Sunday, January 11, 2015

The Messianic Consciousness in Jewish Prophecy (XCI) Isaiah

“And of whom have you been afraid and in fear, that you lie and have not remembered Me nor laid it to your heart? Have not I been silent, even from old times, and you have not feared Me? I declare your righteousness, and as for your works, they shall not be a profit for you.” (Isaiah 57:11-12)

God asks us to whom have we devoted our life, to whom we revere, respect, obey and serve, to whom we fear. What are those desires, ideas, beliefs, fashions, trends we pursue, which we consider more important to love and cherish than our Creator? God reminds us His silence as an answer to the negative choices we have made for a long time. He gave us free will to choose, yet we purposely ignore the ways and attributes that nurture and enhance our existence. This is one of the meanings of not “fearing” Him.

In this context “fear” is recognition, acceptance, appreciation, and that these imply which are reverence, respect and admiration. Thus we understand the “fearing” our Creator. God's ways and attributes are the righteousness He proclaims as our essence and true identity, opposite to our materialistic fantasies and illusions. The latter are the fields from which we never profit.

“When you cry let your gatherings deliver you. And the wind carries all of them away, taking away vanity. And who is trusting in Me inherits the land, and possesses My holy mountain. And He has said, 'Raise up, raise up, prepare a way, lift a stumbling-block out of the way of My people'.” (57:13-14)

God challenges us to rely on our own inventions, conceptions and beliefs as the idols we create with our hands, and hoping they deliver us from the darkness we get into. God reminds us that our vanities are ephemeral and short lasting as leaves cast away by the wind, in contrast to the goodness of Love's ways and attributes. The latter are the values and principles in which we trust God's providence, the land we inherit and the sacred foundation (His “holy mountain”) of our permanent connection to Him.

God again reaffirms His Redemption by asking us to wake up from our long sleep in the dreams of ego's fantasies and illusions, and arise to prepare the entrance to the Messianic era. For this we must remove the rock that contains all the stumbling blocks that prevent us from living our essence and true identity as God's people.

“For thus said the high and exalted One inhabiting eternity, and holy is His Name: 'In the high and holy place I dwell, and with the bruised and humble of spirit to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of bruised ones'. For I do not contend forever neither I am always angry, for the spirit from before Me is feeble and the souls I have made.” (57:15-16)

The Prophet reminds us specific attributes of God in this particular statement. High, exalted (elevated), eternal, holy in His Name, as transcendental traits we have to ascend by leaving bellow and behind the low, shallow, ephemeral and profane traits and trends in our consciousness.

Thus we understand the following statement related to humbleness and the revival of our loving essence and identity. We need to ascend to Love's ways and attributes to also reach up and bond with God's Love. God created us and He knows our flaws and weaknesses, hence His anger is not always and His Love is never hidden.

“For the iniquity of his dishonest gain I have been angry, and I smite him hiding [Myself] and am angry. He goes on turning back in the way of his heart. I have seen his ways and heal him. I lead him also and restore comforts to him and to his mourners.” (57:17-18)

Once again we emphasize that God's “anger” is a metaphor of our separation from His ways and attributes. In this context, He is indeed angry by our negative desires and choices. As we choose to live in ego's fantasies and illusions, we separate from Love's ways and attributes. By living away from the goodness of Love we also turn away from God's Love, yet in His compassion He awaits our return to His ways. In His ways we are healed. In the goodness He wants us to choose, He also comforts us from the pain and suffering (“the mourners”) we inflicted on ourselves.

“I create the fruit of the lips: Peace, peace, to him who is far off and to him who is near. And I have healed him, said the Lord. And the wicked are like the troubled sea, for it can't rest and its waters cast up mire and dirt.” (57:19-20)

What a beautiful poetic introduction to peace! God creates the “fruit of the lips”. Our Sages translate this phrase as the words of prayer, for God created us to praise Him. God wants us to ask for peace and pursue peace as the awareness of our oneness and completion with Him. Peace for all, the near and the far off, for God has already healed us with His Love.

We achieve this completion, as we mentioned above, by ascending to God through humbleness opposite to haughtiness that retains us down under negative traits and trends of ego's fantasies and illusions. These are the traits and trends of the wicked, and also their agitation and restlessness from which evil and destruction (mire and dirt) arise. Thus we understand the next verse.


“There is no peace, said my God, to the wicked.” (57:21)

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From the Book's Foreword

Let's reexamine our ancestral memory, intellect, feelings, emotions and passions. Let's wake them up to our true Essence. Let us engage in the delightful awareness of Love as the Essence of G-d. The way this book is written is to reaffirm and reiterate its purpose, so it presents its message and content in a recurrent way. This is exactly its purpose, to restate the same Truth originally proclaimed by our Holy Scriptures, Prophets and Sages. Our purpose is to firmly enthrone G-d's Love in all dimensions of our consciousness, and by doing it we will fulfill His Promise that He may dwell with us on Earth forever. Let's discover together the hidden message of our ancient Scriptures and Sages. In that journey, let's realize Love as our Divine Essence, what we call in this book the revealed Light of Redemption in the Messianic era.