Matot-Massei: Enforcing our Connection with God's Love

We mentioned in previous commentaries that the war against the potential negative trends in our consciousness must be led by the utmost awareness of our connection with the Creator and His Love, symbolized by the High Priest and in this particular battle in Matot led by Pinchas. We have to emphasize again that when we choose to separate from our connection with God's Love, we live the consequences of that choice.

Ego's fantasies and illusions, as objects of our own invention, all come from misconceptions and feelings of lack that make us doubt our connection with the Creator through His ways and attributes.

The moment ego makes believe that we are separated and not united with God's Love and Love's ways and attributes, we are at the mercy of fantasies and illusions as idols fabricated by us.

“(...) the product of human hands. They have a mouth but they can't speak; they have eyes but they can't see; they have ears but they can't hear (…). Those who make them will become like them, all who trust in them.” (Psalms 135:15-18)

Let's be aware that we are who create idols and an illusory world based on what we think or believe we lack, that which in fact keeps us alive: God's Love. Must of us are totally unaware that God sustains us as well as His entire Creation!

We must remember that our “fall” from Paradise was the result of a false sense of lack, based on the illusion that we also can become a god, which is ego's negative projection in the material world to make us feel that we are the god of our life.

As long as we live in such illusion we feel separated, divided and ultimately isolated from the unity that Love is as our Essence and true identity. Love is what unites us and keeps us united with our fellow humans, our surroundings and individual circumstances. Love is our common denominator, our common bond with the Creator because we were created by His Love that also sustains us. 

The highest awareness of our connection with God's Love is what fights our wars and battles against that which separates us from Him. This is why Moses, our highest knowledge of the Creator and His Love, sends Pinchas to the battlefield where we are entitled to defeat what divides the unity of our consciousness and creates conflict within us.

Our mystic Sages teach that the Hebrew semantic root of Midian (the nation that joined Moab to destroy Israel) means strife and conflict (see our commentaries Parshat Matot-Massei: “Love Defeats Strife” of July 3, 2010 and “Love as the Foundation of Life” of July 17, 2011).

“And Moses sent them, one thousand for each Tribe to the army; them and Pinchas the son of Eleazar the priest to the army, and the sacred vessels and the trumpets for sounding in his hand.” (Numbers 31:6)

The vessels are essential parts of the Sanctuary because through them we honor and renew our permanent connection with God. These vessels are meant to contain the unblemished offerings, our purest thoughts, emotions, feelings, speech and actions that we elevate to the Creator, to honor Him with the purity of Love, the same fragrance that He infused in us.

In this we rejoice and proclaim our praises to Him in total freedom from anything different from His ways and attributes. This is the sublime happiness we live as the resounding vibration of the trumpets of our joy.

The vessels and the trumpets belong to the Sanctuary and are handled and played by the priests and Levites who officiate permanently in the time and space that become one in our unity the Creator, the Sanctuary that He built for us.

The Prophet reminds us of our duties regarding clearing our consciousness from the potential negative aspects derived from materialistic fantasies and illusions, represented by the nations and their rulers.

“Behold, I have appointed you [Israel] over the nations and over the kingdoms, to uproot and to crush, and to destroy and to demolish, to build and to plant.” (Jeremiah 1:10)

The war against negativity and wickedness has the sole purpose to build and plant on the positive traits and qualities of Love's ways and attributes.

We fight evil with goodness, we defeat negativity with positive actions, we dissipate darkness with Light, we overcome and prevail over ego's fantasies and illusions by embracing Love's ways and attributes. The core of our Jewish daily prayers originally contained eighteen blessings, and because of the constant harassment of Israel by foreign peoples our Sages instituted an additional blessing for the Creator, asking Him to help us defeat all our enemies.

The text is written based on the battles and wars God helped our forefathers fight.

“Let there be no hope for defamers [informers], and may all the heretics and all the wicked instantly perish; may all the enemies of Your people be speedily extirpated; and may You swiftly uproot, break, crush, and subdue the reign of wickedness speedily in our days. Blessed are You, Lord, who crushes enemies and subdues the wicked.” (From the Jewish daily prayers)

Let's reiterate again that our enemies also live within our consciousness, and the wars that we fight to protect our people and our Land also take place inside of us. This is the primordial meaning of our forefathers' wars to settle in the Promised Land. They first have to fight, defeat, subjugate and destroy the nations and peoples who occupied our Land in order for us to settle permanently in it. It was true then and it is true now.

We are not going to be worthy of this Land if we don't remove first those who don't belong in it. The Promised Land is both the Land of Israel given to us by God in His Torah, and the awareness in our consciousness of the blessings that He bestowed on us as the people chosen to enthrone His ways and attributes in all aspects of life.

Our Land is the place where we live in the total freedom of our consciousness when we embrace God's Love as our Essence and identity. In this awareness there is no room to share with enemies either they be real within our country and outside, or within our consciousness.

Pinchas represents our approach to God's Love and our connection with Him, and also our approach to the material world and our altitude and attitude towards everything that threatens God's ways and attributes.

Parshat Matot: Love as the Foundation of Life

The previous three biblical portions (parshiot) are related because every event is the consequence of the preceding.

In Balak, the transgression of harlotry with the daughters of Moab had negative consequences which led the children of Israel to realize that the zeal of the permanent awareness of our closeness to God's love must be present always.

As we mentioned in our commentary on Pinchas, this zeal is fundamental to embrace God's ways and attributes as the means to free our consciousness from ego's materialistic desires, fantasies and illusions. This zeal is also the foundation of our loyalty, faithfulness and devotion as the vows we make in order to approach the material world with the truthfulness that love is.

Vows are the main subject presented in Matot to the people of Israel.

"Moses spoke to the heads of the tribes (matot) of the children of Israel (…)" (Numbers 30:2)

Again, the heads of the Tribes are pointed out as the most refined traits and qualities that enable us to conduct all dimensions of consciousness. Refinement is acquired through experience, by trial and error, by discerning true from false, good from evil. The following section of Matot precedes a crucial commandment.

"Take revenge for the children of Israel against the Midianites (…), afterwards you will be gathered to your people." (31:2)

It is given to Moses as the highest awareness of the Creator, because in this knowledge we can gather all our levels of consciousness in order to lead them in God's ways with which we dissipate the negative traits and trends that curse life. And this knowledge must be directed by Pinchas, the zeal of God's love.

"And Moses sent them (...) Pinchas the son of Elazar the priest (…)" (31:6)

We have said that Midian means strife, dispute as the result of poor clarity in our individual awareness of God's love in our life. In this sense strife is the antagonist of our zeal of love's attributes in our consciousness.

Our Sages also define strife as the root of separation and division, and in this sense both are ego's typical expressions to reaffirm its "independence" from the oneness that God's love is.

The war against Midian means to re-direct our thoughts, ideas, beliefs, conceptions, emotions, feelings, and passions into the unifying and harmonizing ways of God's love as our true essence and identity.

After we win this war led by our highest awareness and zeal of the greatest love of all, the entire Israel is gathered together with their natural leader, which is our individual and collective knowledge that God's love encompasses and pervades all His creation.

Our awareness of God is the one and only leader that takes us back to our true identity.

"Moses said to them, 'If you do this thing, if you arm yourselves for battle before the Lord, and your armed force crosses the Jordan before the Lord until He has driven out His enemies before Him" (32:20-21)

The message is clear, and the "if" means that it is up to us to battle the dark side of our consciousness with love as the "armed force" that we have before the Lord, because it comes from His love.

"And the [promised] land will be conquered before the Lord, (…) and this land will become your heritage before the Lord." (32:22)

Hence when life is led by love's ways and attributes, it becomes our promised land.

If we act against our true essence and identity, we are simply acting against He who created us and sustains us.

"But, if you do not do so, behold, you will have sinned against the Lord, and be aware of your sin which will find you." (32:23)

Again, the choice is only ours. God's love is unconditional because He gave us free will to make up to us the choice between Love's ways and ego's illusions. Love is the choice of Israel as the chosen people to reveal the presence of the Creator in the world.

Our mission is to be light for the nations, as the ones who live with, from and by the love of God. This Love is mutual, as it is reminded by the prophet in the haftarah for this portion.

"Israel is holy to the Lord, the first of His grain; all who eat him shall be guilty, evil shall befall them, says the Lord." (Jeremiah 2:3)

God's love is the foundation to build on, to enhance and to elevate live for His sake, as the cause and effect of all that is.

If we don't see or experience this fundamental principle in our individual and collective consciousness, then our duty is to reinstate it by clearing the darkness that became cause and effect of all our miseries in the material world.