This Is Real (3): Elul Check-In

The particularity of time (p.28-30)
Judaism believes in the particularity of time, that certain times have special properties: that Shabbat has an extra degree of holiness; that Passover is the time of our liberation; that Shavuot is a time unusually conducive to revelation. But they have special properties only when we are mindful. If we consciously observe Shabbat, Shabbat has this holy quality. If we don't, it is merely Friday night, merely Saturday afternoon. (p.28)
...What our tradition is affirming with these claims is the healing power of time. What our tradition is affirming is that when we reach the point of awareness, everything in time - everything in the year, everything in our life - conspires to help us. Everything becomes the instrument of our redemption. (p.29)
...The passage of time brings awareness, and the two together, time and consciousness, heal... This is precisely the journey we take every year during the High Holidays - a journey of transformation and healing, a time which together with consciousness heals and transforms us. And the urge to return, that primal impulse buried deep in our psyche, is the current that propels us down this river. It is the impulse that launches the healing process. (pp.29-30)

Divine attention (p.9, 11, 105)
In ancient Israel the seventh month of the year was an anxious time. All the other civilizations of the ancient Near East were sustained by great rivers. The Egyptians had the Nile, the Babylonians had the Tigris and the Euphrates; but Israel was completely dependent on rain. The rains came in the eighth month. So the seventh month was a time when the nation of Israel felt its life hanging in the balance. This utter dependence on the heavens seems to have given the ancient Israelites an intense sense of their dependence on God. It may well have been this dependence that sensitized the Israelites to the existence of God in the first place. The ancient Israelites felt themselves to be part of a vast interpenetrating whole, a cosmos in which the weather and their own moral condition were active and interdependent constituents. The round of holidays we now call the Days of Awe gave form to this sense. (p.9)
...
God's mindfulness of us is the sine qua non of this holiday season. If there were no consciousness out there aware of us, responding to us, this whole round of holidays would make no sense at all. Neither would life. The rains would fall at random. The heavens would shut themselves up, and we would live and die without meaning. Equally important is our awareness of God. We shouldn't imagine this was any less problematic for the ancient Israelites than it is for us. If they found it easy, they wouldn't have needed 100 blasts of the great shofar to bing them back to an awareness of the Supernal Oneness or its inescapable sovereignty over all creation. (p.11)
...
And it is real whether you believe in God or not. Perhaps God made it real and perhaps God did not. Perhaps God created this pageant of judgment and choice, of transformation, of life and of death. Perhaps God created the Book of Life and the Book of Death, Teshuvah and the blowing of the shofar. Or perhaps these are all inventions of human culture. It makes no difference. It is equally real in any case.
The weeks and the months and the years are also inventions of human culture. Time and biology are inventions of human culture. Language and stores, love and tragedy, are inventions of human culture. But they are all matters of life and death, all real and all inescapable. (p.105)

Denying the Denial of Death (pp.118-119)
Earlier I mentioned The Denial of Death, by the philosopher Ernest Becker, and Becker's observation that we human beings seem to be the only creatures afflicted with the mysterious capacity to understand that we are going to die, and that it is precisely this fact that seems to call us to the world, to our life's work, and to God. We try to compensate for this dread intelligence by constructing what Becker calls affirmation systems. We see the void and it terrifies us; it looks to us like utter negation. So we try to set up something in life that affirms our existence.
Against death, which we see as the ultimate failure, we offer up success.
Against death, which we see as the ultimate emptiness, we offer up the acquisition of objects.
Against death, which we see as the end of all feeling, we offer up the pursuit of pleasure.
Against death, which we see as the final stillness, we offer up a ceaseless rage of activity.
Against death, which we see as the ultimate impotence, we offer up the glorification of our own power.

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]

Shofar (p.64, p. 113, pp.10-11)
Suddenly you are awakened by a strange noise, a noise that fills the full field of your consciousness and then splits into several jagged strands, shattering that field, shaking you awake. The ram's horn, the shofar, the same instrument that will sound one hundred times on Rosh Hashanah, the same sound that filled the world when the Torah was spoken into being on Mount Sinai, is being blown to call you to wakefulness. You awake to confusion. Where are you? Who are you? (p.64)
...
When the shofar sounds one hundred times, it blows open the gates of heaven. When the shofar sounds one hundred times, it forms a bridge between heaven and earth, and we enter heaven on that bridge. When the shofar sounds one hundred times, it cracks the shell of our awareness wide open, and suddenly we find ourselves in heaven. When the shofar sounds one hundred times, we hear the voice of heaven in it. We experience Revelation. God's voice comes down to earth on the same bridge we used to go up to heaven.
...
Was the sound of the ram's horn (the shofar) a mystical nexus between heaven and earth or, as suggested by the Rambam (Maimonides, a medieval philosopher and legal authority and a towering figure in the world of Jewish thought), was it a wake-up call for us? Was it crying out to us, "Awake, awake, you sleepers from your sleep; examine your deeds, return in repentance, remember your Creator... look to your souls"? (pp.10-11)

10. Psalm 27: Translation by Roshi Norman Fischer
(from Opening to You: Zen Translations of the Book of Psalms)
You are my light and my help
Whom should I fear?
You are the fortress of my life
Whom should I dread?
When the narrow ones gather their strength to devour me
It is they who stumble and fall
Even if a royal army were camped outside my gate
my heart would not fear.
And when they struck out with terrible weapons against me
Even then I’d trust
One thing I ask for, one thing I hope - To live in your house
All the days of my life
To behold your loveliness
Every morning in the light of your temple dawn
Till on a doomful day
You secure me in your precincts
Conceal me within the folds of your covering tent
Place me high and safe upon a rock
My head lifted above the engulfing waves
With the joy of my heart
I will sacrifice
Within that billowing shelter
Singing and playing my abandonment to you.
Hear my voice when I raise it up
Be gracious - answer me -
Speaking with your voice my heart sang, Seek my presence
I will.
Do not hide your glowing face from me
do not reject me in anger because of my shortcomings
You have always been for me
Don’t cast me off now, don’t walk away
My helper, my friend
My mother and father forsake me
But you take me up
Show me the way! Guide my steps on the clear path
Against the ever-present cliffs and thickets
Protect me from the noise of desire and hatefulness
From false words and shouted accusations
If I did not have faith in your rightness
That is would bloom in this living land - It is unthinkable
I wait only for you
With strength and good courage -
I wait only for you.

Reviewing the Year

• Divide the past year into fall, winter, spring, summer. What were the highlights, achievements and themes of each quarter?
  
• What unfinished business remains from this past year?
  
• 'Four Worlds' check-in: what is going well, and where is there room for improvement in each of the following realms?
  
  • Physical health, fitness and wellbeing
    
  • Emotional wellbeing, intimacy, connection with others
    
  • Intellectual stimulation and growth
    
  • Spiritual connection and spiritual practice
    

Practices suggested by Melinda Ribner, Kabbalah Month by Month

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.