This recording begins with a lesson.
To skip to the meditation,
Go to 5 minutes and 50 seconds.
Not only the name of God is one,
But our experience of God is one.
Our experience is only goodness,
Only light,
A clarity that allows us to see from one end of the universe to the other,
And a joy that reverberates in every aspect of our being,
Our knowing,
Our consciousness.
But in case you are hearing this in the era in which I am recording this,
It appears we live in a world muddied by darkness and death,
By war and disease,
By anger and sadness,
Balancing out all of the light and growth,
Beauty,
Love,
And connection we also experience.
The question is,
In our hunger for pure,
Unadulterated light,
How do we hold space for the darkness?
Our Jewish tradition shows us perhaps a way in so many of our stories.
From Joseph lying in a serpent-ridden pit,
To becoming the leader of Egypt,
To his descendants being led into the lowest levels of depravity and slavery,
Being redeemed into the peaks of Sinai,
From the darkness of the holocaust,
To the redemption of the state of Israel.
We hold within us these narratives of darkness leading into light,
Which is why in so many times throughout our days and weeks and festivals,
We call out for the messianic era,
We sing out next year in Jerusalem,
We understand that even though the world now has darkness,
We also believe in the light that is coming.
One line from the book of Psalms I believe best embodies this understanding.
Those who plant seeds with tears will harvest in rejoicing.
This is the way of it.
There's something about working the soil of darkness that leads to the growth of light,
Especially if you believe it so.
And in this meditation,
I'm going to invite you to hold space for the darkness of your personal world and our collective world,
For the tears that are streaming out of your heart and mind and soul,
And simultaneously hold the beauty of a greater vision beyond.
With blessings from Jerusalem,
I invite you to find a comfortable seat and close your eyes and become aware of your breath,
Of the expansion and taking in of life as you inhale,
And of the constriction and releasing of old,
Dead matter as you exhale,
With what's no longer necessary.
The tzimtzum,
The constriction,
And the melchava and the expansion live in you in every moment of every day.
The cold and dead of winter,
And the brightness and flourishing of summer.
The fire that turns to ash,
And the phoenix that rises anew.
Your breath has all of this in it,
Precious one,
As does all of creation.
So as you breathe,
I invite you to see if you can expand your awareness to the edges of your skin and feel how your body as a whole is expanding and contracting with you,
And see if you can expand your awareness to fill the entire room that you are in,
And allow yourself to imagine as if the walls are breathing with you into expansion and out in constriction.
And now see if you can expand your awareness even further to the globe itself,
And feel the ocean and the trees and the animals and the soil expanding into life,
And releasing.
And as you stay with this breath and feel the planet breathing with you,
Allow yourself to connect to a place of brokenness in your life.
A dream unachieved.
And for the next few moments,
See if you can be the space in which this place of darkness,
Of sadness,
Of longing,
Can live as you breathe in and out without trying to make it change,
Without trying to fix it,
Without trying to sugarcoat it.
Can you simply be with it?
Can you let this thing touch your heart in a deep way?
Can you let the sadness come?
As you breathe in,
Can you allow yourself to know that this too was created by the divine?
That this brokenness,
This longing,
Is a part of creation,
Is a part of the beauty of darkness meeting with light.
And can you trust,
Like the Israelites in Egypt,
That your tears are planting redemption?
That from this place of longing and brokenness,
A rejoicing will one day come.
B'dimah.
Those who plant in tears.
With joyfulness.
With dance.
Can you invite yourself to see this longing,
This sadness,
As a soft rain that nourishes the soil of your heart?
Of your soul.
And of this planet.
See those tears of yours landing as droplets onto parched earth,
And being the source of new life.
Of seeds emerging out of the ground as grasses and flowers and trees.
As beauty.
And you have already lived this precious one.
Your ancestors went through their darkness and held on to life because they knew that one day you would come into the world.
They were planting their own seeds in their own soil.
And you are their redemptive fruit.
And how they must be rejoicing over your existence.
Whether in heaven above or here in earth below.
So see your own tears.
New rejoicing ahead of you.
That is the promise of Sinai.
The promise of Purim.
Promise of Hanukkah.
And the messianic promise that even in the darkness we believe that there is light ahead.
I invite you to plant that knowing into your heart and into your bones.
As you smile to yourself with a wink to the divine.
And slowly come back into your body by wiggling your fingers and wiggling your toes and batting your eyes open.
Ready to bless the world with your gaze.
Offering you blessings from Jerusalem.
