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

Rabbinic Insights: Listening To God

San Diego Jewish Times, March 24, 2006

By Rabbi Wayne Dosick

Can you know anything of what God wants; can you know anything of God's ultimate plan for the universe? Can you know what is God's will?

There are some parts of God's plan that you surely know.

You know that God loves all God's children. God does not "play favorites;” God loves each child equally and unconditionally. And just as no two children in a household relate in exactly the same way to mother and father_, you know that there are myriad ways to relate to God — each one valid and worthy.

If you are, for example, joyously and determinedly Jewish, you recognize and appreciate your friends and colleagues and neighbors who are joyous and determined followers of other faiths and other paths.

You are part of a living organism. Every part — the heart, the liver, the kidneys — is needed to function; each part is needed for its unique place and role. God loves — and needs — us all.

And you know also that God loves good, not evil. God's will is to elevate the human spirit, not crush it; to sanctify life, not destroy it.

God loves justice, and goodness, and righteousness, decency and dignity, kindness and caring, mercy and compassion. And, most of all God loves 
love, because Love is All; All is Love.

And God says to you: I created you in My image. Imitate me. Do justice, love mercy, walk humbly, bring holiness, and, above all, love. Love your 
God; love your neighbor, love yourself.

And, certainly, do not kill each other in my Name. That is a complete perversion of Me. Do not — do not, ever! — think that killing one another — especially for My "sake" — is My will! It is not!

So for what shall you pray? Will God really listen as you talk? Can your prayers — your intimate conversations — influence the Divine design?

You already know that prayer sends energy into the universe. Like any other energetic force, prayer can and does move and influence. The object of your prayer — animate or inanimate, but all of God — can be affected by your prayer energy. Certainly, collective prayer — when you join your voice with other prayers — has the possibility of shaping whole worlds. And, God listens to your prayer, and may be moved to Divine thought or action by your request.

In the yichud, the alone time, of Keter, when you are in union with God, you speak the desires of your heart. Eleh chamda libi. Chusa na, v'al na titaleim. "These are the desires of my heart. Please have compassion. Please do not turn away."

And what are the desires of your heart? Money? Power? Prestige? Fame?

Your Earth-ness may call you to these temporal gratifications, but your soul calls you to the deepest desires of the human spirit.

You seek — in the words of the modern prayer — "purpose to your work, meaning to your struggle, and direction to your striving.” You seek to make your contribution to a "just and peaceful world."

You seek the answers to the very questions with which you began the journey on the magical spiral pathway to God — the questions of the quest for ultimate meaning.

In the yichud of Keter, you ask God all your questions — the questions of the secrets of the universe, and the mysteries of existence; the questions of your heart and of your soul.

And you ask God for the health, strength, and wisdom, along the way; to do God's will with whatever gifts you are granted; to face the vicissitudes of life with dignity and courage; to make every moment a blessing.

You ask to serve; to do God's will in whatever form and format God deems best for you. You ask to use the best that is within you, to serve God with all your heart.

"Purify my heart that I may serve You in truth."

"Purify my heart." Help me to rid myself of any ills that beset it: hatred, and bigotry, and envy, and jealousy. Help me bring my heart to compassion, and kindness, and love.

"To serve You." Not my own selfish needs; Not my own ideas of what is best for me; Not my Earthly cravings and desires. But to serve You, O God — to do Your will.

"In truth." Your truth; the entirety of Your perspective, not the limited view of mine; the greatness and grandeur of Your eternal and infinite reality, not the temporal boundaries of my finite existence.

 And, help me enter Da'at so that Your truth and mine can be refined in the Tunnel of Time, and emerge as new truth for this new world.

And, then, pray for miracles, for God's strong and dear intervention into this world, to bring Light and Love to every corner of existence. "Just as You did miracles for our ancestors in days gone by, please do miracles for us in our time."

And, God wilt respond.

So, listen, listen, listen as God talks to you. What will God say?

That is between you and God, for your conversation is personal and intimate; it is between God and you, alone.

Yet, surely, there are a few things that God might say to every one of us. For just like the prophets of old, you are a prophet. You stand at the bush, atop the mountain, in the sheltering cleft of the cave, at the foot of the Temple, in the stream of exile and return. Though they tried, the rabbis and the sages — who, for their own power and adulation, insisted that individual prophecy died, and God's continuing revelation comes only through them — could not block your vision or silence your voice.

You are in God's holy presence; you are in intimacy with God. You are a pure channel of the Ruach HaKodesh, the Holy Spirit of God's word and will. God's continually unfolding revelation lives in you. Through you, God comes into this world.

So, God might say, "I Am within you. In your heart and soul — that grow and expand in wisdom and in love each and every moment — are the answers to all your questions. I placed within you All That Is. So, pay attention to your intuition, and your sensory perception, and your déjà vu, and your soul memory, and your daydreams, and your nightdreams, for through them. — through Me ­you will discover what you already know."

God might say, “I need you to help build up this world of Ours. We have a sacred task, and I rejoice that you are My co-creative partner. Please bring My message of healing and hope, and please inspire the holy work of billions of hearts and hands.

Most of all, know that I love you, and I cherish you, and I honor you, and I celebrate you, and I walk with you hand in hand through this journey of life. I am with You always — in this our daily conversation — and whenever you call. For, like Me, yours is the power and the glory — and the unending love — forever and ever."

In his contemporary, best-selling book, The Prayer of Jabez, Bruce Wilkinson tells that when the time comes that you pass from this Earth to the Other Side, you will see a box with your name on it, waiting for you.

In the box will be God's answers to all the questions you never asked, God's responses to all the prayers you never prayed.

Our prayer is that your box will be empty.

That is why God says, "Do not be afraid." Speak and you shall be heard. Pray and you shall be answered. Ask, and you shall receive.

Joyously cleave to Me. Together we go to the 'inside of the insides.' Together, we find life's deepest meaning, most noble cause, greatest glory, and richest blessings."

And you say, “Hinneni. Here I Am. I am ready."

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.