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Creating Bridges: Spirituality & Philosophy:
Kabbalah: "Letters from Heaven:"
Spiritual Guidance from the Hebrew Alphabet
Tet
Tet-Goodness
We are a source of music
played
when fully connected
to the Infinite Source of Love
by Avigayil Landsman
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Dedication
I dedicate this month's column to my dear Torah sister, Dena Tova, a woman of overflowing kindness, deep teachings and Binah's most sacred worldly cheerleader. Whether Dena is producing a video, mediating a conflict or organizing an event at our synagogue, she imbues all she does with goodness. She has been my confidante, walking buddy, study partner, a consummate friend. Her bright, loving eyes communicate her deep caring and pure soul.
Number nine, number nine…
The letter tet has the numerical value of 9. The human baby gestates in the womb for nine months. If you look at the negative space inside the letter, you will see that it is shaped like a fetus inside her mother's womb. The word tov, good, starts with the letter tet. The shape of tet is a curve that bends into itself. One's goodness is hidden inside the heart. The fetus is the combined goodness of both parents, inside the mother's womb.
There are ten sephirot in the Tree of Life, the "blueprint" of the divine essence. There are three levels in the tree, each containing three sephirot that represent the three levels of soul: body, emotions and intellect. All of these essences combine in balance with one another and yearn to connect with the tenth sephira of Malkut, or Shekinah, the indwelling presence of God. Manifesting God in the world is a big task. The ninth sephira is yesod, the place of bonding, foundation. The bonding establishes "pregnancy". After nine months of loving nurturance in momma's womb is completed there needs to be a big push to be born. We can know what we must do to bring the upper world to the lower world but the doing is another matter. It also takes a big push. Can we maintain our connection with the transcendent long enough and strongly enough in order to manifest this goodness through our actions? It's easy to meditate and be blissed out, but when we "come down" from that high, can we treat people from that place of bliss? Even Moshe Rabaynu, Moses, our teacher who is considered the most closely connected to God lost his cool with the Hebrews during their long trek through the desert!
Nurturing the soul
Tal, dew, begins with tet. Tal represents God's immanent presence. We pray for rain to nurture the soil, but our prayers for dew are to nurture our souls. After the rainy season ends, we pray for dew because it replenishes the plants during the dry season. For this reason, dew is associated with revival of the soul. Tal is a symbol of the Shekinah because tal covers everything equally. When the tet is overflowing with the goodness of tal, dew, it turns over and becomes the mem of mayim chayim, the waters of life. The mem looks like an overturned tet with its opening at the bottom.
Womb with a view
Tet also looks like a womb. I have already said that this opening allows divine love to enter. I think of the divinity of a couple's love producing a baby. It's a concrete image of what exists in a loving connection. If we close the opening of the womb, the seed will not lodge inside to be properly nurtured. If the fertilized egg does not lodge inside a woman's womb, it could plant itself in the fallopian tube instead, which can result in great pain for the woman and possible danger for the potential life. Keep your wombness open! Tet is a huge call to the Divine Feminine. Contain and nurture until it's time to lovingly let go.
Tet Meditation
Any kind of meditation contradicts our pattern of keeping busy. I believe that a perpetual need to keep busy comes from not feeling worthy. We feel worthwhile only when we are productive instead of fully experiencing our essence. When we can stop doing and appreciate the fullness of our being, we learn that we no longer need to prove to anyone that we are of value and worth. It is in this place of stillness that we contact our innate goodness.
Notice that the top of the letter is open, like a funnel, channeling divine goodness to enter from above. You can do a tet meditation by raising and opening your arms heavenward to receive the divine flow. Let HaShem's abundance fill you with the goodness that will wash you clean and make your heart pure. This will allow your actions to flow freely and manifest more goodness in the world.
One of the traditional daily prayers Jews say begins, "Elohay neshama she natata bi tehora hi," "God, the soul you gave to me is pure." We may lose our connection with our neshamas, our soul, becoming distracted by our base desires, but daily, we start the day by reminding ourselves that planted within each of us is a pure soul.
Torn
Inner brokenness is a tear in our spiritual fabric. The Hebrew word tarrof, "torn" is found in the Torah to describe what Joseph's brothers do to his multi-colored coat that his father, Jacob made for him. The word is repeated twice for emphasis. Joseph's brothers, annoyed by Joseph's boastful nature and jealous of their father's favoritism throw him into a pit to die, then make a more compassionate decision to sell him as a slave to a merchant. They bring their father Joseph's torn bloodied coat as proof that he is dead. They not only tore the fabric, they dipped it in blood to convince their father of his demise. Repeating "tarrof" alludes not only to Joseph's physical separation from life, but their separation from him as well. In addition, it shows the tearing that Jacob felt in his heart upon hearing of the horrible report. Traditional Jews, upon hearing of the death of a loved one, will tear their garment as an outward sign of their inner tearing for when a relative dies, he is torn from the fabric of our lives; life will never be the same again. Kabbalistically, Joseph is associated with the sephira of yesod, bonding. On a deep level, the brothers are enacting the disconnection from our higher selves.
Who put the boom in the box?
There is another level of tarof, of inner tearing and that is the tearing away of our connection to our higher source, or divine love that resides within each of us. So often I hear the question,"How can God allow for such horror in the world?" or, "Where is God in times of crisis?" My answer: that it is we who have lost our connection to our Beloved Friend. This connection to the Holy Source reminds me of the time I thought my boom box was broken. I wanted to hear music so I pushed the "on" button and no music was heard. My immediate response was, "Hey, what's happened to my boom box? It must be broken. It was relatively new, so I didn't want to throw it out. I made sure that the cord was plugged into the wall. "That's secure, so why is it not working?" I went downstairs to check the fuse box -- no fuse was blown. Finally, I came upstairs to see my kitty playing with the loose cord that was not properly plugged into the machine! The chord was plugged into the wall, but I didn't do keep the awareness of the chord being plugged into the boom box! We are like the boom box, a source of music that can only be played when we're fully connected to the Infinite Source of Love. We're complicated pieces of equipment. There are so many places where we disconnect and so many ways we strive to connect. The important thing is to find a way of becoming aware. The disconnection has a helpful component, however. When we do figure out where we're not plugged in, we make sure that when we do reconnect, that the connection is very strong! (See tav for teshuva)
Good enough?
In the Bible, God says, "It was good" after each day of Creation. In fact, God even says "it was very good," but God never says that it was excellent, terrific or even that what was created, although for the first time, was good enough. It's sort of like living with your parents. You put your whole self into a project and all they have to say is that it's good. So, what do we learn from this? When Moses asks God God's name, God replies, rather vaguely, "I am becoming what I am becoming." This indicates that our relationship with the divine is constantly evolving and what the "not good enough" is about is the constant need to improve or strive to improve on what we are, what we have created out of our lives, just as God created everything else. This is hemshech laasot, the continuation of creation. God made it good and it's our job to make it wonderful. As our Broadway teacher, Reb Gershwin wrote, "S'marvelous, s'wonderful that YOU should care for me."
So full of goodness, in fact, that we make ourselves tahora, pure. The Amida, a prayer in the Shabbas morning service says "L'tar hayli baynu, l'avdecha b'emet" "may we make ourselves pure in service to you and in truth." May our service to others remind ourselves that the goodness we bestow on others is connected to HaShem.
All for the Good
What we learn through living a conscious life is that everything we experience, no matter how sad, challenging or hurtful is for the good if we embrace the challenge of transforming ourselves. Each stumbling block put before us, each riddle we try to unravel is presented to us for the purpose of refining our souls. It is a medical fact that a broken bone heals to be even stronger than before the break. Rabbi Nachman of Breslov is famous for saying, "God loves a broken heart." It is only when the heart is broken, that we cry out to God for help and hear that small, inner voice of wisdom that guides us. This small, inner voice is the voice of Spirit; it is our authentic power and beauty and innate intelligence. When things are going well with us, we celebrate our success. Look what I did, we say. But let tragedy strike and right away we'll say, "How could God let this happen to me! I deserve better!" Hopefully, we will not stay in this immature, irresponsible place, but will move to the next level and ask, "So, what do I do about this?" Then we get to do the inner work, look at what this says about our deepest most vulnerable places, feel it completely until we move through it, become stronger and bless HaShem for the opportunity to climb one more rung on the ladder to heaven. If we can fully participate in the dance of life we will find the good in the banana peel that sends us crashing on our tuchas (Yiddish for rear end).
The Zohar makes an insightful comment on a verse that examines the essential nature of goodness. "Not a single word has failed of all His good words . . ."(1 Kings 8:56). "Since it reads: 'of all His good words,' the bad is left behind." Only the good is actualized, therefore, even what we perceive as "bad" is good. The line between bad and good is defined by the redemptive work we do.
Tet in a reading
The funnel of the letter tet draws energy from above, allowing direct flow from HaShem through prayer and meditation. The lesson here is that God's goodness (" . . . and God saw that it was good", Bereishit) has many ways to enter if we allow ourselves to be open and vulnerable. Sometimes we take it in from other people, other times from meditation and prayer. The important thing is to make your container strong enough to hold all this wonderful goodness coming your way.
The shape of the tet resembles a basket, the curved part acts as a handle and the straight horizontal extension acts as a spout, suggesting a cornucopia, meaning a great harvest, fullness, richness of all that life has to offer you. The spout is there so you can offer this goodness to the world. What you have in you is to be guarded, nurtured and then shared with the world. It is always important that when we give, we give what we can part with. Then, through the giving, we generate more goodness inside rather than feeling depleted.
It is important that you can accept the goodness that comes to you if you are a person who might not be used to accepting the wonderful opportunities that are about to come your way. Don't feel overwhelmed; it's about strengthening your container to hold onto this goodness-"kosi revaya"-- my cup runneth over (Psalm 23).
Conversely, the energy can also enter from the horizontal and move inside through the curved part of the tet. This energy is lovingly held inside. This left horizontal is the energy that comes from people, or the feminine side. Note that the letter after tet is yod, the letter of spirituality. Your inner goodness brings you to Spirit.
The image
I made the tet out of a bent over blade of grass, so heavily laden with the good tal, dew that it bends in on itself. The tal enters the womb of the earth to foster goodness. Dew is a symbol of the Shekinah. The Shekinah is as near to us as dew on a tender blade of grass. The Shekinah is so precious and loving that she touches everything, even a simple blade of grass. The Talmud says that there is an angel who hovers over each blade of grass, whispering, "Grow! Grow!" When we see the dew of morning, we are reminded that the immanent presence of the divine surrounds us all the time as well. While meditating on the letter, I saw a fetus in the negative space. The letter is opened at the top to allow goodness from above to enter. Just as the heart is inside the body, so our inner goodness is in our heart. Open yourself often to this divine flow and feel your innate goodness.
Instead of a magic carpet, the fetus inside the tet is riding on a tallit, prayer shawl. We wrap ourselves in a prayer shawl during prayer to enrobe ourselves in divine light, to feel the feminine presence of divinity. I see the tallit as a piece of the hem of Shekinah's robe.
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Avigayil Landsman,
Torah Scholar, Calligrapher, Lecturer, Teacher & Creator of the "Letters From Heaven" Deck
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Avigayil has been a serious student of Torah for the last ten years and has written many d'vrai Torah(Torah lectures). She is the creator of Letters from Heaven, a Jewish divination system that incorporates the mystical meanings of the Hebrew letters, her chiddushim (new insights into Torah) and their application to the challenges of daily life. Her LFH readings offer seekers of all persuasions spiritual direction in finding one's authentic voice.
Avigayil is a multi-media artist who is best-known for the beaded breastplate that adorns the Woodstock Jewish Congregation's Torah. She creates personalized ketubot, beeswax Shabbat candles, shiviti plaques and other judaica as well as secular art in Sculpey, paint, and shadow boxes that combine disparate objects such as feathers, beads and wood.
Her Judaica (beeswax Shabbat and havdallah candles, havdallah spice boxes, shiviti plaques) and calligraphy cards are available for purchase at the Woodstock Jewish Congregation's judaica shop, Miriam's Well and her home. She also does private commissions.
Avigayil has taught enrichment classes in calligraphy for the Woodstock Jewish Congregation's Hebrew school. She prepares children and adults for becoming Bat/bar-mitzvah with humor and deep wisdom that come from her own unique way of living through the lessons of Torah. She has also given workshops and lectures on the spiritual meaning of the Hebrew letters and Letters from Heaven at Omega and Mount St. Alphonsus.
"Avigayil Landsman's interpretations of the Hebrew letters are original, witty, steeped in scholarship, and above all a genuine opening to our own spiritual wisdom." Rachel Pollack, creator of Shining Tribe Tarot Deck www.rachelpollack.com
Avigayil is available for art commissions and LFH readings in person or on the phone. She may be contacted by e-mail at:
jewishwisdomandart@
hotmail.com
www.jewish-wisdom
-and-art.4t.com |
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