Today,
This week,
I had a meeting with the person who I've been engaged in teaching meditation for a long time.
He was complaining about having a block.
I said,
Well,
What's the first logical thing you do when your meditation is not going the way you think it should is to pray about your meditation.
So it's something that we can do.
We talked about God.
I'm having a hard time meditating.
God,
I can't focus.
God,
My mind is closed.
God,
My eye is dark.
Whatever it might be.
It's the minute you open that discussion,
That dialogue up with Hashem,
It's going to bring light into the darkness and hopefully answer whatever might be troubling you in your meditative discipline.
Throw in a little stretching with the meditation.
So let's begin to get ready.
Find a comfortable posture wherever you're sitting.
Our spine should be straight as we can be comfortably.
Our feet flat.
Our hands relaxing.
Our head and neck also trying to find a comfortable balance.
And we begin to breathe through our nose.
Breathing through our nose.
Feel the cool air.
Calming the breath.
Calming the heat of the heart.
The heat of passion.
The heat of desires.
Exhale.
And pause.
Empty.
Waiting.
Sensing our dependence on oxygen.
And then we inhale.
Immediately feel the expansion.
The appreciation for oxygen.
And then the appreciation of the one who created oxygen.
And the ability to breathe clearly.
Unobstructed.
Each breath brings us new life.
Without breath,
Life stops.
Such a miracle.
The way we work.
The way we exist at all.
How far we get away from our truth,
Our simple relationship to our breath.
My breath is where my soul is set free.
From a stream of words.
From an idea.
From a feeling.
The Zohar teaches us it is God's breath that gives life.
By His breath is in our breath deep inside the chamber,
The spiritual meets the physical.
If God creates with breath through the holy letters.
And if He creates my soul with His breath.
Then who are you?
What is your name?
Your name is the precise expression in God's breath of your soul.
Imagine somebody asks you who you are.
Imagine if you answered I am God's breath.
There might be some interesting results to that response.
Continue breathing.
Enjoy breathing.
Enjoy life now.
We need no other reason to rejoice.
Other than the fact that we are alive.
And have this moment together.
Now,
In this moment I will ask a question.
And as we have learned together.
The high level answers to our questions come to us gently.
Perhaps as a bird lands on a tree.
The answers to life's questions are there waiting to land upon the tree of our soul.
So the question we want to ask Am I happy being me?
Am I happy being me?
With all my failures,
All my mistakes,
All disappointments,
Frustrations.
At this very moment am I happy being me?
We must be honest with our answer.
Otherwise we are lost.
Am I happy?
Many answers might arise in your mind for such a simple yes-no question.
But honor those answers.
Look at them.
Am I qualifying my answer?
Am I wishing I was somebody else?
Am I unhappy being who I am?
Do I have a choice?
This question does not have one answer,
As simple as it may be.
This question can be asked every moment of your life,
For happiness is not a static quality.
Happiness expands and contracts like everything else.
Of course it is a gift to be happy,
To be ourselves.
It is also a gift to be wise and understand why I may not feel happy.
To be in the truth of any feeling at any time.
Not the prisoner of a feeling,
But rather the master of a feeling.
Are you the master of your feelings,
Or are you mastered by the feelings?
Certainly we understand that in the way that God creates us with something as subtle as breath,
We can change.
We can change the way we frame ourselves.
We can be happy with all our failures,
And all our disappointments,
And all our misperceptions,
And all the times I thought I was better than I was,
And all the times I could have been better,
And all the could haves and would haves and should haves of life.
They're like toys in the child's room.
You don't play with them anymore.
But God gets pleasure from us.
He gets pleasure when we play,
Especially in his Torah.
So even in these times,
We can be playful.
We can be joyous.
We can have fun.
We can take the greatest works of mysticism,
Like the Holy Zohar,
And learn things that entertain us,
That inspire us,
And make us think.
That remind us we're really not from this world,
But rather we are from the mouth of the living God.
Okay.
Let's come back if we can.
Oh,
Well,
That was nice.
I hope all of you enjoyed the meditation.
Well,
All of you should be blessed with a great Shabbos and a time of renewal,
A time of preparing for Pesach,
For redemption.
And please be in touch,
If you will,
If you have questions.
And we will continue next week.
And I assume the week after,
And then we will have Pesach,
And I hope to teach during Chol HaMewed as well.
So we will have what to look forward in our work and continue.
And I strongly encourage you to meditate,
Even if it's just five breaths,
You know,
Before you get out of that car and face the crowd of kids,
Or whatever it is that you have to face in your life.
Sometimes those five breaths make a big difference.
And God will give us his help to succeed in all that we attempt.
Good night to all of you.
Good night.
