Va'etchanan: The Lord is our God, the Lord is One

We must conceive our connection and relationship with God as part of Him. This is the main lesson of this portion when we read the most fundamental statement and principle of Judaism, “Hear [understand], O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One” (Deuteronomy 6:4), which also defines our individual and collective identity as Jews.

These are the first words we hear when we are born, and the last words we say and hear when we die. From this identifying statement we understand who we are and our purpose in life.

As long as we are aware of God in every dimension of consciousness, we will be able to live our true Essence and identity that come from Him because we are part of Him. The following verses command us the ways to love the Source of our identity because God's Love determines this identity.

We are commanded to love God with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our might (6:5), which also means with all levels and aspects of consciousness because every dimension of us is also part of the Love of God from which we belong. This is how we understand and assimilate that Love is our common bond with God. These verses are decisive to make us aware of our Essence and identity based on our connection and relationship with God.

They also are closely related to the first two Commandments of the Decalogue also mentioned in this portion prior to the fundamental statement indicated earlier.

“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall not have other gods before Me. You shall not make unto you a graven image, even any manner of likeness, of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth below, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down unto them, nor serve them (...)” (5:6-8)

In these Commandments God also defines His connection with us, Who He is for us, and what He wants from us based on our relationship with Him clearly defined by the His Unity and Oneness. Hence to love Him is to reiterate our common bond with Him. If we do not assimilate this principle, we will never understand the meaning of our Jewish identity as defined above (see our commentaries on Parshat Va'etchanan: “The Oneness of Israel and God's Love” of July 15, 2010 and “Our Bond with God's Love” of July 8, 2011).

Our true freedom depends on God's ways and attributes as the material manifestation of God's Love. Only in this freedom we can know God and fulfill our relationship with Him, opposite to living under the dominion of materialistic fantasies and illusions in which we are captive as our forefathers were in the house of bondage in Egypt.

Forced labor was the order of the day back then to build pyramids for Pharaoh, and forced labor is the order of the day now to sustain fantasies and illusions derived from the exploitation of ego's desires by Consumer Society (the Pharaoh of our times).

Fantasies and illusions that don't see, don't hear, don't smell, and don't taste. Neither they think or move by their own, for they are the idols from the present and from the past. In our Oneness with the Creator we are fully aware that everything comes from Him and is sustained by Him, and nothing else. Thus we realize that He is the One and only reality from which we exist, and there is no other reality.

The Written and Oral Torah, both as one, instructs us how to know God besides telling us that we belong to Him. First we must know who we are as part of His Love, and then we must know how we relate to His ways and His will for us. The second Commandment of the Decalogue warns us about living under the dominion and control of illusions created by ego's desires out of either a false or imposed belief of lack.

There's no lack in our permanent bond with God because He is sufficient for all that He has created.

We live divided and separated when we don't live in the unity of God's ways and attributes in all aspects of consciousness. We are commanded to love God because through Love we are united to His Love, and in this Unity there are no fantasies or illusions of any kind. In this awareness, Love is the only reality and the only purpose of life and in this world. God's Love is His Glory that covers the Earth. We just need to get to this awareness in order to truly know Him.

First we have to let Love's ways and attributes to conduct and guide our discernment and thoughts, beliefs and ideas, feelings and emotions, passions and instincts, speech and actions. This is the beginning to awaken our consciousness to God's Presence in all that He has created. Through Love we reveal His concealed Presence in the world, because God's Love is the means to discover Him in His Creation.

Our Prophets tell us that God dwells in Zion, in the Temple of Jerusalem, and this is the same truth when we declare that the Lord is our God and the Lord is One. God lives in us as long as we realize that He indeed does.

In this sense it is up to us to realize and experience that the Torah shall come from Zion and the word of God from Jerusalem, when we finally choose to enthrone Him in the highest awareness of our connection to Him, which is Zion-Jerusalem. First we must free our consciousness from the chains of materialistic desires and fantasies and return to the freedom that Love is.

Love is the ways and means of our true freedom, and in this freedom we will be able to recognize and embrace God's Love as the Source of our Love and our freedom. This is the meaning and implication of the first and second Commandments, in which our connection and relationship with God is stated.

Let's reflect more deeply in the statement we hear when we are born, and recite at least twice daily. Let's reflect thoroughly in our Essence and true identity. Let's reflect intensely about why God commands us to love Him with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our might.

Parshat Va'etchanan: Our Bond with God's Love

Loving our Creator is the essential commandment to fully understand our relationship with Him, and our oneness with Him, as we realize the most important statement for Israel in the Torah.

"Hear [understand] Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord is One" (Deuteronomy 6:4)

The realization of this statement is our heritage, our identity and the source of all our blessings. We have to reaffirm again this truth as the primordial message of our blog "God's Love", every moment of our lives and we do it by constantly loving Him.

Love is our common bond with the Creator, and this is why we have to be aware of love always.

"And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might." (6:6)

This is not an entirely mystic or spiritual bonding with the Creator, but a very real and concrete experience in the material world, for being and manifesting our true essence and identity are the ways to reveal His presence in us and around us.

The first verses of this portion are an invitation to live such experience.

"And I implored (va'etchanan) the Lord at that time, saying, 'O Lord God, You have begun to show Your servant Your greatness and Your strong hand, for who is [like] God in Heaven or on Earth who can do as Your deeds and Your might?" (3:23-24)

Our true reason to exist in this world is to experience our Creator and His love for all His creation. This happens when we, as part of His oneness, approach Him. Thus in that awareness we realize that we are truly alive.

"And you who cleave to the Lord your God are alive, all of you, today." (4:4)

Today is the permanent time and space of the knowledge that His love is what creates and sustains of our life and everything that exists.

In this awareness we see and experience the blessings of love in who we are, and how we approach life and the material world. Hence, we have to be vigilant against ego's fantasies and illusions as the idols that deny the preeminence of love.

"And you shall watch yourselves very well, for you did not see any image on the day that the Lord spoke to you at Horeb [Sinai] from the midst of the fire." (4:15)

Love does not cohabit with fantasies or illusions, and is the material manifestation of the divine fire that transmutes them, for us to see and live in God's ways and attributes completely free from ego's materialistic approach to life.

This vigilance must be permanent.

"Beware, lest you forget the covenant of the Lord your God, which He made with you, and make for yourselves a graven image, the likeness of anything, which the Lord your God has forbidden you." (4:23)

In this context, we have to reiterate the inherent exclusivity of God's love.

"For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a zealous [exclusive] God." (4:24)

Thus is as the fire that consumes not only materialistic illusions but their negative expressions. Our mystic sages say that instead of fighting darkness we rather bring light to it, because with it we turn darkness into light.

This statement is deeper than we think. Darkness indeed is the necessary condition in order to make the light prevail. If there is no darkness, then what is it to be lighted up? We call darkness the negative conditions and situations we must transform with the fire of love.

This means that we have to add love in order to subtract egotism. In this sense, we do not have to fight or kill our egos but to redeem them from the negative effects of their attachment to lower thoughts, emotions, passions and instincts.

Let's remind ourselves again that our choices either get us closer to God's love or separate us from Him, because He never abandons us. When we disregard love as our true essence and identity we withdraw our consciousness to the realm of potentially negative emotions.

"And the Lord will scatter you among the peoples, and you will remain few in number among the nations to where the Lord will lead you." (4:27)

In the absence of love in our lives, our positive traits and qualities are the minority amid the overwhelming power of lower emotions under ego's desires and control. But as we know, God's love is always present and available because He is the source and sustenance of all.

"And from there you will seek the Lord your God, and you will find Him, if you seek Him with all your heart and with all your soul. When you are distressed, and all these things happen upon you in the end of days, then you will return to the Lord your God and listen to His voice." (4:29-30)

Let's never forget this.

"For the Lord your God is a compassionate God; He will not let you lose or destroy you; neither will He forget the Covenant of your fathers, which He swore to them." (4:31)

This is the covenant of love He gave us as our legacy, our heritage, and our identity for which we live to reveal Him in every dimension of our consciousness and in all His creation.

The haftarah for this portion reaffirms such principle in these two verses.

"And the Glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh together shall see that the mouth of the Lord spoke." (Isaiah 40:5)

"Lift up your eyes on high and see, Who created these, Who takes out their multitudes by number; all of them He calls by name; because of His great might and because He is strong in power, no one is missing." (40:26)

Parshat Va'etchanan: The Oneness of Israel and God's Love

Moses fulfilled his transcendental mission as the zealous vigilant-guide who led the children of Israel from slavery in Egypt to freedom in the promised land. God's love heard the people beseeching for freedom and also heard His loyal servant begging for entering the future land of Israel.

"And I beseeched (va'etchanan) God at that time." (Deuteronomy 3:23)

Moses' attachment to serving God compelled him to implore for more, but his mission was already accomplished. 40 years in Egypt, 40 years in Median, and 40 years in the desert for a total of 120 years of learning and transformation in one single memorable lifetime.

Moses had the exclusive privilege to meet God "face to face", and to surrender to Him completely. Moses' greatest desire was to see God's presence fully revealed in all creation, and he knew that this is possible only when we conquer the nations in Canaan (the lower aspects of consciousness and negative emotions), and settle in the promised land (the plenitude and endless abundance of love's ways and attributes).

The Creator allowed Moses to see it from the distance and, as our Sages say, to hear is to understand and to see is to know. Moses saw and Moses knew… what else did he need after seeing it all? Being part of it after "You, O God, have begun to show Your servant Your greatness." (3:24)

This implies that our true connection with God's love begins as a practical approach to life with the mission to reveal His concealment in the world. The promised land also represents the realized awareness of His love, therefore it is the starting point of living it fully in the material world.

This realization has the power to transform darkness into light, thus revealing love's concealment by materialistic illusions. The greatness of God's love is His revelation in all creation, and we see this greatness when we submit all levels of consciousness to His ways and attributes, His Glory. Thus is the true life.

"And you who cleave to the Lord your God are alive, every one of you, today." (4:4)

Our sages say that today refers to the constant present tense in which we experience the constant sustenance of God's love.

Considering the fact that God's love is always with us because He created us and sustains us, it is up to us being aware of that transcendental truth. Even when we live in the illusions of the material world we have access to Him through the Torah.

"From there you will seek God your God, and you will find Him if you search after Him with all your heart and all your soul." (4:29)

Let's never forget that He is the only Truth.

"There is none else beside Him" (4:35, 39; 5:22)

Maimonides reaffirms this.

"This is the foundation of all foundations, and the pillar of all wisdom: to know that there is the First Being who brings all existences into being; that all existences of Heaven and Earth, and between them, derive their existence only from the Truth of His Being." (Laws of the Fundamentals of Torah 1:1)

Moses continues reiterating the covenant between the Creator and His people, and warning about the consequences of following ego's fantasies and illusions (idolatry) instead of cleaving permanently to Him. Hence he reminds Israel of the Ten Commandments (5:6-17), following His ways, and manifesting His attributes.

"You shall walk in all the way which the Lord your God has commanded you, that you may live; and that it may be well with you, and that you may prolong your days in the Land which you shall possess." (5:29)

This is the context that precedes the most important statement of Judaism which defines the oneness of God with His creation through the awareness of His people, Israel. It is Israel who gives complete sense to this statement because it is Israel who is commanded to be aware of it.

"Hear [understand], Israel: the Lord is our God, the Lord is One." (6:4)

Although this statement is made by Moses our teacher, it is actually the Creator who proclaims it. This is the culmination of the oneness of Israel with Him, and Israel as the trustee of this divine foundation and principle.

The verse is followed by a clear explanation of this principle because it is a dynamic statement that implies an active awareness. This explanation is the way in which we realize such awareness (6:5-25) and Love is its essential foundation.

As long as we are in, for and with the love of God we will be one with Him. The verses remark the importance to be constantly aware of God's ways and attributes in virtually everything we do day and night. This bond of love which exemplifies oneness does not allow any kind of separation because this love only cohabits with God's ways and attributes, and nothing else.

As we mentioned in previous commentaries, when we choose to separate from love, as the material manifestation of God's love, the consequences are symbolically illustrated in the Hebrew Bible as "wrath" and "vengeance" derived from "jealousy". Indeed jealousy, our zeal to cleave to God, keeps us united to His love.

"(...) for a jealous God, even the Lord your God, is in the midst of you; lest the anger of the Lord your God be kindled against you, and He destroy you from of the face of the Earth." (6:15)

Indeed we are destroyed when we choose to live in materialistic illusions and not in His truth.

"(…) that they may serve other gods; so will the anger of the Lord be kindled against you, and He will destroy you quickly." (7:4)

"Because you are a holy people unto the Lord your God: the Lord your God has chosen you to be His own treasure, out of all peoples that are upon the face of the Earth." (7:6)

Certainly not everyone is touched and inspired by God's love to follow His ways and manifest His attributes. Therefore if our ancestors were chosen along with their descendants, we as one united Israel must honor this heritage by choosing back to Him.

"The Lord did not set His love upon you, nor choose you, because you were more in number than any people, but because you were the fewest of all peoples." (7:7)

Let's honor the legacy of our forefathers. Let's honor love for the sake of God's love.