Leviticus Cycle Five BeHar

 BeHar

It’s Shabbat. You’ve been meditating in the forest for three or four hours.  And it’s hot. Real hot. Your skin has dust, your hair leaves and dirt. What do you do in the hills ? The angels know. The souls that follow you know. Your soul knows. It’s federal land in any case, not owned used plowed razed paved placed in a box for future investment. It’s cared for by the Oregon forest service. You can be who you are here (not owned or used).  You can be loved by God and love Him and know it.  And shining the vision of God so strong that if people saw you they would gossip. You can shine here. You can set that glow free.  And you don’t hear many voices except those that fade in the wind of your mind.  It’s quiet way high. The boundary of the silence is the creek below. And now you hike down and jump from a steep trail to the fire road and you are so close. You keep walking hoping to just fall into it so you can know the ice-melt whiteness in all your cells swim in  it like champagne feel it in your throat. 

You can still smell the controlled burning as you pass the round rock, the slanted tree.  Even higher up there are forest rangers preparing for what is going to be an awesome hot summer. They burn the floor of the forest before it burns itself so hard it threatens the town of Ashland below. The lesson here: There’s work even if you want to keep the land free. There’s always work. 

Once I get to the path to the ponds I move-in and the leaves embrace me. It smells damp fresh cool. The temperature has dropped. I step slide over rocks, small currents, hugging the edge as I work my way upstream. And it’s work.  The water is way high and I’m no salmon. At one point I leave my running shoes behind and take-on the ground bare-foot. Just heading for the small private pond where I know I can do a mikvah.

After cooling off I head down the same way. Up ahead though I see someone. He’s standing on the large rock, the one I have to hoist myself onto with all my yoga-muscles. I know he’s watching me as I’m moving down-stream. I’m clinging to the edges again, stepping with care on mud and roots that won’t slide.  I get to the boulder and he pulls me up.

He isn’t Jewish. Buddhist (I find out). At least that’s his path.

There with his bandana blond hair and earrings he could be homeless wealthy old young from any culture country religion. After five or six hours in Shabbat- time my sense-mechanism has changed. I can see his heart-connection with God as if it’s in my chest, the drum-beat of his blue-eyes, the way he blends in with the exhale of the trees, the rock-foundation we stand-on. And there I am, just me, no make-up, no rouge, hair wild and half-dry, limber, strong, listening.  We climb to another rock and sit for maybe three more hours until the sun begins to set. There’s faith here without a hierarchy, without ownership, manipulation or boxes for future investment, a feeling as if freedom has been extended beyond all logical possibility. As we study in Torah, a Jubillee. There’s a deep knowledge, a transformation for us both.  But this has happened only after the inner work.  And after having been in the mountain.  First you go in. Then you listen. Then you do the work. Then you can have the Jubillee. 

  

In other words….I tend to write about things as if they are easy. Yes. Just meditate. Just be open to connection and then you will find your year of Shabbat-time.  I write as if it’s easy to be open to earth and people beyond societal norms. The truth is though it isn’t. Not at all. In Torah there’s a whole parasha about it (this week’s parasha…BeHar)  and in it we find the rules around how we get there, what we need to do to be in that place of pure freedom.  And it’s a commandment.

 My message is that it’s possible. Very possible. We can make it our lives. We can know the general guidelines: (I repeat) First we go in. Then we listen. Then we do the work. Then we have the Jubillee. But now let’s also look at the writings of our sages: 

Rashi speaks of trust and faith. Why, he asks, does Torah need to say that this (Jubillee) is the only commandment of all the commandments that is specifically spoken on Mt Sinai? Always our realist, Rashi says that this Jubillee is surely a matter beyond the natural order. He uses Leviticus 25:1 to make his point: And I ordained my blessing for you in the sixth year so that it shall yield a crop sufficient for three years. How could we know for sure? We just need to have trust and faith. 

Rabbi Baruch ben Jehiel of Medzibezh explains Leviticus 25:23-24: For the land is mine. You are but strangers, residents with me. He says we are considered in the eyes of God as residents of heaven. In other words, when we feel the most distant from the masks and layers of this world, we feel equal closeness to heaven. So we need not fear that feeling of distance. We need to embrace it in order to bring the necessary healing to this same world and to ourselves.

The Sfat Emet explains the work of the angels. While humans have messages to bring to earth, the whole being of the angel only exists because of the message assigned to it. At Mt Sinai, we humans rise to that level. So since the Jubillee is a year of Shabbat, it is as if for an extended period of time we are at Mt Sinai. We too become angels…and for more than once a week….and we too become the message. This is why (says the Sfat Emet) our food will come to us in miraculous ways. This is taught in Lev 25:20 But if you say, what will we eat in the Sabbatical year? We are not supposed to raise that question at all. The mere raising of it will show that we have not risen to the angel-place. The objective in other words is to focus on the God-message and our food (and mortgage and car and money for gas) will come to us. 

To finish, Rinpoche says this: Be like a glass of water. Let the energy of this world pass through you.

And I’d like to add…when you listen, when you go-in, when you do the inner work, reflect truth and faith, the message of God, the light.  This is how we can satisfy this important mitzvah. This is how we can be in the Jubillee, in those divine eyes open to the even more radiant pulse beyond human-time in the solid mountain of God, in the freedom of pure Love.