Tag Archives: beginning

Ticket to Ride: Pre-Passover 2015

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Tree

When I was younger, playing at Disneyland, we went on all the classic rides, and also bought “E-tickets.” They cost triple and guaranteed more screams and thrills. I carry in my pocket more computing power than first took men to the moon, so I’m sure that 1970’s special effects would seem as hokey now as 1950’s effects did then.

But E-rides challenged you. They took away your sense of time and space. Hard to hold onto small-ego You while hurtling though darkness at strange angles, lasers shooting all about, heavy metal blasting. One either retreats into denial or the boundaries between self/other get much thinner very quickly.

We’re at the gate on one of Judaism’s E-rides. In the rhythm of the sacred year we move between slow times and deeper, more intense, periods. We do have the seventh day metronome of Shabbat, tick-tocking like a heartbeat, to keep us grounded. But now we’re entering a bigger set of sevens. Seven weeks of meditations on aspects of the divine as reflected in self. Time to take a hard look, to see where you’re getting things right, and where you’re not.

All your New Year’s vows and promises, sacred and secular, are past. Most of us had just settled in to appreciating nature’s budding and blooming. Daffodils and birdsong. Feeling renewed without much stress or effort. Life was gonna coast happily.

Now comes Passover. The retelling of the exodus from slavery. We’ll land at the foot of Sinai once again. But this time, instead of brisk walk, we get fifty days to walk the path, one step in front of the other, one day at a time.

This process is called The Counting of the Omer. It’s the kind of thing that introspective people long for. A mandated and validated form of navel gazing. We meditate on the lower seven positions (sephirot) on the Tree of Life. Each an attribute of the divine, and an attribute of self as we mirror the divine. We meditate on them in succession:

Week 1   Chesed: unconditional loving-kindness
Week 2   Gevurah: restraint, justice
Week 3   Tipheret: beauty, harmony compassion
Week 4   Netzach: energy, zeal, endurance
Week 5   Hod: glory, splendor, creativity
Week 6   Yesod: foundation, possibility
Week 7   Malkuth: living in the earthly kingdom with our inner spark aglow.

You can do it alone or you can pair up, with someone you know very well, or someone you want to. You can study, share, articulate, open, and generally clean yourself out, one to the other. This kinda study- buddy system is chevruta. It can be two people or more. But think intimacy.

Can you find ten minutes a day for seven weeks starting Saturday evening/Sunday? If yes, I promise you’ll be different on the other side. Can’t say how. Pretty sure for the better. Definitely softer and more peaceful. You don’t have to do anything more than breathe and open your heart, thinking about the attribute. No giving up gluten or sugar or checking your email when you get twitchy. You just have to show up and listen.

Got your E-ticket? Get on board.

New Blank Document: TorahCycle Bereishit

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B 3Whether you’re a creative writer or just someone who’s ever faced a term paper, you know that the blank page is a wonderful and terrifying landscape. If you’re not writing by choice, don’t feel passionate about your topic, or generally feel awkward with words, it can be like having two left feet on the dance floor. But for a writer a blank page can be the gateway to a sense of infinity and awe. Anything can happen. Something rising up or through you.

In her brilliant TED talk on creativity, Elizabeth Gilbert cites a poet out in a field who hears a poem come thundering on the air towards her, and who feels her only purpose in life is to run like hell towards pencil and paper to write it down, to be taken by its mystery, to give the words shape, lest they blow through and past her towards another, readier poet.

How do we catch those wise, insightful, whimsical, and challenging thoughts that come knocking at our door on their way through the cosmos? By listening with every part of us that we can keep present and open. By seizing the moment and by allowing ourselves to be seized by it. By paying attention to new possibilities, and being less focused on what we think we know or want or how life is supposed to turn out.

We need to engage in the dance the universe regularly invites us to. Fearfully or fiercely. Whether we think it’s the right time or not, that we’re ready or not, that time is now.

This is not a new message, from me or anyone else. But it’s one that, no matter how often it is said and heard, bears listening to.

If we are very lucky, life’s creative, not dry. I know the joys of a task list accomplished and getting one’s chores done. But I’m a much bigger sucker for the messy, unpredictable, anything’s-possible-on-this-blank-page invitations of the muses. Because when life feels like that, whether the form is words, music, art, love, or cooking, you’re part of the rush of creative inspiration that this week’s reading invokes. You can live with beginningness.

Great quote from a recent book: A good book invites you to read it again. A great book compels you to reread your soul.

That’s how I see I see the annual re-rolling and re-opening of the Torah, which happens this week. Now is when everything that is was and will be is created out of chaos and void. Now is when all is most fertile, when everything new is possible. We have another chance to get it right. To improve and heal as we trek through our own soul turnings.

One more time we are offered beginningness. The beginning of Genesis is the thundering poem about to grab us by the ankles, the heart, and the soul. It’s an invitation to go on a ride of self-examination, self-discovery, and self-recreation. One more time. Lucky us.

So invite whatever parts of your soul are aching to dance. And invite whatever guides and muses you believe in to inspire you, to fill your own blank document with joy and creativity, as we enter the new unknown.

In the Beginning (Again): TorahCycle Bereishit

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Bereishit 2013Someone asked me recently what this blog is about.  My answer: to help you answer the question Who are you in the process of becoming?

Torah readings offer a vehicle for self-transformation. They help us to look through the window of the aspirational self. To listen to what the words are saying about how to live. Me. You. Now.

Almost all of us wrestle with something, for that long night we call life, the way we’ll soon remember Jacob wrestling with the angel.

We each have our own issues and process. Some are unhappy in a relationship or a job, while others long for one. There’s body stuff, and money stuff, and friend/family stuff. All the aspects of our daily reality that our minds chatter and fret about so much and often. There’s soul stuff too, whether that translates into becoming a meditator or simply kinder, deepening a spiritual practice or searching for a resonant path.

We’ve cycled back to Genesis. Creation. The edge of another new beginning.

You may believe in the Big Bang, The Voice/Hand of God, or a different creation story. But anyone who’s ever had a brainstorm knows how quickly something can appear out of apparent nothing. An idea bursts through, alive with energy. The synergy and synchronicity of all of you. Your history and your becoming. Your holy spark glittering to show you the next next. Suddenly a vision, where a moment before there was not. A new world of possibilities, multiplying quickly.

That’s the way to start this year.

Shed last year’s battles and disappointments. Bring with you what you’ve learned, what you earned, and what you aspire to. Leave behind the old struggles, fears, and sorrows. Start over cleansed and optimistic.

Poof! What an idea!

Here’s my invitation: To celebrate creation, give yourself time this week to invite new ideas about how you want to feel this time next year. With hopes you’ll feel like you’d just won the lottery of your life and soul. Like you can create the world you want to live in.

It’s another chance to reinvent you. To edit and to refine. To take everything you’ve learned and have it become your ally. A mini-reincarnation without having to start over again with diapers.

A lot of the “in the beginning” story is about separation and discernment between opposites: heaven and earth, day and night, land and sea, and so on. It’s also about free will: following instructions or risking the consequences of your actions. We all face those kinds of choices every day.

As you make them — consistent, impulsive, risky, wise, or not — some of the glittering possibilities of your great new ideas will fade. And some will grow brighter. The array of bright lights will narrow and cluster. As they do, your life options will become clearer. If you’re lucky or blessed, and can hear the hints and instructions coming from your inner voice, they’ll even show you the paths for your evolving journey.

I’m suggesting folks journal this time around. Whatever strikes you as worth remembering along the way.  If you’re so moved, write yourself or the rest of us a note below.