Our Sages call Isaiah the Prophet of consolation, in spite of the recriminations and admonitions in most of his words. The reason appears obvious, for his words of Redemption resound and overwhelm consciousness inside out. In other words, God's Plan for His Creation endures anything we may dare to think or believe stronger than His will. "Many are the thoughts in the heart of man, but the Lord's counsel will prevail" (Proverbs 19:21)
No matter what we desire to be, have and do in the material world -- whatever ego dictates -- that will never overcome the Creator's Plan, simply because we are His creatures. All we believe we are and have belong to Him because all that exist emanates from Him. Having this clear in all levels and dimensions of consciousness is the beginning of knowing who we really are, our Essence and true identity. The Torah is God's Plan, and our Prophets remind us this. We just have to hear and learn from it. We are the Jewish people, the inheritors of the Torah.
The Final Redemption in Judaism is the whole purpose of God's Plan, the culmination of His Creation. We could have reached out to this destiny sooner than later, for it's up to us. The premise or precondition to fulfill this destiny is free will. As we make choices moment to moment, we certainly have to choose either living in the vanities and futility of ego's fantasies and illusions, including their predicament and consequences, or living in Love's ways and attributes with their goodness that transcends the limitations of the material world. In this sense we must understand and assimilate that the Final Redemption and the Messianic Era belong to a kind of consciousness that transcends the traits and qualities imposed by the constraints of living in a dual consciousness.
Once we overcome the limited choice between good and evil, and leave behind the "temptations" of living materialistic fantasies and illusions, we will be able to enter endless dimensions. This was presented and proposed to us by the Creator from the beginning of times. God offered us the choice, and we chose our own ego's fantasies and illusions based on a false belief or feeling of lack. The Garden of Eden was the starting point for a journey inside the endless dimensions of God's Love. Then we chose to enter the constrains of the tri-dimensional world, limited by time and space. The good news is that God gave us His Torah as the way out and the way back to where we were, where we truly belong.
We began to learn that this way back to our Essence and true identity is Love as the bond that connects us to God's Love. This is the awareness of the Oneness with our Creator, that we recite at least twice every day. We learned that God's Love is always with us, and we have to love Him back by being and doing His ways and attributes. He communicates to us through His Torah, the Divine Plan. Hence we must listen and understand what He commands us. Thus we recognize that Love is the material manifestation of God's Love. By the power and strength of Love we are born and survive the limitations of matter. We can't live without Love, neither live without God's Love. He is the Source from where all comes to exist. We can't live without Him.
The Torah also reminds us that God is our life. Hence we must choose Love's ways and attributes as the means to know God's Love, and the endless dimensions He promised us to enter in the Final Redemption since the beginning. At some point Isaiah and other Jewish Prophets tell us this, when they say that in the Messianic Era our one and only interest will be the knowledge of the Creator. And He is Eternal. With this preamble, let's reflect on the messages God brings to us through the Prophet, who begins calling the Heaven and Earth as witnesses to God's words.
"Hear, O Heavens, and give ear, O Earth, for the Lord has spoken: Children I have reared, and brought up, and they have rebelled against Me." (Isaiah 1:2)
These words can be easily applied to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The minimum God expects from us is common sense after He endowed us with free will, and also with knowledge about the goodness of Love and the futility of ego's beliefs and feelings of lack. Nothing lacks in Love, for Love encompasses and comprises everything. Love is its cause and its effect. Why would we rebel against what is our fulfillment and plenitude, the source of our life from beginning to end? Here we understand that rebelling against God is separating from His Love, the Source from where all comes. Likewise, we also separate from Love's ways and attributes when we embrace ego's fantasies and illusions.
"(...) The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it; but wounds, and bruises, and festering sores: they have not been pressed, neither bound up, neither mollified with oil." (1:5-6)
God calls them (our fantasies and illusions) the sickness of the head, and our discernment, beliefs, ideas, and thoughts around them. As we allow their negative and destructive trends, the feelings and emotions in our heart make it faint. We often quote our mystic Chassidic Sages saying that all levels of consciousness (discernment, intellect, mind, feelings, emotions, passions and instincts) are vessels waiting to be filled. They also teach that we must fill them with God's will, what He commands us to be and do.
If we fill our thoughts with materialistic fantasies and illusions, they also will fill our feelings and emotions with the same, and also our passions and instincts. We end up putting in action what we believe and feel real by envy, lust, greed, pride, wrath, indolence and indifference within ourselves and our surroundings. These create the wounds, bruises and sores that are cured and relieved only by Love's ways and attributes. Thus we realize that Love's ways are the opposite of ego's agenda, and that Love does not cohabit with anything different from its ways and attributes.
"Your land is desolate; your cities are burned with fire; your land, strangers devour it in your presence, and it is desolate, as overthrown by floods. And the daughter of Zion is left as a booth in a vineyard, as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers, as a besieged city." (1:7-8)
We have said that life is our land, cities our ethical values and moral principles, and the strangers or aliens are the fantasies and illusions we empower to take over our intellect, mind, feelings, emotions, passions and instincts. These end up desolated by ego's predicament. Obsessions, attachments, addictions and the anguish, anxiety, depressions and frustrations derived from them are the floods and agitated waters.
This scenario is the current state of consciousness we see around the world. This is the consequence of following the false gods and idols of Consumer Society and Wild Capitalism, with their vanities imposed on ego's endless feeling of lack, leaving little room for Love in our lives. We end up submitting Love to ego's agenda. We shape Love according to our materialistic desires, fantasies and illusions. This is the captivity of Jerusalem, the siege of Zion amid a garden of cucumbers, which represent the sensuality where we are trapped by materialistic desires.
"Except the Lord of hosts had left unto us a very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom, we should have been like Gomorrah. Hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom; give ear unto the Torah of our God, you people of Gomorrah." (1:9-10)
If we choose to return to our Creator to fulfill His Final Redemption, we have to hear His voice that speaks to us every moment, for He is always with us in His Love for all His Creation. We must repeat that we go back to God's Love through our Love. We already know that Love is our sustenance and also our true identity. We love because we are Love, it is part of us. There is a greater Love, the greatest of all that is God's Love, our Essence and what we truly are. Hence the way out from ego's lustful and sensual desires, the rulers of Sodom and Gomorrah, is by returning to Love's ways as the material manifestation of God's ways, the law of our God, the Torah. God's Plan for humankind is the total and permanent Redemption in the Messianic Era.
God continues to confront us for the negative choices we have made for a long time, and even worse: we have had the nerve to offer them to Him. We have lived under the mirage that ego's fantasies and illusions please our Creator. He created the transcendental reality of Love as the cause and motivation to love Him, His ways and attributes, as what He also wants us to offer and elevate to Him.
The goodness of who and what we are meant to be manifest in our thoughts, speech and deeds. Our good actions and the choicest of their fruits are the ways we honor Him. The goodness of His Glory, His Love, covers the Earth and all His Creation. Therefore we also have to cover our life and deeds with the same goodness. We must be aware that we neither love, honor nor glorify God with anything different from what He is and does for us and His Creation.
"Your new moons and your appointed seasons My Soul hates. They are a burden unto Me, I am weary to bear them." (1:14) "Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean, put away the evil of your doings from before My eyes, cease to do evil. Learn to do good, seek justice, relieve the oppressed, do righteousness for the fatherless, plead for the widow." (1:16-17)
We begin to return to God when we clear the negative trends in our consciousness. We know that we can't stand by ego's fantasies before God's Love, and expecting Him to be part of such illusions. We go back to Him by reclaiming and embracing Love's ways as our common bond with Him. This means being and doing goodness, making prevail what is just and fair. We bring this to life by freeing those who are captive in their misery and oppressed by their disgrace.
In this sense we have to start with our selves individually. We can't liberate others while we are prisoners of our own misery. As we get closer to the truth of who we really are and our purpose in God's Plan, we can bring others to the common collective destiny He wants for us. These others are the ones who suffer the oppression of not having the loving direction towards our destiny, as orphans without parents and widows without husbands.
"Come now, and let us reason together, says the Lord; though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. If you be willing and obedient, you shall eat the goodness of the land." (1:18-19)
We choose back to God's Love by choosing back to our own Love. This is the result of putting our intellect and discernment in consonance with the common sense God gave us. This is our reasoning together with Him. As we said, Love is our common bond with God. His Love and our Love together, reasoning and acting accordingly. In this one accord what doesn't belong is transformed into what does belong. Our transgressions derived from ego's false feelings of lack are transmuted into Love's attributes. We cease to be egotistic and begin to be giving from this Love endlessly connected to God's Love. Thus we begin to live in the goodness of Love, which is also the goodness of the land, the goodness of life.
The last verses of the first chapter in Isaiah's book reiterates God's unceasing call for us to awaken from the illusions and mirages we have created in the material world. He denounces time and again our stubbornness to remain attached to addictions, obsessions, false beliefs, negative feelings and lower passions. These are the sword that devours the happiness in the abundance of goodness (1:22-25). The chapter ends with God's promise to restore our consciousness as it was originally before we made the choice to separate from Him.
"And I will restore your judges as at the first, and your counselors as at the beginning. Afterward you shall be called the city of righteousness, the faithful city. Zion shall be redeemed with justice, and they that return of her with righteousness. And the destruction of the transgressors and the sinners shall be together, and they that forsake the Lord shall be consumed." (1:26-28)
This is God's promise for us when we make the choice to return to His ways: the endless dimensions we will discover in His Love. We will discover and live fully in our knowledge of Him as we elevate our Love to Him in our good deeds. These are our judges and counselors that led us when only goodness was the law of the land, the Paradise we lost once.
Love's ways and attributes will direct and inspire what we are and do in our consciousness in its permanent connection with the Creator. This kind of consciousness is the city of righteousness and faithfulness that is redeemed in the ways and means of the goodness of Love. In this consciousness there is no room for anything different from Love's ways and attributes, for all negative trends will be consumed by the fire of God's Love.
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