Ki Teitzei: God's Love in Our Consciousness

“If you go out to war against your enemies, and the Lord your God, will deliver them into your hands (...)” (Deuteronomy 21:10)

This verse contains two statements. The first one is when we go out to confront our enemies, and the second tells us that God is who defeats them. Indeed we exit the peace and balance of our consciousness in order to “go out” to face issues, situations and people that in one way or another disturb our peace and balance. This seems to be the predicament of our lives on a daily basis amid ego's fantasies and illusions in the material world.

We experience separation and isolation from a reality that seems to exist on the grounds of culture, ideology, fashion, and social patterns that demand from us everything we can be, have and do, but not from who we really are. It's called consumer society in which we live to think, feel, speak and act based on its trends and not on our true essence and identity.

The more you have, the more you are respected; the more you act out of fashion's trends, the more you are emulated; the more unreal you are, the more admired you are. These fantasies and illusions, derived from ego's materialistic desires, are the inner and outer enemies that we must to fight as we go out into the world.

In this process the only reality that exists, God's Love as our true essence, fights our wars against the illusions we deal with every moment, day in and day out. God delivers our enemies as long as He dwells with us, within our consciousness, and the only way to have Him with us is by creating a space for Him.

This place is named Jerusalem and its Temple, as the highest awareness of our connection with God. This is why we pray daily asking Him to rebuild Jerusalem because in this awareness lies our Redemption from the negativity we have been trapped for a long, long time.

Our Sages say that “God doesn't dwell with the proud because he is full of himself”, and he is not willing to make room for God neither in his consciousness or his heart. This means that when one doesn't want to embrace His ways and attributes, he rather lives in ego's illusions.

God is sacred and He wants us to be sacred to Him, so He may dwell in us to fight our enemies.

“For the Lord, your God, goes along in the midst of your camp, to rescue you and to deliver your enemies before you. [Therefore] your camp shall be holy, so that He should not see anything unseemly among you and would turn away from you.” (23:15)

Let's be mindful that God is not separated from us, we separate from Him; and it's up to us to be the sacred people He wants us to be. Let's also be aware that our choice benefits us, not Him. God is the blessing in the “camp” of our life, and defeats the curse we find in the negative aspects of consciousness as well as in the material reality.

Our mystic Sages say that we are in the field of life to reveal the concealed Divine Presence in the world. This means that first we have to reveal Him in our own consciousness. There is no other way. We find our Creator in what is sacred for Him in us, because in His ways and attributes we are able to embrace the awareness of His Love as our Essence and identity.

We learn to know Him through His Torah, which “its ways are ways of pleasantness, and all its paths are peace.” (Proverbs 3:17) and Torah's paths are God's paths. The Torah shows us how He relates with us and His Creation, and we learn that through our daily Torah study in order to be able to confront the darkness of material illusions (see our previous commentaries on Parshat Ki Teitzei: “The Ethics of Love” of August 14, 2010 and “Ethics in Love's Ways and Attributes” of September 4, 2011).

We already know that Love does not coexist with anything different from its ways and attributes, and this is the same context when we said above that God does not dwell with the proud. First we must remove what is useless in terms of beliefs, thoughts, desires, emotions, feelings, passion and instinct, including what makes us doubt and feel weak in our true purpose in life.

There are times in which we give more credit to what separates us and isolates us than the opposite. We rather trust and bend to lack in ego's fantasies and illusions than embracing the abundance of Love's attributes as our real fulfillment and true happiness.

“[Therefore,] it will be, when the Lord your God grants you respite from all your enemies around [you] in the land which the Lord, your God, gives to you as an inheritance to possess, that you shall obliterate the remembrance of Amalek from beneath the Heavens. You shall not forget!” (Deuteronomy 25:19)

Amalek represents not only doubt, uncertainty and hesitation regarding choosing what is good and right for us. He also represents all that is contrary to what is good and right. This is why we are strongly commanded to erase him completely from the world, by remembering every day what he did to our ancestors in their way out of Egypt. In other words, we have to keep on guard constantly against all that opposes Love's ways and attributes.

Amalek represents cruelty, abuse, humiliation, mockery and oppression against the weak.

“How he fell upon you on the way and massacred your stragglers, all those who trailed after you when you were faint and spent, and he did not fear God.” (25:18)

Hence we have to take this Commandment one step further by applying it to our own consciousness, because these negative and destructive traits are latent in our discernment, thought, emotions, feelings, passions and instincts.

Ego's selfishness can be ruthless with our compassion, destructive with our kindness, indifferent with our good values and principles, and indolence can eliminate positive endeavors. In this Commandment the Creator reminds us to be strong in who we truly are, and protect ourselves with the blessing of Love and goodness which are our common bond with His Love and goodness.

Thus He will be with us fighting our enemies to settle us permanently in His Promised Land, in the ways of pleasantness and peace.

“For your Master is your Maker, the Lord of Hosts is His Name, and your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel, shall be called the God of all the Earth. (…) 'For the mountains shall depart and the hills totter, but My loving kindness shall not depart from you, neither shall the Covenant of My peace totter,' says the Lord who has compassion on you.” (Isaiah 54:5, 10)

Parshat Ki Teitzei: Ethics of Love's Ways and Attributes

"When you go out to war on your enemies, the Lord your God shall deliver them into your hands." (Deuteronomy 21:10)

This verse contains the assurance that when love's ways and attributes confront ego's materialistic illusions, love as the attitude and altitude from which we approach the pain, and suffering as their result, God delivers them in our hands.

In our hands, because in the same way that our negative behavior takes our hands to do and experience harmful thoughts, hurtful emotions and destructive passions, also with our hands we rectify and enhance our deeds and actions under the guidance of love's attributes.

As we mention often, love is the catalyst to transform and refine the negative traits, conceptions and habits when we live under ego's rule.

This transformation starts when we are able to see the potential goodness, righteousness and virtues of our thoughts, emotions, feelings, passions and instincts; the beauty we can embrace when we live in love's ways.

"If you see among the captives a beautiful woman, and you desire her (…)" (21:11)

The same emotions, feelings, passions and instincts we experience negatively such as depression, sadness, anger, greed, indolence, etc. we also can experience the opposite when love fills them all.

We start doing it with our own life, and once we are strengthened with the complete awareness of God's love in our consciousness, we help those in our immediate surroundings, our loved ones including our fellow Jews.

"You shall not see your brother's ox or sheep straying, and ignore them. [Rather,] You shall return them to your brother." (22:1)

We must not be indifferent to our brother's ego's lower desires and passions (their strayed "ox" and "sheep").

Regarding the issue of gender identity, we are by birth endowed with two polarities, male and female, that we are summoned to develop and direct under God's will in His Torah, the commandments of God's love for Israel.

These two polarities must coexist in a working and purposeful harmony. We know that we all strive to balance them the best way we can in order to live individually as well as collectively in harmony. Both polarities, as well as the rest of our levels and dimensions of consciousness, must be guided and directed by love's ways and attributes and not to be led strayed by ego's fantasies and illusions.

Masculine and feminine are the two fundamental principles of material creation, and we have to "dress" them with their own respective inherent traits and qualities, in order to cultivate them as the enhancing complementing energies that keep the balance of our material existence.

"A man's attire shall not be on a woman, nor may a man wear a woman's garment because whoever does these [things] is detestable to the Lord, your God." (22:5)

The ethical lessons continue in this portion, and compassion among them as one of the essential ways and attributes of love.

"You shall send away the mother, and [then] you may take the young for yourself, in order that it should be good for you, and you should lengthen your days." (22:7)

Also to remark that the commandments (the rational and the supra-rational as well) are given for us to refine and enhance our individual and collective lives, as ethical and moral principles that ensure a life dedicated to justice, peace, and happiness for all, and not simply to please the Creator. We are reminded of this.

"If you sin, how have you affected Him? If your transgressions multiply, what do you do to Him? If you are righteous, what do you give Him? What can He possible receive from your hand? (Job 35:6-7)

Our sages say that even if (God forbid!) He is not with us, we have to live by the truth of justice and righteousness for our own individual and collective sake. In this sense, life is a matter of ethics in order to coexist and survive as loving human beings and not as wild beasts.

We are talking about the ethics of love's ways and attributes, that we must preserve and protect by being and manifesting love as our identity.

"When you build a new house, you shall make a guardrail for your roof, so that you shall not cause blood [to be spilled] in your house, that the one who falls should fall from it [the roof]." (Deuteronomy 22:8)

In the process of building love's values in our consciousness (the house) we have to make them prevail in every aspect of what we are, have and do, thus we guard and protect ourselves from falling down into negative illusions that end up destroying the foundations of love's ways and attributes by letting illusions take over our consciousness, and bringing disgrace to what we consider the most cherished and sacred asset of all.

We must walk in the ways of the blessings of love, God's love in our consciousness, and separate from the curses of a loveless life represented by Canaanite nations.

"But the Lord, your God, did not want to listen to Balaam. So the Lord, your God, transformed the curse into a blessing for you, because the Lord, your God, loves you." (23:6)

As we already know, His love is with us as long as we allow Him in all aspects of consciousness.

"For the Lord, your God, goes along in the midst of your camp, to rescue you and to deliver your enemies before you. [Therefore,] Your camp shall be holy, so that He should not see anything unseemly among you and would turn away from you."(23:15)

Hence selling our awareness of love to materialistic illusions is how we separate from the Creator.

This portion with its many commandments ends reminding us to destroy the memory, the thought, the feeling and the emotion of doubt, uncertainty and hesitation regarding the only true choice of all that is living in love's ways and attributes.

"[Therefore,] it will be, when the Lord your God grants you respite from all your enemies around [you] in the land which the Lord, your God, gives to you as an inheritance to possess, that you shall obliterate the remembrance of Amalek from beneath the heavens. You shall not forget!" (25:19)

Let's be aware always that God is our Creator, and His love is our essence and identity for which we have to live every moment. Love is what we are made of, love is who we are, and love is what we have to manifest.

Ego's fantasies are ephemeral and they abandon us in their illusion, while love's ways always remain and are waiting for us to return to them.

Parshat Ki Teitzei: The Ethics of God's Love

“When you go out (ki teitzei) to battle against your enemies and the Lord your God delivers them into your hands.” (Deuteronomy 21:10)

This verse makes us reflect on the fact that in order to claim and possess the promised land we have to defeat our enemies. If they threaten to destroy us, we must subjugate them in order to make them cooperate in the tasks that await us once we occupy the Land. As we can see, there are enemies we must eradicate completely and enemies that we must subdue and redirect them to serve our mission and purpose in life.

Our sages say that a wild ox can either build or destroy a field, and the difference between the two is a yoke. The wild ox typically represents ego, the field is life and the world, and the yoke is Torah’s commandments which we call here the ways and attributes of God’s love. But we have a multidimensional consciousness that encompasses something more than just ego.

Intellect, mind, emotions, passions, and instincts also need to be directed and guided under the yoke of love. Here we call them the empty vessels waiting to be filled with the ways and attributes of God’s love, which are love’s own ethics.

This means that when we confront the world and its material illusions, we have to do it through love’s ways and attributes because through them we are connected to God’s love, the source that created us and sustains us.

In this context God delivers our enemies into our hands. The entire Torah and Hebrew scriptures that define Judaism are all about ethics, because ethics reflects the ways and attributes of our Creator. Our sages say that God overlooks our sins against Him but not the sins against our fellow man, by quoting:

“If you sin, how have you affected Him? If your transgressions multiply, what do you do to Him? If you are righteous, what do you give Him? What can He possibly receive from your hand?” (Job 35:6-7)

In the material world we fulfill His will by the ways we relate with each other and the whole Creation.

In this portion we read many commandments related to how we approach our enemies and our fellow man.

“You shall not see your brother's ox or his sheep driven away, and hide yourself from them; you shall surely bring them back onto your brother.” (Deuteronomy 22:1-2)

This clearly refers not only to protect our brother’s material possessions but also our responsibility to make him aware of the consequences of his uncaring attitude by letting his desires and emotions go out of control.

“You shall not plow with an ox and an ass together. You shall not wear a mingled stuff, wool and linen together.” (22:10-11)

We must not mix ego and humbleness, simply because they don’t mix.

As we said earlier, there are particular traits and qualities that comprise our consciousness, and our duty is to fill them all with love’s ways and attributes as the only means to make them work in harmony.

Good and positive thoughts are the best guides to our emotions; and joy, excitement and happiness are the best motivation to do good deeds through speech and action. In anything we conceive, think, feel, speak and act we must only use the right seeds (thoughts), the right animals (traits), and the right garments (attitudes).

The ethics of love means not mixing with anything different from its ways and attributes. In this sense there is no chance to give in to ego’s fantasies and illusions.

“You shall not seek their peace or their prosperity all your days forever.” (23:7)

“(...) because the Lord your God walks in the midst of your camp to deliver you, and to give up your enemies before you; therefore shall your camp be Holy that He sees no unseemly thing in you, and turn away from you.” (23:15)

Let’s be aware that it is us who turn away from God with our wrong choices, because He never abandons us. We are also reminded about the effects of negative talk.

“Remember what the Lord your God did to Miriam, by the way as you came forth out of Egypt.” (24:9)

The portion ends with more ethical teachings.

“You shall not have in your house diverse measures, a great and a small. A perfect and just weight shall you have; a perfect and just measure shall you have; that your days may be long upon the land which the Lord your God gives you.” (25:14-15)

Love doesn’t allow double standards because love is its perfect and just measure, the essence that sustains us and prolongs our days in the life what God gives us. Love is the true measure of all things because God’s love creates and sustains all things. This is the ethics of love.