Rabbi Lew's suggested avenues for practice map nicely onto the yogic chakra system - seven areas of human focus (represented above as power centers in the midline of the body).
1. Practice stillness; meditate [Ground]
2. Examine one area of life and desire, eg money, sex, food [Appetite]
3. Tie up loose ends [Power and Will]
4. Be available to the suffering of others [Heart]
5. Prayer and hitbodedut [Speech]
6. Examine methods of perception - look at the window not through the window [Vision]
7. ??? [Higher Alignment]
1. Practice stillness; meditate [Ground]
2. Examine one area of life and desire, eg money, sex, food [Appetite]
3. Tie up loose ends [Power and Will]
4. Be available to the suffering of others [Heart]
5. Prayer and hitbodedut [Speech]
6. Examine methods of perception - look at the window not through the window [Vision]
7. ??? [Higher Alignment]
1. Ground and Practice Stillness - Meditation (p.70)
Sitting each day at a specified time during the month of Elul, we may focus on our breath and our body, holding our body at the tension point between balance and relaxation, watching the breath as it enters and leaves the body just below the navel...
As we saturate these most fundamental aspects of our reality with our awareness, we find that we are inhabiting ourselves in a deeper way than we usually do. And gradually this sense spreads to our heart and our mind and our soul, and we find that we are also inhabiting our feelings, our thoughts and our spirits more deeply, that we are filling these things with more consciousness than we usually do, that we are feeling them more immediately, more concretely, more viscerally than we usually do: in short, that we are coming to inhabit the present-tense reality of who we are, coming to experience our real moral and spiritual position and what is required of us next.
Sitting each day at a specified time during the month of Elul, we may focus on our breath and our body, holding our body at the tension point between balance and relaxation, watching the breath as it enters and leaves the body just below the navel...
As we saturate these most fundamental aspects of our reality with our awareness, we find that we are inhabiting ourselves in a deeper way than we usually do. And gradually this sense spreads to our heart and our mind and our soul, and we find that we are also inhabiting our feelings, our thoughts and our spirits more deeply, that we are filling these things with more consciousness than we usually do, that we are feeling them more immediately, more concretely, more viscerally than we usually do: in short, that we are coming to inhabit the present-tense reality of who we are, coming to experience our real moral and spiritual position and what is required of us next.
2. Examine One Area of Life and Desire (p.71)
Just choose one simple and fundamental aspect of your life and commit yourself to being totally conscious and honest about it for the 30 days of Elul. "A world in a grain of sand," as the poet William Blake reminded us. Everything we do is an expression of the entire truth of our lives. It doesn't really make any difference what it is that we choose to focus on, but it ought to be something pretty basic, something like eating or sex or money, if for no other reason than that these concerns are likely to arise quite frequently in our lives and to give us a lot of grist for the mill.
(p.91) We can spend a bit of time each day locating our own particular belle dame sans merci, to identifying whatever desire has distorted our lives, the beautiful delusion for which we've thrown everything away, or for which we stand ready to do so, in any case.
And when we've located it, all we have to do is look at it. We don't have to kill it, and we certainly don't have to act on it either.
Just choose one simple and fundamental aspect of your life and commit yourself to being totally conscious and honest about it for the 30 days of Elul. "A world in a grain of sand," as the poet William Blake reminded us. Everything we do is an expression of the entire truth of our lives. It doesn't really make any difference what it is that we choose to focus on, but it ought to be something pretty basic, something like eating or sex or money, if for no other reason than that these concerns are likely to arise quite frequently in our lives and to give us a lot of grist for the mill.
(p.91) We can spend a bit of time each day locating our own particular belle dame sans merci, to identifying whatever desire has distorted our lives, the beautiful delusion for which we've thrown everything away, or for which we stand ready to do so, in any case.
And when we've located it, all we have to do is look at it. We don't have to kill it, and we certainly don't have to act on it either.
3. Power to Act: Tie Up Loose Ends (pp.79-80)
4. Feeling: Be Available to Others' Suffering (pp.82-84)
5. Prayer (p.68)
The Hebrew word for prayer is tefilah. The infinitive form of the verb is l'hitpalel - to pray - a reflexive form denoting action that one performs on oneself. Many scholars believe that the root of this word comes from a Ugaritic verb for judgment, and that the reflexive verb l'hitpalel originally must have meant to judge oneself.
This is not the usual way we think of prayer. Ordinarily we think we should pray to ask for things, or to bend God's will to our own. But it is no secret to those who pray regularly and with conviction that one of the deepest potentials of prayer is that it can be a way we come to know ourselves.
The Hebrew word for prayer is tefilah. The infinitive form of the verb is l'hitpalel - to pray - a reflexive form denoting action that one performs on oneself. Many scholars believe that the root of this word comes from a Ugaritic verb for judgment, and that the reflexive verb l'hitpalel originally must have meant to judge oneself.
This is not the usual way we think of prayer. Ordinarily we think we should pray to ask for things, or to bend God's will to our own. But it is no secret to those who pray regularly and with conviction that one of the deepest potentials of prayer is that it can be a way we come to know ourselves.
The Serenity Prayer
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
- Pastor Richard Niebuhr, 1951
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
- Pastor Richard Niebuhr, 1951
6. Examine Your Frame of Perception (pp.77-78)
(With his son the entomologist, stuck in the rain on Martha's Vineyard)...
The essential act of the High Holiday season is Teshuvah, a turning toward mindfulness, and an important step in this process is a kind of turning in to examine our perceptive mechanisms, the way we see the world. It is a shifting of our gaze from the world itself to the window through which we see it, because that window, the screen of our consciousness, is not just a blank, transparent medium. Rather it is a world unto itself, a world teeming with life, and that life affects what we see. And because that life makes us see the world differently, the first step in Teshuvah is to look at the window itself.
When the shofar blows on the first day of Elul, and every morning thereafter, it reminds us to turn our gaze inward, and to place judgment at the gates of our consciousness, to shift our focus from the outside world to the considerable activity taking place in the window through which we view it.
(With his son the entomologist, stuck in the rain on Martha's Vineyard)...
The essential act of the High Holiday season is Teshuvah, a turning toward mindfulness, and an important step in this process is a kind of turning in to examine our perceptive mechanisms, the way we see the world. It is a shifting of our gaze from the world itself to the window through which we see it, because that window, the screen of our consciousness, is not just a blank, transparent medium. Rather it is a world unto itself, a world teeming with life, and that life affects what we see. And because that life makes us see the world differently, the first step in Teshuvah is to look at the window itself.
When the shofar blows on the first day of Elul, and every morning thereafter, it reminds us to turn our gaze inward, and to place judgment at the gates of our consciousness, to shift our focus from the outside world to the considerable activity taking place in the window through which we view it.
How's Your Life? The Life Pie Review
In each of the six areas of life charted below, put a dot to indicate your level of fulfillment. The closer to the center you place the dot, the less fulfilled it means you feel about this region of life. A dot right by the rim means you are very fulfilled in this domain.
Note where your life is what you would like it to be, as well as the places you see room for improvement.
Practice suggested by Julia Cameron in The Artist's Way
Reviewing the Year
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Divide the past year into fall, winter, spring, summer. What were the highlights, achievements and themes of each quarter?
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What unfinished business remains from this past year?
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'Four Worlds' check-in: what is going well, and where is there room for improvement in each of the following realms?
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Physical health, fitness and wellbeing
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Emotional wellbeing, intimacy, connection with others
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Intellectual stimulation and growth
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Spiritual connection and spiritual practice
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Physical health, fitness and wellbeing
Some Jewish Meditation Resources
Or haLev
https://www.orhalev.net/
Retreats online and in person - Classes and practice groups - Podcast, articles and more.
Institute for Jewish Spirituality, IJS
https://www.jewishspirituality.org/
Including Awaken, a 4 week online intro to Jewish mindfulness program, starts September 4 2022.
Also podcast, weekly Torah study, yoga and more.
Awakened Heart Project
https://awakenedheartproject.org/
Retreats online, including Aug 22-28 2022: Preparing for a New Jewish Year in a Changing World with Sylvia Boorstein, Norman Fischer, Joanna Katz and Jeff Roth) and in person.
Podcasts, practice instructions, videos of talks and more.
Or haLev
https://www.orhalev.net/
Retreats online and in person - Classes and practice groups - Podcast, articles and more.
Institute for Jewish Spirituality, IJS
https://www.jewishspirituality.org/
Including Awaken, a 4 week online intro to Jewish mindfulness program, starts September 4 2022.
Also podcast, weekly Torah study, yoga and more.
Awakened Heart Project
https://awakenedheartproject.org/
Retreats online, including Aug 22-28 2022: Preparing for a New Jewish Year in a Changing World with Sylvia Boorstein, Norman Fischer, Joanna Katz and Jeff Roth) and in person.
Podcasts, practice instructions, videos of talks and more.
Ana b'Koach - The Secret of Ascent
https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/ana-bkoach-a-portal-to-creation/
R DovBer Pinson http://iyyun.com/teachings/ana-bkoach
We beg you! With the strength of Your right hand’s greatness, untie our tangles.
Accept the prayer of Your nation; strengthen and purify us, O Awesome One.
Please, O Strong One – those who foster your Oneness, guard them like the pupil of an eye.
Bless them, purify them, show them pity, may Your righteousness always recompense them.
Powerful Holy One, with Your abundant goodness guide Your congregation.
One and only Exalted One, turn to Your nation which proclaims Your holiness.
Accept our entreaty and hear our cry, O Knower of mysteries.
[Baruch shem kavod: Blessed is the name of the One the glory of whose sovereignty is ever and always.]
