The Messianic Consciousness in Jewish Prophecy (XXIV) Isaiah

The Prophet scolds his people for rejecting their Essence and identity. We refer to this rejection as forsaking Love's ways and attributes in order to embrace ego's fantasies and illusions. We abandon the positive traits and qualities inherent to human nature to engage into negative trends in consciousness. Philosophers have debated about human nature. Some believe that man is good by nature, and later corrupted by his social environment. Others assure that man is born evil, and his wickedness unfolds as he grows up. There is something predominantly real beyond either view. Good and evil determine man's "nature", and this means -- as we have said in other commentaries -- that free will shapes what eventually will manifest in what we are and do.

In this sense instruction as education is the key to reveal what we essentially are. If the premise is that we are good and pure since we are born, there must be some kind of journey or destiny that should confirm such premise. A process by which we unfold our intrinsic goodness and purity despite the abrasiveness of hostile and evil surroundings. The journey towards our destiny is the instruction of the traits and qualities we claim to be born with, so we can manifest them as who we are and what we do. We as Jews know that the instruction of the journey as our destiny is the Torah.

In this context we can assimilate the words of our Prophets. We embrace what we recognize as our Essence and true identity, the intrinsically good of Love's ways and attributes emanated from God's Love. This in contrast to the traits and ways of what we fabricate as a false belief of what we want to be and do in the material world. Our own version of what we want to be and have against God's version of us. The choice, obviously, is only ours. The good news about God's version is that it is the real one, regardless the versions we want to make of us. No matter what we imagine, wish, fantasize or invent about our self, we still are the emanation of God's Love, no matter what. This means we always have the choice to return to our Essence and true identity. This is the good news that will be always good.

The bad news is the nothingness from which we elaborate ego's version of what we wish or desire to "be", "have" and "do". These are the emanation of nothingness and their results. The "vanity of vanities" king Solomon warned us in his wisdom. Actually it was not from his wisdom but from his experience. He certainly lived intensely the realms of ego's fantasies and illusions in order to share with us their true nature. Thus we can learn from them and avoid their vain and futile predicament. The Prophet also enters these realms to warn us against living in the falsehood of the masks we carve with our own hands. "Mask is person" the Greeks and Romans used to say referring to the semantics of personality, as the mask we individually make to wear the days of our life. Hence some say that life is a masquerade, the work of our hands, what we make out of it. In this sense we can finally assimilate ego's role in the drama of life.

"For You have forsaken Your people, the house of Jacob; for they are replenished from the east, and with soothsayers like the Philistines, and they please themselves in the brood of aliens." (2:6)

The Prophet appeals to God for abandoning His people due to their choice to live the negative fields of ego's desires, in the materialistic lifestyle typical of peoples from the East in ancient times. Also ego's obsessive and compulsive illusion of controlling as aspects of life, represented by the Philistines who learned it from the Egyptians. All these fantasies accompanied by demeaning customs and habits alien to our Essence and true identity. We begin to lose touch of what we truly are when we sale our consciousness to something completely alien to our Soul and heart.

"Their land also is full of silver and gold, neither is there any end of their treasures; their land also is full of horses, neither is there any end of their chariots." (2:7)

We sale our consciousness for silver and gold, the imaginary value given to material possessions. We become trapped in ego's stubborn illusion that there will never be enough space to store them all. Greed is never satisfied in ego's domains. Greed quickly becomes lust, for both are made of the same illusion for the same vain purpose. Sensual desires are the aim and end of greed and lust, engendered by envy and coveting as the result of the invention of a false belief or feeling of lack. For this lust we need energy to waste, the horses we buy from Egypt. These are the sensual and sexual drive we take from our vital life force, in order to submit our life exclusively to sensual desires and pleasures. Sex becomes another commodity like the silver and gold we don't find enough room to store. Thus they become our idols.

"Their land also is full of idols; every one worships the work of his own hands, that which his own fingers have made. And man bows down, and man lowers himself; and You can not bear with them." (2:8-9)

At this point, once again, we are reminded to be aware of what we store in our mind, thoughts, feelings, emotions, passions and instincts. About what we make out of them, and for what purpose. As we fill them with ego's fantasies and illusions, they will act accordingly. Then instead of serving us, we become their servants. We lower our discernment, intellect and common sense -- the preordained guides for the remaining levels of consciousness -- to negative feelings, harmful emotions, destructive passions and instincts out of control. This predicament is defiantly against God's version of who we are. Hence He does not bear with it, for He does not dwell with iniquity. We do.

"Enter into the rock, and hide your self in the dust, from before the terror of the Lord, and from the glory of His majesty." (2:10)

We remain trapped in ego's fantasies and illusions like living in the darkness within a rock. We enter realms absent from the Light the Creator made us. We are absent from our own Light as the dead in the dust. Here again we realize the nothingness of fantasies and illusions we have been living for a very long time, at the expense of the Source of our life. We need God's Love to live, for He made us with His Love, and we have the audacity to waste it in nothing we can even claim as ours. 

We can't argue that we learn from vanities of vanities and their brief imagined pleasures. After all, we pursue sensual and emotional pleasures we have already fabricated in our imagination, out of ego's fantasies and illusions. But we certainly learn from the overwhelming emptiness of their aftermath that begs us for more. An example of this is gambling. We fall into the illusion that we have something we can be easily increase. At some point we believe we have it until we lose it completely. The emotion of believing that we have it, followed by the desolation after we lose it.

In the darkness of our emptiness we become afraid to return to the Source of our life. The frustration, loneliness, depression and abandonment of emptiness become our whips. These are the traces of the chariot driving our slavery under ego's fantasies, now institutionalized as the reigning lifestyles in modern times. The ancient pyramid of Egypt's Pharaoh still going strong ruling our consciousness. Exploiting each other's lives to feed the same illusions all share and dream to live and possess. Climbing the pyramid to get to the top. We rather stay slaves than returning to the circle of Love's ways and attributes, which revere and honor God's Love, His Glory.

The fear of God replaces the Love of God. We rather chose ego's illusions, for we better stay with them than fearing God. Our guilt, resentment, remorse and shame become our fear of Him. Exactly as Adam did when he chose ego's illusions and found himself afraid of God to see him naked. Adam's choice, which is also our choice, drags us out from the Paradise where we always have belonged. This Paradise is still within us in our Essence and true identity, in the Love of God that is also our Love, waiting to return to His ways and attributes, our true home, the Glory of His Majesty.

Time and again, we have to choose. Either we extend the endless futility of ego's fantasies and illusions, and their negative consequences, or we say that it's enough. Certainly it has been quite a long period of deliberated waste. Now it is time to leave falsehood behind and forever, and return to truth. This is the beginning of all beginnings. The first step to awaken into the Messianic Consciousness that leads us to the Final Redemption. This is God's version of who we are.

The Messianic Consciousness in Jewish Prophecy (XXIII) Isaiah

"And it shall come to pass in the end of days, that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established as the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it." (2:2)

This declaration is emblematic of the Final Redemption and the Messianic Era. We can understand the "end of days" in two ways. We can see it as the end of the fractured human consciousness trapped in the constrains of ego's material illusions, where we have lived thousands of years. Also as the final remaining days of God's Creation, endless "final" days we will live forever, knowing the Eternal Presence of the Divine. The multidimensional time and place -- where the end of days occurs -- have an anchoring point, both in consciousness and the material world named Zion, where the Temple of Jerusalem stands. 

Our Hebrew Scriptures refer to it as the mountain of the Lord, the house of God, Luz, mount Moriah (lit. from the Light of God). Abraham our father called it "God will appear" (which also means "God will see"), and Jacob called it the house of God (Beit El). This site is surrounded by a city named Jerusalem ([God] Will see peace, [God's] peace will appear). Together, the mountain of the Lord, Zion, Jerusalem and its Temple, are part of this anchoring place. The meanings of each one complement each other.

The mountain of the Lord is God's place in world, but let's keep in mind that our Sages say that "God is the place of the world, and the world in not the place of God" (Bereshit Rabba  68:9) Thus we understand that the mountain of the Lord is the connecting point between the Creator and the world. This Talmudic statement remarks that our place is God. This explains that one of His Names in Hebrew is HaMakom, The Place.

As the living human shape of the world we reach out to our Creator, for we come from Him and belong to Him: God is our place because He is The Place. In a deeper meaning we learn that whereas God is our place, we compel ourselves to also know His place. As a learning process to realize our Essence and true identity, we must know our Creator. As we come to know Him through His ways and attributes, we come to know our common bond with Him. This is the beginning of the endless journey of knowing God, what we call here the Messianic Consciousness.

This knowledge as our permanent connection with God is the foremost of all wisdom. Whatever we have learned in life becomes subservient to this connection. This makes it the top of the mountains and hills that symbolize principles, beliefs, ideologies, philosophies, sciences, ideas and values by which we discern, think, speak and act. In this context, the "nations" represent emotional qualities we imprint to the "mountains" and "hills" we refer to. Together they all flow into the mountain of the Lord and are subservient to it.

"And many peoples shall go and say: 'Come you all, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and He will teach us of His ways, and we will walk in His paths.' For out of Zion shall go forth the Torah, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem." (2:3)

The nations as well as the peoples represent emotional aspects and levels of consciousness usually lured by ego's fantasies and illusions, and filled with ego's negative trends. In the Final Redemption, all aspects, levels and dimensions of life will be united and directed by our permanent bond with the Creator -- the house of the God of Jacob --, to know Him by learning His ways and walk in His paths. This is Zion, our connection to Him, from where His knowledge is revealed to us. This knowledge indeed is His instruction, His Torah, the word that comes from Jerusalem.

Our Sages also interpret this statement as Jacob (Israel) teaching the nations and peoples God's ways for them to walk in His paths. Zion, Jerusalem, the Promised Land and the Torah belong to Israel. The Torah was given to Israel as an eternal legacy: "Moses commanded us the Torah, an inheritance of the congregation of Jacob." (Deuteronomy 33:4) Thus we the Jewish people are bestowed with the privilege, the right and the obligation to teach the Torah to the world. When the nations fulfill the content of this verse (Isaiah 2:3), by their own will and accord they will come to Jerusalem to learn from us. We will lead the nations and peoples into the Messianic Consciousness to make them also part of the endless knowledge of the Creator.

We have to remark again that Jerusalem is the city, the fundamental principle on which our permanent connection with God -- the Temple -- stands. This principle not only supports this connection but sustains it, and this principle is Love. We continually quote Maimonides, the Rambam, saying that the First Temple was destroyed due to murder, idolatry and incest; the Second Temple was destroyed due to uncalled for hatred; and the Third and final Temple will be build on uncalled for Love. Again we repeat that Love is our common bond with God, and the Temple of Jerusalem in the Messianic Era stands by the permanent connection of our Love and God's Love.

In the Oneness of our unity with the Creator we become aware of the eternal bond with Him. Thus we realize that Jerusalem is the constant awareness of Love, in which all aspects, levels and dimensions of consciousness are filled and guided by Love's ways and attributes. In this context Israel is the chosen one. Historically we have been the people who are and represent the goodness of Love as the material manifestation of God's Love. Everything related to Israel is about Love. The Promised Land God gave us is the goodness of life and for life. The Torah is our Essence and identity by which we are commanded to love, and we love by being and doing what is right, just, fair, correct and uplifting. Doing justice and righteousness if an act of Love that motivates and encourages us to be good and do good.

Love's ways and attributes compel us to be against everything negative, demeaning, undermining, corrupting, oppressive, abusing and destructive; all that attempts against human dignity. The people of Israel, as the inheritors and bearers of the goodness of Love the Creator wants to prevail, are destined to reveal God's Love -- the Divine Presence -- in the material world. In spite of endless persecutions, massacres and genocides our people have suffered, the goodness of our manifold contributions to the betterment of humankind have been without parallel in history. We have fulfilled God's commandment to be Light onto the nations, in spite of them. When we rebuild and unite Jerusalem within us and in our Land, the State of Israel, we will do even more and greater in our destiny as commanded by the Creator.

We do this by expelling and removing those who are against what the Torah, Israel, Jerusalem, the Promised Land, and the Final Redemption mean. Those peoples who are trapped and enslaved in negative and destructive beliefs, ideologies, philosophies and religions. We are commanded to remove them from our midst since our ancestors received the Torah and the Promised Land, the life of the goodness of Love. In Jerusalem united and indivisible we will be redeemed as our Prophets proclaim. We must unite our consciousness in the encompassing and comprising power of Love. This is the first step into our Final Redemption being led by its ways and attributes towards God's Love. 

"And He shall judge between the nations, and shall decide for many peoples; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more."  (2:4)

The Love of God is the fire that burns and never consumes. The fire that transforms our consciousness under Love's ways in order to be guided by them. This is how God's Love judges the nations and sets the path for the peoples. Love turns violence into peace, negative and destructive tendencies into positive and productive fields of creative potentials and deeds. As Love reigns there are no wars, disputes or conflicts. All human actions, tasks and endeavors are motivated by goodness and aimed to goodness.

"O house of Jacob, come you all, and let us walk in the Light of the Lord." (2:5)

The goodness of Love's ways are the Light by which we will walk in our redeemed and renewed consciousness. Thus we realize that Light, Love, goodness, peace, joy, plenitude, abundance, prosperity, solidarity, compassion, righteousness, justice, fairness, loving kindness, and the positive expressions of Love are all inherent to each other. We have peace because we have Love, justice, compassion, loving kindness, etc. We have prosperity and happiness, because we have all their complements.

The Messianic Consciousness in Jewish Prophecy (XXII) Isaiah

Our Sages call Isaiah the Prophet of consolation, in spite of the recriminations and admonitions in most of his words. The reason appears obvious, for his words of Redemption resound and overwhelm consciousness inside out. In other words, God's Plan for His Creation endures anything we may dare to think or believe stronger than His will. "Many are the thoughts in the heart of man, but the Lord's counsel will prevail" (Proverbs 19:21) 

No matter what we desire to be, have and do in the material world -- whatever ego dictates -- that will never overcome the Creator's Plan, simply because we are His creatures. All we believe we are and have belong to Him because all that exist emanates from Him. Having this clear in all levels and dimensions of consciousness is the beginning of knowing who we really are, our Essence and true identity. The Torah is God's Plan, and our Prophets remind us this. We just have to hear and learn from it. We are the Jewish people, the inheritors of the Torah.

The Final Redemption in Judaism is the whole purpose of God's Plan, the culmination of His Creation. We could have reached out to this destiny sooner than later, for it's up to us. The premise or precondition to fulfill this destiny is free will. As we make choices moment to moment, we certainly have to choose either living in the vanities and futility of ego's fantasies and illusions, including their predicament and consequences, or living in Love's ways and attributes with their goodness that transcends the limitations of the material world. In this sense we must understand and assimilate that the Final Redemption and the Messianic Era belong to a kind of consciousness that transcends the traits and qualities imposed by the constraints of living in a dual consciousness. 

Once we overcome the limited choice between good and evil, and leave behind the "temptations" of living materialistic fantasies and illusions, we will be able to enter endless dimensions. This was presented and proposed to us by the Creator from the beginning of times. God offered us the choice, and we chose our own ego's fantasies and illusions based on a false belief or feeling of lack. The Garden of Eden was the starting point for a journey inside the endless dimensions of God's Love. Then we chose to enter the constrains of the tri-dimensional world, limited by time and space. The good news is that God gave us His Torah as the way out and the way back to where we were, where we truly belong.

We began to learn that this way back to our Essence and true identity is Love as the bond that connects us to God's Love. This is the awareness of the Oneness with our Creator, that we recite at least twice every day. We learned that God's Love is always with us, and we have to love Him back by being and doing His ways and attributes. He communicates to us through His Torah, the Divine Plan. Hence we must listen and understand what He commands us. Thus we recognize that Love is the material manifestation of God's Love. By the power and strength of Love we are born and survive the limitations of matter. We can't live without Love, neither live without God's Love. He is the Source from where all comes to exist. We can't live without Him. 

The Torah also reminds us that God is our life. Hence we must choose Love's ways and attributes as the means to know God's Love, and the endless dimensions He promised us to enter in the Final Redemption since the beginning. At some point Isaiah and other Jewish Prophets tell us this, when they say that in the Messianic Era our one and only interest will be the knowledge of the Creator. And He is Eternal. With this preamble, let's reflect on the messages God brings to us through the Prophet, who begins calling the Heaven and Earth as witnesses to God's words.        

"Hear, O Heavens, and give ear, O Earth, for the Lord has spoken: Children I have reared, and brought up, and they have rebelled against Me." (Isaiah 1:2)

These words can be easily applied to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The minimum God expects from us is common sense after He endowed us with free will, and also with knowledge about the goodness of Love and the futility of ego's beliefs and feelings of lack. Nothing lacks in Love, for Love encompasses and comprises everything. Love is its cause and its effect. Why would we rebel against what is our fulfillment and plenitude, the source of our life from beginning to end? Here we understand that rebelling against God is separating from His Love, the Source from where all comes. Likewise, we also separate from Love's ways and attributes when we embrace ego's fantasies and illusions.

"(...) The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it; but wounds, and bruises, and festering sores: they have not been pressed, neither bound up, neither mollified with oil." (1:5-6)

God calls them (our fantasies and illusions) the sickness of the head, and our discernment, beliefs, ideas, and thoughts around them. As we allow their negative and destructive trends, the feelings and emotions in our heart make it faint. We often quote our mystic Chassidic Sages saying that all levels of consciousness (discernment, intellect, mind, feelings, emotions, passions and instincts) are vessels waiting to be filled. They also teach that we must fill them with God's will, what He commands us to be and do. 

If we fill our thoughts with materialistic fantasies and illusions, they also will fill our feelings and emotions with the same, and also our passions and instincts. We end up putting in action what we believe and feel real by envy, lust, greed, pride, wrath, indolence and indifference within ourselves and our surroundings. These create the wounds, bruises and sores that are cured and relieved only by Love's ways and attributes. Thus we realize that Love's ways are the opposite of ego's agenda, and that Love does not cohabit with anything different from its ways and attributes.   

"Your land is desolate; your cities are burned with fire; your land, strangers devour it in your presence, and it is desolate, as overthrown by floods. And the daughter of Zion is left as a booth in a vineyard, as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers, as a besieged city." (1:7-8)

We have said that life is our land, cities our ethical values and moral principles, and the strangers or aliens are the fantasies and illusions we empower to take over our intellect, mind, feelings, emotions, passions and instincts. These end up desolated by ego's predicament. Obsessions, attachments, addictions and the anguish, anxiety, depressions and frustrations derived from them are the floods and agitated waters. 

This scenario is the current state of consciousness we see around the world. This is the consequence of following the false gods and idols of Consumer Society and Wild Capitalism, with their vanities imposed on ego's endless feeling of lack, leaving little room for Love in our lives. We end up submitting Love to ego's agenda. We shape Love according to our materialistic desires, fantasies and illusions. This is the captivity of Jerusalem, the siege of Zion amid a garden of cucumbers, which represent the sensuality where we are trapped by materialistic desires.

"Except the Lord of hosts had left unto us a very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom, we should have been like Gomorrah. Hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom; give ear unto the Torah of our God, you people of Gomorrah." (1:9-10)

If we choose to return to our Creator to fulfill His Final Redemption, we have to hear His voice that speaks to us every moment, for He is always with us in His Love for all His Creation. We must repeat that we go back to God's Love through our Love. We already know that Love is our sustenance and also our true identity. We love because we are Love, it is part of us. There is a greater Love, the greatest of all that is God's Love, our Essence and what we truly are. Hence the way out from ego's lustful and sensual desires, the rulers of Sodom and Gomorrah, is by returning to Love's ways as the material manifestation of God's ways, the law of our God, the Torah. God's Plan for humankind is the total and permanent Redemption in the Messianic Era.

God continues to confront us for the negative choices we have made for a long time, and even worse: we have had the nerve to offer them to Him. We have lived under the mirage that ego's fantasies and illusions please our Creator. He created the transcendental reality of Love as the cause and motivation to love Him, His ways and attributes, as what He also wants us to offer and elevate to Him. 

The goodness of who and what we are meant to be manifest in our thoughts, speech and deeds. Our good actions and the choicest of their fruits are the ways we honor Him. The goodness of His Glory, His Love, covers the Earth and all His Creation. Therefore we also have to cover our life and deeds with the same goodness. We must be aware that we neither love, honor nor glorify God with anything different from what He is and does for us and His Creation.

"Your new moons and your appointed seasons My Soul hates. They are a burden unto Me, I am weary to bear them." (1:14) "Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean, put away the evil of your doings from before My eyes, cease to do evil. Learn to do good, seek justice, relieve the oppressed, do righteousness for the fatherless, plead for the widow." (1:16-17)

We begin to return to God when we clear the negative trends in our consciousness. We know that we can't stand by ego's fantasies before God's Love, and expecting Him to be part of such illusions. We go back to Him by reclaiming and embracing Love's ways as our common bond with Him. This means being and doing goodness, making prevail what is just and fair. We bring this to life by freeing those who are captive in their misery and oppressed by their disgrace. 

In this sense we have to start with our selves individually. We can't liberate others while we are prisoners of our own misery. As we get closer to the truth of who we really are and our purpose in God's Plan, we can bring others to the common collective destiny He wants for us. These others are the ones who suffer the oppression of not having the loving direction towards our destiny, as orphans without parents and widows without husbands.

"Come now, and let us reason together, says the Lord; though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. If you be willing and obedient, you shall eat the goodness of the land." (1:18-19)

We choose back to God's Love by choosing back to our own Love. This is the result of putting our intellect and discernment in consonance with the common sense God gave us. This is our reasoning together with Him. As we said, Love is our common bond with God. His Love and our Love together, reasoning and acting accordingly. In this one accord what doesn't belong is transformed into what does belong. Our transgressions derived from ego's false feelings of lack are transmuted into Love's attributes. We cease to be egotistic and begin to be giving from this Love endlessly connected to God's Love. Thus we begin to live in the goodness of Love, which is also the goodness of the land, the goodness of life.

The last verses of the first chapter in Isaiah's book reiterates God's unceasing call for us to awaken from the illusions and mirages we have created in the material world. He denounces time and again our stubbornness to remain attached to addictions, obsessions, false beliefs, negative feelings and lower passions. These are the sword that devours the happiness in the abundance of goodness (1:22-25). The chapter ends with God's promise to restore our consciousness as it was originally before we made the choice to separate from Him.

"And I will restore your judges as at the first, and your counselors as at the beginning. Afterward you shall be called the city of righteousness, the faithful city. Zion shall be redeemed with justice, and they that return of her with righteousness. And the destruction of the transgressors and the sinners shall be together, and they that forsake the Lord shall be consumed." (1:26-28)

This is God's promise for us when we make the choice to return to His ways: the endless dimensions we will discover in His Love. We will discover and live fully in our knowledge of Him as we elevate our Love to Him in our good deeds. These are our judges and counselors that led us when only goodness was the law of the land, the Paradise we lost once. 

Love's ways and attributes will direct and inspire what we are and do in our consciousness in its permanent connection with the Creator. This kind of consciousness is the city of righteousness and faithfulness that is redeemed in the ways and means of the goodness of Love. In this consciousness there is no room for anything different from Love's ways and attributes, for all negative trends will be consumed by the fire of God's Love.

The Messianic Consciousness in Jewish Prophecy (XXI) Jeremiah

"I have surely heard Ephraim bemoaning himself [saying]: 'You have chastised me, and I was chastised as a calf untamed; return You to me, and I shall return [to You], for You are the Lord my God." (31:17)

The redeeming passages of Jeremiah's prophecies refer to Israel as God's son, and Ephraim His firstborn [(...) "for I am a father to Israel, and Ephraim is My firstborn." (31:8)]. This makes us reflect on the link that connects them all. In our commentaries on the last four portions of the book of Genesis we remark the meanings of the verse "These are the generations of Jacob: Joseph (...)" (Genesis 37:2) which introduces Joseph as the inheritor of the birthright. Hence Jacob, Joseph and Ephraim integrate the same principle represented by the firstborn. When the Creator tells us that Israel is His firstborn we realize the meaning of this. 

We gather the character traits of Jacob and Joseph, and we see they complement each other as the goodness derived from Love's ways and attributes. These are the qualities inherited by Ephraim (representing here the entire Israel) from the Creator, which we are destined to manifest in the material world.

Historically, Ephraim characterizes our Jewish rebelliousness from God's Love for us. The Love of the Creator in which we delight in His Commandments, opposite to the false gods and idols derived from ego's fantasies and illusions. These are the choices we make which also become the punishments for our separation from Love's ways and attributes. We are the rebellious children who blame God for the negative choices we make, the untamed wild calves waiting to bear the yoke of Heaven. 

After thousands of years of suffering the deceit of the idols made by our hands, again we cry out loud to return to the goodness that God is. In this sense, we must give the first step in that direction by returning to the goodness of Love that is the material reflection of God's Love. We have to return to our Essence and true identity that make us image and likeness of the Creator of all. There is no other way. We first embrace goodness in order to embrace the goodness of God.    

"Surely after that I was turned, I repented, and after that I was instructed, I smote upon my thigh. I was ashamed, yea, even confounded, because I did bear the reproach of my youth." (31:18)

The return to Love begins when we fully learn from ego's fantasies and the negative choices we make. Through the eyes of Love we find enough compassion to forgive ourselves, and look forward to live in its ways and attributes. We embrace Love as our true identity by which we are and do. We realize Love is the teacher that instructs our discernment, intellect, mind, thoughts, emotions, feelings, passions and instincts. Far and beyond what we are aware and not aware in our consciousness. 

This verse carries the fundamental prevision to forgive ourselves. Shame, reproach, recrimination are lashes we inflict on our utmost desire to return to Love. Hence confusion takes control to make us remain in the vicious circle of coming in and out ego's fantasies and illusions. These are the sins and transgressions as the choices we make by ignorance in our youth, our unrefined judgement. Once we assimilate that life is also a learning process to choose the goodness of its blessings, we realize that self-forgiveness is the gate that shows the way back to Love. We forgive ourselves as the beginning to return to who we truly are and have.

"Is Ephraim a beloved son to Me? Is he a child that is dandled? For as often as I speak of him, I do earnestly remember him still. Therefore My heart yearned for him, I will surely have compassion upon him, said the Lord." (31:19)

Here we also realize that God's Love forgives us too, because He never ceases to love us and all His Creation. His Love yearns for our Love that is the common bond with Him. He knows that we are able to learn from our mistakes and the suffering derived from them. God understands our rebelliousness because He gave us free will to learn by our choices. He is not content with the miseries we carry in the negative vicious circle of ego's materialistic desires. In His compassion God feels our ordeals, hoping we choose to return to Love as our bond with His Love.

"Set up for yourself way marks, make for yourself guide-posts; set your heart toward the high-way, even the way by which you went; return, O virgin of Israel, return to these your cities." (31:20)

We return to Love though its ways, its guide, its direction, which are Love's qualities and attributes. We know them because we went to them since we were born, and have walked in its ways. We know Love is the Essential part of who we are. Through Love's ways and attributes we return to all these mean and represent, as the cities built by the awareness of our permanent connection to God. This link is Jerusalem, the virgin of Israel.

"And it shall come to pass, that like as I have watched over them to pluck up and to break down, and to overthrow and to destroy, and to afflict; so will I watch over them to build and to plant, said the Lord." (31:28) 

As we mentioned before, our choices lead us to a learning process from evil to goodness. God's compassion offers His constant Redemption for us to embrace forever. As He sees our transgressions and wickedness by which we pluck up, break down, overthrow, destroy and afflict our lives, He also sees the goodness in our potential to build and plant. This is the choice He wants us to make as the beginning of the next phase of our destiny, what we call here the Messianic Consciousness in the Final Redemption.

"Behold, the days come, said the Lord, that I will make a new Covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah; not according to the Covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; for as much as they broke My Covenant, although I was a lord over them, said the Lord." (31:31-32)

This is the prophecy of what awaits us in the end of times, in the day of the Lord, when evil will be wiped out from the face of the Earth and only goodness will prevail. This is the goodness of God, which will be revealed to us as we devote our lives only to know Him.

"But this is the Covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, said the Lord. I will put My law in their inward parts, and in their heart will I write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying: 'Know the Lord'. For they shall all know Me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, said the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin will I remember no more." (31:32-33)

The Messianic Consciousness in Jewish Prophecy (XX) Jeremiah

"Thus said the Lord, the God of Israel: Cursed be the man that heard not the words of this Covenant, (...) that I may establish the oath which I promised to your fathers, to give them a land flowing with milk and honey, as at this day." (Jeremiah 11:3, 5)

The Covenant of God and Israel is one of the pillars of the Creator's Plan for the material world. Let's reflect on this Covenant. It begins in a place and time God calls a land that flows milk and honey as in today, meaning permanent goodness in the permanent now. This is the land as the life we are destined to live according to God's Plan. We start to dwell in its blessing, its milk and honey, when we live by hearing, understanding and implementing the words of our Covenant. This is actually an alliance that turn into One the parts of the pact, the Creator and Israel. 

We become completely aware of our permanent bond and connection with God when we realize what this Covenant is about. This happens by living goodness in the constant here and now. The goodness derived from Love's ways and attributes are the words of this Covenant promised by God's Love to our forefathers for us, their descendants. We as Jews are the inheritors of this everlasting legacy which is entirely revealed and manifest as the Messianic Consciousness. 

"They are turned back to the iniquities of their forefathers, who refused to hear My words; and they are gone after other gods to serve them; the house of Israel and the house of Judah have broken My Covenant which I made with their fathers." (11:10)

Our Creator reminds us time and again through His Torah and Prophets the choices that make us reject His words. Those choices are ego's desires for material fantasies and illusions, the other gods we serve, by which we brake our bond with Love's attributes as the material manifestation of the attributes of God's Love. As we break this bond we separate from our Essence and true identity, and the destiny God promised us to live only in the goodness of life.

These reminders continue in the next chapters, indicating the consequences of living for the idols we create with our vain and futile attachments, obsessions, addictions and negative patterns, that turn our lives into a fleeting sound, "(...) yet is their pride but travail and vanity, for it is speedily gone, and we fly away." (Psalms 90:10) and the Prophet valiantly pleads to God to eradicate the negative trends in human consciousness as the cause and effect of all evils and iniquities we inflict in ourselves and our surroundings.

"Wherefore does the way of the wicked prosper? Wherefore are all they secure that deal very treacherously? (...) How long shall the land mourn, and the herbs of the whole field wither? For the wickedness of them that dwell therein, the beasts are consumed, and the birds; because they said: 'He sees not our end'." (Jeremiah 12:1, 4)

But we know that in our free will we choose negative trends. If we demand from God total freedom in our consciousness, He creates evil for us to choose goodness. Now we complain to Him demanding the removal of evil and wickedness from life, the land we desolate with ego's fantasies and illusions as idols and false gods. He responds the same message all our Prophets proclaim.

"And it shall come to pass, after that I have plucked them up, I will again have compassion on them; and I will bring them back, every man to his heritage, and every man to his land." (12:15)

The removal of evil from the face of the Earth is one of the foundations of the Final Redemption in Judaism. In His endless Love and compassion for all His Creation, God says repeatedly in the Torah and through His Prophets that He is is One who punishes us. We know perfectly well that we are the ones who punish ourselves by the consequences of our negative choices. Only the Greatest Love of all is willing to carry the burdens of our transgressions against the goodness He gives to life.

In the following chapters of his messages the Prophet tells us more metaphors about our estrangement from God (the hidden linen girdle, the vessel filled with wine), the upcoming captivity in Babylon and the drought in the land, the wrath as jealousy of God because of Israel's transgressions including the desecration of the Sabbath, and the redeeming sweet metaphor of the potter, "O house of Israel, cannot I do with you as this potter? said the Lord. Behold, as the clay in the potter's hand, so are you in My hand, O house of Israel." (18:6) to make us aware that He is our Creator, that all we are and have belong to Him, hence ultimately live according to His Love for us. More admonitions against idolatry and the corruption of kings are brought amid prophecies announcing the destruction of Jerusalem and the consequent exile, which make Jeremiah regret his assignment as a Prophet of doom. These chapters (13 through 30) precede the message of Redemption with the return of the captives to their land.

"Alas! for that day is great, so that none is like it; and it is a time of trouble unto Jacob, but out of it shall he be saved. And it shall come to pass in that day, said the Lord of hosts, that I will break his yoke from off your neck, and will burst your bands; and strangers shall no more make him their bondman. But they shall serve the Lord their God, and David their king, whom I will raise up unto them." (30:7-9)

Indeed a great and unique day when we see in our consciousness and surroundings the vanishing of all forms of evil. The day when we leave behind forever the seduction of ego's fantasies and illusions to embrace Love's ways and attributes as our Essence and true identity. The day when we abandon forever thousands of years of misery to enter into the beginning of eternal life guided exclusively by God's Love into endless dimensions where our only purpose will be the knowledge of the Creator.

"(...) I will cause them to walk by rivers of waters, in a straight way wherein they shall not stumble; for I am become a father to Israel, and Ephraim is My firstborn. (...) For the Lord has ransomed Jacob, and He redeemed him from the hand of him that is stronger than he. (...) And they shall come and sing in the height of Zion, and shall flow unto the goodness of the Lord (...). (...)  and My people shall be satisfied with My goodness, said the Lord." (31:8, 10, 11, 13)

We don't have to wait for the Jewish prophecies to be fully manifest. We have to manifest them by initiating our own entrance into the Final Redemption, embracing the goodness of God by which He created us. We are made by His goodness we are destined to be and manifest through Love's ways and attributes. Let Love be the teacher, the guide, the intention, the motivation, the reason and the purpose in all we discern, think, feel, speak and create in the here and now of life as the goodness God wants us to live. 

This is the river of waters where we don't stumble because we are taken by the hand of our Father who redeems us. We are His firstborn with whom He sealed His Covenant. Then we shall sing in the height of Zion, the summit of the awareness of our permanent connection with the goodness of God, His Love.

The Messianic Consciousness in Jewish Prophecy (XIX) Jeremiah

In order to fully assimilate the Messianic Consciousness as the premise for the Final Redemption, we have to understand key fundamental principles the Hebrew Bible teaches us. God created us in His image and likeness; we and all the Creation emanate from God's Love and are sustained by Him; our Essence and true identity come from God's Love; we are destined to be and manifest Love as the material manifestation of God's Love; He has a Plan for His Creation as a result of His Love for it; in His Love, God endowed humankind with free will for us to know our Essence and identity in order to know Him; God created evil to enable free will and become aware that evil exists only as a reference to choose goodness.

As we reflect on these principles we come to the easy conclusion that everything we discern, think, feel, say and do are based on free will. Hence the Messianic Consciousness and the Final Redemption depend on the choices we make. In this context, we have to choose in order to live by what we chose. The Torah tells us that the Redemption from slavery in Egypt was the result of the children of Israel's crying out loud to God. They remembered Him, and He responded to their call. From this Chassidic Sages teach that the Redemption from Egypt came from above, and the Final Redemption will come from bellow. We must understand this as a dynamic process. God hears if we speak to Him, and also responds when we cry out to Him. This is the real "primal scream". We call out to our Creator since the moment we take our first breath in the material world.

"For of old time I have broken your yoke, and burst your bands, and you said: 'I will not transgress'; upon every high hill and under every leafy tree you did recline, playing the harlot." (Jeremiah 2:20) "Withhold your foot from being unshod, and your throat from thirst; but you said: 'There is no hope; no, for I have loved strangers, and after them will I go'." (2:25)

Speaking of choices, the Prophet calls our attention regarding free will. God reminds us through him that He gave us free will, because that is the key to connect to Him. The "problem" is how we handle free will. Here we have to reflect on our Essence and true identity. This one is destined to rule and guide free will. At this point we realize that our freedom lies on Love as the material manifestation of God's Love, from where we all came. Thus we assimilate that Love is its own cause and effect, the paradigm of our existence. We are here because of Love and for Love. Real freedom is living in Love's ways and attributes. Therefore we exercise our free will by choosing Love as the motivation and the intention in order to see Love as its effect. All the Jewish Prophets make us aware of the negative choices we make, and their cause and effect in our consciousness.

"If you will return, O Israel, said the Lord, return unto Me; and if you will put away your detestable things out of My sight, and will not waver; and will swear: 'As the Lord lives' in truth, in justice, and in righteousness; then shall the nations bless themselves by Him, and in Him shall they glorify. For thus said the Lord to the men of Judah and to Jerusalem: break up for you a fallow ground, and sow not among thorns." (4:1-3)

As we mentioned above, the dynamics of human consciousness is based on free will. This means we have to choose the path to the Final Redemption by assimilating the Messianic Consciousness, in which Love guides and directs all aspects, facets and dimensions of life. We kiss goodbye ego's desire for material fantasies and illusions, and embrace the truth, justice and righteousness of Love's ways and attributes, the blessings of God's Love by which we glorify Him. These are the fertile fields where there are no thorns. We are not going to be redeemed by God's Love if we do not choose back to Love. As long as we remain living with and in the negative trends of consciousness, Redemption will be pure wishful thinking.

"O Jerusalem, wash your heart from wickedness, that you may be redeemed. How long shall your baleful thoughts lodge within you?" (4:14) "For My people is foolish, they know Me not; they are sottish children, and they have no understanding; they are wise to do evil, but to do good they have no knowledge." (4:22)

The admonitions and warnings continue in the messages of the Prophet, as a reiteration process to make us fully aware of what we do with our free will. Here we realize that our choices are directly proportional to our knowledge of God. The less we know Him, the less we are connected to Him. Let's remind ourselves that the knowledge of God leads us to know our Essence and identity, for what we are and have come from Him. The more we know Him, the more we know who we are and for what are we here.

"Thus said the Lord: Let not the wise man glorify in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glorify in his might, let not the rich man glorify in his riches. But let him that glorifies glorify in this, that he understands and knows Me, that I am the Lord who exercises loving kindness, justice, and righteousness in the Earth; for in these things I delight, said the Lord." (9:22-23)

God's Love is our glory and delight. In His ways and attributes we delight, for they are our freedom and fulfillment. These verses make us understand what our Sages meant when they ask who is rich. We see here that it's not about wisdom, might or material possessions, but our knowledge of the Creator. In this knowledge we realize that true richness is our connection with Him.

"O Lord, correct me, but in measure; not in Your anger, lest You diminish me. Pour out Your wrath upon the nations that know You not, and upon the families that call not on Your Name; for they have devoured Jacob, yea, they have devoured him and consumed him, and have laid waste his habitation." (10:24-25)

Hence in true humbleness we ask Him to guide us in the path He promised for us. At this point we have learned that the nations, as the negative trends in consciousness, are the cause of our separation from Him, His ways and attributes, which make our free will wise and safeguard our bond with Him. The Prophet emulates here King David's words: 

"Save us, O Lord our God, and gather us from among the nations, that we may give thanks unto Your holy Name, that we may glorify in Your praise. Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, from everlasting even to everlasting, and let all the people say: 'Amen'. Praise the Lord." (Psalms 106:47-48)

The Messianic Consciousness in Jewish Prophecy (XVIII) Jeremiah

The most persecuted, humiliated and oppressed of all Jewish Prophets was Jeremiah. Not just because he was the messenger of God's words for Israel and the nations, but because he told the truth. The irony of this is that being God's speaker and telling the Truth are the same. We know that God reveals to us attributes that manifest His Love for His Creation: "And the Lord passed by before him [Moses], and proclaimed: 'The Lord, the Lord, God compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abundant in loving kindness and truth (...)'." (Exodus 34:6) Hence our Sages teach that these attributes correspond to some of the Names of God, and Truth is one of them.

It's not easy to live with the truth, which means to live by and for it. This is the precious heritage of our Jewish identity that the Torah bestows on us. We have said that being the image and likeness of our Creator means being and manifesting His ways and attributes. We are compassionate because He is compassionate, we are kind and loving because He is abundant in loving kindness, we are graceful because He is gracious, we live in truth because He is the One and only Truth.

These are some of the reasons that Israel has been the most persecuted of all peoples on Earth. We live by and for the Truth that is God's will for the material world and beyond. Jeremiah's life reminds us who we are, what we live for, and what we die for. The encompassing definition of this is the goodness God wants us to live, enjoy and celebrate at all times. What and who are the enemies of this simple and yet comprising purpose? Who wants to obliterate and destroy goodness? Who can live without goodness as the expression of Love's ways and attributes as the material manifestation of God's Love? What can be against our Essence and true identity, with its freedom, expansion, wholeness, abundance and plenitude as gifts from God's Love? The answers to these questions are the negative trends of human consciousness we call here ego's fantasies and illusions. These are the idols and enemies of the Truth we are and are meant to live and manifest.

"Before I formed you in the belly I knew you, and before you came forth out of the womb I sanctified you; I have appointed you a prophet unto the nations." (Jeremiah 1:5)

In this sense, Jeremiah represents Israel. As the inheritors of the Torah, we are the bearers of God's word and will for the material world. Thus we understand that when the Creator speaks to Jeremiah, He is speaking to Israel.

"Then the Lord said to me: 'Out of the north the evil shall break forth upon all the inhabitants of the land. For, lo, I will call all the families of the kingdoms of the north, said. And they shall come, and they shall set every one his throne at the entrance of the gates of Jerusalem, and against all the walls thereof round about, and against all the cities of Judah." (1:14-15)

In our last commentary on Ezekiel's prophecies (on August 11, 2013 in this blog) we said the cardinal points represent traits of our consciousness, and the north symbolizes negative and destructive trends. These are also represented by our left arm, hence "the enemy comes from the north". These are the negative qualities of ego's fantasies and illusions, lower passions and instincts. These are the major threats against the goodness of Love's ways and attributes that rule in the highest level of consciousness, represented by Jerusalem. Chassidic Sages refer to the "gates" of Jerusalem as the openings we have in the upper part of the body, the head. They point out at the threats as the negative seductions we perceive with our open eyes, ears, nose and mouth. Hence we have to guard ourselves from what we see, hear, smell and taste.

This means that we have to keep away from ego's materialistic desires we actually experience through our physical senses, which come from the sinister (the left arm) north.

"Thus said the Lord: what unrighteousness have your fathers found in Me, that they are gone far from Me, and have walked after things of vanity, and became vain?" (2:5) "Has a nation changed its gods, which yet are no gods? But My people has changed its glory for that which does not benefit." (2:11) "For My people have committed two evils: they have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water." (2:13)

The warnings and admonitions against idolatry are fundamental messages of the Torah and the Jewish Prophets, for us to reflect on ego's fantasies and illusions as idols that enslave our free will. We lose our freedom after we get attached, obsessed and addicted to them. These are the vanities that make us vain, the gods that are not gods for which we trade Love's ways and attributes as the sources of goodness from which we benefit. These are the living waters that emanate from God's Love. We trade them for materialistic fantasies, the broken vessels that have no water.

"Your own wickedness shall correct you, and your backsliding shall reprove you: know therefore and see that it is an evil and a bitter thing, that you have forsaken the Lord your God, neither is My fear in you, said the Lord God of hosts." (2:19)

Living in ego's fantasies and illusions sooner or later makes us aware of their true nature. This becomes a learning process through which we end up forced to pursue goodness out of the pain and suffering as the aftermath of such fantasies and illusions. Negativity becomes the prosecutor and the punishment that push us back to the goodness we traded for vanity. This verse comprises what we reiterate time and again. God does not punish our transgressions, we are punished by the consequences of our separation from Him. What can be more evil and bitter than living away from the Truth and Loving kindness from which we came to exist? In this sense the bitterness of evil and wickedness is the exile we suffer far from the Promised Land of Love's ways and attributes, that is also our Redemption.

We have said that the only purpose of evil in all its forms and expressions is to be a reference -- and not an option -- in order for us to choose goodness. We come from goodness and are destined to manifest it in all its forms and expressions as Love's ways and attributes. The Messianic Consciousness is what brings us back to the Essence of who we are, God's Love.