We are interpreting Gevurah as “limiting” love (from others).  In the early Kabbalah it is usually translated as fear or awe. As it is on the left side of the Tree of Life, opposite Chesed,  most interpret it as discipline; saying no as a form of love—teaching that love is also learned through its limits. In the first week we have Gevurah in Chesed (this week we start with Chesed in Gevurah) and interpreted it as a sense of losing love.  Gevurah then as we will elaborate this week is the limits or boundaries on love. We need to always look at each of these dimensions both ways—from outside in and inside out.  How we receive and how we give. If we look at Gevurah in Gevurah we see that at times we need to look inside and realize—it is up to me—and when we look at others to have an awareness that ultimately the other person (be they adult or child) are on their own.

Day 8 – Chesed in Gevurah

The festival of Passover has passed over. We are on the other side of the split sea. Can we still hold onto the power of what has been revealed to us? Now as we count (putting one foot in front of the other) we are just in the count—another (wondrous) day. The residue of Passover—the love that we have received and given is now receding in the rear view mirror of memory. Moving forward. Independence. Self-reliance. It can feel like bitterness, a separation from love.  You are experiencing being on your own (yet infused with love). Perhaps that is why we shake hands upon meeting—connecting and then separating—we are ready to walk on our own.

Meditation: The moment you let go and took your first steps. Two hands separated—the one that held yours and the one you held.  Remember a time and how that felt to you when you separated—you needed to let go—to move forward.

Day 9 – Gevurah in Gevurah

The next few steps are realized as “I am really on my own.”  Fear can set in.  Can you summon the courage to keep going? Independence is scary. You do not know that you can make it through on your own but all you need is to take the next step.

Meditation: You are on your own. Sit with yourself. Sit alone.  Feel your aloneness. There may be an aspect of yourself that you would not dare share with others—you alone need to face it with courage.  That is the aspect of Gevurah.

Day 10 - Tiferet in Gevurah

Feeling empathy for what it is to be on your own or in setting boundaries for others to realize themselves fully by limiting what they experience as love.  Ultimately we are interconnected to all and yet we can feel alone and for that we reflect on and empathize with our sense of aloneness.  It can take many forms from feeling alone physically, or feeling alone with one’s feelings or thoughts.

Meditation: When we see the person at the intersection with a cardboard sign do we feel for their aloneness?  As we empathize for others’ aloneness we connect with our deepest aloneness.

Day 11 - Netzach in Gevurah

Overcoming obstacles to separating—there are internal and external obstacles.  Fear and dependence can be internal states but often are sourced from the outside. In Netzach we not only summon our courage we enlist it to subdue those inner and outer fears about and blockages to our independence (and our granting others their independence).  As we have taught in class the Sefirah of Netzach is aligned with parenting and in this regard the parent has the courage to let their child face the obstacles of their life on their own.

Meditation: What do I depend on? I can rely on others and be disappointed—but that is different than depending on them (or on God). I can commit to others and then they can rely in me. Free myself of dependence. I will not be enslaved that way.

Day 12 - Hod in Gevurah

While we may strive for setting limits—for gaining our independence (self-love) there are times when we will need to surrender to times of needing others (more than we might want ideally) or giving in a way that exceeded our commitment to the growth of the other toward independence.  We give in or accept these times as necessary and acknowledge our limitations in setting limitations!

Meditation: Before going to sleep acknowledge this day for what it brought—lessons for me to learn about what I need to accept as my growing in independence.

Day 13 - Yesod in Gevurah

Independence is actualizing self-love. For each week’s Sefirah you can ask yourself on this day of Yesod, have I done the inner work needed…to put into action my limiting and focusing love to foster independence?  Am I telling the truth when I withhold from myself or others Chesed? Have I stepped into fear with courage; avoiding nothing that holds me back from my self-love and independence.

Meditation: The truth be told am I still holding onto some form of dependence? When we talk about independence it does not mean we are not connected. I am connected to God for life. I am connected to every ancestor. I am connected to every atom. I am independent and able to discover my connection, my reliance, my commitment to all.

Day 14 - Malchut in Gevurah

Put into action your limit setting. This is a day to transform bitterness into sweetness and transform a feeling of aloneness into a triumph of independence. We are traversing the desert. One step at a time to independence. I may stumble and rely on someone to lift me up or lift someone who is stumbling. But my back is straight and my feet are ahead of me.

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Overall intention: To view love and those who love you as your teachers; expanding who you are emotionally and growing your capacity to love.  Love comes in many varieties—and we embody the many varieties of love.  We receive many gifts in our life from those we love and from those we might even hate.

Imagine for a moment the scene of leaving Egypt at midnight. The moment arrives. God’s love permeates the moment.  Finally, freedom. Gather your gifts—first life itself—you have survived, you will walk out of this Egyptian concentration camp.  It feels euphoric, chaotic, overwhelming (Chesed).  Then focus sets in. First steps and then next steps. Gather what you need. There is not even time to let the bread fully bake.  There are limits to what you can take with you, to what you can take in (Gevurah). Your oppressors offer gifts. Accepting the gifts is a harmonizing act, integrating the pain and loss and feeling empathy (Tiferet).  Can love win out, will expansiveness be the measure of the day—a day that has no limits. All obstacles have been removed or now can be seen as overcome (Netzach) and there will be a need to let go, to acknowledge that within this euphoria there are those that will not be leaving, nor has an ultimate awareness come to the Egyptians themselves (Hod).  And what is Moses doing at this moment? He is finding the bones of Joseph to keep a promise that was made two centuries before, “take my bones out with you from Egypt”.  The leader ensures that the moment of leaving is with integrity (Yesod). Then the exodus begins. With trumpet and tambourine and a step over the border. Free at last—with love and for love. Love busts us out—it is that power worth waiting for until the last day, the very last moment.

Day one: Chesed in Chesed

Receiving love is not always easy—it makes us uneasy at times. Underlying this dis-ease is a lack of feeling worthy of the largess of unconditional love.  Similarly, are we able to love with no feeling of reciprocity—to love for its own sake.  On this first full day of freeing from slavery (of the past) how can you love others and yourself unconditionally? Is this a contradiction? Can I love you the way you want and not give up loving myself?

Set aside a time to meditate without any time limit—just sit and allow the emotion of love to permeate your body and mind.  Feel yourself expanding with the meditation. If you want to add words you can say: Love my neighbor—love myself.

Day two: Gevurah in Chesed

The balance of overflowing love is to be focused and even limiting in our love. This not only impacts the ‘quantity of love’ it also defines the ‘quality of love.’  One often recognizes this aspect of love (Gevurah) with the loss of love.  After loss the question is can I ever love again? Yet we find that love is generative—it can be born again even from the narrow confines of loss.

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We are adding our own way of approaching this 50 day count.   Be mindful that this is a practice of living in the present moment; being aware of just today and the possibilities it presents—without being stuck in the past —  living with regret of the past , or being stuck in the future—waiting for “then” and not living now.

Wonderful teachers have gone before to create a scheme of using the (seven lower) Sefirot and intentions for each day of the week representing one of the seven Sefirot.  Each week is an inter-inclusive teaching with the particular Sefirah defining the week. The Sefirah then is the energy of the week—and the specific combination of the overall Sefirah and its connecting Sefirah a particular energy for that day. Please find below a chart with a synopsis of Rabbi Jacobson’s The Spiritual Guide to the Counting of the Omer (1995) and Rabbi Min Kantrowitz’s Counting the Omer: Kabbalistic Meditation Guide (2010). Read the rest of this entry

Can we start anew each day, each moment?  Memory is like an anchor in the flow of time.  We remember our ports of call, the people, places, tastes, smells, feelings etc.  Can we really ever start anew?  Can starting anew carry any memory from the past?

Starting next week on the second night-day of Passover we begin a 50 day count (referred to as the counting of the Omer). Each day is counted, a day unto itself.  We actually count 49 days, the 50^th day is ‘counted’ by itself—and is the holiday of Shavuot, the day of the revelation of Torah (historically, the day the Jewish people became the Jewish people at Sinai through their encounter with God).

For more than three millennia we use this count to exit a state of constriction (symbolized by enslavement in Egypt) to a state of freedom.  As we explain in our Kabbalah studies, one central constriction a slave deals with is that time is not their own.  We too struggle with being in time that is not constricted—time that is free, time that is neither day nor night (a part of a song sung at the Passover Seder: “a time is coming that is neither day nor night) is the present moment—NOW.  There are teachings  in the Kabbalah and from the East that say that the past (and future) is illusion.  But memory serves us to be aware of what we want to bring into the present. Such as a memory of where we were last year at this time and where we are this year. The question for our meditation as we count is not where we are in our thoughts (recollecting a past) but when are we? Are we in the present with our thoughts.

This 50 day count is a daily practice in living in the present moment.  Each day counts unto itself. We are not stitching something together; we are not adding one brick to another. We simply take each day as it is –in its newness and uniqueness and live that day.  To highlight the uniqueness of each day a Kabbalistic tradition is to assign a special intention for each of the days—a uniqueness for each day.  These intentions are linked to the system of the Sefirot on the Tree of Life (if you have not studied this yet the intentions will be understood without that knowledge) from Chesed to Malchut.  The seven (lower) Sefirot are assigned, one to each of the seven weeks of the count as follows:

I will be blogging an intention for each day of the count starting next Tuesday night-Wednesday day for 49 days. These blogs will appear on our website in order with the latest one on top.

I was watching Young at Heart, a delightful documentary about a singing group of people in their seventies and beyond.   The group is a compilation of people making each day count.  There are many precious lines—one I laughed out loud—“We may be lost, but we are making good time.”

This is the time of year to focus on our relationship with time and we are going to try something new as a community and count together the 49 days between Passover (leaving the enslavement of Egypt) and Shavuot (the revelation at Sinai is the 50^th day).  The count (referred to as counting the Omer, after the thanksgiving barley offering brought on Passover) starts on the second evening of Passover (if you celebrate a Seder that night, you start the count at the end of the Seder) which will be Tuesday night April 19^th.  For first year students in the Time class, we will be studying the significance of the way the count is structured (counting up).  The Kabbalah’s main teaching regarding the count is appreciating the moment—the day—the gist and gift of now.

In our class on Kabbalah and Buddhism, we found an interesting parallel tradition of counting 49 days.  It is a customary Buddhist tradition to count and say prayers for 49 days for the departed. On the 50^th day the soul find its way to its new life. The counting of the Omer is also a freeing of the soul; to be liberated from enslavement to time and find a new life in the revelation of the present moment.

This will be our learning in this time period of the count.  While it will be a collective count, it is a personal count and a steady, consistent practice of coming back to the present moment. What does this moment present? I spent a few moments early this morning responding to emails of students who were asking questions, sharing thoughts or providing feedback. Each answer requires attention and being present to the richness of what we are learning together.  That is one aspect of being present. Another is the teaching that no two moments are the same. In the east the saying is, you can never step into the (same) river twice. In Kabbalah we say: you can never eat the (same) matzah twice.

I look forward to our journeying together on this count. We will be “making good time.”

P.S. For another take on numbers see the link to Nancy Sharp’s blog: Vivid Living