Tag Archives: heart

Counting the Omer: Chesed

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ChesedUnconditional love is something we all long for but rarely experience. From our pets perhaps, or young children. As adults we get momentary rushes, but they tend to be a little more specialized: gratitude, appreciation, joy, relief, new love. But in our 24/7/365 worlds too often we equivocate, hold back, or keep a quid-pro-quo relationship with our heart via-a-vis the hearts of others, even those we hold close and dear. Best to keep a little something in reserve in case the world surprises you and you need it later. Like carrying around a psychic water bottle.

It’s not for want of caring. But too many of us have been bruised and wounded in ways that leave us cautious about being too (let alone totally) vulnerable. But as we go through the world with veils of emotional protection, we’ve also limited our heart’s ability to feel. Unintended consequence or not, it happens.

We don’t advertise these shortcomings and barriers. In fact we’re pretty creative about our disguises, volunteering, putting on band-aids, and helping out, embracing altruism and compassion in our rhetoric and actions. To other we may seem completely loving and caring. But how close to the core do we let them get?

Chesed is about love with a capital L. Divine love. Unconditional love. Love that comes from the heart not from head or need or expected or hoped-for reciprocity. Love without questions asked or answered. Deep and abiding and open. Love eternal. Loving-kindness and grace. Unlimited benevolence. It’s about generosity, about reaching past the boundaries of ego and self.

Chesed is associated with the principle of expansion. About things growing. Not that unlimited growth is always for their best or highest benefit. That’s why its counterpart is Gevurah, the principle of restraint and boundaries. (Next week, stay tuned).

Chesed is the first of the seven lower sephirot on the Tree of Life. Sephirot represent the qualities that organize how we live as incarnated souls. Higher soul levels breathe through chesed. You can feel them in very special times, birthings and dyings and fallings in love.

Chesed’s about being open, kind, full of goodness and grace. It ties to tzeddakah, generosity–a right action in Judaism–sharing that benefits both receiver and giver.

Chesed’s about saying Yes. It is about optimism, willingness, receptivity, even curiosity. It’s about the absence of limits.

What prompts this in you and what makes you run from the idea? (Ask sincerely, and don’t grip your pen too tightly.)

It’s hard to imagine being heavy and dark when you’re filled with chesed. But pay good attention if anywhere in you feels looser or tighter when you think about people/situations in your life where your chesed feels either extra strong, strained, or out of balance, past or current. Are there patterns and similarities? What brings out the best in you? And what tips it past the balance where the giving remains good for both you and others.

As much as you can this week, meditate on that kind of openness and caring. It’s the beginning of this process, and the more open you can become, the more you will receive.

Till Death Do Us Part: TorahCycle Chayei Sarah

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Chayei Sarah 2013People with relationship issues tend to fall into one of two categories: How do I find and keep a good one? How do I change or dump a bad one? There are auxiliary questions of romance relating to finding/losing/mourning one’s true love. And a zillion issues related to communications, money, messiness, honesty, household chores, and bloopers.

I do know a handful of remarkable relationships. The sort we were weaned to believe in. The decades-long partnerships where both halves have grown and evolved in love and support of one another. Sure, they argue and disagree on matters great and small, but the testing anneals the bond rather than breaking it. It’s admirable and enviable.

Why don’t the rest of us have it? Why’s it so hard to find and nurture the connections that challenge, nourish, and enhance our bodies and souls in equal measure?

I wish I had easy answers.

Every single person who’s looking for a relationship has their own version of “the list.” Qualities that Mr. or Ms. Unknown will have as basic part of their core DNA, lifestyle, and character. The pretty much standard ones (in an order reflecting any given moment) are sensuality, integrity, intelligence, spirituality, communications, financial stability, and senses of humor, honor, curiosity, and common sense. A friend one told me one of hers was “forthright,” which I interpret in part as an absence of passive aggressive or whiny tendencies. The ability to disagree and not hold a grudge or desire to prove one’s point.

My own summary is Someone who appreciates my best qualities and tolerates my worst ones with patience and humor. (And hopefully agree on which is which.

Because let’s face it, we have gnarly places. Ways we respond when life doesn’t go our way. Attitudes and behaviors that make us and/or our loved ones crazy. I’m not talking about serious maladies like substance abuse, or petty annoyances like knuckle-cracking. More retreating to a gloomy corner or the frustrating ward-off of cheerful denial. The kinds of traits that make you feel a loved one is either remote or clueless.

This week’s reading has a servant sent on a mission to choose Isaac’s wife. What seals the deal is her compassion. That’s setting the bar at the right place. Because when the hot sensuality is less frequent and times are tough, what you want, or should, is someone who has the grace to approach life (and you) with equanimity and a sense of caring.

For your sake I hope you’ve had at least one great love. The kind that shakes your soul to the core. A red-hot, zappy, can’t keep your hands off one another that lasts until the end. A love you so much my heart hurts kind of romance.

But I also hope you’ve met the person who satisfies your list. The one you want standing by you in the daylight, both when life seems hard and you can’t make it through alone, and in times when you’re happy and excited about the possibilities life is offering.

Partners like that should be well-loved. I hope you are one and appreciate or find yours.

Growing Up: TorahCycle Ki Tavo

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KiTavo

It happens to all of us eventually. Perhaps sooner in some areas of our lives than in others. But some day we all look around, and think: Wow, that’s not such a big issue for me any more. The issues are as varied as our DNA and karma. But show me someone without any and I’ll listen hard to whatever they have to say.

This week’s reading begins, “When you come into the land…” Amazing. All that long beginning ago there was chaos and void; then lots of begetting, slavery, and most recently forty years of trekking. Finally someone’s talking about a payoff. Hooray.

The instruction goes, When you get there, give gratitude. There’s details of course, but it comes down to regular invocations of awe and wonder and saying lots of thank yous. It doesn’t really matter if the thanks yous are to self or external entities. The energy’s coming from the same place, the one where you say Good job! And really mean it.

Personal development is more than a theory. It’s not just possible. It’s becoming real and we are here to prove it.

What’ve we done in all our time of trekking and searching, striving and berating, trying and trying and trying yet again? We’ve grown “a heart to know, eyes to see, and ears to hear.” There is no wonder we’re not equipped to witness. And no tragedy we can ignore. If we stay open and aware we’ll be in a continual state of witnessing and growth.

The promised land offers us plenty to give gratitude for. We’re able to share, to gift our family, friends, and neighbors. So do it.

You’ve heard the summer joke about people locking their car doors so people don’t fill the seats with zucchini. Turn it around. Practice practical gratitude. If you have money, donate some. If you have time, share it. If you know, hear, and see something that needs to be fixed, start fixing it.

That includes continuing to work on yourself, as well as looking outside. In this time of harvest we’re being gifted with a sense of optimism. It’s the time to believe not just in the possibility of change but in its manifestation.

I’ve been noticing how happy the current crop of babies is making people. It’s always that way of course, its just that in my circle there’s a dozen or so newborns/not-yet-walking souls. They make people smile. We’re tickled that they haven’t done anything wrong yet. Haven’t screwed up a relationship or a job, gotten stuck in a rut of bad habit or foolish opinion. Haven’t made the work of being human any harder than it need be.

This week’s about that same sense of newness. Of starting over with a clean slate. Of having made it through a passage that seemed endless. And, now, poof it’s gone. Over. Done. We have new life, more energy. We’re happier and in a better mood, We are fueled with the buoyancy of gratitude and wonder that an open heart can bring.

We are soon to enter a new year, a time of starting over. With our hearts open, eyes open, and ears open. May they see, hear, and share blessings.