The Holy of Holies and how Consciousness Will Change for the Better

Isaac said,

Whether it was traveling in the desert, or built to last like Solomon’s Temple, the ancient Temple was always set up the same way. The innermost room was the Holy of Holies, where the Ark of the Covenant was kept. This space was 20 x 20 using a measure of the forearm, from fingertip to elbow.

Every name of God emanated from the Holy of Holies, each name in its own stream, flowing out into the world to fulfill its particular purpose. These streams flowed first through the sanctuary, then through the courtyards, and finally out into every place in the world.

A larger sanctuary encompassed and surrounded the Holy of Holies.

On either side of the doorway to the Holy of Holies sat two important items. On the right side was a special menorah with all of its lamps turned toward its center stem, which is regarded as the face of the menorah. On the left side, a golden table held a loaf of bread. This was to remind everybody of the blessings eternally bestowed.

In the center of this large sanctuary stood a square gold altar, and here only one kind of offering was burned, the highest offering, which was incense. Only the high priest was able to make this offering.

This altar, where the incense was burned, was considered the umbilical cord of the whole world, because this incense connected all human souls to the bliss of the divine flow, or “shefa.” In a sense all the bliss of the world was concentrated at this one place, at this altar.

Incense burns down, totally consumed by fire, with virtually nothing left over. In the same way the human soul is consumed by the Divine.

In Solomon’s Temple, this altar, the umbilical cord of the world, was placed on the same rock where Abraham almost sacrificed Isaac, which was the same rock where Jacob slept and saw the ladder of angels coming and going to divine realms. So this altar was connecting all realms to the human world. All human souls would receive this blessing of shefa (divine flow) from this very place.

Moving further through the Temple, beyond the large sanctuary, outdoors stood the higher and the lower courtyards. Here the archangels and angels would receive their blessings of shefa. Beyond the courtyards the blessings would spread throughout all the physical world.

Solomon was gifted with special sight to see all these streams of divine energy flowing everywhere. He could choose the best spot for a non-indigenous plant to grow, and it would thrive there. These courtyards were beautiful gardens with wondrous variety.

As we know, said Isaac, angels are born to serve God. When they fulfill their function, they’re finished. A human can become like an angel, running to serve God. After their season of being like an angel, the person will become human again, to enter into the deeper sanctuary and receive the greatest blessing, which is for human souls.

In our written records it says the third Temple will be built by God. Yet another passage says it will be built by people. Currently one of our Sages says it will actually be a holographic Temple that will appear, sent by God, and people will fill it in with the physical building. And it will be placed on the same site as Solomon’s Temple.

Apart from these traditional mystical teachings, the time is approaching when we may experience a new reality. Consciousness will change, and everything will look different to us. A shift will occur from the old wisdom into the “time of Keter.” The crown. We will understand that we are truly extensions of God. God is flowing through us and becoming all that Is. We are simply conduits.

At this point we will fully understand that I am you and you are me. There will be no doubt. It will be undeniable and obvious. Everything has consciousness. Birds, trees, rocks.

We will see God in everybody and everything. We will watch God’s will pouring through us, right into every aspect of our lives.

A person needs to be only two things: available and alert. Ready to serve the needs of the moment, whatever they may be.
This kind of readiness is more valuable than intelligence.

Our lives won’t change much. Daily life will play out as usual. We’ll still have challenges, but our perception will change. Our consciousness will deepen. We’ll be watching God pour through, everywhere we look.

There is no telling when this new understanding may arrive. It may take a long time yet. But here in our circle we may feel a little of it. It really depends on people. And this is the sort of teaching that, when you name it, you call it forth.

So said Isaac.

These are Isaac’s words from Chapter 59 of Volume 1, Walking the Bridge – With a Fearless Heart.

 

(Thanks to Mary Harrsch on Flicker for this image of Solomon’s temple.)

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Bring Your Own Happiness – the Good Wisdom of Purim

On Purim we are commanded to be happy, said Isaac. It may sound odd, but this is what is required of us.

When I was a young man, I entered the Yeshiva (seminary) in Jerusalem without knowing anybody or anything. I did not grow up as an observant Jew, so I knew little about my ancestral tradition. As the months went by, when each holiday approached, I would learn about it.

When it came time for Purim, I read about it, but I didn’t know what to expect. I was invited to dinner with a respected rabbi, a serious man, who spent his days learning and teaching, rising early and going to bed late. His days were filled with devotion. This was life in the Yeshiva for all of us – study and devotion, to the best of our ability.

When I sat at his table on Purim, to my great surprise, he pulled out a bottle of homemade cherry schnapps. He told me tonight it was a mitzvah (good deed) to get drunk. There was so much about Yeshiva that I had to scramble to learn, but here on this night I said to myself, this is something I know how to do.

He poured me a glass and I drank it. It was delicious. Being a good host, he filled my glass again. I drank it again. This went on awhile until I had no memory of the rest of the dinner.

The next thing I do remember that night, I was out on the streets of Jerusalem. People were walking around. Kids in costumes, people singing. People drinking. One or two throwing up. The world was topsy-turvy that night. That is Purim.

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On Purim everything goes upside down. It’s a mitzvah to get drunk to the point where you don’t know which end is up. You don’t know good from bad.

It gets all mixed up because all of it, the good and the bad, is from God.

Most of you know the story about Haman (“Boo,” we answered) and Mordechai (“Yay!”). (Boo-ing and cheering from the crowd is traditional with this story.)

Well, Haman (“Boo!”) was not a happy man. He had worked hard. He had risen to the top of his achievements, to the point where the king elevated him to an even higher post.

In his new elevated role, everybody had to bow to him. He would walk through the courtyard and everybody bowed. But Mordechai (“Yay!”) would not bow.

Why was Haman (“Boo!”) such an unhappy man? He was given so much, after all. He should have been grateful. He had a high post and lots of people complimenting and bowing to him. But like many of us, he lost sight of the ninety-nine percent of the supportive people, and all he could see was the one person who was not supporting him.

He focused his entire attention on that one guy, Mordechai (“Yay!”) who refused to bow to him.

Haman (“Boo! Boo!”) . . . Haman (“Boo!” we shouted him down). . . . He didn’t know how to be happy.

“Who?” Somebody asked amid the laughter.

Him, said Isaac.

He focused on his one small trouble. He expanded his trouble to include not only Mordechai (“Yay!”) but all the Jewish people in Persia. He plotted to destroy them all. He was a man filled with jealousy, anger, and violence.

But in the end, the tables were turned, and the very death he had planned for Mordechai (“Yay!” “Boo!”) was carried out on himself (“Yay”). (Thanks to Queen Esther who brought the truth. She told King Xerxes that Mordechai had saved him from an assassination plot.)

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So Purim is a time when things going in one direction can reverse into the opposite direction. It’s a time when karma pays out. The good or the bad you have done may catch up with you now. If you have sown seeds of kindness, they are returning to you now.

We know the world is our mirror, and whatever vibration we offer will be reflected back to us. Even though the response is slowed down in this world, and it may take awhile, we will eventually receive the reflection of our own faces.

Maybe I was angry and upset, lashing out, and a couple weeks go by until the day someone becomes angry with me. I might not make the connection that it began with my own anger. Because this earth plane has a time lapse, we might not connect related events.

Our practice is to learn to be happy.

Learn to be happy.

Your happiness will create more of the same in the world.

An important ingredient in being happy is to accept your own dark side and light side.
When we are young and we are forming ourselves, we tend to hide away the things we don’t want to reveal to others. I don’t like this part of me. I’m not good at this. I hide away my negative aspects.

We need to embrace all parts of ourselves. Relax and allow it.

That’s another reason to dress funny for Purim tonight.
Can I let down my guard?
Can I let myself go?
Is it okay to show my messy side?

You know we need all of ourselves.
We need to be whole.
We need both our right and left wings before we can fly.

Parents tend to tell their children how to behave, what to do, how to be. But those are just words. What the children really learn from you is how you live in the world. They see and imitate your way of being. Are you happy enough that they can learn “happy” from you?

Don’t be seeking happiness and working hard to find it. It’s already available. Seeking mode means you don’t have it yet.

Realize your happiness is already with you.
Find your happiness right where you are, within the situation you are living right now.
Find the happiness in it.

Your soul is naturally happy.
We get so busy that we cover up the soul’s natural happiness.
We do too much and stay too busy.

Don’t depend on others to bring happiness to you.
Bring your own happiness.
Bring your happiness to the party.

In any situation, you can be happy if you bring it with you.

No matter what kind of people you are with or how difficult the situation, you can still find happiness – because you bring it with you.

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These are Isaac’s words from Chapter 11 of Volume 4, Walking The Bridge: With Courage And Trust.

(Thanks to Wikimedia Commons for this Purim smile.)

Open Your Loving-Kindness and Release the Judging Mind

Isaac said,

The Torah tells us Abraham “came with all his days.” It’s an odd phrase. When our Torah scholars examine its root word and connotations, they say that here the word “days” signifies attributes, sefirot. As we’ve learned before, the sefirot are emanations, illuminations of Divine Light coming into creation in the Tree of Life within each of us. These attributes are the characteristics of wisdom, understanding, kindness, restriction, balance, assertion, surrender, and so on.

Abraham “came with all his days.” He came with all his sefirot aligned, balanced. He was loving and accepting of others. He withheld judgment (“din”). He was generous and understanding. He had little anger or restriction, but when he did, it was appropriate to the situation. He was able to surrender to Divine Will. Above all he was kindness itself.

Abraham is the patriarch who fully embodies Chesed, loving-kindness.

Our teachers remind us that in any situation, if we have doubt about how to handle things, always move to the right, move toward Chesed, in our dealings with others.

Abraham had made himself into a strong vessel, a cup to hold divine light.

Most of us have leaky vessels. Our attributes are not fully developed.

We tend toward the human habit of seeing shortcomings in others and judging them for it. In some cases din, judgment, can be appropriate, but not when it is tainted with any trace of anger, zeal, jealousy, the negative personal emotions.

To speak out with zeal may be too forceful, because you’re sure you’re right. You’re blinded by your own view. You’re not allowing the opinions of others.

We’re so human; we project a lot. We barely see our own faults. We see these faults in others. We point out others’ leaks because we have the same leaks ourselves.

A leaky vessel cannot be filled. It cannot hold grace the way a complete cup does.

Take a moment now to open your loving-kindness. You will find your loving-kindness place, because the totality of everything is inside you. This is a holographic universe, which means that every small part of it contains the whole of it. You simply locate that vibration. It’s there in you.

Find it inside yourself, the attribute of loving-kindness. Open it. Think of a beloved person, pet, situation, or memory. Feel the love in your heart.

Take a moment to bask in this vibration.

Now that you have located and opened this attribute of loving-kindness, ask that it be filled.
You open it. God fills it.
Breathe into this. The Source of all is filling it for you.

Excerpted from chapter 31 of Volume 2, Walking the Bridge – With Balance.

Let There Be Light and Consciousness from One Level of Soul to the Next

Isaac said,

If we had a goal, it would be to bring the unconscious to light, bring it to consciousness. The reason Shabbos and all Jewish holidays begin at nightfall is because we are bringing light into our darkness. Bringing more awareness.

When God said, “Let there be light,” it meant “Let there be consciousness.”

Question: If our progress in this life depends on becoming aware of our unconscious limitations, is this also true of the beings in other realms?

Yes, Isaac replied. In all worlds, all realms, the challenge is to become more and more conscious. Imagine three bottles of increasing size, and they are one inside the other, each with its own cork. Each contains seawater as well as its smaller bottle.

The smallest bottle is our physical existence. When we finish this existence, and the small bottle breaks, we are released into a larger space. We have an experience of expansion into more seawater. It feels liberating. We gain a wider perspective in the astral plane. Yet eventually we find we are limited by the next larger bottle.

All beings want to and need to increase awareness, in order to go beyond all the bottles. By the time we break all the bottles, we re-join the Unity of the Ocean. We melt into It, and we’re overjoyed to do so.

Watch and listen to your dreams. Dreams are often the best tool to uncover the unconscious. You might like to jot down a few descriptive words the moment you awaken, to strengthen your remembrance.

Question: Please explain more about the levels of the soul, of increasing consciousness. Are they like the bottles?

Yes, the levels of the soul are the Nefesh, the Ruach, the Neshama, the Chaya, and finally the Yehidah. Only the Yehidah is complete Union.

Among the many names for God, Elokim is the One who forms all things in the world of duality. This is a subject-object world, where the subject is your inner witness, looking at the objects.

Havayah is the name of God that means Unity, and God alone.

These are Isaac’s words from Chapter 62 of Volume 1, Walking the Bridge – With a Fearless Heart.

On Revealed Light and Concealment – when Trouble Conceals the Fruit

Isaac said,

On the mystical side of our tradition, our teachers tell us this world comes into being with a balance of light and dark.

The Light of Being is infused into every part of this world, but at the same time it is hidden from us, concealed.

The light is called “Kedushah,” holiness.
The concealment is called “Kelipah,” which means a husk, a shell, a covering, like the thick skin of an orange. The peel.

Both always come together, the light and the husk which hides it.
In this way light and dark stay balanced.

Duality stays dualistic, two sides, pro and con, up and down, positive and negative.
Each pair is positioned on either end of a continuum.

We stand in middle and feel like we have a choice between the two.
This is the basis of free will in duality. We choose the right or the left.

We are meant to work with the concealment.
Like with an orange, you work to peel off its shell before you reach the fruit, the sweetness inside. You must go beyond the mundane, the concealment, to reach wisdom.

Many aspects of life are like this. You must get past some difficulty, some negativity, to reach the light.

Sometimes a great soul comes to earth, but their great light is hidden by difficulties, concealed in a thick shell of trouble or negativity.

Many generations ago in the Hasidic lineage, Rabbi Simcha Bunim was a great master filled with holiness, vast knowledge and wisdom. He was greatly respected.
His student, Rabbi Yitzhak, was also grounded in wisdom and already had some of his own students. But he continued to learn from Rabbi Simcha, bringing the students along.

Sometimes Yitzhak and his students went to another city to learn from a master rabbi who was intensely argumentative. He was a master, yet his belligerence was his kelipah, the dark shell around him.

Not only that, he often said terrible things about Reb Simcha. Big insults. Yitzhak knew these were untrue and unfair. But Yitzhak didn’t fight back.

Yitzhak’s students asked him, “How can you sit and take it while he insults your master teacher again and again? Why don’t you stand up for Reb Simcha?”

Yitzhak then told them a story of an unfortunate event in his life.
He was walking through a town where he knew no one, and no one knew him.
But a man stopped him and said accusingly, “You’re the one!”
Other people gathered around, examining his face, pointing at Yitzhak.
They said, “Yes, that’s him! That’s him! He’s the guy! Grab him!”
Yitzhak had no idea what they were talking about.

It turned out that they thought he was the man who had abandoned his young wife in that town, the man who had run off many years before. They “recognized” him as that terrible guy.
Yitzhak sat before the Rebbe of that town and explained himself. Thankfully the Rebbe understood and accepted his side of the story. They let him go.

It was a case of mistaken identity, Yitzhak told his students.

He said, “I was not angry that day, but confused. In the same way I don’t feel angry with this teacher for insulting Reb Simcha, because obviously he doesn’t even know him. To be talking like that about him, I’m sure he knows nothing about him.”

Reb Yitzhak was also following the sage advice from the Talmud, which says that when you keep silence, you become an agent for wisdom, “Chochmah.”

Joseph is another expression of Chochmah through silence. Wisdom through silence.

Joseph was born as a great light in the world, but his brothers cast him into slavery. They threw him into concealment, into the pit.

He became a servant in the house of Potiphar, and when Potiphar’s wife tried to seduce him, he patiently kept silence. He was an agent for wisdom. He was a light.

But again he was cast into a pit, into the dungeon, concealed in darkness.

The thing about Joseph was that no matter what happened to him, he carried a lot of light.

People could simply see that God was with him. Even non-believers had to admit, everything kept working out for him. Even they would say, God is always with that guy.

You know the story, the wine steward and the baker were also imprisoned. When they each had a powerful dream and needed help to understand it, they went to Joseph. This was their obvious choice – ask the guy who is so connected to God.
Joseph interpreted their dreams accurately, and eventually he advised Pharaoh himself, interpreted his dreams, and saved Egypt from impending famine.

Did Joseph lash out in anger against the events that befell him?
No, he maintained his patience and his wisdom.

In the same way Rabbi Yitzhak shows us how to turn away from anger, no matter what the insults are.

These are Isaac’s words from Chapter 1 of Volume 4, Walking The Bridge: With Courage And Trust.