Vaeira: Loving God Unconditionally

Probably the most important lesson our Patriarchs teach us regarding their relationship with the Creator is to love Him and devote our lives to Him unconditionally.

This is a fundamental principle to entirely assimilate the uncontested fact that God is the Creator of all, and that includes us. Once we fully understand that we come from Him, who also shows us the meaning of life in His Torah, we come to realize that there is no point for us to set out conditions for our relationship with Him.

The moment we fall into ego's illusion that we are our own gods, living as separate entities from the Creator, we lose the true meaning of our individual and collective existence.

Our Patriarchs were beyond the limitations of intellect, understanding and sensation to approach the Creator as conceived by Judaism, under its principle that He has no definition. Hence, this approach implies and requires an unconditional attitude towards Him in every way, starting with our love for Him.

We love God because we come from His love. This fact allows us to know that love is our common bond with Him. Therefore love is also the means to transcend the limitations of consciousness in order to bond with Him as undefined has He is. Transcendence is the result of love when it is unconditional. In other words, when we love unconditionally we transcend the limitations (as “conditions”) of human consciousness.

In this context, unconditional love is the opposite expression of an egocentric approach to life. This means that ego limits and restricts our consciousness to its fantasies and illusions. The more selfish we are, the more isolated and constrained we become in our life, to the point that everything else is meaningless.

An egotistic attitude is directly proportional to a materialistic approach to life. We are attached to bad habits, negative behavioral patterns, unhealthy addictions and obsessions in direct proportion to ego's fantasies and illusions. Thus we understand what our sages indicate when they say the Pharaoh represents an egotistic approach to life, and Egypt (as the space of of ego's domain) the constrains and limitations of such approach.

Ego indeed sets our limitations as boundaries that separate us from our surroundings. We fulfill our personal pretensions first by letting ego control every level of consciousness, and then trying to control other people's lives. This also was the case of the Pharaoh of Egypt on his people, and on the children of Israel.

God responds to Moses' frustration over Pharaoh's decision to make harder the bondage of the Israelites in Egypt. Moses knew that it was God's decision behind Pharaoh's, and complained to Him.

We read God's answer at the beginning of this weekly portion.

“I appeared [lit. I was seen] to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.” (Exodus 6:3)

Thus pointing out to Moses that the Patriarchs never questioned His decisions as God the Almighty, because their love was truly unconditional for Him.

As we said above, the lesson here is to accept God's ways and attributes (either revealed to us or not) for the simple fact that He is our Creator. As long as we maintain this awareness permanently, we enable ourselves to relate to God not only as His creatures, but as an emanation of His love. Our love for Him must be as unconditional and endless as we conceive Him.

We must not fall into the illusion of conditioning and imagining God according to ego's agenda. Should we fool ourselves creating an illusion of God the way ego imagines, desires and controls? A god according to what I want, desire or need, depending on the circumstances? And submit this illusion to ego's wishes and demands? “Give me this, such, and that”... and then I will love you, dear god?

This delusional approach, epitomized by the Pharaoh of Egypt, gets its answer from the true God that is in undisputed control of His Creation. An answer intended to reveal His ways and attributes to instruct humankind about the real purpose of life in the material world.

The ten plagues as the overwhelming manifestation of God's dominion and control over His entire creation, in contrast to ego's pretension to control human consciousness.

We referred in this blog to the meanings of the plagues in our previous commentary on Parshat Vaeira: “Love as freedom from ego's dominion”. The Plagues convey profound lessons to redirect ego's negative approach towards positive and uplifting ways and means. These allow us to assimilate life as an extension of God's love for us to relate with Him.

The plagues were not intended to destroy the king of Egypt but to teach him in particular, and human consciousness in general, that love's ways and attributes are the means through which ego (as the driving force of life), must be directed.

The restricted and constraining space in which ego limits our consciousness (represented by the land of Egypt) must be devastated in order to be abandoned and evacuated. Once we leave behind all restrictions from ego's domination, we turn into a vessel to be filled by God's ways and attributes, revealed in His Torah.

As we have said before, this vessel is humbleness. In this sense humbleness enables us to be unconditional in our love to approach every aspect of life. Our oral tradition teaches that Moses became “God's loyal servant”. Humbleness was the means that make him close to the Creator, gaining the right to be called “the humblest man who ever lived”.

In sum, the essential message of this portion is humbleness as the premise to love God unconditionally. Humbleness in direct opposition to ego's separatist agenda. We often say that love does not cohabit with anything opposed to its ways and attributes. Our sages also say that the Creator doesn't dwell with the arrogant, simply because he doesn't have space except for himself.

The prophet summarizes this essential message in the haftarah for this portion.

“Thus said the Lord God: 'behold, I am against you, Pharaoh king of Egypt, the great dragon that lies in the midst of his rivers, who has said: “My river is mine own, and I have made it for myself”'.” (Ezekiel 29:3)

Vayeira: Our Identity as the Perfect Offering to God

We have said that our patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob epitomize the relationship between the Creator and Israel. We learn this relationship as we reflect on each episode and situation narrated in the Torah. We also said that in the awareness of God's ways and attributes we know Him. The zenith, the highest point of this knowledge is represented by the akedah, the offering of Isaac to God.

We learn in the Torah that our three patriarchs represent primordial qualities of consciousness, as well as specific aspects of our relationship with the Creator. Abraham means our covenant with Him, Isaac our permanent connection with Him, and Jacob (Israel) our expression of them in the material world, in order to fulfill the covenant in the awareness of our connection with God (see in this blog our commentaries on Parshat Vayeira: “Life as an Offering to the Creator” of October 17, 2010 and “Living in the Unity of God's Love” of November 6, 2011).

In this context, Isaac is the most important because he represents our eternal bond with the Creator. We as Israel conceive this bond in the total awareness that God is one and unique, that all that exists comes from Him, is sustained by Him, and belongs to Him. These principles are the foundation and the reason that led Abraham to bring up Isaac as an offering to the Owner of all. Both Abraham and Isaac shared this utmost awareness.

“(...) and the two of them went together.” (Genesis 22:6)

This awareness is the key to liberate our consciousness from its captivity under ego's rule. When we fully realize that God is the only reality that is, all fantasies and illusions we make out of the material world disappear.

Our sages call Isaac “the perfect offering” because it is unblemished, transparent, clear, wholehearted, complete, upright, total. These are the traits and qualities inherent to God's ways and attributes, which are the offering we elevate to the One who bestows them on us in order to live by, with and for them.

As we said earlier, we become these offerings when we fully realize that life and all its levels and dimensions don't belong to us but to our Creator. We come to this awareness when we truly can tell between the blessing of God's love as love in the material world, and the curse as ego's negative desires and illusions.

Once we enthrone love as the ruler and conductor of all aspects of life, ego's rule and dominion disappear. In other words, as soon as we realize that every aspect and dimension of what we call existence belong to the Creator, we realize that they also belong to His ways and attributes.

“(...) and you did not withhold your son, your only one, from Me.” (22:12)

Likewise, as we follow His ways, attributes and commandments, we rejoice in the delights of the awareness that we belong to Him. The name Isaac (which means I shall laugh/rejoice) encompasses the experience of this awareness, as his mother Sarah says.

“God has made joy for me; whoever hears will rejoice over me [on my behalf].” (21:6)

This is the primordial teaching in the meanings of the akedah, the offering of Isaac in which we rejoice when we bond with God's love through our love.

Love makes us good, wholehearted, complete, unblemished, total, upright, righteous, just, and everything that turns darkness into light, negative into positive, wrong into right, lack into abundance, depression into fulfillment, hate into solidarity, indifference into care, indolence into protection, cruelty into generosity, envy into sharing, avarice into plenitude, egotism into kindness.

Love is the catalyst, the fire that transmutes curses into blessings. Love is the perfect offering that unites us with the source of its goodness. Hence, we love in order to be with God's love. We love because God loves us in order to share with us His ways and attributes. Our fathers Abraham and Isaac realized this transcendental truth attained in their unconditional devotion to the Creator.

This is an essential part of their legacy for us, through which we assimilate that we are God's chosen because of this legacy. We too recognize that we belong to Him, and our reward is to rejoice in His love as our essence and true identity.

“And through your children shall be blessed all the nations of the world, because you hearkened to My voice.” (22:18)

This is who we are and what we have, the lot of our happiness. Love is our portion of the Torah we ask God every day to give us, because is our sustenance and means to know His love in His ways, attributes and commandments.

We recall this in our Jewish daily prayers.

“(...) give us our lot in Your Torah, and our hearts will eagerly follow Your commandments”, for our sages say that he who studies the Torah everyday “the ways of the world are his [the ways of the Torah]”.

The same goes for love because the ways of the world are love's. They also say that those who study the Torah [God's instruction and ways] increase peace in the world. Likewise, love increases peace in the word as we allow it to rule over all dimensions of life.

This is what others see in us when we become God's ways and attributes.

“Abimelech and Phicol his general said to Abraham, saying, 'God is with you in all that you do'.” (21:22)

This is thus, for when we walk in His ways we reveal His presence in the material world. This is the reason God chose Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to be the bearers of His love for humankind and all His creation. This awareness has a time and space that occupy all dimensions of life and consciousness.

This time and space mean always and everywhere because this awareness transcends material reality. This is one of the reasons the covenant (through circumcision) is commanded by God to take place on the eighth day after we are born. In Judaism the eighth day symbolizes existence beyond time and space, free from all limitations we can conceive.

Let's be always aware that we elevate love as our true essence and identity to God's love. Both loves become one in a place and time in consciousness that are also eternal.

“And Abraham named that place, The Lord shall see, as it is said to this day: On the mountain, the Lord will be seen [will appear].” (22:14)

In this eternal place and time in consciousness God appears to us and we see Him. This takes place in Jerusalem, in Zion, in the temple mount of the eternal and indivisible capital of Israel. The time is always now, and the place is always the temple of Jerusalem where we fulfill the total awareness of our permanent connection with the Creator. This is our total and complete freedom from material fantasies and illusions, and our true redemption.

Parshat Vaeira: The Regency of Love in Life

Our Sages teach that all the Divine Names mentioned in the Torah represent a particular attribute with which the Creator relates to His Creation: “I appeared (lit. was seen) to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as the Almighty God, but My Name YHWH I did not become known to them.” (Exodus 6:3).

Regarding YHWH, they indicate that it is related to abundant loving kindness and compassion. Hence we can understand it as Divine Love that sustains, relieves and redeems us from the bondage of negative trends in human consciousness, triggered by ego's materialistic fantasies and illusions.

As we have said often, the essential message in this blog -- God's Love -- is to conceive (from our human consciousness) the Creator through His Love, and relate to Him also through Love. The message is quite simple. If Creation is an emanation of God’s Love, therefore the Essence of Creation is also His Love. Such as we must conceive God's Love and relate to it.

It is also written that we humans were created at His image and likeness, thus we must understand our human identity as and emanation of His Love and relate to our Creator through Love as our common bond with Him.

This is the context in which we have to understand “And I will take you to Me as a people, and I will be a God to you, and you will know that I am the Lord your God, who has brought you out from under the burdens of Egypt.” (6:7).

God’s Love summons us as our Redeemer simply because He is our Creator. He is the only One we have to know in order to understand who we are in His Divine Plan.

“Moses spoke thus to the children of Israel, but they did not hearken to Moses because of shortness of breath and because of hard labor.” (6:9)

When we achieve higher consciousness, and realize the message presented above, we become the Moses of our own awareness. Thus our purpose is to gather every aspect of consciousness (the children of Israel) and convey this message to them. This task is extremely difficult when these aspects are subjugated to the negativity of ego’s materialistic demands (“shortness of breath” and “hard labor”).

“(…) the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: ‘I am the Lord. Speak to Pharaoh everything that I speak to you’. But Moses said before the Lord: ‘Behold, I am of closed lips; so how will Pharaoh hearken to me’?” (6:29-30)

Here we see the dynamics of the Divine Plan when we have to fulfill the will of the Creator. He is the One that rules His Creation, and He shows the way to walk before His Love as the true sovereign of all dimensions of consciousness, ego included.

It is essential to realize that the task to harmonize our consciousness starts with directing our ego, because it is the most powerful force in human life. As we mentioned in our previous commentary on parshat Shemot, Pharaoh (ego) does not recognize any other power besides him. Hence the whole process of the Exodus from Egypt is about teaching Pharaoh who is the real God in our life.

When we realize God’s Love as our Essence and identity, He is the One who speaks to us and to our ego when we cry out to be released from darkness and return to Light. But sometimes even if we are aware of God’s Love in our lives we don’t fully believe that He can subjugate and direct our basic human driving force. Indeed ego is a powerful ruler hard to be dominated, even by Love.

“The Lord said to Moses, ‘See! I have made you a lord over Pharaoh; and Aaron, your brother, will be your speaker’.” (7:1)

In this verse the appearance of Aaron as the complementary quality to fully embrace God's Love is clearly indicated. Our awareness of God (represented by Moses, our teacher) is indeed the natural ruler over ego, and it is our constant connection with the Creator (represented by Aaron, the High Priest) that executes this action (see commentaries on the book of Leviticus in this blog).

We have said before that Moses and Aaron represent two aspects of the highest awareness of God’s Love in our consciousness. We also learned that in Jacob’s final blessings to his children three dimensions of Israel’s identity were defined.

Joseph became the Birthright, Levi the Priesthood, and Judah the Kingship. Joseph encompasses Israel’s inheritance and legacy which are God’s Love in humankind manifest through Israel. Levi represents the spiritual connection with God’s Love as the highest awareness of Him in our consciousness. Judah represents the material manifestation of God’s Love in the physical world.

The portion continues with seven of the ten plagues that afflicted the land of Egypt in the process of making God’s Love the One and only Ruler over Creation, and the portion ends with ego’s obstinacy to give in to Love’s ways and attributes as the true conductors of life:

“And Pharaoh saw that the rain, the hail, and the thunder had ceased; so he [Pharaoh] continued to sin, and he strengthened his heart, he and his servants. And Pharaoh's heart was hardened, and he did not let the children of Israel go out, as the Lord had spoken through the hand of Moses.” (9:34-35)

Once again we are reminded of the power of ego in our consciousness and the struggle that we face to subdue it to Love as the key to redeem ourselves from the bondage of materialism in this world.