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 Forest Lawns Eternal Rest Park
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!
