Bechukotai: Our Relationship with the Creator

In previous commentaries in our blog about this portion (Parshat Bechukotai: “Following Love's Ways” on May 2, 2010 and “Choosing Love” on May 15, 2011) we underscored that we are an emanation of God's Love and, such as, Love is our common bond with the Creator. Through this bond we relate to Him and His Creation which is also an emanation of His Love.

The Creator makes this principle clear to Israel in this portion and in other chapters of His Torah.

“If you walk in My statutes and keep My Commandments and perform them (...)” (Leviticus 26:3)

The first ten verses that follow up in Bechukotai (26:4-14) contain some of the blessings we enjoy when God's ways and attributes guide and direct all aspects of our consciousness.

“I will give your rains in their time, the Land will yield its produce, and the tree of the field will give forth its fruit.”

We understand “our” rains also as God's Love manifest in the potential goodness that we can express in our thoughts, emotions, feelings, passions and instincts, including speech and actions as the means to convey Love as our Essence and bond with God.

The natural consequence of this is the goodness that life, which is also the Land, yields as its produce. We have a fruitful and productive life when we work and play in the fields of God's Love.

Our Sages refer to trees as metaphors for knowledge, and the Torah as the most important tree of all with which we sweeten the bitter waters (the negative aspects of material reality as a reflection of the negative aspects of consciousness). Trees also represent beliefs that, if conceived and manifest in Love's ways and attributes, always bear good outcomes.

“Your threshing will last until the vintage, and the vintage will last until the sowing; you will eat your food to satiety, and you will live in security in your Land.”

This explains the transcendence of Love as its own cause and effect, as long as we make it prevail in what we are, have and do. In this permanent awareness we experience and trust Love's attributes as the ways and means to live in goodness as our intended destiny.

We experience and enjoy the greatest security ever in this destiny as God's purpose for us in the material world. We have said many times that peace, abundance, prosperity, happiness, and all positive traits and qualities are the ways, means, attributes and effects of Love. As we live by, in, with and for them there is nothing that can be against us, because in them there is no room for opposite attributes.

In this broader sense we understand the principle that Love does not coexist with anything different from its ways and attributes, because these are directed by their inherent ethics.

“And I will grant peace in the Land, and you will lie down with no one to frighten [you]; I will remove wild beasts from the Land, and no army will pass through your Land (...)”

The righteousness of Love does not allow anything negative as the effect of its ways and attributes.

Wickedness and negative traits are the wild beasts that threaten Love's qualities and, no matter how harmful they might be, Love always prevails and transcends as our true Essence and identity.

This is why we call here “fantasies and illusions” ego's negative desires, because that is what they are. They all are temporary and never transcend in our lives, but let's be mindful about negativity as a reference and not a choice for us.

Some people experience sadness, depression, frustration, anger, rage, greed, lust, cruelty, indolence and other negative traits as permanent residents in all levels of their consciousness, and indeed they make them “transcend” in their lives by becoming addicted to them. They truly are part of their lives and are mainly their references and choices to relate with others and their surroundings.

This is what the daily news refer to as wars, crimes, conflicts, robberies, assaults, rapes, kidnappings, scams, embezzlement, fraud, cheating, intimidation, racism, xenophobia, and even things that may sound positive as rebellions, revolutions and uprisings.

These are not positive as long as they are driven by negative motivations. What would be positive in the so called “Arab spring” if behind it there are the nefarious purposes of Islamic fundamentalism? As long as they are motivated by their hatred and total disrespect for human dignity and integrity, they remain puppets of the delusional nature of ego's negative fantasies. Love does not coexists with such a thing!

The purpose and destiny of Love as our true identity is to protect us from the potential harm of the negative aspects of consciousness. As long as Love guides and directs all dimensions of consciousness, nothing can harm us because Love is our strength and armor.

“You will pursue your enemies, and they will fall by the sword before you. Five of you will pursue a hundred, and a hundred of you will pursue ten thousand, and your enemies will fall by the sword before you.”

We experienced these words in our wars in 1967 and 1973, when the small army of Israel defeated the combined armies of several Arab nations.

We prevailed and will prevail because we honor the destiny that the Creator wants for Israel, and the first eleven verses of this Torah portion clearly illustrates our destiny, because it is the cause and effect of our Covenant with God.

“I will turn towards you, and I will make you fruitful and increase you, and I will set up My Covenant with you.”

God reminds us again that His Love, from which our Love is nurtured, sustains us in the goodness we harvest when we walk in His ways.

These previous verses are the premise for God's permanent Presence in our lives.

“And I will place My dwelling in your midst, and My Spirit will not reject you (...)”

As we have said many times, His dwelling is the Sanctuary (the Temple of Jerusalem) which is also built by Him in the highest levels of our consciousness, and from it we realize the full and complete awareness of our connection with Him. In this awareness we indeed know that He dwells in us.

“I will walk among you and be your God, and you will be My people.”

We must understand that this connection is the purpose and destiny that He wants for us as His people, and the ultimate reason of our freedom from the materialistic aspects of human consciousness.

“I am the Lord, your God, who took you out of the land of Egypt from being slaves to them; and I broke the pegs of your yoke and led you upright.”

Only the greatest Love of all, God's Love, liberates us from what does not allow us to live and enjoy Love's ways and attributes as the means to remove the burdens of ego's fantasies and illusions, and walk upright in the endless freedom and happiness that God's Love gives us as our true Essence, identity and destiny.

The rest of the portion are the negative outcomes that we suffer after choosing ego's fantasies and illusions instead of Love's ways and attributes. As we separate from our true Essence, we enter the realm of the negative aspects of consciousness.

The Torah reminds us constantly about the blessings and the curses for us to choose, and the choice is ours. Let's choose the blessings.

Parshat Bechukotai: Following God's Ways

The fact that this portion starts with the conditional if makes us reflect about who is putting conditions in our relation with the Creator.

"If you follow My statutes (bechukotai), and observe My commandments, and perform them" (Leviticus 26:3)

Semantically we can conclude that God conditions His love to us but in reality we, with the free will He gave us, are who act under the conditions of doing what is right or not.

If we fully assimilate that God's love for His creation is truly unconditional because He lets us choose the conditions, then we can understand that He gives us the choice to either follow our material individualistic desires or His ways and attributes.

Love is the choice for being as abundant as His rains, the produce of His land, the fruit of His tree; and these also are our threshing, our vintage, and our food to eat to satiety. Love is our security and our peace in God's love, because love is our land in which nothing frightens us.

Our Creator gives us the strength to remove the wild beasts, the enemies and their swords before us, because our covenant with Him increases us and makes us fruitful, as it is written in this portion (26:4-9).

Love renews and revives our lives when we let God dwell in our midst, because when we embrace Him and walk with Him, He never rejects us (26:10-11).

"I will walk among you and be your God, and you will be My people." (26:12)

God's love liberates us from the slavery of lower thoughts, emotions, passions, desires and instincts.

"(...) and I broke the pegs of your yoke and led you upright." (26:13)

God's love is the sole nurturer and sustains all His creation. We must realize this truth since the very moment when we were born. In this awareness we must realize that we exist for the sake of love. Hence love is the choice we must be compelled to make every moment of our lives, instead of ego's illusion that being self-centered is the drive that gives sense to life in the material world.

God's love pervades and transcends all creation, in contrast to the ephemeral nature of human illusions. Ego's illusions deny the ways and attributes of love and, when we choose them as the idols they are, we become the victims of their outcome. The words of the Torah regarding this choice are loud and clear, not as a curse but as a direct result of the choices we make.

It sounds that God's love is "against" us when we do not choose His ways, but let's be aware that our choices have consequences. We don't have to label them necessarily as love's "punishments", but as the direct result of our actions.

We certainly know that love does not punish because transgressions contain their own punishment. The moment we abandon love, anything different than love await us (26:14-43). Therefore we can't blame it on God's love because is unconditional as He is.

"(…) despite all this, while they are in the land of their enemies, I will not despise them nor will I reject them to annihilate them; thereby breaking My covenant that is with them, because I am the Lord their God." (26:44)

Yes, because God is our creator and sustenance.

After these divine warnings of the consequences of separating our lives from God's love, there are more commandments to make us aware that our peace and plenitude in the material reality depend on our total commitment to our oneness with Him, as our offering to Him.

"However, anything that a man devotes to the Lord from any of his property whether a person, an animal, or part of his inherited field shall not be sold, nor shall it be redeemed, [because] all devoted things are holy of hollies to the Lord." (27:28)

In this sense, every personal trait, quality, talent and acquired knowledge as an individual possession must be devoted to God's ways and attributes, and not sold o given to anything different simply because they are gifts from the Creator and therefore sacred to Him.

Love, as a material manifestation of God's love, is our true essence and identity, and when we choose love all fantasies disappear, as the prophet reminds us in the haftarah that accompanies this parshah.

"O Lord, who are my power and my strength and my refuge in the day of trouble, to You nations will come from the ends of the Earth to say, 'Only lies have our fathers handed down to us, emptiness in which there is nothing of any avail! Can a man make gods for himself, and they are no gods?" (Jeremiah 16:19-20)

God's love is our power and strength because love is our life, and love tells ego's fantasies and illusions (the "nations") the lies and emptiness they are, in contrast to the truth that love is.

We create our own fantasies and we who turn them into gods, and it is only up to us to return to love's ways to free us again from them.

"Therefore, behold I let them know; at this time I will let them know My power and My might, and they shall know that My name is the Lord." (16:21)

Parshat Bechukotai: Choosing Love as our Identity

"If you walk in My statutes (...)" (Leviticus 26:3)

Our sages say in the Talmud (Avodah Zarah 5a) that we have to understand that the word if is not meant to be taken as conditional but as a plea from God.

In the context of "in My statutes" (bechukotai) they represent what makes us God's image and likeness, also part of Him. Here we understand this as God's love. This is what unites us to Him as our common bond with Him, and it is our choice to exercise this sacred identity.

These statutes are God’s ways and attributes we can be fully aware of when we elevate our consciousness to that primordial principle. The effects for being and doing His ways and attributes are His blessings.

"And the trees of the field shall yield their fruit." (26:3)

Rashi understands this verse as a divine promise for the future in Messianic times, saying that then "every species of trees will bear edible fruit". The question is when this promise is fulfilled.

Everything seems to be conditional in this material world except for the divine essence that created it and sustains it. We can see it clearly in nature: the air, the rain, the sun and the earth don't impose conditions for us in order to benefit from them. This is how God's love works, hence we have to follow His ways. The rest is conditional in this world, and it is us who impose the conditions, usually pursuing personal interest or individual convenience rather than the collective well being, including us.

In a deeper sense this verse means that when we are and manifest love as our true essence and identity in every aspect of consciousness, our thoughts, emotions, feelings, passions and instincts will bear its fruits as goodness in everything they manifest.

We already said that love is the cause and the effect, and this is the inner meaning of the verse. Therefore the only condition, the phrase "if you do it" implies that it's up to us to return to our true essence and identity, and not up to God. When we make the choice we allow the divine promise to be fulfilled here and now, then God's redeeming love will manifest with all might and power with His blessings (26:4-13).

"And I will walk among you, and will be your God, and you shall be My people." (26:11)

The portion immediately states the conditional effects of choosing ego's agenda and rejecting love as our true identity (26:14-41, 43). Though these consequences are detailed as negative actions apparently "imposed" to us by our Creator for not following His commandments, they are the obvious results of separating ourselves from His ways. The Torah makes this clear.

"(…) and they shall be paid the punishment of their iniquity (…)" (26:43)

Transgressions are our choice, not God's. Interestingly in verse 42, although among the "curses", the following is not one of them.

"Then will I remember My covenant with Jacob, and also My Covenant with Isaac, and also My covenant with Abraham will I remember, and I will remember the land."

And continues…

"And yet for all that, when they are in the land of their enemies I will not reject them, neither will I abhor them, to destroy them utterly, and to break My covenant with them; for I am the Lord their God."

This again clearly shows that God's love never has and will never be separated from us because He created us and sustains us, in spite of our choice to separate from Him. Love is our bond with God as our covenant, just because He is our Creator.

The rest of the portion, which is the final chapter of the book of Leviticus, ends with details that represent our full and complete commitment to God, His ways and attributes in how we relate to Him and our fellow man.

This chapter mentions in a symbolic way that we can't change our intention and willingness to do what is sacred, what is right and proper when we offer our sacrifices, our offerings to become the means to fulfill God's ways and attributes.