Tag Archives: soul

Counting the Omer: Malkuth

Posted on by
Reply

Malkuth (1)Malkuth (1)Malkuth (1)

Malkuth’s a matrix of the divine, natural, and human worlds, the context for what we experience as life. The word means kingdom. It’s an expressive conduit for all higher energies and the landing zone for your personal form of reality. Malkuth is seen an ongoing expression of creation: How you live your life, interacting with all the energies you’ve been exploring the past six weeks, creates the context for your happiness and evolution, and your progress with your karmic homework.

When your personal kingdom is filled with great gifts or great challenges, it’s partly a message from the universe saying, Wake up and pay good/better attention.

Malkuth is about being present. About living with awareness and intention. Living as though each moment, each choice, each aspect of how you live matters at a soul level as well as at the level of material comfort and aspiration. That’s true whether you’re dealing with yourself or others, if you’re wrestling with your own core issues (especially habituated patterns) or trying to heal the outer world.

Malkuth is about seeing the holy spark in every element of creation. Just as Hindus greet one another with Namaste (I greet the holy within you), we need to live as though we could see that holy spark in ourselves/others in each moment. We need to treat one another, and every aspect of creation, with respect, goodness, and gratitude to make this world a sweeter and more healing place. That will likely mean stretching, especially if your path is filled with bad drivers, big health issues, or relentless temptations.

The other day one of those FaceBook quizzes came around. The kind that tells you your spirit color or totem animal based on what cities, art, or music you prefer. This one offered to identify your top five traits. Words like creative, intuitive, intelligent, spiritual, eccentric, fierce, compassionate, organized, kind, curious, etc. A wealth of desirable ways to be.

My goddaughter Wendy, whom I love from a zillion lifetimes of knowing, wrote: challenging, neurotic, demented-but-in-the-cute-way, insincere, and one short. LOL.

It got me thinking about why our malkuth can feel neurotic/annoying at some times, and all chocolate and kisses at others. We’re pretty much the same us, though clearly stuck in traffic or mud wont bring out the same virtues as a great friend or book.

It’s more than just attitude. If you don’t go slightly ballistic when you’re utterly powerless, even if you can find equanimity or patience a nanosecond later, we’re from a slightly different species.

What I learned these omer weeks, and what I’m hoping to bring back into my daily world: knowing that the more I lighten up, sweeten up, and open up, the more responsive the universe tends to be, and the more great traits I have access to. Sure, some crap is gonna fly, but maybe not as much or often or hard.

Take a moment to think about which parts of your life satisfy you and which do not. Just sit, and let the feelings wash over you as you scan your kingdom. Breathe, sigh, wonder, ponder. Invite all your best traits into this new you that you are continually making, and that will make your kingdom whole.

The Harvest of Our Lives: Sukkot 2014

Posted on by
Reply

sukkot 2014At the end of the day, what do you talk about, you and your soul? Do you get into the existential Why am I here? stuff, or do you think about how you’re doing with your chores, whether they’re simple things like chopping veggies for dinner or deeper tasks like taking a karmic inventory?

In the quiet of the day, what’s the conversation between you and you?

There’s a great holiday that starts this week, early in the Jewish calendar year and at the very end of the Torah cycle. It’s called Sukkot, from the word sukkah, which means booth. Traditional folks build covered shelters, as simple as a frame tented with fabric or wood and a canopy of thatch, harvest stalks, and reeds. They eat and sleep in them. The more observantly elastic take part of each day to meditate outside and share a meal with friends in a less formal sukkah.

The observance is a powerful mirror of the Passover holiday we celebrated six months ago.

Way back then we chose to leave mitzrayim, the narrow place, the symbolic land of constraint. We left slavery and went into the unknown. Now, after reaching our symbolic goal (and a new year), we take time to harvest the blessings of the land, give thanks, and take stock of the insights from our journey.

I’m not always a good practicing Jew. But I cherish the way Judaism organizes the year, the way it moves us inexorably through the cycles of self-examination and growth that so many of us profess to want to partake of.

I frame this writing on the weekly turning of the scrolls because I think that somewhere along the way someone got it right. That there’s a story here, and it’s a good one. That there are paths and processes and journeys that we go on. Spiritually. Emotionally. Intellectually. Physically. That what takes place in the material world happens in parallel in your soul. And if you pay good attention to your process you might learn something that’ll help make it easier/kinder/gentler and also deeper/more meaningful/spiritually valuable. If we all did that, this place would be happier/sweeter/more joyous. And all our paths would be paths of peace.

So if you and your soul aren’t talking, if you don’t think you’re here to learn/grow/improve and to find/create greater goodness and compassion, then what are you doing? Does it teach you or satisfy you? Energize you and open you?

I hope so. If not, then get on with figuring out what’ll give you the same bang for your karmic buck.

As we sit amidst the harvest of the season–the squashes that will sustain us this winter, the aromatics that will flavor our soups, the apples and pears that will sweeten our winter evenings–we give thanks for not only our liberation but for our arrival in this place of safety. Our ability to have perspective and quiet time. No more scrambling and searching and wondering. We have arrived.

At this turn of the seasons, in the oasis of whatever sukkah you choose, take a sweet moment to have a good heart to heart with your higher self. There is simply nothing better.