What have I learned about Chet today?

Well, I learned that it is a Zayin and a Vov linked together. Do you see it? And remember that vertical line that goes up on top of the other letters that represent God? Well the same applies here, only there is something a little bit different, because you can also write a chet like this:

Weird, huh? You know why that is? It is because of the concept of “Touching but not touching,” Also known as hovering. No, not Hoovering – God is not a Vacuum! Well, maybe he is.

I mentioned this back when I was talking about the Aleph my first day out here in Joshua Tree.

In Genesis, when God created the heavens and the earth, there are distinct separations that are made between the sea and the sky, between the deep water, and the light water (there is a distinct passage about how he hovers over the water and creates the ‘expanse,” which is actually translated as the “firmament,” and it’s all about how the celestial water is definitely different from the sea water, etc.), the sea and the land and the distance and closeness between God and human beings – the spiritual world and the mortal world. It is quite clear. There is an “above” and there is a “below,” the “above” having to do with God’s world. 

In Kabbalah, Chet represents The Life Dynamic of Run and Return, meaning that there are these two levels of life: “Essential life” and “life to enliven.”

Think of God as the “Essential life,” of course. What else would he be between the two? Duh!

Something like mortal reality would be the “life to enliven.” Do you kinda get where I’m going here?

So, the letter Chet is the secret of “run and return.” It’s how God hovers over his creation, touching, but not touching, and all the Jewish souls connecting their lives that need to be enlivened with the essential life. It works two ways.

That’s what I got out of it anyway.

If I’m off base, then I’m off base.

And not to say that this is what I got out of the letter/my studying at all, But it got me thinking.

Very recently I lost my beloved aunt Susan. She had cancer. At first, it was diagnosed as breast cancer, actually Stage 4. That’s when they found it, so it was pretty bleak.

She went through super aggressive therapy, five rounds of chemo, back to back, during which time she told me several times, she was not afraid to die.

I was actually just writing about it this morning. I have been thinking about her a lot.

She was serious. She wasn’t trying to convince me, or herself, God or the universe. She really wasn’t afraid. I believed her. It wasn’t easy to believe, but I did. For her, she was ready for the outcome, whatever it was. She also had a strong belief in God. I wondered if that had anything to do with it.

I know people who have a very strong belief in God, but they are still scared to death to die.

I am basically scared to death to live. I will admit to it. I live my life in love, but I have to say, I’m afraid of everything. I live in fear. And while that fear motivates me to conquer it constantly – for instance, if I am scared to fly someplace alone, I’ll go do it just because I’m scared. If I am afraid to expose my weakness to strangers, I’ll show my vulnerabilities to anyone and everyone just because I fear it most. I’ll walk on fire because it scares me. I’ll make that line on the canvas because I think it’s stupid. You get the idea.

I do this because I desperately want to stop living my life in fear, and you know what, nothing works!

So I wonder, sometimes, if death is it. Is death the moment in time when I will finally “let go?” Where the anxiety of life finally leaves and you feel like you are falling back into a fresh, Downey pillow, with TRUST? Maybe then it would be something to look forward to. I wonder if Susie was not just unafraid, but if it was something like a relief she was looking towards?

Anyway, I wonder about these morbid things a lot, in case you can’t tell. I know I should not, but I do.

Maybe she knew there would be no more “hovering” from God, no more running back and forth. No more effort. Maybe it’s when God stops barely touching and finally touches you.

Just a nice, shiny thought to brighten your day! 🙂

Whelp, I was studying the Vav today. And boy is it windy! It’s been windy every single day I’ve been here. And maybe I’ve mentioned it, but I probably haven’t told you that it’s been nearly record breaking winds. Every day!

Being outside has been nearly impossible. All the Benadryl in the world can’t help you. The dirt and sand just flies in your eyes, tree branches come barreling through the wind only to smack you in the face and break your flesh open, and the visibility just isn’t good at all. Benadryl doesn’t help that kinda thing at all.

I hear that tomorrow will be a better day though. No wind. No flesh-eating tree branches, etc.

So, I was right about that Vav being a ray of light, but I sure didn’t know how deep it was going to go, again! Of course, all these letters lead you down a rabbit hole that goes on forever and ever, and I am only skimming the surface really. One letter a day just doesn’t get you far when it comes to studying Kabbalah. Not even a little. I feel like a dope thinking I could have done that now – now that I know how many avenues of thought Kabbalah has alone! It’s the same as Judaism!

But of course! These are Jews we are talking about here. No one is going to agree on any one school of thought, or anything for that matter. I remember my family couldn’t even decide on what restaurant to go to. That alone took an hour at least! The places would pretty much be closed by the time we could all decide on one place to go to. And no one was really satisfied with their choice either.

That’s Judaism for ya.

It’s pretty easy for me to go down rabbit holes though, considering that I am so very green (and bunny-like), but today I went down the one having to do with Tzimtzum. Even if you just skim that whole subject, you can hardly get an idea of what it’s all about. It will twist your little mind into knots!

I can’t put this one in a “nutshell” for you this time folks! But what I can do is tell you some things I got out of it.

Like some of the validation on the art I have been doing up until now – up to the present. And the future. And the past!

I have made my negative past into a positive future, not just a positive present, and I have even brought the past into the NOW, changed it, and laid down a new future.

I know it seems like I just said the same thing twice, but I didn’t. Trust me.

Also: connectivity.

What I wasn’t able to get into last night because of all my bitching and moaning, was the top line of the Hei, which in a nutshell, represents God, but really, his connectivity throughout all of us, not exactly the separation like the higher and lower worlds I have mentioned before. That comes in more on the left side of the Hei in the action of the foot and in the absence of a connection from the foot – to the top line… 

I am just quickly summing up the Hei here, because I didn’t do that last night, so I’m kinda rushing through it.

The right side of the Hei is us, and the power of our reach (our connectivity) through speech. And that left side, there’s that foot – representing action. But it’s not connected. As you can see, there is a space, and that space represents that nothingness I love so much, taking me back to Aleph, “The direct insight of Divine Truth; to be nothing.”

It’s that existential gap…

From the text I am reading:

The servant of God experiences the existential gap between his thoughts and deeds. Often he is unable to realize his inner intentions. Other times he is surprised by unexpected success. In both cases he feels the hand of God directing his deeds. The gap is the experience of the Divine Nothing, the source of all Creation in deed: something from nothing.

Okay, that’s Hei.

But back to Vav!

I had to fill you in on Hei because Vav is all about The Tzimtzum, not just a simple “ray of light” that I naively gathered before.

I once studied, once upon a time, some very basic physics. I was probably in my 20s, so I don’t remember a lot of it, but I remember how light, space and time all tied together, and you’d be shittin’ me if these early Lurianic Kabbalists knew anything about that in the 1500s, but apparently they did! Seriously! Classical Physics didn’t even start until the early 1600s. But somehow, even if it was just a theory or a guess – obviously it was a religious, creationist view – but they knew that light and time were connected (as light and space are).

Now I am stuck on whether or not I should link you to a physics page on that, or just leave it at that. …It’s based on Minkowski Space, which is all you really need to know.
Like I said – rabbit hole!

Yeah, Vav. Jeez! Who knew?

Here are some pictures I took today:

OH! By the way, I am going to be observing Shabbos tomorrow, so you won’t hear from me until Saturday night.

Have a great one! See you Saturday!

I see a red door and I want it panted black.

Words from one of my favorite rock n roll songs that I always thought was political, but it’s not. It is, according to Mick Jagger, about a young girl’s funeral. That’s good enough for me. It’s a dark song. I’m the dark and brooding type, so it works.

But I started to sing this because of the door. I suppose I could have sung Paul McCartney’s (Wings) Let em In, but that is just so upbeat! You know, because of Paul. Paul is a bit of an optimist. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. It was a good thing he was actually. It was a great balance for the Beatles and it made for the most perfect songwriting duo known to mankind. I was just more of a Lennon fan myself – for the very reason that Paul was a bit too much of a fluffy cloud.

But anyway, that door. Dalet is the door to the house, or rather, the opening to the house. If you’ve been following my blog, I’ve been studying the Hebrew letters and the Kabbalah.

The Dalet also represents the poor man that the Gimmel is running after to give charity to.

That sounds pretty funny that you would have to chase someone down to give them money, doesn’t it?

Remember I said before about how I have certain people in mind when I think about the Gimmel? Well, this might sound strange, but I think about the part of my relationship with my brother that has been strained in the past – although lately it has been quite healed – but I have thought about him as a Gimmel and about me as a Dalet, but not in the same context. I don’t think of him running after me. That’s not it. It’s hard to explain. …Trust me, he’s not running after me to give me any charity.

Like I said, it’s hard to explain, but what I can say is this: there’s actually a verse in Matthew that goes: “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”

Now whether you are a Christian or a Jew, or nothing in between, there is something to be said about that. I think about that verse a lot, as a “poor man” and as someone that usually runs away from charity! Ha! Yet, here I am in Joshua Tree on this quest, because of the charity of my friends and supporters. A charity of sorts anyway.

And speaking of mitzvahs, and the Dalet, here we go, right? Trust me, this ties together I think — into the poor man, the rich man, and in my mind, which has the bigger ego.

The Dalet has a lot to do with the consciousness of the ego, because many times in life we think that when we achieve big successes, it’s all about us. It’s all about how powerful we have become on our own alone. And we forget about this free will thing. That goes right out the window. We don’t give God any thought when these great things happen, yet we sure get pissed at him when the bad stuff occurs. (How could God let this horrible thing happen to me?!) 

We seem to acknowledge the God presence in times of struggle. I know I have noticed looking around for God during those times, probably every time. That’s when I need it.

The Talmud describes a situation where one man is carrying a heavy object and another man appears to be helping him by placing his hands under the object, when in truth the first man is carrying all the weight. The second man is referred to as “a merely apparent helper.” So are we, explains the Ba’al Shem Tov, in relation to God. Ultimately, all one’s strength comes from Above. Free choice is no more than the expression of one’s will to participate, as it were, in the Divine act. One merely places one’s hands under the weight carried exclusively by God.

Okay, I’m almost done with all this religious stuff. Well, I am done. I just wanted to say that I went down the biggest rabbit hole today when studying because I didn’t know what the Zohar was. Now I do!

Now for what I did in the studio today. Nothing!

Okay, I did some sketches, but not many! It was really a study day. Here are a few. I worked on a watercolor for a long time, but I don’t know how I feel about it yet.

Okay, this is me, signing off. See you tomorrow.

LOVE!

It was some kinda day today. Or maybe I should not say that.

I did not get as much done as I had hoped to, but I wonder if I’m going to be saying that every day. (Probably so, Joe.)

There is a friend I have in mind and I hope she is reading this blog entry tonight because I couldn’t help but think about her the entire time while studying today, while I was studying about the Kabbalah anyway. At least I did that! Other than that, I only got about five drawings – sketches really – done, plus a few photographs. No video footage today unfortunately.

I was studying and meditating on the letter Beit, which comes next in the Hebrew alphabet, and is also the first letter in the Torah, opening Genesis.

Most of you probably know, and I have known for a long while that Beit mainly means House, I did’t know how in depth – of course – all this gets.

And I hope all of you know that I am not giving out lessons here. I am merely learning these things and just writing out my stupid interpretations of how I  perceive this stuff, as some of it is a little poetic to me. None is quite literal. Although, I’m sure many do  take it literally. I do not. I am, and always have been, pretty secular, as a Jew. Only in the last decade have I become a little more serious about this religion. Or rather, “a little more interested,” might be a better way to put it.

My true calling for it was nostalgic; an early family connection that I missed very much when my grandma was still alive. I missed the traditions mostly. I missed when the family was closer and like a network of loving women. Since then, I felt lost, and sad. Once I found the right synagogue, I think that changed and my interest deepened.

But back to Beit,  the house business. Genesis begins with a BIG Beit.  God had specific intentions about his house and our house. It was the original intention as a matter of fact and that’s why  Genesis starts out that way, because it’s, of course, more than just a house,  it’s what dwells inside  the house.

You have to look at it in terms of God being a house. A really big, powerful and loving house. And you are a house too. And yes, the temples were/are the houses where we connected to God, but not really. We are the ones that dwell inside them. But what about when the Temple was destroyed?

The Torah details a description of the Tabernacle and its vessels: “They shall build me a Temple and I will dwell in them.” Not “in it,” but “in them” – in each and every Jew. Not the temples. I see it this way.

This following paragraph is for my friend. I’m cutting and pasting it right out of The Channels of the Creative Consciousness:

Beit is numerically equal to the word “ta’avah,” which means “desire” or “passion” (412). In general, “ta’avah” connotes a negative human property. However, in several places “ta’avah” denotes the positive passion of the tzadik, the righteous man. One passage in Proverbs states: “He will fulfill the passion of the tzadik,” and a second says: “the passions of tzadikim are only good.” The “ta’avah” of G-d, the “Tzadik of the world,” is altogether above reason and logic. At this level one cannot ask “why.” As expressed by Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi: “About passion, there can be no question.” As G-d is the essence of good so His passion is “only good.”

Some more connections leading back to this letter – it has everything to do with FREE WILL, being able to make choices between right and wrong, what is best to bring happiness to your personal house. It even talks about how your house also represents your partner. Beit  is the second letter in the alphabet, so its Divine number is two. Being after Aleph,  and the two being you and your mate for life, this is the kind of partnership that is next to the one you have with God.

Okay, enough with all that, here are some of the pictures I took today that I LOVE the most!