Genesis Cycle Two Bereshith 1:1 to 6:8

Bereshith


What is man? As we watch the breathe going in and out, where does man hang his hat? Well, Bereshith doesn’t only show us our home as humans…we are also given a fleeting glimpse of those of prophets and murderers. To know who we are we have to look at what we’re not.

First though, what’s the game plan? I mean, how do we do Torah anyway? What’s the thesis statement, the plot? Well, Torah is neither a piece of fiction or historical analysis. If we try to make it either we end up with two beginnings, not one, and data proven scientifically wrong. What we need is to climb up and out of literal analysis. True, we’ll have to squint a bit but at least we’ll have meaning. So what’s the plan? Go straight to sod. Go directly to sod.

That finished, let’s begin with the prophet. He is someone who can read the beginning and understand it. Easier said than done. He can love it, love God, love the words and the white space and connect it completely to the story of Adam and Eve. He can understand that the lightning fast creation of the universe expressed in less time than the specifics regarding leprocy (for example) or offerings, means that it goes beyond human cognition. So, I’m in a precarious position here. But I do understand a few things. God is here first. God does not say let there be fire. Fire reflects a moment. God says let there be light. The prophet revels in the inner eternal light. The prophet becomes a witness, the covenant created before it is even mentioned.

The prophet flows with the God experience. From His head the prophet expands. He sees the pulse of words like tahoo and tahom (line 2) and how, one within the other, they tremble from singular depths to plural depths. The prophet is in the action of the in-breath, speaks with God, hears the voice, and knows that there isn’t any dividing here. Division infers separation. Vadal (the Hebrew) means to isolate inferring purity and containment. Something can’t be what it is if the boundaries are blurred. Days therefore are isolated, not divided. Light is isolated from darkness. The sea is isolated from the earth. Each needs to be what it is to connect with the other. The prophet sees connection and translates the Torah with connection in mind.

Finally as expansion becomes more constricted, from great beings like the sun to things in its kind, the prophet realizes that what we are experiencing is God finding the core… His heart. We continue with that treasure hunt as He contracts to form us, man. Like I said, one beginning, one breath. You can’t divide the breath-in from the breath-out. You simply need to accept that we, man, are the flow of both and that flow forms the heart. The prophet, knowing this, focuses his attention on man while being in God-space. Now let’s look at Adam.

Adam is clearly the contraction of God, that perfect place of transition, like Shabbat, in which contraction and expansion meet, that catch of the breath, that hold in space and time. Adam is a human Shabbat. Adam is who we are when God breathes life into us right at the start. The best way to see this definition in words is in line 26. In Hebrew, there are 7 places of expansion and contraction. God thus created man with his image. In the image of God, He created Him, male and female, He created them. The Him marks the center of the process, the focal point. And Adam is intended to be at the center, as if all of these divine sparks are pulled like magnets into and onto each other and this miracle, this package holding more and more God-cells, is the man-force that keeps the expansion/contraction in balance, one breath to the next.

Now for man. The problem with contraction is that once your body is happening you don’t want to stop it. It feels good. It’s receptive mode. I mean, absolute contraction is orgasm. But, surprise, orgasm is not the ultimate treasure. The acquiring of knowledge is also an act of contraction, bringing more and more vibrational energy into the mind, consolidating. That feels good too. Enter the snake. God expects you to eat that apple (he says to Eve who never gets the direct commandment anyway)…He expects you to keep contracting. And you know, you can’t blame Eve for believing or wanting to believe. We’ve gotten so much of it. We’re all contraction addicts anyway. But it really is a pity. Off we go, no longer heart central, the human Shabbat, in need of just a bit more expansion to make it back to Eden. And we will certainly know how to discern expansion…it will hurt bad. It will hurt in childbirth, in the fields.

Now for the murderer. He’s a man who contracts straight into his ego. This is Cain. Am I my brother’s keeper, he asks. In short, he can’t fathom his absolute connection with the rest of humanity or the world. The murderer is so far from God it’s as if he has a spiritual disability. God sees the continuum and knows that while Cain who He loves is partly to blame it really is the process, the exponential energy. The only way to fix it is to turn it, bring man as a whole closer to Him, protect him. That’s why God protects Cain. I guess it gets a bit complicated. I think we just have to remember that we all are much more responsible for each other’s actions then we want to think. We are not only our brother’s keeper, we are our brother.

So, whether we hear God’s voice or not, may we look to prophets. Whether we yearn for more contraction or not, may we all be a human Shabbat. Whether we have been kicked out of Eden or not, may we find ways to expand so that we find our heart within. And whether we are murderers or not, may we be in their home just as we are in the home of God. May we hang our hats where we find a heart both expanding and contracting... in the place of responsibility, awareness, silence, compassion, and awe. May we begin in the God-rhythm, the center of wholeness and love.