Exodus Cycle Two Ki Thisa 30:11 to 34:35

Ki Thisa
Ki Thisa is about pushing out what is stopping you. It’s like the water roaring down after months of winter snowfall. Rocks are forced away. Tiny ponds once in stasis are swept into the flow. Trunks of trees help form the new paradigm. All barriers become part and piece of the writhing currents. There’s muscle here, a fire, renewal, a resignation, a knowledge, deep love. This is Ki Thisa. Ki Thisa is break-through.

Here’s more. It’s about clearing veins, arteries, inner and outer. It’s the necessary explosion (yes explosion) to free the channels for our hearts to radiate light and compassion. And it takes an explosion to break through that which is hard stopped frightened, to break through archaic damaging convictions, self justification for idolatry, the deification of any belief system, of one’s own ego, of any moral code dependent on cultural norms, of an officious non judgmental attitude that accepts all…even the ignorant, of a cloak that looks like God but certainly is not. It takes the cleansing power of forty days and nights on a mountain in intimate communion with God.

Let’s look at the story. Moses is alone on the mountain. Imagine being in solitude. You are the outsider, the anomaly, the receiver of messages, the carrier of visions and spheres within your cells. You feel it, know it, don’t question. Please don’t say this isn’t you. This is all of us, if not now in this life then later in another, if not here in this place then there where you will be. Time in Torah is one. A mountain experience isn’t unusual or beyond-human. Look at Moses at the end of his life. We don’t even know where he’s buried. That’s because, when it comes down to it, he is one of us. We are each the outsider, the anomaly, the receiver and transmitter of messages. No reason to create a major shrine for Moses when we are already it. Granted, in the mundane hour in the present we must recognize the hierarchy in order to achieve this state of consciousness. We must be on the mountain and off the mountain the same moment.

So, let’s continue. Moses is alone. Imagine separating yourself from those who share your form, who speak, breathe, drink and eat like you, who aren’t with you yet. Imagine sitting with that radiance for so long that your hands, eyes and heart are infused with a vibration that few now can embrace, let alone hold for more than a split second. Imagine having the visions of the letters and the words of God, the finger of God, the rain and light flowing down your throat through your feet to the earth. One thing you know, if you try to keep this for yourself it will turn dark. This is not to be owned like a diamond or even an intellectual truth. You can’t patent it, sell it, save it. You can’t freeze it. Maybe there’s a piece of you that wants to settle in it, merge yourself. Maybe that yearning to be it is so great that finally you are capable of witnessing the absolute merge, not in your body like you desire, but on stone.

And you accept. The tablets are a gift. Now you have to take them down, to transmit. You just want to wait until you are at the break through point, when the love will flow into the people, satiate them. So you wait. You stay. You hold in your light and it’s like having to hold in a baby. The more you hold it the more you want to scream and merge with the divine in your own physical form. It becomes too much, too powerful, too painful, joyous, outrageous, frightening, radiant. It’s impossible beauty, impossible love. It’s possible to see God’s face but it isn’t. You can do it or can you. And then God says go down!

The people below have cut themselves off.

Full of fire you go down like rushing water from melting ice holding the manifestation of your near-merge in your hand, the two tablets. And that’s when you hear the people. They have lost faith. They’ve tried to create a way to God through their things, their gold, their old ways. They are praying to a gilded calf. As Aaron says, the calf just came out…just as we came out of Egypt. Same verb, different construct altogether. Your pure radiance is blocked. The birth canal is blocked. There is nowhere to go. There is only the sitra atra down there, the delusion of God in the twisted mirror replica of the pure essences into which the radiance must be poured.

You are yourself and you are not. You are glowing, alive with intimacy and knowledge. But because of the weakness of the people you can’t stay this way and share it all. You have to break through to the mundane with your body but not your divine message. You must recreate that same dichotomy within yourself that you almost healed on the mountain. This hurts. It hurts bad. There’s disappointment, disgust and anger. But mostly, there is pain. And still, you have to keep moving forward. The message must be held back, the people must be cleansed. The force within your heart, still kissed by God’s essence, must focus on healing.

So often in the study of Moses we decide that anger is bad, that Moses did something wrong. This is easy. This is the archaic structure, one manifestation of a present day gilded calf, and so comforting. Instead, in my opinion, we need to see the action of Moses from above, as divine, natural and compassionate. We need to see it as heroic. It’s tragic that sometimes people just don’t get it. But we can’t sit around and allow their ignorance to obstruct divine flow forever. We have to cut our losses, even if this means taking their physical forms away from them, yes killing them as does Moses to the 3,000 Israelites. In a strange way, since they have already cut themselves off, the action of Moses is compassionate, like shooting a bullet into the head of someone who has attempted suicide and has been almost...but not completely successful. Moses is putting those Israelites out of their misery.

So may we accept the divine in ourselves. May we honor it and each other. May we be channels for the flow and be aware enough to protect it from darkness. May we know the meaning of restraint. May we carry the message and wake up out of our old rhythms to see the great love of God. May we be the surge of radiance as we transmit the message into the open eyes of those who finally see. May we move on with compassion, discernment and strength. May we continue the process of transmission, heart to heart, eye to eye, until we all are One.