributes, which are manifest in us as part of His Love.

“The Rock, His work is perfect; for all His ways are righteousness; a God of faithfulness and without iniquity, just and right is He.” (32:4)

These qualities are part of our consciousness as long as we recognize Him in us, instead of thinking we are the result of ego's foolishness.

“Do you thus requite the Lord, O foolish people and unwise? is not He your father that has begotten you? has He not made you, and established you?” (32:6)

If we live by our fantasies and illusions, we will die by them. This is the equation of “cause and effect”, and “what goes around comes around”. The good news is that God's faithfulness to us is unshakable and unbreakable, unlike our unfaithfulness to His ways and attributes.

“Is corruption His? No; His children's is the blemish; a generation crooked and perverse.” (32:5)

We know that we are not perfect, and we will never be because we live in an imperfect reality which we have distorted with false conceptions and wrong perceptions. The world may appear perfect by itself, but no the way we relate to it. Nature, as perfect as it may be is not always kind, benign and pleasing as we want it to be. Harsh winters and summers, wilds beasts and inhospitable environments, to mention a few. No wonder the first gods and idols of primitive peoples were the indomitable forces of nature, animals and trees, long before they started to look up to the sky for higher powered entities like the sun and the moon. Then our “blemished”, “crooked” and “perverse” ways are clearly the false idols in which we become. 

Our blemishes or defects are the false beliefs and feelings of lack, of being incomplete. This is the kind of mentality that we can't elevate to the God who is complete, sufficient and enough, who created us in His image and likeness. He doesn't settle for less, and He commands us not to settle for less. Our offerings (what we are in all dimensions of consciousness) to Him must be unblemished, complete, full, enough and sufficient, because He created us with those qualities and attributes.

We are talking here about human consciousness, not physical appearance or traits. Our crooked ways are the negative approach to ourselves and to life when we can't fulfill ego's materialistic desires out of a belief or feeling of lack. Lack makes us take what is not rightfully ours, and to say and do what trespasses individual and collective boundaries of respect for other people's property and rights.

Perversion is our denial of any ways aimed to correct and redirect our discernment, beliefs, ideas, thoughts, emotions, feelings, passions and instincts towards Love's ways and attributes instead of ego's negative fantasies and illusions (see in this blog our commentary on Parshat Haazinu: “Listening to God's Love” of September 5, 2010 and “The Sheltering Love of God” of October 2, 2011).

This is the practical approach when we discern what is God to us. We know Him through His ways and attributes, which are manifest in the material world as Love's ways and attributes which inherently possess righteousness, justice, fairness and goodness as part of the ethics of Love. In this context we grasp the question “Is corruption His?”, because Love does not cohabit with anything different from its ways and attributes, and does not deal with iniquity, evil, and their crooked and perverse ways.

These are the blemish that separates us from Love as the Essence and true identity that establishes our connection with God's Love, because Love is our common bond with Him. We must reclaim and embrace our true identity.

“For the portion of the Lord is His people, Jacob the lot of His inheritance.” (32:9)

This is one of the greatest statements in the entire Torah: We are God's portion! Do we have any idea at all of what this means?! Let's wake up and shake up the fibers of every dimension of our consciousness, and arouse our hearts and souls to the One who calls us His portion!

What is God's inheritance? Let's take a look around once again and see His Creation. Then look at what impregnates His Creation. Yes, His Love that proclaims the magnificence of all that is. That is the lot that He gives us, because He loves us. He made us inherit His Love that forms and sustains His Creation. God's Love is our lot, and is also enough. In this awareness there is no room for anything less than that, because there is no room for less. Unless we create the blemished, crooked, and perverse illusion that God is not enough, and run after gods and idols that exist only in our imagination.

Once we start believing in them and feeding them with the Essence that sustains our life, we fall in the fatness of the illusions we created.

“But Jeshurun [Israel] waxed fat and kicked, you did wax fat, you did grow thick, you did become gross; and he forsook God who made him, and despised the Rock of his Redemption.” (32:15)

King David recalls for us God's Love as our inheritance.

“For You are my lamp, O Lord; and the Lord does lighten my darkness. For by You I run upon a troop; by my God do I scale a wall. As for God, His way is perfect; the word of the Lord is tried; He is a shield unto all them that take refuge in Him.” (2 Samuel 22:29-31)

We are God's lot and inheritance, and the awareness of His Presence in our lives is our Redemption. Let's wake up to Love as our Essence and true identity, and through its ways and attributes let's return to God's Love as our Redemption. Amen.