MYSTERY OF THE KABBALAH

— God as Energy

(Each Star is Sun center or a Cosmic expression of Ain Sof. Therefore, like the Avatars that have gone before us, we too have the potential for the inner brilliance of Infinity.)

I am the embodiment of Keter Elyon. I am pure ether that cannot be grasped. I am the sum of all existence. I am before 10,000 things but I AM also the source of 10,000 things. I Am secretly named Ain Sof and I am infinity.

I am AYIN and therefore, I AM NOTHING, (NO-THING). All wisdom comes into being out of me. I AM BOUNDLESS. You cannot know anything about me except that I exist. My name is “ I AM BECOMING.” I am sealed, concealed and unknowable. When I am aroused, I radiate and sparkle but I can't be grasped.

If you think of yourself as me, AYIN, you will forget yourself totally. If you think of yourself as something, than God cannot clothe himself in you because God is infinite.

I am the root of all things and when you bring anything to me, I can transform it-world, mind and self dissolve. It is a moment of transformation from being to nonbeing to new being. When you arrive at the level of me, then Nothingness can embrace all potentiality. I Am in the place of death and rebirth.

In order to attain the “mystical nothingness,” you must take your ego and transfer it into the state of ayin. When you have no individual self, you will attain humility, the key attribute that allows one to obtain the far reaches of Infinity. God's entire Universe emanates from here.

In the cosmic game of hide-and-seek, God hides in each one of us, within all of creation and throughout space time… God is disguised as the world, and the purpose to the game of creation is to uncover the divine, to explore the limits of who we are, to actualize God's self-awareness. (pg. 79 “God and the Big Bang, Daniel Matt).

According to Daniel Matt, before Creation, there was only Ein Sof, God as infinity. As Ein Sof began to unfold, a ray of light was channeled into the vacuum through vessels. Some less translucent vessels could not withstand the power of the light and shattered. Most of the light returned to the infinite source, but the rest fell as sparks along with shattered vessels and became entrapped into the material universe.

He goes onto say that our task is to liberate these sparks and restore them to divinity. If the vessels would not have broken, we wouldn't have lost our oneness and there would be no separate material world. The way back “home” is to live ethically and spiritually in order to raise the sparks and thereby bring about the mending of the cosmos. Just one righteous person sustains the whole world.

So, it is our spiritual task to remember to raise the sparks and uncover what has been lost. This is the object of the cosmic game. As sons of God, our Father will be even more delighted when we return, than if we had never forgotten our roots in the first place.

This concept of forgetting is called Shevirah. First, God withdraws, concealing Itself. This creates a gap of spacetime. As God recedes, creation unfolds. Oneness can't be contained in one vessel alone, so it spills out variety. Each vessel holds a portion of the light of God.

Kether is the light source. Chockmah is the focused beam that streams out form the light source and Binah is the prism through which the light is scattered. None of these three have color in itself, yet together they produce the rainbow of seven colors, representing the main sephiroth of the Tree of Life. (pg. 21, The Practical Kabbalah guidebook, C.J.M.)

Keter is likened to the time before the Big Bang, the original source of the universe. (The experience of Keter is the union with God.) If Keter is N0-thing, than Hokmah is SOME-thing-the creative force that pours itself into existence: the results of the Big Bang. This outpouring contains all things, hence the name of Wisdom, which contains everything.

Hokmah is the point of beginning. God decides to take time for self-reflection: it is God moving to a place where he can experience Himself/Herself. And it is a time where we can take a corresponding re-action through devotion to Him.

Again Daniel Matt describes this two-way relationship as somewhat of a razors edge. “God does not derive as much in the delight from us when we are all one entity as when we are individuals. For God desires us so that He can receive delight from the detailed individuality within our separate bodies.” He goes on to say, “If we take ourselves and our tales too seriously, if we remain hermetically sealed within the borders of self, than we lose contact with the oneness of it all. If we become too attached to oneness, we forfeit the zesty spiciness of life…The middle path is being aware of the underlying oneness while expressing it creatively.” (pg. 87-88, God and the Big Bang).

In other words, it is in our individual and unique fragmentations that delights God. We are composed of energy but it is congealed in each of us in a particular way. Through Binah, the out-rushing force of the pure energy of God in Hokmah becomes limited. It takes the force of Hokmah and forms it. The quality of limitation is required in order for God to learn about Himself/Herself. If the energy kept going, nothing could be learned. Thus, we have our limited self-expression.

How do we find symmetry? From within, through meditation, each of us can grasp the oneness. Rooted in oneness, the self branches out, seeking balance in both directions-back to oneness and out toward the other. Our goal in searching in this cosmic hide-and-seek is to keep seeking. “Seek and Ye Shall Find.”

Matt describes the process, 'Fashioned in the image of oneness, we reflect oneness, but we also refract it through our prism of individuality. Each of us is a fraction of divinity… But even a fraction of infinity is infinite. Through being who we are, each of us expresses the cosmic oneness distinctively.' He goes on to say, “I AM MADE OF STARDUST. But unlike the rest of creation, I know I am made of stardust, that I am one with the cosmos and simultaneously a separate, conscious person.

“Whatever one plants firmly in the mind becomes the essential thing. So if you pray and offer a blessing to God, or if you wish your intention to be true, imagine you are light. All around you-in every corner and on every side- is light. Turn to your right and you will find shining light; to your left, splendor, a radiant light. Between them, up above, the light of the Presence. Surrounding that, the light of life. Above it all, a crown of light-crowning the aspirations of thought, illumining the paths of imagination, spreading the radiance of vision. This light is unfathomable and endless.” God is energy and we are contained within this energy performing a cosmic dance with It. The give and take of the universe, the deaths and rebirths and the perpetual transformation of our consciousness, is the result of this Energy of God calling us to ascend through the planes of density to planes of light or from separateness into unity.