Lech Lecha: The Hebrew identity

Our patriarch Abraham is the epitome of the relation-ship between Israel and the Creator. He is the chosen one for the covenant of both parts, the seal of this pact. We must bear this in our minds, hearts and souls.

Abraham represents the higher consciousness that recognizes the oneness and uniqueness of God, the individual who rejects all kinds of idolatry as ego's fantasies and illusions. This higher consciousness knows that the one and only true reality is God, His ways, His will, and His attributes.

God chooses Abraham as Israel to seal the eternal covenant with which Israel proclaims and manifests God's presence in His creation. This is Abraham's inheritance and Israel's legacy to the world. This covenant delineates Israel's destiny in the material world, and determines our greatness as the Jewish people.

“And I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you, and I will aggrandize your name, and [you shall] be a blessing.” (Genesis 12:2)

This is Israel's identity through which we realize that God is the greatest blessing, because all the blessings come from Him. In this awareness Israel is blessed, and becomes God's blessing to be manifest in the world.

We as Israel are the recipients and bearers of the blessing to reveal God's presence, to celebrate and rejoice in the realization that His love is our essence, and also our redemption from the illusions, mirages and fantasies that separate us from Him.

Love, as the material manifestation of God's love, is indeed our redeeming spirit because love is the primordial sustenance of our life. Our love is the blessing of God's love. Thus we realize that love does not cohabit with anything different from its ways, means, and attributes.

This means that the blessings don't share time or space with curses, because the goodness of love doesn't coexist with the badness of wickedness. This is how we understand God's words in this context.

“And I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse, and all the families of the earth shall be blessed in you.” (12:3)

Goodness as well as all the traits, qualities, aspects and dimensions of love's ways and attributes are the blessing in which everyone is blessed. What a privilege and honor to be the bearers of the blessing to reveal God's presence in the material world! We have heard that “privileges and honors imply obligations and responsibilities”.

We don't necessarily have to understand it as some-thing forced onto us to be and to have, but to assimilate it as an essential part of our identity. In this way, we flow with the blessing in what we discern, think, believe, feel, speak and act. This is the fundamental legacy of Abraham to us (see in this blog our commentary on Parshat Lech Lecha: “Walking before the Creator” of October 9, 2010).

Jewish oral tradition tells us that at an early age, Abraham became aware of the futility inherent in ego's materialistic desires out of a feeling or belief of lack in any of our consciousness' dimensions. He learned that such illusory approach to life is the creator of idols we follow and obey, falling down under their domain and servitude, making us ignore and even deny our essence and true identity.

In this sense, the prerequisite to know and embrace God is the rejection of ego's fantasies and illusions. This is how we understand what the Torah refers to as idolatry. Abraham's total rejection of idolatry led him to realize and recognize the Creator not only as the one and only God, but also the one and only reality by which we must live as the blessing He is for us and His creation.

We achieve this awareness by knowing His ways and attributes also as ours in what we are and do (see our commentary in this blog, Lech lecha: “The Blessings of our True Identity” of October 30, 2011).

This awareness is the inner land that He gives us to live eternally.

“For all the land that you see I will give to you and to your seed to eternity.” (13:15)

As we live this blessing we assimilate its endlessness, because His giver is endless and we don't have to fear the awe our consciousness experiences because the blessing is also our shield.

This shield not only guards us from ego's illusions, but it is also part of our identity because this shield identifies what we must become in this world.

“(...) the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision saying, 'Fear not, Abram; I am a Shield for you; [therefore] your reward is exceedingly great'.” (15:1)

Here we understand this identity as a bond with God, because His ways and attributes are our guide and destiny to live and experience in this world. As we said before, these ways do not cohabit with any different to them, because they are paths of goodness, righteousness, fairness and justice. In this direction we find our abundance, prosperity, and happiness in excess.

“(…) and He said to him, 'I am the almighty God; walk before Me and be wholehearted [righteous]. And I will place My covenant between Me and between you, and I will multiply you very greatly'.” (17:1-2)

This first dialogue between God and Abraham also re-minds us to eliminate all that is useless in our consciousness, that which we do not need in our destiny to know the Creator and reveal His presence and glory in the world... that which obstructs our path to redeem ourselves from all evil through love's ways and attributes as our essence and true identity.

That is what the foreskin represents in our body and in our consciousness.

“And you shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin, and it shall be as the sign of a covenant between Me and between you.” (17:11)

With this we seal our pact to pursue, live and rejoice in God's ways.

“But you, Israel My servant, Jacob whom I have chosen, the seed of Abraham, whom I love, whom I grasped from the ends of the earth, and from its nobles I called you, and I said to you, 'You are My servant'; I chose you and I did not despise you.” (Isaiah 41:8-9)

In this awareness all fantasies, mirages and illusions of the material world dissipate because God's love strengthens our love to clear them all.

“Behold I have made you a new grooved threshing-sledge, with sharp points; you shall thresh the mountains and crush them fine, and you shall make hills like chaff. You shall winnow them, and a wind shall carry them off, and a tempest shall scatter them, and you shall rejoice with the Lord, with the holy one of Israel shall you praise yourself.” (41:15-16)

Ki Tavo: Claiming our Inheritance of God's Love

We have said in previous commentaries on this portion of the Torah that the Promised Land, the Land of Israel, is the inheritance of the Jewish people. We also mentioned many times that our Land encompasses a permanent space and time with the One who gave it to us. This is the best reason to rejoice individually and collectively as part of the essence and identity God has given us in His Torah.

“Then, you shall rejoice with all the good that the Lord, your God, has granted you and your household you, the Levite, and the stranger who is among you.” (Deuteronomy 26:11).

In this context we understand the meaning of the tithes because everything that exists belongs to God. Hence what we produce out of life and Land He gave us also belongs to Him. Our individualistic and separatist approach to God and others makes us believe that we own something we consider our property, and this is one of the biggest illusions we have created out of ego's approach to life and the material world.

The Torah teaches us that our Land is part of our existence, and the space in which we realize our unity as a Nation and also unity in our consciousness. In other words, our unity depends on our individual and collective livelihood in our Land. God gave us a Land to share our common identity and purpose as Jews with our diversity, and in spite of our differences. We as Israel are diverse and multidimensional as consciousness also is, and the meaning of settling in our Land implies living in it united as individuals and as a Nation.

We tithe in order to keep and protect our unity and permanent bond with the One who gave us life, freedom, the Torah, identity, and Land. Thus we understand that our Land is the place and the a time where and when we fully recognize and experience our connection with God.

The laws, ordinances, statutes and Commandments given in the Torah, which relate to our life in the Land and the relationship with the Land, are directed to maintain our bond with God.

“You have selected the Lord this day, to be your God, and to walk in His ways, and to observe His statutes, His Commandments and His ordinances, and to obey Him. And the Lord has selected you this day to be His treasured people, as He spoke to you, and so that you shall observe all His Commandments, and to make you supreme, above all the nations that He made, [so that you will have] praise, a [distinguished] name and glory; and so that you will be a holy people to the Lord, your God, as He spoke.” (26:17-19)

We integrate this principle in all aspects and dimensions of consciousness because by doing this we realize God's Love and His Presence in our life. This is a turning point in what we know about us and about God. Once we realize that we belong to Him as His Creation emanated from His Love, we begin to discover who we truly are and sacred to Him. We turn to this awareness as we assimilate God's ways and attributes described in His Torah.

By knowing His ways and learning His attributes, we also know and learn our ways and attributes. This is how we understand the meaning of our relationship with God. We relate to Him through His ways and attributes as also ours, which we learn from Him. We do this by loving Him, because we understand His Love for us by loving Him.

This is one of the reasons the Torah commands us to love Him with all our heart, all our soul, and all our might, because through Love we know His ways, and we make them our ways. Our Sages remark this as the main foundation and meaning of our essence and identity.

“Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One” as the declaration of our Jewish identity in which we realize the reason and purpose of our existence (see in this blog our previous commentaries on Parshat Ki Tavo: “Living in the Promised Land” of August 22, 2010 and “The Heritage of God's Love” of September 11, 2011).

In our Land we build and exercise our unity, because in our unity lies our bond with God. When this unity is broken or fractured as we fall into materialistic fantasies and illusions, the curses fall on us as direct consequence of our separation from each other as Jews and also from God.

“Cursed be the man who makes any graven or molten image an abomination to the Lord, the handiwork of a craftsman and sets it up in secret! And all the people shall respond, saying, 'Amen!' (...)” (27:17-26, 28:14-68)

The blessing is our bond with God's ways and attributes.

“And all these blessings will come upon you and cleave to you, if you obey the Lord, your God.” (28:1-13)

We must insist in the fact that we exist because of God's Love, and we owe Him our life and all He created to sustain us in every aspect of consciousness. Hence we have to start knowing who we truly are from the principle that we are God's creatures. Therefore, we come to know ourselves through our Creator, and nothing else.

We are not from where we were born, from a country, culture, language, customs, ideology, fashion, or religion, neither from what we have learned in school, or what we do. These things only label us in regards to other peoples' countries, culture, language, etc. which are all subjected to change depending on time, place and circumstances. Our true origin, place and time of birth, as well as our real identity are God's Love because we all come from Him.

Our true ways and attributes are His ways and attributes as stated in the Torah He gave us. These are the real “culture”, language, customs, etc. that we have to learn in order to know who we truly are as Jews, and our purpose in the world. This is how we become the Light for the nations. This is how we dissipate the fantasies and illusions ego makes out of the material world. This knowledge occurs when we allow the Creator be manifest in us as His creatures.

In this awareness we recognize Him in our life which also is the Land where He wants us to live and rejoice in our bond with Him. Be aware that our bond with God lies in Jerusalem as the highest awareness of our connection with Him.

“Arise [Jerusalem], shine, for your Light has come, and the glory of the Lord shall be seen upon you. For, behold, darkness shall cover the Earth, and gross darkness the peoples; but upon you the Lord will arise, and His glory shall be seen upon you. And nations shall walk at your Light, and kings at the brightness of your rising.” (Isaiah 60:1-3)

This is why we have to rebuild and unify Jerusalem by God's will, for this is how our Final Redemption begins.

“Violence shall no more be heard in your Land, desolation nor destruction within your borders; but you shall call your walls Redemption, and your gates Praise.” (60:18)

As we already said, living in full awareness of God's Love as our Essence and true identity is the Land where we are redeemed.

“Your people also shall be all righteous, they shall inherit the Land forever; the branch of My planting, the work of My hands, wherein I glory.” (60:21)

Eikev: Living the Love of God

In this portion the Torah keeps reminding us about our bond with the Creator as our greatest blessing and strength (Deuteronomy 7:12-24), warning us about the consequences of idol worship as our curse and weakness (7:25-26), and our duty and obligation to eradicate them from every aspect of our consciousness in the material world.

This bond with God through His Commandments is the foundation and the source of our life, understanding life as the blessing and goodness that God's Love gives us to enjoy in this world (8:1) after He redeemed us from slavery in Egypt (8:2-3).

The constant awareness of God as our one and sole Source of life and Redeemer is what reminds us who we are and from where we come. This is our Truth. God's Love is our Essence and identity, and as long as we live in His ways and attributes we are indeed alive. This is how we understand that Love is life and life is Love as long as we live by, for, in and with God's ways and attributes.

This is the greatest lesson of all to learn, that God's Love is our only and true sustenance, as it is written

 “(...) that He might make you know that man does not live by bread only, but by every thing that comes out of the mouth of the Lord makes man live.” (8:3)

God's words precede what is manifest in His Creation. In a deeper meaning, our life and support are sustained directly by His will, and not by our perception of the sustenance we find in the material world. In other words, our life depends solely on Him.

We assimilated this principle through the forty years that our ancestors spent in the desert (8:4) and is the premise to live our bond with God in the world, in the time and space He promised them, which we know as the Promised Land (8:6-9).

This Land is the material manifestation of God's Love for Israel in which we are entitled and commanded to live in His ways, in order for us to be always close to Him (see our commentaries on Parshat Eikev: “The Blessings of Love” of July 27, 2010 and “Because We Have to Love” of August 14, 2011).

Let's be aware that the Promised Land is the material realization of our bond with God as our blessing, identity and purpose in life. He blessed this Land, therefore we bless Him. By blessing Him we acknowledge not only what we are but what He is for us and His entire Creation.

The most succinct, clear, direct and effective way to realize our identity and bond with God is summarized in the four blessings we say in our Grace after Meals (Bircat HaMazon) as commanded to us.

“And you shall eat and be satisfied, and bless the Lord your God for the good Land which He has given you.” (8:10)

In these blessings we become aware that all sustenance comes from God's Love, that our sustenance and our Land is our bond with Him, that in our Land we have Jerusalem as our eternal and undivided capital and also as the highest awareness of our connection to Him.

This bond is fully manifest in the Redemption promised by God through His Prophets, which is enthroning the Messianic Era in the world.

God's Love, through our highest knowledge of Him represented by Moses, warns us time and again not to forget who we are and from where we came (8:11-16). He makes us remind that our oblivion is named after ego's fantasies and illusions.

“(...) and you say in your heart: 'My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth'.” (8:17-18)

This is the time in consciousness when we have to decide on what side we fight between ego's individualistic desires and Love's ways and attributes. We already know their differences, we have experienced them both, and the choice is ours. Either we live and die in ego's fantasies and illusions (“other gods to serve and to worship”) as it is written (8:19), or we live forever in God's ways and attributes which transcend time and space, life and death.

God's ways and attributes are our true life, and they are also our power and strength to defeat the negative aspects of consciousness that keep us captive in ego's illusions.

“Know therefore this day, that the Lord your God is He who goes over before you as a devouring fire; He will destroy them, and He will bring them down before you; so shall you drive them out, and make them to perish quickly, as the Lord has spoken to you.” (9:3)

The fire of God's Love is with us to burn our negative traits and trends, and the choice is ours to drive them out steadfast and erase them completely.

The Promised Land is the place and time that God has chosen for Him to dwell in the material world. This is why He removed the corrupted nations from its midst. The Torah makes this point clear when He says this through Moses.

(...) whereas for the wickedness of these nations the Lord does drive them out from before you. Not for your righteousness, or for the uprightness of your heart, does you go in to possess their land (...)” (9:4)

This is to demonstrate us again that He controls His Creation, including what is negative and corrupted before His eyes.

At this point is quite clear that the negative aspects of consciousness can be more powerful than our will to defeat them. This is why we need God's Love to fight our wars in order to live in the Land where He wants us to build a place for Him to dwell among (in) us.

Moses continues reminding us our tendency to bow to ego's materialist desires and fantasies, represented by idols (9:12-24).

We divorce materialistic illusions by becoming permanently aware our connection with the Creator.

“And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require from you, but to revere the Lord your God, to walk in all His ways, and to love Him, and to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.” (10:10)

Our Love is our bond with God's Love.

When we petrify our hearts in the attachment to the mirages of the material world, the Torah and our Prophets remind us to return to a heart of flesh and purify it from the negative trends of consciousness.

“Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no more stiff necked.” (10:16)

Hence when we return to Love as our Essence and true identity, we also return to God's Love and His attributes.

“He does execute justice for the fatherless and widow, and loves the stranger, in giving him food and raiment. You shall love the stranger; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” (10:18-19), because “He is your Glory, He is your God.” (10:21).

Devarim: Facing the Material World

“The Lord our God spoke to us in Horeb [Sinai], [and] said: 'You have stayed long enough at this mountain. Turn and journey forth (...)'.” (Deuteronomy 1:6-7).

These two sentences comprise one essential aspect of the relationship between Israel and the Creator. We indeed are always connected to Him as our forefathers were in the desert of Sinai during forty years after their Exodus from Egypt. Actually, they initiated this connection with Him that we still have as long as we want to be aware of it. We are long enough with Him in our Torah study, in which we realize the identity He shaped for us, and in our full awareness of it we must go out into the world and take on our journey by the hand of this identity.

The key of this awareness is to constantly live God's will for us in every aspect of consciousness. As we have mentioned many times, His will is His Commandments which we perform with His attributes of compassion, grace and loving kindness, for these qualities are our common bond with His Love.

In this awareness we realize that Love's ways and attributes are the material manifestation of God's Love that must constantly direct our discernment, thoughts, emotions, feelings, passions and instincts, speech and action. This is a practical process in which Love is the Light that dissipates the darkness of indifference, fear, apprehension, doubt, uncertainty, lack, helplessness, despair and the potentially negative aspects in human consciousness.

As long as we confront the fantasies and illusions of a materialistic approach to life with Love's attributes, we secure our connection with God's Love. This confrontation is symbolized by the children of Israel and their wars against the corrupted nations settled in the Promised Land.

We must be in full awareness of our unity with God's Love to be able to subjugate the lower aspects of consciousness and redirect them toward positive and constructive ends.

If we doubt God's Love for us, as well as Love's attributes as the means for our individual and collective Redemption, we will live under the dominion of egotism, separation, indifference, cruelty, lust, envy, indolence and all that keeps us apart from the embracing unity that Love is and amplifies. This is one of the meanings of the following verse.

“The Lord your God who goes before you, He shall fight for you, according to all that He did for you in Egypt before your eyes (...).” (1:30)

Sometimes we are extremely overwhelmed and subdued by negative fantasies and illusions, and seem incapable to overcome them. It feels like an addiction to a potent drug from which we are completely dominated. At this critical point we must trust Love as our way out, as our redeemer and deliverer, because Love fights and wins our wars against the negative choices we make and their consequences.

“Do not fear them, for it is the Lord, your God, who is fighting for you.”(3:22)

Let's refer back to the two sentences pointed out above, because in our connection with the Creator we become aware of the power we experience when we walk in His ways. We need to know His ways in order to fully assimilate the power of loving kindness, compassion and grace as some of the main attributes of Love as the material manifestation of God's Love.

Life is our journey and we must live it embracing the goodness of Love's ways and attributes. We are born to be loved, nurtured, cared for and protected in order to be able to love, nurture, care and protect others as well. That's the reason we are in this material world. Love is its own cause and effect. As long as we realize this Truth we are ready to live life regardless negative, violent and hostile illusions that many people experience in this world.

However, most of us prefer to live in the goodness of life trying to overlook wickedness, and avoiding negativity and evil by separating ourselves from their influence and predicament. This seems the best way to keep our “cool” and protect ourselves from danger and potential harm. But this is not what the Creator wants from us. That's the meaning of the the two lines mentioned above. It was meant to be that way back then in the desert and also now.

The idea is not only to enjoy God's Love and His goodness for us in Love's ways and attributes, but to manifest them where we don't find them. In other words, the purpose of Love – as well as Light – it to dissipate darkness and create a space and time where their attributes can be fully manifest.

In the desert God's Love provided for all that our forefathers needed and in that place and time nothing made them different among each other, because they all lived under God's care and protection. Likewise, when we all live in Love's ways and attributes nothing makes us different from each other because we all share the same approach and the same attitude towards each other. Nothing makes us better or superior to each other because we share the same identity.

The challenge begins when we go out into a world filled with materialistic fantasies and illusions that separate us from Love as our common Essence and approach to each other. At this point we are compelled to confront such illusions with the strength and power of the awareness of who we truly are.

Love's righteousness, justice, compassion, fairness, kindness and goodness are our references among its attributes to confront their opposite traits. If there is no justice and fairness, we make them prevail; if there is wickedness, we make righteousness and goodness prevail, and so on.

Love makes us better because Love is better than anything different from its ways and attributes. These shape the way we live, in the same way that God's Love shapes and sustains His Creation. In the freedom that Love gives us, because Love is our freedom, we love our Creator and His will for us.

Only in total freedom we can truly love God and His ways. This is why we must free ourselves from materialistic fantasies and illusions that keep us captive in the lower aspects of consciousness, and Love is the key to our freedom in order to live in its freedom.

This task or mission begins with us individually, and we do it by learning God's ways and attributes as stated in His Torah, and how He relates to His Creation. Once we acquire this knowledge, we integrate it into all levels and dimensions of consciousness in order to manifest it in what we discern, believe, think, feel, speak and do. This is how we redeem ourselves and those around us: by making Love's ways our ways. When we do this individually and collectively Redemption comes.

We have mentioned many times that some of our Sages say that the Final Redemption comes when we start to love each other without preconditions or hidden agendas, what they refer to as “uncalled for Love”. We do this as the way to clear the darkness of all that opposes Love's ways.

For some this sounds like an impossible task. They can't imagine that evil can be completely eradicated by Love's attributes. In other words, they don't believe that Love is more powerful than evil, and rather choose to be indifferent and separate from whatever they consider negative.

This endeavor does not mean that we have to force everybody to abandon their wicked ways and instantly embrace Love's ways. Love does not force itself on anything or anybody.

Love does not need promoters or advocates because it presents itself as a choice, not as a weapon. In the same way that evil seems to be something we choose, Love is also a choice. The idea is to consider evil not as a choice but as a reference to be ruled out, and make Love the one and only choice to live happily ever after.

In order to live happily ever after we must subjugate ego's drives and desires into Love's ways to secure goodness, peace and harmony in the decisions we make every moment.

This is the task of Love and as we engage on it, God's Love is also on our side helping us fight the wars against the potential negative aspects of consciousness represented by the nations that occupied the Promised Land.

This Land is also the time and space where and when Love conducts and guides all dimensions of life for us to live happily ever after. Let's accept and execute the Creator's Commandment to engage ourselves in the journey to confront the fantasies and illusions of the material world in the awareness of His ways.

Let's transform our consciousness through Love's ways, means, qualities and attributes in order to settle permanently in the Promised Land we also call Redemption.

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.

Terumah: The Sanctuary as the Connection with God's Love

The Torah, Israel, the Promised Land, and the Temple of Jerusalem are the essential elements to reveal God's presence in the material world. They are parts of the same entity we call consciousness, and they are also the means to achieve its purpose.

The Torah is God's master plan, the Promised Land the material and spiritual space to implement the plan, and the Temple of Jerusalem our highest knowledge and awareness of God's love as the level to connect with Him. In this Unity we fulfill our mission to reveal and proclaim His kingdom over all His creation.

With Torah study we learn to know the Creator through His ways and attributes, which we as Israel are entitled to emulate. As our divine legacy and inheritance, the Torah defines our identity as Jews. We are Jews because the Torah tells us what we are. We have spent hundreds of generations immersed in Torah study just to define for us and future generations, who we are.

The result of this long journey is the volumes compiled by the oral Torah [the Talmud]. Ironically, after so many centuries and lifetimes devoted to such monumental task, we still debate what defines the Jewish identity. This indicates that one of the major challenges and endeavors we have to engage into in the dawn of the Messianic era is to discover and embrace who we truly are, based on the definition that the Creator gave us in His Torah.

As long as we don't realize our Jewish identity we will never know our purpose in the material world. Knowing or ignoring this identity has determined our fate as individuals and as a nation. If we are willing to learn from our history, the expected obvious and “logical” conclusion would be to embrace our real identity, though it seems that our common predicament is to rebel against who we are.

We rather assimilate to other “cultures” or lifestyles. The main criticism to non observant Jews is their lack of interest in knowing their Jewish identity. If they, out of individual desire, would inquire about it probably would leave behind what doesn't define who they are.

It's interesting to note that in these times thousands of people from all over the world are embracing Judaism as their material and spiritual identity. This fulfills the prophecies about “the gathering of the exiles” as the descendants of the lost tribes of Israel, for whom we pray three times a day when we stand before our Father and King.

The land of Israel is the geographic space in the material world chosen by the Creator for His people, to fulfill their destiny according to His will. The Torah describes this land both as a physical and spiritual place to exercise our identity, because this identity encompasses material and spiritual qualities.

Judaism conceives life and the physical world as part of a unity from which nothing is separated, because our destiny is to make both the spiritual and material as the combined means to reveal God as the Creator of all. This comprises all levels and dimensions of consciousness that must be conducted and guided by God's will.

This is what we call here God's love as the cause and effect of what we conceive and experience as love in our human comprehension. The more we discover, experience, learn and share love, the more we know God's love.

In this sense, the land of Israel encompasses all manifest and potential facets of human consciousness under the awareness of God's love. We have mountains, valleys, deserts, beaches, sea, lakes, hills and plains that represent thoughts and ideals, imagination, insight, expression, sensitivity, austerity, and character traits that expand or limit the way we conceive life, the world, and how we interact with our fellow man.

Hence we are gifted with a land that enlarges the human potential in every dimension of intellect, thought, emotions, feelings, passions and instincts. This land, as a special quality in consciousness, endows us to fulfill God's will. In other words, as long as we do not dwell in it (meaning not living consciousness in its full potential), we are not able to fully manifest God's ways and attributes in the material world.

The Sanctuary, as the Tabernacle and the Temple of Jerusalem, is also the anchoring physical and spiritual place in which our consciousness reaches the full awareness of the Jewish identity. By realizing God's love as the essence of who we are, through the awareness of His ways and attributes, we ascend to Jerusalem (the highest awareness of God's love).

Thus we will be able to enter the most sacred place in consciousness which is our connection with God. We pray daily for the reconstruction of Jerusalem, and this process we do only with the help of God's love. This is how we understand terumah as the elevation process through which we offer our life to God's will.

The offerings we elevate in the Temple are all facets, aspects, traits, qualities and dimensions of consciousness under the guidance of love as the material manifestation of God's love. See our commentary on Parshat Terumah: “Elevating Life to God's Love” in this blog on January 30, 2011 for more details.

Only love meets love, and nothing else. Thus we understand that our offerings must be unblemished and whole, meaning that in them there is nothing but love.

“(…) and have them take for Me an offering [lit. uplifting] from every person whose heart inspires him to generosity (…)” (Exodus 25:2)

When love inspires us and fills us, generosity follows and our love meets God's love.

“And they shall make Me a sanctuary and I will dwell among [in] them” (25:8)

The Torah is the means to establish this Sanctuary.

“And you shall place into the ark the testimony, which I will give you.” (25:16)

Our sages debate on the allegorical meanings of every part and utensil of the Tabernacle and compare it to the human body, and all that God created in the seven days of His creation. These comparisons teach us that the Sanctuary encompasses all the elements of the material and spiritual Creation.

As an allegory of the human body, it means that all the body contains must be consecrated to its Creator. Hence we proclaim what king David's stated.

“Happy are those who dwell in Your house, they are ever praising you.” (Psalms 84:4)

After all, we are God's creatures, and our destiny is to know Him and unite with Him. That's the legacy of the Torah, Israel, the Promised Land, and the Temple of Jerusalem.

“Praise the Lord, O Jerusalem; praise your God, O Zion. For He has strengthened the bars of your gates; He has blessed your children within you. He makes peace in your borders, and fills you with the finest of the wheat.” (147:12-14)

The Desert as a Field of Life

The experience of our ancestors in the Sinai desert after the Exodus from Egypt set a principle for us, individually as Jews and collectively as a Nation. We understand their journeys in the desert as a transition process between slavery in Egypt and freedom in the Promised Land, darkness and Light, exile and Redemption, ignorance and knowledge. It seems to be a process in which there are many elements involved with total freedom as the common purpose. Life itself encompasses a similar process as the vehicle that supposes to be the means and the end for freedom. We have said many times that freedom is inherent to life in the sense that freedom is the means to experience it in a meaningful way. For this we have to define "freedom" and "meaningful". Even though both terms seem to complement each other, they may mean something different depending on who defines them and this also depends on the circumstances and the borders within we live.

We also have said often that Love is what gives sense and purpose in life, while the opposite of Love's ways and attributes deny any sense nor purpose in life. With these premises in mind we are going to approach "desert" and "journey" as well as "transition" and "purpose", among other terms relevant in the message that we aim to convey here. The desert is a place related to barrenness, lifelessness and something unable to sustain life. We can't live in a desert as a dwelling place unless we bring with us what we are going to need there in order to survive. The material world offers more suitable places, and the last place we want or need to go is a desert, except if we can find in it an oasis or an enlarged version like the one called Las Vegas. 

It's amazing what ego's materialistic desires can achieve to the point of building an entertaining city in the middle of the desert dedicated to fantasies and illusions. It sounds like defying the whole point that the Torah wants to teach us about Israel's journeys in the desert, which was to be closer to the Creator and not closer to ego's desires. The desert is the absence of anything that invites our consciousness to desire or to possess, simply because there is nothing there. We leave behind the accessories for a life in comfort in order to find something that gives meaning to any possible material asset to experience life in the best conceivable way. The desert, the land of nothing, the non-having and non-desiring place becomes the setting as a precondition to start knowing the One who created all and owns all. 

As we reflect on this, we start realizing that we humans do not really own anything, neither in the material world nor in the spiritual world. This is easy to confirm this when we realize that we don't take with us what we have when we die. In other words, we must realize that the only "possession" is our consciousness as long as we live with it in freedom. This is one of the lessons about knowing the Creator when we "meet" Him in the wilderness of Sinai. We can stand before Him when our consciousness is free from the bondage of material illusions we call "possessions" and other fantasies created by ego's desires.

Our mystic Sages say that we have to empty our consciousness in order to make space for God's blessings, which are His ways and attributes for us to experience and manifest in what we think, feel, speak and do. This conclusion is based on the Talmudic quote, "The Creator doesn't dwell with one who is full of himself", just because he leave no space for Him. Hence, the main obstruction to approach Him is the way we conceive ourselves individually, and what we do with our life according to such conception. Here we start to make the classical existential questions related to who or what we are, why are we here, etc. In the answers we suppose to find the whole point.

Most people believe that we are the result of our circumstances, and we act according to them without objections because "that's all there is". If we are not happy with that, we try as much as we can to change things and turn our circumstances according to what or who we think we are or "should" be. The other day an Israeli newspaper mentioned a new book of about a religious character whose life and deeds are based on legends that have been modified or transformed according to the interests of a particular religion. This book pretends to give a different perspective or vision about this particular character based on other legends and the author's own interpretation of them. He is basically trying to change a myth with his own version of the same myth, a lie from another lie. Most of us do the same regarding beliefs, customs, habits and views about things and people, and we are (not all of us) changing throughout our lives according to the times and circumstances.

We must assimilate the "desert" as a state of consciousness in which we make a space to meet the Creator. In order to enter this space we must reflect on our needs in every aspect of life, and come to the awareness that all our needs are fulfilled by God. If we don't realize this, we are back into the bondage of an approach to life that commands us to live according to ego's "rules of the game" or "fair play" in the fields of the material world. This is when we rather return to the consciousness of "Egypt" than pursuing a consciousness of real freedom in the fields of God. We have to embark in a journey in a desert with many stops and turns until we empty all levels of consciousness in order to let God fill them with the Essence of who we truly are. 

In this process God's Love is fully revealed to us in direct proportion to the space we allow for Him in our consciousness. The more we experience Love and manifest Love, the more we are able to transform darkness into Light. Our Sages say that a good deed is rewarded with the opportunity to do another good deed, and it makes sense because once we see the Light and hold it in our hands we are able to illuminate dark places. They also refer to the light of fire as something that we give or share without losing it, as it also happens with Love's ways and attributes. We give Love without losing it. We understand Love as something endless and infinite as God's Love, because it is our Essence and identity as well as the source and sustenance of life.

We realize this when we entrust ourselves to leave behind the mirages, fantasies and illusions of what we are not, and the "desert" is the empty space in our consciousness where this endeavor takes place. Here is where we stand before our Creator, who tells us that we are His and belong to Him, not to ego's illusions. Not to Egypt, not to Vegas, not to consumer society, not to "light" culture, not to vanity and glamour, not to futility, not to a meaningless life. In the desert we meet our Creator and in the desert we build a Sanctuary for Him, a place in the highest level of consciousness in which both our highest awareness of Him and our highest awareness of our connection to Him are the main leading and driving forces to approach life and the material world as emanations of God's Love.

In order to understand and assimilate the knowledge of life and the world, first we have to know their Creator and His Love; and we do this through Love as our common bond with Him. Let's leave behind our bondage to the material illusions fabricated by ego and engage in our individual inner journey to the place where only the Truth of who we are dwells, and let's dwell always in this Truth. This is Israel's legacy, inheritance and destiny as the state of consciousness in which God's Love fills every space of who we are as His children and as His chosen people, because we chose back to embrace Him as our Father and our King. This is our true Essence and identity, either in the desert or in any other place, to turn the desert into a field of life as He conceives it for us.