Wayne Dosick    By Wayne Dosick       List of honorees         Louis Rose Society         Jewishsightseeing home  San Diego Jewish Times  home

Rabbinic Insights:  More Kabbalah

San Diego Jewish Times, January 27, 2006

By Rabbi Wayne Dosick

It is true. The rational, scientific, technological world in which we live and work demands a high level of intellectual thought and achievement. We cultivate and honor the world of the mind; and we rejoice when our knowledge and insights lead to greater cognitive understanding.

Yet, as human beings, fully involved in the human experience, we hunger for more.

We want to be open to the fullness of the universe, to the grand design, to the blueprint for existence.

We want to have access to what is already there, but seems to be hidden from us by the limitations of living on Earth.

We want to be in full connection with the energy and the flow of creation.

We want to know beyond knowing, to see beyond seeing, to hear beyond hearing.

We want to remember. We want glimpses of what we once knew, and what, one day, we will know again.

We want to know God — both the transcendent God of the communal covenant, and the immanent God of the “inside of the insides” of our beings.

And we want to ask God all our questions.

In the world of Spirit — through evolving human consciousness — we enter into the gateway that can bring us into the Divine presence.

In the world of Spirit — by means of intuition, night dreams, day dreams, visions, prayer, meditation, chant, body movement, channeling, and soul memory — we move beyond our Earth-existence and Earth-experience, and we open ourselves to receive and hold — if only for a few moments at a time — universal, eternal knowing.

In the world of Spirit, we come to know that there is no separation between us and God, between us and all other human beings; we become vividly aware of the Wholeness of existence, the Oneness of all peoples.

To bring us into the world of Spirit, kabbalah is an exquisite pathway to connect and communicate with God, and to delve into the mysteries of the universe, and the ultimate meaning of human existence.

Who is this God who beckons us?

The God we seek is not an old man with a long white beard, sitting on a Heavenly throne.

The God we seek is not a Santa Claus, who automatically and without discernment gives us anything we ask.

The God we seek is the Infinite, Ever-Present, Eternal, All-Encompassing, the Everything of the Everything.

God is the Wholeness, the Totality, the Oneness of the universe — male and female, light and dark and shadow, us and other, justice and compassion, pain and comfort, good and evil, life and death and life eternal. There is nothing in the universe that is not God. God is the Source and Substance of All.

This is God who made us, and who knows us, and who cares about us; who watches over us and protects us; who weeps with us in our pain, lifts us up from the depths, and comforts us in our sorrow; who empowers our strengths, heralds our triumphs, and celebrates our joys.

This is God who loves us.

Now, here comes the part that is sometimes hard to understand.

If God is Everything, and since I, and an elephant, and a chair, are part of Everything, then I — and the elephant and the chair — am God. Right?

Some — especially in this the new age — would say, “That is exactly right. You are God.”

But the kabbalists would say, “Not quite.” We do not claim an undifferentiated Oneness with God. Yes, God is Everywhere. God is in the elephant. The elephant is of God. God is in the chair. The chair is of God. God is in me. I am of God. My breath is the Breath of God; my spirit is the Spirit of God. I am not God. But God is Within me.

As the great modern spiritual guide, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel zt”l taught, we do not want to be the mystic who seeks to become one with God. We do not want to be the ecstatic who seeks to separate mind from body in finding God. We do not want to be the psychotic who goes mad in the quest. We do not even want to be the poet, lest we confuse our intent with God’s intent, our will with God’s will.

Rather, we want to be what Heschel taught that we all can be — the prophet, who can find God, know God, be in relationship with God, be sourced by God, talk to God, hear God’s word and will, and be God’s messenger on Earth.

I want to know God and be with God from “the insides of the insides.” I want God to be at the very center of my Being.

And God needs and wants us to be part of the Divine, to be wholly of God. God wants us to be in the “inside of the insides,” to reside at the Heart of all Being. You and I are Within God. We are at the very center of God’s Being.

So, in kabbalah, we seek the most intimate union with God.

I seek to merge my Self with God’s Self, my Being with God’s Being. I seek what the kabbalah calls devekut, “cleaving to God” — blending, melding.

I want to come into alignment, attunement, at-One-ment with God. I want to be in the deepest spiritual intention, the highest spiritual connection, the highest and the deepest human consciousness. I want to be wholly present in God’s design and flow, in God’s “energy field,” God’s “light-sphere,” God’s “wavelength,” I want to be a conduit to God and a channel of God.

By coming to God in daily kabbalistic meditation, by crossing the abyss and coming to know that there is no distance to the Infinite Oneness, we can come into union, into Being-ness with God.

We are in intimate connection. We are engorged with God-energy. We speak the yearnings of our hearts and souls. We feel so loved. Oh, how we feel loved!

We come to know the transcendent God, the God who creates, and commands, and sustains — the God of history and of destiny.

And we come to know the immanent God, the God Within.

Our wonderings can be sated; our questions can have response, for we merge with universal, eternal knowledge; we intuitively feel-sense the innermost secrets of the universe.

Rabbi Wayne Dosick, Ph.D., the spiritual guide of the Elijah Minyan, an adjunct professor at the University of San Diego and the Director of the 17: Spiritually Healing Children's Emotional Wounds. He is the award-winning author of six critically acclaimed books, including Golden Rules; Living Judaism; and Soul Judaism: Dancing with God into a New Era.