Re'eh: Free Will in the Freedom of Love

Freedom of choice is the foundation of our relationship with God and His Creation.

“See, I give you today [a] blessing and [a] curse (...)” (Deuteronomy 11:26)

Countless times we have said that diversity is the premise for us to choose, and that anything negative should not be a choice but a reference to always choose the goodness of God's ways and attributes. God gave us free will to understand the essence and qualities of everything we relate to every moment. In this sense we must approach everything in full awareness of all levels of consciousness.

It implies that in this process these must be present: discernment as the wisdom to understand in order to know what we are about to approach, mindfulness to be aware of what our emotions and feelings experience with it, their intensity as the passion it arouses in our senses, and the actions we are eventually compelled by our instinct.

This is the integral approach to have in order to fully experience life and the way we relate to it, and this approach is activated only by free will. In other worlds, if all our levels of consciousness are not involved in our approach to life there is no real free will. This means that if we put aside or repress our emotions or feelings in what we discern, our experience of what we discern is not complete. Likewise, if we only devote our emotion, passion and instinct to experience something without discernment, we miss a greater and more fulfilling moment.

The lesson here is that no matter how different the dimensions of consciousness indeed are, we must integrate them harmonically in order to truly know what we have before us. Throughout our lives we seem to divide our consciousness under the belief that emotions don't mix with discernment, and that instinct is divorced from thought. In this predicament our idea or conception of freedom becomes something relative, therefore we are not completely free because we limit our power to choose only to part of our consciousness. In sum, we are really free when we choose in full awareness of all aspects of consciousness.

“Division” in consciousness occurs when we have a separate approach to what we are about to experience, and this separation is the result of ego's fantasies and illusions. The moment ego dictates that only our discernment must lead or only our passion and instinct, we get trapped in the mirage of ego's individualistic desires.

Then we realize that our way out is our recognition that Love is the one and only capable to integrate all aspects of consciousness, in order to bring us to real freedom to live and experience life and the world in all their dimensions. 

As we approach this world with our entire consciousness, all its dimensions also unfold before us. This explains our limited perception of what we see around us, because the limitations imposed in our consciousness reduce what we see in front of us.

If we approach a person based either on beliefs (preconceptions) or on emotions, we will perceive him or her only within those frames. This explains prejudice, racism, apprehension, hatred and other limited approaches to all. Hence having a positive, integrating and embracing consciousness leads us to perceive and experience with an expanding and enhancing approach.

Our mystic Sages teach a higher conception of free will when they say that in the blessing lies the power to transmute and change the curse. This happens in the same way that Light dissipates darkness, as also happens with the expanding, integrating and embracing qualities of Love's ways and attributes to transform their opposite qualities and turn them into Love's domains.

Thus we are able to see that what we perceive and experience as negative, destructive and contracting can be transmuted by our desire to turn it into something positive, constructive and expansive. This is actually what we learn to do since the moment discernment is fully developed in our childhood. We learn to discern with the sole purpose to exercise free will. Ignorant people depend on the limitations of their knowledge to make their choices, hence limited people make limited choices.

We must clarify here that knowledgeable people do not necessarily make wise or positive choices, because knowledge makes us better only if we apply it for good. In this sense Love's ways and attributes are our best knowledge, discernment, understanding and motivation to be good and do good. Let's get it right, Love is the best measure of all things because Love doesn't have limits when we perceive everything through Love (see our commentaries on Parshat Re'eh: “Choosing the Blessing” of August 1, 2010 and “Seeing God's Love” of August 21, 2011).

We choose the blessing because God of is the blessing in His ways, attributes and Commandments, and also because He is our God and our Father.

“You are children of the Lord your God. (…) For you are a holy people unto the Lord your God, and the Lord has chosen you to be His own treasure out of all peoples that are upon the face of the Earth.” (14:1-2)

Our Father chose us to make us aware that we are an emanation of His Love, and His Love is our Essence and identity. Hence Love is our preferred reference and choice to make it prevail in the world. God entitles us to exercise our true identity in the awareness of Love as our Essence and freedom. In the total freedom that Love is we liberate our consciousness from anything opposite to Love's attributes, and in this awareness we enthrone Love in all the ways we approach life and the world.

Only then we will live the fullness and plenitude of His blessing, and transform all curses through the goodness of the blessing, the goodness of Love.

“Know Him in all your ways and He will make your paths straight.” (Proverbs 3:6)

“(...) honor the God who holds in His hand your life and all your ways.” (Daniel 5:23)

Parshat Re'eh: Seeing God's Love

The purpose of the three major Jewish festivals (Pesach, Shavuot and Succot) is to see the Creator to whom we bring our offerings in the Temple of Jerusalem.

We have said in our commentaries on Vayikra (the book of Leviticus) that the offerings are the ways to elevate our main human traits and qualities in order to devote them to His service. Only throughout this divine service we achieve our unity with God.

The name of this portion, as well as its first word, reminds us that by choosing His blessing we indeed see Him.

"See (re'eh), I set before you today a blessing and a curse." (Deuteronomy 11:26)

The following verses make clear that we are blessed by cleaving to His ways and attributes, and the curse is the consequence of attaching to the idols we make out of ego's fantasies and illusions. The commandment to destroy such idols is unambiguous.

"You shall utterly destroy from all the places where the nations, that you shall possess, worshiped their gods, upon the lofty mountains and upon the hills, and under every lush tree." (12:2)

We have to make our individual inventory of the material illusions in which we live, and to which we dedicate every aspect of our consciousness. These aspects are the "places" that encompass our higher awareness ("the top of the mountains and hills") and our lower traits (the underground) where we have to examine what compels us to think, speak and act the way we do.

The goal of this inventory is to transform and redirect our thoughts, emotions, feelings, passions, and instincts into love's ways.

"And you shall tear down their altars, smash their monuments, burn their woods with fire, cut down the graven images of their gods, and destroy their name from that place." (12:3)

This transformation occurs when we refine the ways we approach life in the material world through the blessings of God's love.

"And there you shall eat before the Lord, your God, and you shall rejoice in all your endeavors you and your households, as the Lord, your God, has blessed you. (…) and He will give you rest from all your enemies surrounding you, and you will dwell in safety." (12:7, 10)

As we said above, the ways to see the Creator and dwell in His ways are our willingness to assume love as our true identity, and to live in His attributes.

"And you shall eat them before the Lord, your God, in the place the Lord, your God, will choose you, your son, your daughter, your manservant, your maidservant, and the Levite who is in your cities, and you shall rejoice before the Lord, your God, in all your endeavors."(12:18)

We have to implement and incorporate ("to eat") the best of who we are in the presence of love ("the place" of God's loving kindness) all aspects of consciousness (us and our creations [oneself, sons, daughters], our motivations [servants] to deeds and actions, and our highest awareness of divine love [the Levite priesthood]) in order to exult with love in all we are, have and do.

This is the blessing, our blessing.

"For you are a holy people to the Lord, your God, and the Lord has chosen you to be a treasured people for Him, out of all the nations that are upon the earth." (14:2)

The portion ends reminding us again to see the Creator in our festivals.

"Three times in the year, every one of your males shall appear (lit. shall see) before the Lord, your God, in the place He will choose: on the festival of matzot and on the festival of weeks, and on the festival of succot, and he shall not appear before the Lord empty-handed." (16:16)

We come to see Him and be united to Him with our love that is also His love, the essence with which He created us. We see Him when we elevate all dimensions of consciousness with, in and for His love because God's love is what is revealed in His creation, and is what we have to reveal from its concealment under the darkness of the negative aspects and expressions of our consciousness.

Let's keep in mind that the portion, the lot that He has given us individually is measured and limited by our own awareness of His Love, and this lot is also our relationship with Him.

Let's not be mistaken thinking that He gives more to some and less to others, because the love we have is directly proportional to the love we want to have in our life. Thus we understand this coming verse.

"[Every] man [shall bring] as much as he can afford, according to the blessing of the Lord, your God, which He has given you." (16:17)

In the haftarah for this portion, the prophet invites us again to fulfill the commandment to cleave to the Creator.

"Hearken to Me and eat what is good, and your soul shall delight in fatness. Incline your ear and come to Me, hearken and your soul shall live, and I will make for you an everlasting covenant, the trusted loving kindness David. Incline your ear and come to Me, hearken and your soul shall live, and I will make for you an everlasting covenant, the trusted loving kindness of David." (Isaiah 55:2-4)

King David represents the loving kindness of the Messianic consciousness God's love offers us to redeem ourselves individually and collectively from the negative situations we have created by living in ego's materialistic illusions.

Once we realize this we become aware that all depends on the blessings of love ever since we are born until we die. This awareness is the beginning of our way out from the darkness of exile into our way to redemption.

Parshat Re'eh: Choosing the Blessing

The name of this week’s portion is Re’eh, usually translated as “see”. We have said many times that our sages teach us that to see is to know, and knowledge is what we need in our search for God's love.

“See (re'eh), I set before you this day a blessing and a curse.” (Deuteronomy 11:26)

Thus we become aware of the choices we make, for we choose based on what we know. The wisdom of the Torah reminds us that in life we have to make choices every moment, either with or without previous knowledge. We learn from experience, by trial and error, true and false, right and wrong. We humans are empiricists by nature because we learn from the choices we make, and that is how we achieve knowledge and wisdom.

When we conceive and experience God's love we become aware that the best choices we make are those related to His ways and attributes, which are the blessing. That’s the whole point of the entire Hebrew Scriptures, and it is also the point of Re’eh.

We have to choose being and doing love’s ways and attributes in order to cleave always to God's love, thus we have complete awareness of our oneness with Him. The curse is the consequence of our choice to live in the illusions and fantasies of the material world. Choosing the blessing implies eradicating completely what separates us from our Creator.

“You shall utterly destroy from all the places where the nations, that you shall possess, worshiped their gods, upon the lofty mountains and upon the hills, and under every lush tree.” (12:2)

This means we have to clear all levels of consciousness from negative traits and expressions. It is the war we have to wage in order to conquer the promised land and settle in it.

“Because you are a holy people to the Lord your God, and the Lord has chosen you to be His own treasure out of all peoples that are upon the face of the earth.” (14:2)

Once we achieve this awareness we become the blessing of God's love, and all this starts when we make the choice between the blessing and the curse.

The portion continues with Moses reminding us not to eat unclean animals, which also represent the lower aspects of consciousness. We must not bring into us anything that is not positive, uplifting, constructive or enhancing.

Our mystic sages say that all things in creation contain sparks of divinity because all emanates from the Creator, and our duty is to reveal those sparks by sanctifying them. This process occurs when we bless the foods before and after eating them. We also do this when we use anything around us, including stones, as means to sanctify God’s Name.

In their wisdom our sages teach that everything in creation exists for the only purpose of glorifying God’s Name.

When we reveal love concealed in the darkness of egotism and selfishness we realize that love is endlessly abundant, as the light that does not diminish after being shared with others. Hence our most rejoicing moment is when we share the abundance of love with those waiting to also reveal its goodness in their lives.

“If there be among you a needy man, one of your brethren, within any of your gates, in your land which the Lord your God gives you, you shall not harden your heart, nor shut your hand from your needy brother; but you shall surely open your hand to him, and shall surely lend him sufficient for his need in that which he wanted.” (15:7-8)

Love is our greatest need and our greatest fulfillment. Everything we are and have come from the Creator and belong to Him as the Psalmist reminds us.

“For everything comes from You, and from Your own hand we give to You." (I Chronicles 29:14)

The portion ends with the following verse.

“Every man shall bring as much as he can afford, according to the blessing of the Lord your God, which He has given you.” (Deuteronomy 16:17)

Our sages ask…

“Who is rich? One who is satisfied [happy] with his lot.” (Pirkei Avot 4:1)

Some say the “lot” is not necessarily what we are or have but our individual relationship with the Creator, for by this depends who we are and what we have.

The more we are aware of His love, the more we are connected to Him. The more we love, the more we reveal His glory in this world. Hence we give according to the blessing He has given us, and the greatest blessing is His love.