Leviticus Cycle Five Tsav

Tsav

How do we keep our offerings burning?

I’m not referring to the flames, the translucent yellows reds and blues (as evocative and beautiful as they are). I’m not focused on that semblance of fire jumping all excited, demanding, showy and wild from the golden core. I don’t mean the semblance that we cling to when we can’t get closer (even if sometimes that’s the closest we can get.) I don’t mean the wafting smoke snaking or flowering up from incense or a candle or a bonfire at midnight.

I am pointing at the real fire, at the core itself. The substance. The heart. The air earth fire liquid merge of compassion, graciousness, patience, simple kindness. How do we keep that full-glow stable solid and still, set and protected, present, as real as I write this, as here as we speak, as here as we make love, make sounds, make dreams, live dreams. How do we keep it here as we process our changing settings, our changing bodies, our blessings as they transform the world and nurture us. How do we keep that force of kinetic energy framed and packaged in our minds-eye as well as in our hearts? So that we can bring more offerings to it?

It’s a commandment so we want to think about this.

And as I write this I think that if you are making love really making love this is what you know. The flames are beautiful and fun and yes wild. But the core is where you both settle, together in the eternal embers, in the calm of the sacred fire-before-the-flame, the intimacy of oneness of form and body, the nexus of God. And if you settle in, you keep it going.

I think the sages knew how to make love. In Leviticus Rabbah 7:2 we read that finding the force within to do an offering is like going up to Jerusalem, building the temple and doing all the sacrifices in Torah. And if making love isn’t doing an offering I don’t know what is.

.But I’m jumping ahead of myself. There’s logic here.

.First, we must be aware that the olah offering, that burnt offering, is one of repentance. It is wholly given over to the flames (Lev Rabbah 7:4). And in the beginning of Tsav we read that one burnt offering is to feed into the next. In other words, those embers are never to go out. Therefore one offering after the next brings each of us to the place of God-radiance.

This is what Rabbi Kook writes about these offerings and repentance:

First the weakening of the will is related to remorse. I see this as the break-down of ego. Whatever one has done, acceptance and growth beyond that action opens each of us to the action of stepping forward beyond self. Yes, we step forward with this symbol of our animal-self to be placed on the altar.

Next, rising higher on the flame, we transform that energy of remorse to joy, the animal-self to soul-self.

Next, the joy of God is in full splendor. We can see all actions…those that have been recycled through our inner work…as from the very beginning.

And Kook says…and higher than this is the manifestation of light in the universal crown. Here is the mysterious vision of the all, that begets all delight, all holiness and good, that includes everything in its holy treasure.

The image of treasure brings us to the embers of our love-making, that solid center of which I speak. We rise from our embers to connect to the embers, to feed and glorify them once again. The action of love… being to being and/or being to God… is the manifestation of that rising. Once again, it is the offering.

What we want to be fully aware of though (and this is very much in Tsav) is that in order to do any of this, in order to go to Jerusalem, build the temple and do all the sacrifices…and really touch and feel and enter our light into the body/spirit of another being… we not only need to bring ourselves beyond that ego-state. We need to be seen by ourselves as capable. We need to have faith that we can be purveyors of those embers. In short we need to be fit with the sacred clothes. We need to do all of the necessary actions that bring us to a place of personal purification. We need to know where to dump the ashes.

Finally, we need to continually recycle our actions into a place of beauty, every day. Because things happen. Mindless things are said. Mindless things are done. In fact, we wouldn’t need the offerings if we were already perfect. So we need to have faith in the fact that we can do the recycling. Because those embers won’t stay powerful if we slack off or if we believe we aren’t fit for the job.

This is more than daily. This is moment-to moment awareness, forgiveness, compassion, for ourselves and others.

Therefore….The next time we might be touching the skin and heart of the person we love we can fold in and feel ourselves rise. We can settle into the silence at the center of all the work and activity, of the past and future, the mind-conversation, the body-movement. We can be in that place of universal joy. It seems so complicated. But what we learn in Tsav as well is that this is simple. This is who we are. Lovers at the golden-core-center. Lovers of God.

In still silent glow.

It’s clear and real and not complicated at all. It’s Torah.