Our Space

** The following quotes the opening passages of the book, The Place Where You are Standing is Holy: A Jewish Theology on Human Relationships, by Gershon Winkler & Lakme Batya Elior, which has got me thinking...

"Make me a sacred space, and I shall dwell amongst you... Exodus 25:8.

In the creation myth of ancient Judaic mysticism, God creates the universe by a process dubbed tzimtzum, which in Hebrew means a sort of stepping back to allow for there to be an Other, an Else, as in some one or something else. The Judaic notion of a world of Free Will (Babylonian, Talmud, Berakhot 33b) is deeply rooted in this concept, in the understanding that in creating life, the Eyn Sof or the Endless One, subdued the omnipotent, all-embracing Presence for the sake of realizing the Divine Will that there be other beings (Etz Chaim 1:1:2). Our world, then, is the sacred space that the Great Spirit gave as a gift to us, a space in which to be as human as divinely possible and as divine as humanly possible. A space to err, to fall, to believe, to doubt, to cry, to laugh. Our space, created by the simple motion of stepping back, the humble act of honoring the separate reality of an Other."

I guess this related to the idea I blogged about yesterday, re: HaMakom -- or The Place. That one of the ways to understand God, is "The Place." Now, here we have God's Place and the space He/She made for us by withdrawing his presence from it, with-held the glory to make a space where God's presence wasn't. Is this what you are understanding from the above, too?

It also makes me reflect on a blog my Rabbi did (yes my Reb blogs, how cool is that??) about the Progression of the human soul, which I have lifted, nay Borrowed: indicated below. He says that according to the Jewish Path, there are five levels/aspects tot he human soul:

"1st* NeFeSh is the physical soul that returns to the earth with the body. It becomes one with the spirit of the earth as our body becomes one with the matter of the earth. Some might refer to this as becoming one with the ‘Gaia spirit’.

2nd* RUaH, the wind spirit aspect of our soul. My reb says his father spoke of this as anonymous immortality. Imagine that you share some important life lesson with a friend. That friend is moved by your teaching. S/he shares it with others in your name. They share it with others and so on. But during the passing of the teaching, your name disappears from the story. The story lives on and in this way you live on in the realm of RUaH but your name does not; anonymous immortality. The stories and lessons that we share regarding our parents, our teachers, our ancestors keep their RUaH, their wind spirit alive in our realm. This is why tribal folk keep an oral history. The tribe lives on in the oral history and in the actions based on that history. When I tell stories of my parents and grandparents, or when we tell the stories of Sarah and Avraham, Moshe and Miriam, Ester and Mordecai, their RUaH feeds us, feeds the tribal RUaH.

3rd*NeShaMaH, which is the breath of our soul. I envision a tiny, invisible silver thread connection to the Wholly One of Being. Since all humans have this connection, the picture is of a spider web of inter-connection between us all and with G. Our joys and sorrows strengthen the web connection of NeShaMaH. Each of us from the greatest Tzadik (righteous one) to the most mean spirited Rasha (evil one) is part of the web. On our computers we see WWW/World Wide Web but that is a pale shadow of the greater WWW that connects us to the Wholly One of Being. Ignore it if we will, it is always there. I remember a story of a Bar/t Mitzvah who said: “I don’t believe in G!” The Rabbi’s response was: “Don’t worry about it. G believes in you!” The World Wide Wholly One of Being Web (WWWOBW) is always connected and no virus can create a disconnect.

4th*HaYah, which can be translated as life and sometimes as a hungry wild beast. But here it refers to longing. We may long for more money, more stature but this is a deeper form of longing. This is a longing to elevate ourselves into a oneness with the Wholly One of Being. “Oh G, how I long to be with you, to feel you in my life!” HaYah is the holy longing. “Oh G, I am hungry for your presence!” In prayer we are in Hayah. We are, as Rabbi Avraham Yehoshua Heschel might say, in longing to be part of that which is greater than the self. We are in preparation and in longing for the final level of soul, of soulfulness (which leads to the fifth...).

5th*YeHIDaH refers to being in total oneness. In Hebrew there are 3 words having to do with ‘One’. There is YaHaD in which I am one with… My belovedest and I are one. We are one made of parts. Indeed everything that is of matter is one, made of parts. All matter can be broken down into smaller parts. The next level is EHaD as we find in the Shema. EHaD is one without parts, impossible to dissect into aspects. Maimonides speaks of G in this way. G has no parts, G cannot be separated, broken down into components. G is the Wholly one; G is the Wholly One of Being. And the third level of ‘one’ is YeHIDaH. Not only is it one without parts, it is one alone. There is nothing else. There is not even a ‘nothing else’. The image is of G before creation. YeHIDaH is the oneness without parts and without ‘the other’. My mind has trouble wrapping itself around the concept. And yet that part of our soul is us yet not us it is a part of the One Who has no parts. On this level of soul, we do not exist as other than G."

So what happens Aharei Mot, (after death) after the passing of our physical? My Rabbi wrote that, "according to this paradigm, our NeFeSh returns to Gaia spirit. Our RUaH lives on in the souls touched by us in our journeys in this realm. Our NeShaMaH is wound back to G; our HaYaH disappears completely. For there is no longer longing as we become YeHIDaH, enfolded into the total oneness of the Wholly One of Being."

So what is my question?

Here: If the beginning quote is correct, than we exist in a space uninhabited by God... he had to make space for otherness, meaning he could no be there, which, frankly: is not my experience or "belief" (I hate that word) about the Nature of God and our human connections. I am more drawn though to my Reb's progression of the soul -- because it describes the manifold process of being as "human as divinely possible and as divine as humanly possible." We are, after all, both at once. Otherwise, how could we exist and continue on being?

I had a Prof. in undergrad who took that same quote above in Exodus, re: the tabernacle in the Sinai desert erected for God to dwell... but he also mentioned that the Hebrew word for amongst (I think this is right... its been a few years) is also within -- which, with this interpretation means that if we build for God a sacred space within our body-soul-heart i.e. our space, our human Other-ness; he will then dwell inside of us, too.

Somehow that just feels heart-ful, spiritual, and very real... to me. That "the Place" where God is, is Me.