Tazria-Metzora: Cleaning our Consciousness with God's Love

Sometimes Pesach falls between parshat Shemini and parshat Tazria-Metzora and their contents are related to the Exodus from Egypt. Their specific references are about cleanliness and uncleanliness, and at the end of Shemini we read, “For I am the Lord who has brought you up from the land of Egypt to be your God. Thus, you shall be holy, because I am holy.” (Leviticus 11:45).

The Creator takes us out of Egypt (which represents the negative traits and qualities in our consciousness as the unclean ways to face the material world) as a premise for Him and for us to be our God.

While we are under the dominion of negative beliefs, thoughts, emotions, feelings and passions, we live without God. He is the means to be aware of our true essence and identity. In other words, there is no love or its ways and attributes amid negative circumstances, because love does not dwell with anything different or opposite to its ways.

The children of Israel were aware that their forefathers knew that there was one God with whom they were closely related, yet under the oppression by the worse traits in human consciousness they doubted that their forefathers' God existed at all. If we put ourselves in their shoes, neither we would believe that there is a compassionate, benevolent and loving God.

We experience such feeling when we go through difficult circumstances in our efforts to survive and fulfill our basic needs amid increasingly hostile and adverse conditions.

In the case of our ancestors, they were completely dependent on the Egyptians for their survival and knew no other land to go. Hence, their deliverance depended exclusively from the God of their forefathers, and it happened because of Him. God sent them to Egypt and He took them out of there as part of His plan for Israel.

The circumstances now are different because we are under the dominion of our own material illusions that keep us separate from God, because we chose to follow them and not His ways and attributes. Now our deliverance depends on us and not on Him.

Making the choice to return to God implies separating our consciousness from the negative and adverse circumstances that we have created as real in our lives.

It works in the same way of the so called “revolutions” throughout history. People simply get fed up with the status quo, the oppression of the establishment's ideology, as well as social and economic patterns, and cultural trends that dehumanize our consciousness.

In Judaism, the difference between those revolutions and the Final Redemption is that in the latter all evil, wickedness and negativity will be eradicated, and we will be living only for the purpose of knowing God's ways and attributes.

This means that we don't expect it as a sudden unannounced miracle, but as something that we must pursue with all our heart, mind, soul and might. This we do by loving God enough to pursue in all our levels of consciousness love's ways and attributes as material manifestations of God's love. Then we will make possible the miracle of revealing His presence in the world, and turn it into a place for Him to dwell among us.

Our ancestors in Egypt had to leave the uncleanliness of the negative traits of consciousness in order to have God, so they could become holy because He is holy. Again, love as holiness does not cohabit with anything different to its ways and attributes.

This is why we must reflect on what is clean and unclean to tell the difference between love's qualities and ego's fantasies and illusions (see our commentaries on Parshat Tazria: “Speak Love” of April 3, 2010 and “Living in the Pact of Divine Love” of March 27, 2011).

All the Torah's laws regarding individual and collective purity are intended to make us aware of what is clean and the unclean in our consciousness. We have said often that our levels of consciousness are vessels in which we fill our thoughts, emotions, feelings, passions and instincts. They are designed to be empty in order for us to fill them with the positive qualities of love's attributes, and to do that we must first clean them from ego's agenda.

It's not an easy task, considering that we have been filling every aspect of consciousness with the wrong ingredients.

We are what we have in our thoughts, emotions, feelings, passions and instincts, and we know this. A negative approach is to start by looking in the mirror and ask ourselves if we like what we see or not. What we see in the mirror is only the reflection of the exterior of the vessel, not its content which is what we must evaluate: the ingredients that make who we think we are. Then we begin to make the inventory by identifying right from wrong, positive from negative, true and false, and so on.

It's not a judgmental process but a discerning journey in which we put to the test our free will. Discernment and free will go together in this, because if we are not able to discern we will never be able to properly exercise free will. We need to know first before making choices, and we all are aware of this.

The Torah instructs us to discern about everything because that is the way to acquire knowledge. In other words, we have to get smart before making decisions; and the smartest way to be is by discerning in, with, for and through love's attributes.

Our inner cleanliness is not about reflecting emptiness but by carrying love's ways and means in what we may believe, think, feel, speak and do. Consciousness contains vessels designed to be filled at all times, and we constantly must check if their content is clean or unclean, pleasant or unpleasant, uplifting or degrading, exciting or depressing.

Let's be aware that in love's ways there is no room from anything negative, so there's no such as thing as “it's OK to be sad” or “there's nothing wrong with being angry or upset” because once we fill our vessels with such feelings, they will drive us in their ways. Then don't blame God for it or anyone for our frustrations as the direct outcome of our fantasies and illusions, either be real or imagined.

Some say that the path of righteousness that leads us to real freedom and redemption is straight and narrow, and they are right.

As we follow love's paths, there is no point to look to the sides because the only sides are love's sides. Others say that we have to be constantly vigilant while we walk in those paths, because we can fall again into ego's illusions. Indeed, it's not an easy task but we have no other choice.

As long as we are fully aware of God's love and His goodness, as the moment to moment real experience that they are, we begin to live our own individual redemption. We realize this when we start cleaning who we are and what we have in order to embrace our God, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Israel.

Parshat Metzora: Embracing the Purity of Divine Love

"This shall be the law of the metzora on the day of his purification: He shall be brought to the Priest." (Leviticus 14:2). Our Sages explain that the metzora is a person afflicted by tzaraat, usually translated as leprosy but they describe it a skin condition that appeared as a result of gossip and slander. They conclude that tzaraat was a Divine signal to make the slanderer aware of the gravity of negative talk as a result of haughtiness or arrogance that separates us from the unity that Israel must maintain.

Although in present times we are not afflicted by skin problems due to evil speech, we must be aware of our separation from others when ego's agenda is prevalent in the way we relate to them. The Priest, as the highest awareness of our connection with God, is who brings back the gossiper from is ego trip to the unifying power of Love's ways and attributes. Love is our common Essence that keeps us united as we care for each other, protect each other, and lead each other toward our mission to reveal the Divine Presence in the material world as well as in the entire Creation.

We must go beyond the shallowness of the lower aspects of consciousness and make them subservient of the higher purpose that Love, as our true Essence and identity, requires from us amid the limitations, obstacles and challenges we face in the material reality. We are limited to exist within the boundaries imposed by the laws of nature, the challenges posed by natural disasters, and the obstacles that they may become when our survival and well being are in peril. In this predicament things get worse when we don't act as the care takers of each other. Selfishness destroys the ultimate individual and collective well being that Love compels us to achieve.

We face natural disasters not as individuals but as the collective unity that we must be. We also must be united to overcome the social and economical turmoil caused by tyranny and despotism as two among other destructive expressions of the lower aspects of human consciousness. Repression, discrimination, bigotry, corruption, oppression, and their synonyms derive from arrogance and haughtiness as ego's illusions to feel superior and become a petty god who wants to control not just other people's lives and destiny but also the laws of nature.

The parshah continues with the cleansing and atonement of the slanderer, and later juxtaposes the male seminal discharge with the menstrual period of women as both impure states that need to be ritually cleansed. The common denominator of both seminal discharge and feminine blood discharge is the death of the seeds of potential life. In this sense human life is exalted as the highest expression of Creation, hence it must be valued and respected to the point that losing our potential to generate life (seminal discharge and menstrual discharge) makes us unclean.

There is an implicit lesson to learn from the laws regarding these situations and it is not only about being life but also being bearers of life. We learn from this that we can remain clean and pure before our Creator when we choose the blessings of life over the curses of death, as He commands us. Life is the encompassing principle and vessel of Love's ways and attributes to be manifested in the world, while death is the expression of negative traits derived from ego's materialistic fantasies and illusions.

We become impure and unclean when we deal with any kind of thoughts, ideologies or beliefs that engender negative results that ultimately lead to death as the negation of Love's ways and attributes. Israel is chosen to champion Love as the revealed Divine Presence in the world, and the portion ends with a reminder of this as part of our Covenant with the Creator: "You shall separate the children of Israel from their contamination, and they shall not die as a result of their contamination if they contaminate My Tabernacle that is among them." (15:31).

The Tabernacle represents the permanent awareness of the Divine Presence in our lives as long as we keep ourselves separated from the unclean and impure expressions derived from the death represented by all that can't coexist with Love's ways and attributes. In this portion the Torah reminds us again that arrogance is the root of the negative illusions that ego makes us believe and revere as the idols that pretend to deny the Love of the Creator as the One and only Essence and sustenance of all Creation including us.

Parshat Metzora: Dwelling in Higher Consciousness

In this portion the word kohen (priest) is mentioned 35 times, 32 in chapter 14, and 3 times in chapter 15. Likewise, the phrase “before God” appears 10 times in chapter 14, and 3 times in chapter 15.

Why these words and phrases are repeated in the context of the narrative? We know that when words and phrases are repeated in the Hebrew Scriptures is to remark, highlight and emphasize the message in which they are mentioned. In this case the message is also pointed out in the previous portion Tazria, and expanded with details related to removing “leprosy” from the one who sins by what our sages consider slander and negative judgments against his/her fellow man. The Kli Yakar in particular refers to negative speech, arrogance and stinginess. These last two seem to be the roots of the former.

The high priest, who symbolizes our permanent connection with the Creator, is the one that guides us in the process to bring us back to the awareness of His love. He teaches us to “sacrifice” the negative traits that cause “leprosy”, which threat the spiritual and material well being we achieve when we follow God’s ways and attributes.

“And the high priest who cleanses him shall set the man that is to be cleansed, and with them, before the Lord, at the door of the tent of meeting.” (Leviticus 14:11)

The phrase “and with them” refers to the animal sacrifices to be offered at the entrance of the Tabernacle, meaning that we have to remove negative thoughts and speech from our mind and heart in order to enter in our higher consciousness of God's love. As we have said, we need to remove (cleanse) all aspects of our consciousness in order to turn them into the vessels and chariots of the will of our Creator.

When we speak about our spiritual and material well being, our house (our dwellings) is included. The portion mentions the risks of propagating leprosy in its walls. In the worse circumstances the high priest orders to destroy the whole house and to build it again. The message to keep clean all the aspects of our consciousness "before God" is not only loud and clear in the Torah, but it also encompasses every aspect of our material life.

The repeated presence of our higher consciousness (the high priest mentioned 35 times) as our guide is to reiterate the warning that we must be always cleaved to God's love, and be permanently before Him. Our sages elaborate on the hidden meanings of the text, indicating that the “houses” that the Israelites were about to occupy from the Canaanite peoples, after conquering the Promised Land, are the negative traits we must turn into qualities directed to the service of God.

The midrash tells about the gold hidden by the Amorites in the walls of their houses that was later found when the Israelites turned them down because they were contaminated with leprosy. The hidden message is that when we clear our levels of consciousness from negative traits we find the gold, the light concealed in their darkness.

The next chapter of the portion continues with cleansing instructions regarding the woman’s menstrual period. In this sense, the cleansing involves water as life against death (represented by the blood tainted by the unfertilized ovule).

The temporary separation of man and wife ordered in the Torah teaches us that the closeness and intimacy of both may only be when life and its potentiality for creating new life are present. After all, life is the purpose of all Creation which emanates from God's love that also sustains it and nurtures it.