Ki Tisa: God's Love

The principle in the relationship between Israel and God is Love. We proclaim this principle twice a day before and after we say “Hear [understand!] O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One [and Unique]”, because it defines our identity. What we are, have and do are founded on this relationship, for we recognize that what we are and have come from the Creator, including Love as our common bond with Him. Being counted by Him reveals how precious we are for Him.

As long as we are bound to God by taking what we are and have to Him, nothing negative can happen to us amid the illusions of the material world. In this context we understand the beginning of this portion.

“When you count (lit. raise ki tisa) the head [the total sum] of the children of Israel according to their numbers, let each one give to the Lord an atonement for his soul when they are counted; then there will be no plague among them when they are counted.” (Exodus 30:12)

We must be aware that since the moment God chose us as His partners for His Divine Plan, our bond with Him is permanent. This partnership, as we said above, is based on Love because God's Love makes it possible.

In this sense our duty is to know God in all His ways revealed by Him to us in the Torah. Once we adopt His ways and attributes, not just as our guidelines and purpose but also as our Jewish identity, we fulfill our partnership with Him.

This makes sense to “Know Him in all your ways” (Proverbs 3:6) because the point is to be always aware of our permanent bond with Him. This principle is fully realized in the Sanctuary God wants us to build for Him in order to dwell in our midst.

Though the Sanctuary chronologically came after the transgression of the Golden Calf, the Torah mentions it earlier because before any transgression we may incur there is already a place in our consciousness where we are permanently connected to God. We belong to a house that He has built beforehand, and this house is His Love for us.

The principle we have been referring to is about making the choice to live, experience and enjoy our connection with God as a matter of fact. It is a fact because He is telling us so. Therefore it is not a matter of faith or even trust, because it is the truth.

The Torah and our history prove that fact, and we know it is true because we have lived it and experienced it. How can we deny God's Love? How can we deny Love as the best we are and have? Only by creating an illusion of denial, by choosing to live in ego's false beliefs and feelings of lack.

These beliefs and feelings build the Golden Calf and the idols we empower to enforce the illusion of separation from Love as the material manifestation of God's Love. Our Sages say that the transgression in the Garden of Eden was repeated with the Golden Calf.

When we adopt the false belief that God is not enough, that His Creation is not enough, and that nothing is enough, we fall by transgressing the matter of fact that God is enough, and that we are also enough because we come from Him. Thus we understand the following verse.

“The rich shall not give more, and the poor shall not give less than the half shekel, when they give the offering of the Lord to make atonement for your souls.” (Exodus 30:15)

We have to elevate our consciousness to the awareness that in our bond with God we are and have all there is to live and manifest.

God's Love reestablish our connection with Him when we realize that. He atones for our souls, because once we are trapped in ego's illusions of grandeur, being self-centered and self-sufficient, the only way out from them is by returning to the Truth. This Truth atones for our wrong choices. Our atonement and return to the Creator occur when we realize and adopt His ways and attributes.

“And the Lord passed by before him [Moses], and proclaimed: 'The Lord, the Lord, benevolent God, compassionate and gracious, patient, and abundant in loving kindness and truth; preserving loving kindness to the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity and rebellion and sin; and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, unto the third and to the fourth generation'.” (34:6-7)

Should we have to explain further these ways and attributes? Let's just say what we call them here in our blog: God's Love. All comes from God and all is sustained by Him, and that is the greatest Love of all. The opposite to this is our illusion that we rather believe in our feelings of lack out of ego's desire to be its own god.

These feelings and beliefs of lack are the “nations” that invite us to covet, lust, envy and fall trapped in their indolence, indifference and negativity.

“Beware lest you form a covenant with the inhabitant[s] of the land into which you are coming, lest it become a snare in your midst. But you shall demolish their altars, shatter their monuments, and cut down their sacred trees. For you shall not prostrate yourself before another god, because the Lord, whose Name is 'the Exclusive One', is an exclusive jealous God.” (34:12-14)

Likewise, Love's ways exclude anything different or oppose to its means and attributes.

“You shall not make molten gods for yourself.” (34:17)

We are destined to know our Creator, from whom all come to exist. We are bound to know our Essence and true identity. We can't settle for less and live in the illusions and fantasies of a false reality built out of ego's agenda. We must have an existential approach to life and the material world, and ask the transcendental questions about who we are, from what we came from, and where are we going to.

As Jews we have all the answers in the Torah, which defines our identity and delineates our purpose as God's partners in His Creation. We can't settle for less. Our lot and truth is Love as our common bond with God. That's who we are and have, and that is quite enough.

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.

Chayei Sarah: The Jewish Identity

One of the most profound statements by Abraham recorded in the Torah is “I am a foreigner and a resident with you.” (Genesis 23:4). We have to understand it, not only as a gesture of Abraham's humbleness towards his neighbors, but as a characterization of the Jew based on his relationship with the Creator, in regards to the material world.

Our identity as Jews is broadly defined in the Torah as the Chosen People, and Abraham's neighbors recognized him as the seed of the great Nation whose mission is to be God's People.

“Hear us, my lord: You are a prince of God in our midst.” (23:6)

We must consider our identity, not only as a definition by the most important Testimony ever written, but as a meaning for us as Jews. Both “foreigner” and “resident” seem to complement each other in the context of living or dwelling in a particular place, but we must see them in relation to our identity defined according to our bond with God.

This bond consequently makes us foreigners in any place where God's Presence has not been totally revealed. We are foreigners in the sense that we are entitled, and commanded by Him, to create a place for Him to dwell in the material world.

In order to accomplish our mission and fulfill His Commandment, first we must become residents in the world. As the first Jew, Abraham was recognized by his neighboring nations as the man who was with God in their midst. This recognition is essential for us to assimilate the Jewish identity.

We know that we are God's people not only because the Torah says so, but because since our origins the nations also acknowledged it. They knew that we are foreigners and residents in their midst because, after all, we are the emissaries of God among them.

It sounds like we can be settlers in the land as long as we remain God's people in the eyes of the nations. This predicament makes us reflect thoroughly in the essence of the Jewish identity.

We indeed (as it is also for the rest of the non-Jewish mortals) are temporary residents in this world, but what makes us different is our mission to be the Light for the nations, a sacred Nation because our God is sacred, and a Nation of priests who sanctify His Name with their actions.

Our place is with God and this also means that, wherever we are, our lives are entitled to fulfill His will. We do this by making the world a better place for all, according to the ways the Torah instructs us to follow. For this mission God gives us the Promised Land.

We may be foreigners and residents in the midst of other nations, but we also have a land assigned to us. In this Land we are able to develop the full potential of our identity to fulfill our mission.

We have indicated in previous commentaries that the Promised Land, besides being a specific geographic location known as the land of Israel, also represents the individual and collective awareness of our connection with the One who gave us this Land. Possessing the and is the direct consequence of manifesting our identity as Jews.

The Torah states this fact, and also warns us countless times about the consequences of losing or despising our connection with God by the choices we make with the free will he gave us.

Our condition of foreigners and residents amid the nations also means that we do not become part of them and their ways, because our ways are defined by our relationship with God. We also have mentioned that the Canaanite nations represent negative traits and qualities that we have to conquer, defeat and subjugate in order to settle in the Promised Land.

The Torah and God's Commandments are the ways and means to overcome the potentially negative trends in human consciousness. When we accomplish this task, we are able to dwell in the awareness of God's Love, hence living in the Promised Land here in the material world.

Ultimately, our final destiny is with the Creator and we see our passage through this world as the time to fulfill the Covenant with Him. Though we know that our spiritual destiny is to dwell with Him, we also know that our lives on Earth are bound to our mission to reveal His Presence, and proclaim His Glory.

We do this by removing the illusions and fantasies of ego's materialistic desires, along with the negative traits that have kept humankind in darkness.

We are indeed strangers and aliens in the lands of negative thoughts, emotions, feelings, passions and instincts. But all these aspects of consciousness can also recognize the positive traits and the blessings that walk hand in hand with God's Love. If we Jews, the Abrahams of today, manifest our identity as emissaries of God's Love in order to awaken others to the awareness of Love's ways and attributes in the midst of material illusions, we will have accomplished our destiny as God's People.

Lech lecha: The Blessings of our True Identity

"Go for [to] yourself from [out of] your land and from your birthplace and from your father's house, to the land that I will show you [make you see it]. And I will make you into a great Nation, and I will bless you, and I will aggrandize your name, and [so that you shall] be a blessing. 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." (Genesis 12:1-3).

These verses are about one single Commandment containing several blessings that bear more blessings. All in regard to the knowledge of something in particular: the awareness of being and doing who we truly are. This awareness is the result of a process by which we have to see (or being shown) in order to know. Our Sages say that hearing relates to understanding, and seeing to knowing. We can understand what we are told, but we know it when we see it. Hence, the key of the process is for us to be shown or to make us see about who we really are.

We can be mistaken if we are not previously taught how to see in order to properly know what we have before our eyes. We need references to acquire knowledge in the proper context. In this sense, our references are contained in the Torah in contrast to the references in the non-Jewish world. In the narrative of these verses, the land that the Creator will make Abraham see is the Promised Land that the Torah reveals to us. This land is the place and time combined where the Creator's blessings are completely manifest as a purpose, as a destiny, and as an end. 

The Commandment to Abraham sounds conditional as if he complies with it, he will be rewarded with such blessings. Not quite. This Commandment is about the individual challenge to know who we truly are amid a myriad of illusions and mirages we have created as references to understand and to know what we suppose to be in the material world. These illusions exist as the result of ego's desires and fantasies that we turn into references as idols that dictate who we suppose to be and what we suppose to do.

This fantasy island is the place that Abraham had to abandon in order to go to his true self, as the land that is our true individual and collective identity. The Commandment was given to him as the chosen seed of the Jewish people whose destiny is to possess that land and dwell in it: "To your seed I will give this Land, (…) for all the Land that you see I will give to you and to your seed to eternity." (12:7, 12:15).

This Commandment is also given to every Jew as well, so that we may choose to be the blessing, as Abraham did. Our Sages say that while the nations prefer to be blessed by the Creator, Israel prefers to be His blessing.

We have to abandon the idolatry of ego's illusions through understanding and knowing what the Torah tells us, in order to partake of the blessing of being the great Nation destined to be the Light for the peoples. In these verses Abraham's name shall become enlarged as he becomes the blessing that is receiving, and consequently a blessing for those who bless him.

Cursing carries back its own curse, and blessing carries its own goodness. By being in that blessing, everyone who chooses to receive it is therefore blessed with what it represents. If we want to partake in these blessings, we have to go to who we truly are, instead of what ego's illusions tell us to be and do. We get the awareness and knowledge when we listen to the Source that created us, which is God's Love. It is also the Land that He shows us when we choose to hear and follow His ways, and manifest His attributes.

As we mentioned, this awareness requires a process in which we must confront the material illusions that blur all levels and dimensions of consciousness, as a result of misconceptions created by those illusions. As a state of consciousness, this Promised Land needs to be cleared from the nations that represent such misconceptions. They are regarded as the Canaanite nations (see in this blog our commentary "Conquering the 'nations' with Love" of June 26, 2010) that Israel has to subjugate in order to dwell in this Land.

We, as our forefathers did, must confront and defeat kingdoms that deny the moral freedom that only God's Love, as our Essence, can redeem and preserve. The Commandment to Abraham carries the blessings when we fulfill it. Through Love, as the material manifestation of God's Love in human consciousness, we clear thoughts, emotions, feelings, passions and instincts from their negative misconceptions. Love is its own cause and effect, and also the catalyst to dissipate ego's illusions, and direct our consciousness to partake in the blessings of God's Love.

Abraham listened to God's voice and Commandment and he chose back to His ways and attributes, which are His blessings: "I chose you and I did not despise you. Do not fear for I am with you; be not discouraged for I am your God: I encouraged you, I also helped you, I also supported you with My righteous hand." (Isaiah 41:9-10), because God's blessing is His Love.

Parshat Pinchas: Our Zeal of God's Love

Our mystic sages explain that the highest awareness of our connection with God's love (represented by the Jewish high priesthood) is beyond comprehension because it transcends both the material and the spiritual realms.

In this highest awareness, our consciousness does not allow anything that questions or threats this connection. This level of perception implies the zeal that will never allow our separation from God's love.

"Pinchas the son of Eleazar the son of Aaron the priest has turned My anger away from the children of Israel by his zealously avenging Me among them, so that I did not destroy the children of Israel because of My zeal." (Numbers 25:11)

This zeal secures our connection with God, that is and always must be permanent. In this sense, the consequence of this permanent awareness is wholeness, completion, eternity, peace.

"Therefore, tell them, 'I hereby give him My covenant of peace.' And it shall be to him and to his seed after him, the covenant of an everlasting priesthood; because he was jealous for his God, and made atonement for the children of Israel." (25:12)

Hence, in our constant awareness of God's love we transform (atone for) every level and dimension of our consciousness in order to create a space for Him to dwell among (in) us.

This transformation occurs when love directs our thoughts, emotions, feelings and actions. With and through love all kinds of strife and distress disappear.

"Distress the Medianites, and you shall smite them." (25:17)

"Because they distress you with their plots which they contrived against you in the incident of Peor (…)" (25:18)

Our daily dealings with material reality test the ways we approach every situation, and particularly the good traits that define who we are. These traits are the qualities with which we must always lead the best way we can.

Hence we have to care for them by enhancing them, and elevating them for the highest purpose we have in life, which is to fully reveal God's love in His creation including the dimensions of our consciousness and the world where we live in.

"Take a census of all the congregation of the children of Israel (…)" (26:2)

It's important to count, to distinguish and to cherish every single trait and quality that remain firm and strong in us to conquer the negative aspects (the nations of Canaan) that keep us away from our Promised Land.

This land is our life guided by God's ways and attributes. Hence, dedication and devotion in the way we care for ourselves and others, patience and perseverance to transform negative situations, joy and enthusiasm to be and do good, are among the positive qualities we have to expand in our awareness of God's love in the goodness our life (the Promised Land) is.

"To the large [tribe] you shall give a larger inheritance and to a smaller tribe you shall give a smaller inheritance, each person shall be given an inheritance according to his number." (26:54)

The last two long chapters of the portion (28 and 29) refer to our offerings to the Creator, daily and in the appointed times (festivals).

"Command the children of Israel and say to them: 'My offering, My food for My fire offerings, a spirit of satisfaction for Me, you shall take care to offer to Me at its appointed time'." (28:2)

And ending with, "These you shall offer up for the Lord on your festivals, besides your vows and voluntary offerings, for your burnt offerings, for your meal offerings, for your libations, and for your peace offerings." (29:39)

It is important to note that the episode of Pinchas with Zimri is juxtaposed to the offerings, because by constantly elevating every aspect of our consciousness to God's love, we are manifesting our zeal to always be close to Him.

Our sages reflect on the loneliness that we individually experience in our reaching out to God's love, and particularly when all levels of consciousness seem to abandon us in our aim to reveal His presence amid the darkness of the illusions in the material world. But the level we must keep always aware of our connection with the Creator (the high priesthood) and our zeal to protect it (Pinchas, Elijah the Prophet) must be permanent.

This is reminded in the haftarah for this portion.

"The word of the Lord came to him. And He said to him: 'What are you doing here, Elijah?' And he said: 'I have been zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts, because the children of Israel have forsaken Your covenant. They have torn down Your altars and they have killed Your prophets by the sword, and I have remained alone, and they seek my life to take it'." (I Kings 19:9-10)

No matter how strayed our good qualities may become, we must never lose the awareness that we were created by God's love, and that His love sustains us.

Parshat Shelach: Directing our Life in God's Love

Settling in the Promised Land (living in the truthfulness of God's ways and attributes) is an endeavor that virtually takes a lifetime. We all know that life in the material world is not an easy task, hence some call it a blessing and some call it a curse depending on how easy or hard it may be or turn to be.

In the case of the Promised Land, the endeavor carries a learning process aimed to create a space for the Creator to dwell with us. This mission is ours, in the sense that it depends only on our free will. It is a choice that we either make or not.

In this context, it is clear that one thing are God's commandments and another is to fulfill them on our own free will. It is part of human nature, and the choices we make are the result of what we want in our life. It is not about what we need to do, but what we want to do.

Moses, our teacher, knows quite well the fabric with which the Creator made us and he acts accordingly. He, as the representative of our highest awareness of the Creator and His love, has to lead the higher aspects of consciousness as the ones that must direct the remaining dimensions of life.

The Creator then commands Moses.

"(…) 'send for yourself (shelach lecha) men who will scout the Land of Canaan, which I am giving to the children of Israel. You shall send one man each for his father's tribe; each one shall be a chieftain in their midst." (Numbers 13:2)

Moses sends those who are the most able to get acquainted with the traits, qualities and expressions of every level of consciousness in order to direct them into the goodness of God's ways and attributes.

"You shall see what land it is, and the people who inhabit it; are they strong or weak? Are there few or many? And what of the land they inhabit? Is it good or bad? And what of the cities in which they reside are they in the fields or in fortresses? (13:18-19)

These referring to the nature of our thoughts, ideas, beliefs, habits, moods, tendencies, emotions, feelings, passions, and instincts.

Life indeed is good, regardless the negative approach to it we may have at one point, and ultimately it is our approach to it and not God's. Our approach and not His is what makes life and the world the way they appear to us. In the approach of love everything is good.

"They [the scouts] told him [Moses] and said, 'We came to the land to which you sent us, and it is flowing with milk and honey, and this is its fruit'." (13:27)

The ones who directed their awareness into God's love find it even better.

"They spoke to the entire congregation of the children of Israel, saying, 'The land we passed through to scout is an exceedingly good land'." (14:7)

As we guide all aspects of consciousness in the ways of the Creator, His love makes it so.

"If the Lord desires us, He will bring us to this land and give it to us, a land flowing with milk and honey." (14:8).

In order to dwell in God's ways and attributes we must never separate from His love.

"But you shall not rebel against the Lord, and you will not fear the people of that land because they are [as] our bread. Their protection is removed from them, and the Lord is with us; do not fear them." (14:9)

Every facet of our consciousness is actually an essential part of life and in that sense our thoughts, emotions, feelings, etc. also feed us as bread does. When we cleanse them from their negative expressions, love is with us and thus we have nothing to fear.

If our will is not strong enough to clear negative thoughts, emotions, feelings, passions and instincts from our acts, we will fall into the darkness of the illusion that negativity is.

"For the Amalekites and the Canaanites are there before you, and you will fall by the sword, because you have turned away from the Lord, and the Lord will not be with you." (14:43)

God's love is not with us when we despise His ways.

The experience of the episode of the scouts (also called "spies") indicates us that our voluble nature must be directed to pursue the loftier delights of God's ways. The guidance and direction of His love also must be constantly reminded in every aspect of consciousness.

"(…) this shall be fringes for you, and when you see it, you will remember all the commandments of the Lord to perform them, and you shall not wander after your hearts and after your eyes [ego's materialistic desires and fantasies] after which you are going astray. So that you shall remember and perform all My Commandments and you shall be holy to your God. I am the Lord, your God, who [whose Love] took you out of the land of Egypt [ego's illusions] to be your God [to live in the Truth]; (because) I am the Lord, your God." (15:39-40)

Conquering the "nations" with Love

These are the seven nations and the way to conquer them:

Anger: calmness, enjoyment, pleasantness, agreeability, peace
Greed: generosity, kindness, benevolence
Envy: humility, contentedness, self-confidence
Impatience: self-control, ease, endurance, tolerance, acceptance
Imprudence: sense, carefulness, caution, thoughtfulness
Indolence: diligence, dedication, laboriousness
Lust: modesty, temperance, austerity, moderation, frugality

Lust and greed are similar in their aims, which are eventually fulfilled (temporarily). Envy as well as lust and greed are caused by a feeling of lack, although envy is never fulfilled. To envy and to covet are similar in their root. Sages say that Eve's illusory belief that there was something lacking in the Garden of Eden led her to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Anger and impatience are caused or motivated by feelings of being unsatisfied with what one is or what one has. Therefore there is no acceptance, no ease, no happiness or peace with what one is or what one has. Imprudence and indolence are rooted in carelessness. If one does not care, there is no interest or concern for anything or anyone.

Negative emotions are usually perceived as evil traits; and indeed they are emotions, not traits. Negative emotions are not overcome by positive emotions but by positive traits or qualities, because emotions by themselves are neutral. This means that emotions in their neutral state must be directed by positive traits. In general, egocentricity is the motivator of all negative traits and emotions. In "God as Love" we say that emotions are neutral by nature, and we described them as "empty vessels" waiting to be filled and directed by our higher levels of consciousness. Therefore either we fill them and direct them with our awareness of Divine Love, or with ego's fantasies and desires. If one covets, he is putting his trust and self-confidence into envy, greed and lust; and if he doesn't get that which he envies and lusts, he will be overcome by impatience and anger that make him imprudent, and ultimately indolent. It is in this context that we understand the saying "sin is the punishment itself".

We also mentioned in the book that, in addition to the emotions, the remaining aspects or levels of consciousness are also empty vessels that include intellect, mind, feelings, passions, the five senses, and instincts. Our intellect must fill (instruct) our mind with common sense, practical ideas and righteous principles inspired by Love's ways and attributes. Our mind fills (directs) the emotions with positive thoughts. Emotions will fill our senses inviting them to embrace the passion and excitement in the body, making speech and action the tangible manifestation of Love.

Sages teach that the positive traits that redeem the negative emotions are loving kindness, awe, compassion, confidence, honesty, loyalty, and humbleness. Other Sages consider that those traits are actually the natural state of emotions, and they end up being misdirected by ego's fantasies and illusions. This means loving the wrong ideas, people or situations; revering and respecting bigots and prejudiced people; being compassionate with criminal behavior and the wicked; trusting false beliefs and devoting loyalty to negative people; and being humble and meek when the situation demands courage and determination.

Most people believe that traits have a dual quality, and one directs them either way depending on his character. Instead of loving good and positive actions, he loves destructive habits or additions; he rather be arrogant than humble; instead of trusting his solid principles he rather believes in glamorous or shallow behavior; and he lies in order to make others believe in his ego's fantasies. We all are aware that there are certain factors that determine people's beliefs and behaviors, mainly cultural patterns, ideologies, social and economic status, educational level, and family values. In Judaism those are subjected to ethical principles, meaning that our line of thought, emotional responses, passions and instincts are submitted to these principles. And they are based on G-d's Love for all His Creation, and His Commandments for us to be and do His ways and attributes.

We also mentioned in "God as Love" that emotions are the axis that maintains the balance of all levels of consciousness. As long as we keep our emotions filled with the Truth, we will be true to ourselves, to others, and our surroundings; and the Truth is Love. No matter what, we must fill our emotions and all levels of consciousness with Love in order to be Love and manifest Love, which is the mission that He commands us to do.