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Essay on the Tree of Life
For the most part, we live in a world that doesn't acknowledge the
existence of the Self, the Soul or of God. Where it is acknowledged, it is
often an intellectual understanding, a concept or a belief based on current
convincing information or arguments. The Baal Shem Tov, the founder of
Hassidism, said that knowing is not data/information, it is intimate
knowledge, it is experiential knowledge, it is being consciously one with
that which is known. It is the difference between the Tree of Knowledge
and the Tree of Life. It is the difference between mental intelligence,
emotional intelligence and spiritual intelligence.
My work is about bringing the soul from an intellectual concept to
a personal and intimate experience. Haven't we had enough focus about the
soul? From a mental approach, yes. Now it's time for one that speaks from
the soul and to the soul and calls to and awakens the soul. It combines
the religious, the spiritual, the psychological and the meditative. It is
rooted in traditional teachings and practices, and bears fruits that are
fresh and deeply nourishing today. It is rooted in traditional Judaism,
but speaks to and respects all streams of Judaism, and all world
traditions. But in particular it speaks to that part of all traditions
that is for those walking the path of the heart.
The book Emotional Intelligence points out how the heart has
suffered and been attacked. I seek to remedy this in general - in
spiritual and psychological and meditative approaches, and in specific in
the realm of Judaism. Perhaps more than anything else, surviving the
experience of the holocaust left the heart teachings of Judaism forgotten
and almost inaccessible.
Like the high priest who couldn't serve God in the Holy Temple if
he had come in contact with death because death darkens, saddens or angers
us, and in that frame of mind, one can't serve God with Truth, Light and
Joy. Similarly we today having been touched by 6 million dead, can't serve
God in our teaching and learning. The words come out, the information is
passed on or over, but the light, the truth and the joy within is lost.
Our greatest task today is purifying ourselves to serve God truth and joy,
once again. To rediscover, regain, restore access to our soul and to God.
The soul is not a divine or Godly spark flitting around the body
like a fire fly. It is not the spiritual half of our physical body. It is
not another name for Self or the archetype of God (with all due true
respect and love for Jung).
The Soul, this Godly Presence, is all there is. It's all we are.
Modern physics has proved that all matter is energy. When energy
turns into matter, it doesn't stop being energy. If you take the energy
out of matter, it doesn't leave the matter like a deflated balloon.
Without the energy, there is no balloon - inflated or deflated. Matter may
be highly compacted and compressed or condensed energy, but it is
none-the-less, only energy. There is nothing else.
Like the contents of a very vivid dream. When I wake up, it
disappears with hardly a trace. Because everything, object and person,
feeling and understanding in that dream, was made alive and sustained by my
consciousness during my sleep. And when I awake, that sustaining
consciousness is removed and its just a fragment of memory (if I'm lucky).
So, my body doesn't have a little bit of soul in it, the body is
only condensed spirit. That's all there is.
What appears to be a split between body and soul, matter and
energy/spirit, is because of a split in the Mind/Brain between left and
right, the linear and the holistic. We grow up only learning of the
existence of, and how to use, the linear, rational, logical,
differentiating mind set of duality. No one talks about or teaches about
the unitive way of being and knowing, beyond the appearance of
separateness.
Judaism and Jewish mysticism in particular tried to warn us about
"falling" into seeing everything through duality, by planting the story of
the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and the Tree of Life at the
beginning of the Torah (the first five books of the Bible). We start out
in Paradise (a state of oneness), eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of
Opposites, the Tree of Duality, and are out of oneness and paradise. Every
child goes through this in his or her early development. But there is
almost no education for, no maps to, regaining access to this realm of
wholeness, soulness and Godliness.
And those systems that do exist, are mainly descriptions and
analysis, linear vehicles - themselves from the Tree of Knowledge - that
rarely can transport the seeker to the ever-present dimension of the Tree
of Life. The Tree of Knowledge is horizontal, linear, rational,
hierarchical, sequential, causal, time and space bound, trapped in the past
or sucked into the future. The Tree of Knowledge is the vulnerable, temporal
world of the mortal ego/personality/body. The Tree of Life is vertical,
holistic, multi-dimensional, simultaneous, overlapping, interpenetrating,
beyond time and space, ever present in the here and now moment. The Tree
of Life is the safe, protected, womblike timeless world of the immortal
soul, life force, essence of all.
We must go from horizontal intelligence and information to
Vertical intelligence of knowing and experiencing. To remind you that right
now, this moment you can go beyond the worries, hurts, dreams, expectations
and anxieties of your ego, and tune into your ever-present, satisfied,
joyful soul.
Horizontal learning does not answer the need for spirituality and
meaning. Today we must be concerned with vertical knowing, with the
spiritual heights and depths found in the Jewish tradition. Vertical
intelligence is authentic, positive and relevant, affording a deeper
understanding and meaning that can be applied to one's personal life, from
whatever background one has or spiritual path one is traveling. This
psychological and contemplative approach involves the spiritual,
intellectual, emotional and physical levels of expression.
Through teachings of the ultimate oneness of all energy/spirit and
matter/body, through an understanding of the nature of Tree of Knowledge
duality consciousness that cuts us off from that oneness, I try to present
the teachings from the Tree of Life on how to get back to the Tree of Life.
The Kabbalistic map of the Four Worlds can be taught linearly or
holistically. We can learn it from the Tree of Life, seeing these worlds as
simultaneous, overlapping, interpenetrating dimensions in our every day
life.
This is the new education from the Tree of Life. This is the
education of the Soul.
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