Primer part 7

Finding a Place and Time

It is a good idea to find yourself a special place for meditating. The place can be in your home, or out in nature. There is nothing wrong with having more than one place. Forests and caves have been popular choices, as well as graves of zaddikim (if you know of any zaddikim buried in caves, so much the better!) In the end, your local synagogue or Bet Midrash may be the best place of all. You can consider showing up half an hour early for Prayers and using the time for meditating. While in synagogue you should try to establish a spot you habitually use. You may find yourself drawn towards a certain spot, sometimes for no particular reason. I have always let my intuitions guide me.

There are no hard rules for picking a place, other than you should feel focused and calm there. While your local synagogue has the advantage of being a real sacred space unfortunately it is not always conducive to a calm and focused state of mind. You need a place where you won’t be self conscious, and if your local synagogue insists on a having formal, correct decorum, you won’t feel comfortable shaking, yelling and jumping around. If you think you will be doing gestures in a pronounced way, you will need someplace more private. There are some hassidic synagogues where everybody carries on in a pronounced way. The purpose is to create the kind of environment where you will have no need to worry that others think you’ve lost it, but then such places are often not conducive to a calm focused state of mind. Preferably, your place should be clean and nice smelling, and –let’s face it—some Hassidic synagogues leave something to be desired on that score. Of course some quiet spot in a forest could be wonderful, but spooky for people with spider and snake phobias. Likewise caves are a challenge to keep clean. Graves of zaddikim are plentiful in Israel and no-one will hassle you if you are seen carrying on there in the middle of the night. However, I would stay out of the mausoleums at the Forest Lawns Eternal Rest Park. Come to think of it, finding a place can be a challenge sometimes. For a long time, my place was in the laundry room in front of the window. I also have a little pine dotted dune at the top of a cliff where the surf pounds the sand. In the end, even if your place is not ideal it will be great because you are going to do great things there.

So, humor aside, your place should have as many of the following attributes as you can find: 1) Sanctity and or connection to nature, 2) Good quiet vibes and atmosphere 3) Cleanliness and nice smells, 4) Privacy and 5) Proximity. This means that your place should be close enough that it won’t be a drag getting there and back.

The best time for your meditation session is in the second half of the night, or during early morning, so it can feed into your daily prayers. If that doesn’t work, then any time is fine, just try to fit your meditation session so it prepares you for performing some mitzva or prayer that is part of your day.

Not only should your place be clean, you should also make a point of being clean yourself and wearing clean good smelling clothing. Be careful with basic hygiene. Go to the bathroom. Never underestimate the spiritual value of good regular movements. (According to the Talmud in Berachot, one who wakes up, goes to the bathroom, does the ritual hand washing, puts on tefillin, says shema and prays, is seen as building the altar in the temple and offering a sacrifice on it! So eat lots of fibre! Forgive me if I seem to be getting extreme here, but this is important both spiritually and for your health! Don’t rely on toilet paper to get you clean. Use water. You can always tell you are in a Kabbalah Yeshiva if the toilets all have little bidets installed in them!) Did I mention that you should brush your teeth? No point in searching for God with all that yucky plaque from last night. If you can get to a Mikveh, fantastic! If you don’t have a Mikveh in your area, you can shower and let “9 Kavs” (24 quarts) of water flow over you. This is usually estimated as being about three buckets, and any unrushed shower will probably use this much water anyway. In a very limited way, 9 Kavs is considered equivalent to the Mikveh for the purposes of sanctification and prayer (but not for Niddah or conversion which requires a real Mikveh.)

Once you have you place picked out there is a beautiful Kavvanah  you can do to “make an acquisition” of it for your meditation. Firstly, if you are fortunate enough to have a synagogue to meditate in, you can actually rent the place from the sexton. If not, well no harm done. The next step is to stand in your place and visualize the name YOD- HE- VAV-HE. Do not pronounce the letters, just see them. Then multiply the letter by each other. That is how you generate spaces mathematicly, right? Try to visualize YODxYOD (which is gematria ten times ten =100.) In your mind it should look like this :

י י י י י י י י י י 

Then visualize HExHE (five times five =25)

ה ה ה ה ה

 Then visualize VAVxVAV (six times six =36)

ו ו ו ו ו ו

And again HExHE (five times five =25)

ה ה ה ה ה

This all adds up to… (drumrole please) 186, which is the numerical equivalent of the word “place”

מקום

So visualize these letters, and dedicate yourself to using this place in a holy way, so you can find God (also referred to in Hebrew as “The Place”) 

המקום

I have heard of some people encircling their place seven times. I have even heard of some zaddikim who dance out the letters, taking ten steps here, five steps there etc, but I have never actually seen this done. I won’t recommend anything I have not seen first hand, but of course if you feel like dancing, why not?

As I said at the outset, not everybody is comfortable doing Kabbalah. When you start imagining letters and names that is when you have crossed the line between regular serious Divine service and Kabbalah. For those of you who want to avoid the Kabbalah, skip the visualization and go straight to the following little prayer: (In case you’re wondering it’s an original)

Master of all the worlds: In this place I will try to fulfill your commandments to believe in You and only You, to love You, to be in awe of You and do your will. Grant me success and draw me close to you always. Fulfill through me the verse: “One thing I asked from Hashem, and that I will request. Let me stay in the House of Hashem all the days of my life, to see the sweetness of Hashem and visit his sanctuary. Make your presence known in the world and redeem us! Amen!

Primer part 6

How to do the Gestures.

The gestures are meant to help you bring about the shifts in awareness. After all, it is possible to investigate the ephemeral nature of reality without actually getting it. You may imagine the name of God and imagine that the king is present; but you might not be able to hold the thought or focus. The idea of the king might leave you cold. The gestures help you concentrate your mind and make it reach down into your physical and emotional dimensions. The mind can think, but only when the heart and body awaken do spiritual truths become real. This reminds me of something I heard in the name of the Rebbi of Ishbitz. The Rebbe was heard to tell God “If you had really wanted that people should do your will, you should have put heaven in front of their faces and physical temptations in books. Instead you put heaven in books and temptations in front of their faces!” The point of meditating is to adjust the ratio between this-worldly experience and the light of truth. When your heart and body begin to respond, then you know you are getting the light. And again, please understand. Nothing is automatic. Believing in God means that you will trust in Him as you search, wait and wander. You can choose to find God, but you can’t force God’s hand. Also meditating with the gestures can look pretty strange, which is another reason why many zaddikim preferred going off into the forests by themselves. Eventually you may find that very small gestures can be more powerful than big dramatic ones. It seems sometimes that the smaller the gesture the greater its impact. But of course there is no right way or wrong way to do them. You have to go with what works and trust that G-d is drawing you close as you search for Him.

 The Shulhan Aruch supplies the basis for using gesture to bring about the transformation of consciousness (OH 48:1) “The pious customarily move about while reading the Torah, since the Torah was given in trembling. Similarly this is done while praying as well, in fulfillment of the verse ‘all my bones will say: Hashem, who is like you!’” while some authorities claim that the amidah prayer is best recited without motion, the Mishna Berurah concludes: “It all depends on the person. A person who focuses well through movement should move about. A person who does not, should just stand and pray making sure to focus the heart. Some of those who move about do so improperly. They keep their bodies stationary and move their heads back and forth in a haughty gesture, which should not be done.” By the way, I have never seen anyone just move his head. I wonder if perhaps the head movers were performing some left over Abulafian practice, which has since faded from common use. Rabbi Avraham Abulafia originally instructed his students to use elaborate head movements. Perhaps the Mishna Berurah was unaware of this tradition, or thought it to be an aberration. Since I want to stick with describing things that I have actually seen in a Hassidic worship, I will not expound on the head movements.

When you perform a gesture, you need to put your whole mind into it. This takes some practice and concentration. I like to think of a gesture as a riddle or a maze that one can solve by going into it and feeling it from the inside. You will experience the gesture as physical movement, as emotion and as thought. It will take you beyond thought as well. As the ancient philosophers noted, there is something in movement which defies logical categories. As you immerse yourself totally in the gesture, the hope is that you will open yourself to the larger process of which it is a part. Rising to the light of truth is a process intrinsic to being in the world. That is why the gestures are drawn from movements that happen spontaneously as a natural part of life. The light of truth is found in the ordinary. In describing the meanings of each gesture what you may discover in them I do not intend to offer a definitive and final statement. The fruit of the practice ripens when you find something new. If you find something other than what I describe, rejoice! It means you are walking the paths for real and encountering what is there. 

Primer part 6

A Primer for Jewish Meditation 5

Commentary to the Shiviti Meditation

Now let me continue with my commentary to the Shiviti Meditation. It looks like the point of the meditation is to create an all pervasive sense of fear and awe in the presence of G-d. This presence is everywhere and leads to almost instinctual shifts in behavior across the whole range of life’s activities. This leads one to ask: what is the point of this meditation? Aside from insuring better compliance with the rules of morality and Halacha, why is it good to be afraid and ashamed all the time? Why is the metaphor of G-d as king so central to this meditation? What are we to do if we have no experience in real life of Kings and courts?

Before I go on, I will just make one observation. Ultra orthodox Jews in general and Hassidim in particular, seem permanently welded to their clothing. The hats, jackets, white shirts, long coats, fur hats, ties or gartels are both uncomfortable and ever-present. There seems to be no acceptable time for casual attire. Of course when you wear formal clothing all day every day or during unseasonable weather it can all end up looking very shabby. This shabby-ness eventually becomes part of the accepted look. Sill, the original point of the ever present formal look is to embody this meditation. The idea is to dress as if one is always ready to greet a great dignitary…no less than the King of Kings, in whose presence we are at all times. On a personal note, I do not wear formal clothing much of the time. I dress appropriately for what I am doing. This doesn’t hamper my Shiviti Meditation. I am a created being, and as such I cannot be on the pinnacle of formality all the time. God knows I need time for shopping, cleaning and even relaxing. That is the way I am made. Still there is a substantial difference relaxing in the presence of the King because that is the way he made me, to just kicking back and letting it all hang out, as if I am alone in the world and owe nothing to anyone.

Now back to the meditation. The point is to realize the ephemeral nature of being. By seeing through ephemeral being you should come to the awareness of God who is absolute being. To live in the presence of the king means being in the presence of one who holds your fate absolutely. The king is seen as a higher order of being because he determines life or death for any one of his subjects. God is King because His Being and Freedom determines our being. The being of any given thing of person as well as the being of the universe as a whole is a freely given gift chosen over nothingness. The deeper and more all pervasive one’s sense of one’s own emptiness and ephemeral nature, the more one is sustained by the truth. One must know that one is ephemeral and that G-d alone is absolute. That knowledge, insofar as it can etched into the very fiber of ones mind and body is true life. To believe that one actually exists for real is to be sunk into illusion, which is death. Fear enters here in two forms. First it is the instinctual fear of non-existence and death than any living being experiences in the presence of that which determined life and death. Secondly, it enters as the fear of slipping from God consciousness, into the illusion of self sustaining existence. Paradoxically, along with fear come the bliss, joy and love of living in the light of truth, which is beyond all fear and mortality. Fear and joy are intertwined, as in the statement of the Talmud in Berachot “In the place of joy there should be fear” Similarly awe and love of God are simultaneous and mutually sustaining. Experiencing these feelings fulfill of two very fundamental Mitzvot.

There is great significance in the perception that each and every ephemeral being, (and particularly the self) exists as objects of G-d’s knowledge. As empty beings it would be appropriate for us to be mere dust in the wind, and yet we are held in a kind of orbit with God’s ultimate being at the center. We partake of God’s truth and discover life in the very midst of our emptiness. This is how we know that God knows us. Many great spiritual thinkers have known of G-d but have mistakenly assumed that in his own perfection he has no knowledge of anything outside himself. They have imagined G-d to be projecting the world in an impersonal detached way. Judaism and its prophetic tradition reject this. We perceive the world as willed, chosen and known. God’s being is beyond categorization, such that to be supreme perfect is also to be intimately involved. Each created being, for all its ephemeral nature and emptiness, knows that it known and loved, and knows that God’s knowledge extends infinitely down to the foundations of being. God’s infinity is beyond measure, but that means there is enough God for every single being no matter how small its size and brief its duration. The original choice at the beginning of time to create the universe is just as well the choice to create this individual being, this individual soul, and this moment in time. God’s knowledge fills every thing and every moment with infinite significance. This moment is chosen from the very beginning. It holds preciousness that cannot be wasted, as Moshe said in the Psalms “Let us know how to count our days and we will bring the heart of wisdom.”

Ephemeral created beings are hungry. We yearn to absorb into ourselves the source of our being. Just as we breathe, drink or eat, try to absorb, somehow, God’s being. All creatures (on some level) and Human beings in particular are instinctively driven to worship. To worship means attempting to fill ourselves with the divine. This hunger to become full of divine being lies at the foundation of the religious impulse felt by all human cultures. As the Rambam pointed out in his Guide, this religious impulse is very problematic. The worship and absorption of divine being requires objects of worship. The objects of worship we generally fashion unconsciously from our projected needs, hopes and fears. Furthermore, the attempt to satiate our hunger seeks an escape from our ephemeral nature and into being substantial. In fact there is no satisfying our hunger except through illusion, while accepting our ephemeral nature makes us live through God’s truth.

It might be said that Torah is anti-religion. If religion is based human needs and posits objects of worship, Torah challenges us not to attempt to control or delimit the Divine Presence. The Torah seems to encourages us to develop some concepts of God, (like Creator, King, Father and even Lover) yet our images continually and endlessly shatter against the His unknowable being. This is how the relationship works. God’s being shatters again and again all attempts to grasp him, turning the structure of knowledge inside out. This process of arising of projections and breaking them is the essence of Torah. Every time God transcends the limits of some imagination of him, the remaining form becomes a structure of Torah, a mitzvah, or a way of organizing life. God speaks and reveals his will by always transcending conceptions, by being endlessly holy. The emptied forms which are left from this transcendence stand as revelations of Divine will. The King is beyond the kingdom, but his presence is everywhere where his will is done. God’s transcendence itself gives forth divine words, and these have organized the stuff of the universe, the forms of life, the forms of human consciousness. The forms of the Torah, its commandments, observances and social organization let us cleave to the will of the King. In each form, awareness is turned outward so that the desire to absorb God’s being, becomes a way of becoming absorbed by the light of truth. Instead of becoming more substantial through absorbing divine being, we become ever more open, thankful, accepting and alive in our ephemeral nature. God’s words give form and structure to everything, and when we act out that specific form which encodes God’s transcendence and holiness in, that is doing G-d’s will and following the Torah.

All human societies are touched in some way by the Kings will. The light of truth translates into of a just society. Ephemeral beings accept each other as they accept themselves. Creating a just society is a basic commandment for all humanity. Bad people, (until they repent) will for the most part try to gratify themselves in secret by lying and cheating. They believe that behind the public exterior or society, such negative acts will find secret places to hide. However, when one realizes that society is founded upon the will of the King, there remain no secret places. The same fear or shame one would feel if one were caught doing something bad, will be felt before the act is carried out. When a person acts corruptly in secret that person becomes dead in the eyes of God. It is only a matter of time until the just society sniffs out the walking corpse. People who are aware of the presence of G-d become consistent in their behavior. Such people a feel a shame that does not let evil get a foothold even in their most private and personal lives. The shame which the Shivity Meditation brings about is not neurotic or masochistic. It involves the healthy understanding that a person should be as good on the inside as they are on the outside.

Ultimately, the fruits of the Shivity Meditation are: 1) a sense of faith and openness that negates manipulative and selfish desires, 2) an acceptance, appreciation and love for others, 3) an increased awareness of spiritual life beyond the physical being,

4) an increased consistency in ones personal and public behavior, 5) increased vitality and joy arising from the sense of being constantly created anew, and 6) the ability to “hear the word of God” as it supports, establishes and re-creates just societies. (For Jewish people this also means hearing the word of God vibrating within the framework of Halacha and Jewish Practice. As you progress to more intense levels of Love and Fear of Hashem, you can expect increased wisdom in understanding the Mitzvot and their meanings. You may find yourself discovering new Torah thoughts. You should relate to this as Hashem teaching you his word. Perhaps you may hear an echo of prophecy. I hesitate to say this because some people should not be encouraged to imagine themselves prophets. But if you are sane and well balanced, you should come to no harm. The Shiviti Meditation is one step on the road to prophecy. Admittedly, we are not on the level to become full prophets today. But an echo of prophecy (insofar as it makes you a better person and better in observing Mitzvot, studying Torah and doing good) is everyone’s birthright. Remember what it says in the book of Proverbs “The fear of God in the beginning of wisdom.”   

In my comments to the rather brief passage from the Shulhan Aruch I have tried to explain why one should think of God as a king, what benefits are derived from cultivating an all encompassing awareness of the King’s presence, and what point there is in feeling fear and shame. The Shiviti Meditation may be accompanied by the visualization of the Letters of the Divine Name, if you find this helpful. In any event, the commentary I have given here is based upon the Rambam, and it is not Kabbalistic (as far as I can know.) In actuality, this is all just basic Judaism, which is why the Shiviti Meditation is placed at the very beginning of the code of Jewish Law. Over your life time you will find yourself undergoing various phases. Initially you will be working to gasp the truth of this way of seeing the world, the self and G-d. Once that is passed you will be actualizing these perceptions across the whole range of you life experiences. As you become more and more absorbed into the light of truth, you will find yourself behaving more and more consistently and reacting to lifes challenges with greater faith and tranquility. You will find joy and significance in every moment, every thing and every person. When you are strong in the light you will sense your body fading as you become truth and eternity. There is no more basic meditation than this. Perhaps there is none more advanced either.