Exodus Cycle 6 Ki Thisa

 Ki Thisa

Essence is Oneness.

Try lighting incense and counting the fumes. Try counting rays from the sun. Try counting angels when we meditate.  Try counting the pores on our skin, the heart beats in a day.  It feels enlightening until we need glasses. Then it feels like holy work until we go blind.

Keeping up with the tiny increments is not easy. Meanwhile, it seems to be the only way to survive in our human form.  We break the whole into tiny pieces whether we are referring to time or law.  We follow the liturgy on the pages called out by the rabbi or the chazzan. Even in Torah we read one word after the next with linear focus.

In the quotidian world we have schedules and appointments, bank accounts, cell phone minutes, megabytes on our hard drive.  No wonder the world so often feels insane. The more we create divisions the closer we are to joining them at the sacred core and (concurrently) the farther we become from that same core.

Many of us are stuck right in between and scared to move in either direction.

It’s enough to anger even the most enlightened among us.  The question therefore is how we can experience the Oneness and more... how we can bring it down to the people and keep it from splitting beyond our (present) ability to heal the resulting pain.

I don’t have any answers. 

I do know that we don’t fake it. We don’t try to pretend the Oneness in order to impress or even to teach or punish or humiliate or exemplify or even to love. We don’t mimic the incense and pretend it’s the real thing (Exodus 30:32). We don’t mimic our God or try and create Him from ornaments torn off our bodies. We’ve all been there. We’ve all trusted a great teacher or a friend and then seen something false, a false glow, a black-out of hypocrisy.  

I do know that we keep the components of Oneness ready to merge. We keep the fragrances finely ground and mixed. We speak our many words with restraint and continuity of expression.  That way when the incense burns it will burn as one (Exodus 30:36). We’ve all been there. We’ve all been with a lover who, when it really comes down to it, can’t be intimate. We’ve all been with a rabbi who doesn’t pray with the people.

I do know that we carry the many in the one just as Moses carries the commandments on the two lochot in his one hand. We receive the message in many parts in a two-part vessel in the Oneness.  If the message can’t be heard (we think) maybe it needs to be in more pieces.  The only problem is that too many pieces cause destruction.  We’ve all been there. We’ve all been forced into laws that pull our hearts from our souls. We feel that God wants us to self-implode. But He doesn’t. He doesn’t want us to be in pieces like the broken lochot. He wants us to be propelled by mitzvoth and boundaries that best create connection.

I also know this: We open our eyes and drink the essence. We open our pores and smell the incense. We breathe it in. We glow. We see beyond our sight.

No doubt, counting the pieces and knowing them well is holy. But that’s not the final message. Not by any means.  The only thing to do until the merge is to stand strong in our individual likeness to God. In our oneness with self we will ultimately be One.  And it won’t be false or destructive.

 It will be like what follows after the incense has finished and we live in the knowledge-of-healing and the vision-of-power that is just as exquisite and real as the incense itself. 

It will be Love and Truth merged on the altar of Eternity.