#147
I’ve been studying Torah after a sorts lately. The thought kinda struck me as kinda odd when I realized it, but not necessarily a bad sort of odd. I’m starting to get things I didn’t before and understand them. What’s more than that, I’ve been starting to apply them to my own life and get a better understanding of it because of it. Like something I previously disagreed with, the part about not getting into things like Kabbalah til a certain age actually makes a lot more sense now. It’s really a lot like what Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan says….
‘The proper way to study any kabbalistic text is to take it as a whole, using every part to explain every otherone. The student must find threads of ideas running through the text, and follow them back and forth, until the full meaning is ascertained…In larger texts such as the Zohar, this methodology assumes every greater importance, and without it, much of the writings of Ari (Rabbi Isaac Luria) will appear like little more than gibberish.’
It’s just that reason why there’s that rule that people must first really learn and understand the nonmystical texts first…without them they simply don’t have enough of the background to understand the complex texts. It’s like trying to learn pronouns and proverbs without knowing what a verb or a noun is, or even what a word is. It’s like trying to perform calculus without understanding multiplication or division. The higher learnings are little more than gibberish without the base. I’ve definately been seeing that myself; I keep needing to refer back to explanations, to looking up other things. I’m sure I’m missing a lot in what I’m reading now, too, possibly making false assumptions as well. I just don’t have the base that I should have by now.
Even so, I’ve still been looking and applying the oral Torah quite a bit, at least after my own fashion and understanding. I’ve been looking to mitzvah and their relation to the ‘body parts’ of Adam-Kadmon and to tikkun olam most especially. The funniest thing is that, in these things, I’ve found explanations to many things that I’ve felt and impulsively found strong reasons to do and to be. It’s funny how connected I feel Jacinta is to this, too. I’m not studying for her approval or for anything that I can think of for her…but nearly every time I read something that rings strongly, it rings because it reminds me of her and our relationship together. Not every time, some things are intensely personal, but many of them do. For instance, the story of ‘The Heavenly Body of Adam’ for instance, is more personal than not, as is ‘Roots of the Soul.
The Heavenly Body of Adam
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‘In the beginning, before Adam was placed in the Garden of Eden, his soul already existed in the mind of God,as a great cosmic being called Adam-Kadmon, the Primal Adam. The souls of humanity were like one, joined together through Adam-Kadmon’s cosmic body.
While God was still forming Adam’s earthly body from dust, He sh owed him all the generations of the Zaddikim – righteous souls – that were to come from him. Adam saw them all, from the greatest to the smallest, and understood he was to be the single origin of the family tree of humanity. Whenever a soul was ready to be born, it would leave the body of Adam-Kadmon and descend through the spiritual works where it would join with a newly forming embryo in the womb of it’s earthly mother. And the same process continues to this very day.
Adam-Kadmon’s cosmic body is made up of 248 bones and organs held together by 365 sinews. Together, these body parts total 613, cossponding to the number of mitzvot in the Torah. Each of these parts is also a “major soul root” which, in turn, subdivides into 613 “minor roots.” These further divide into “great souls,” who are the Zaddikim, the righteous leaders and teachers of each generation. The souls of the Zaddikim are, in turn, divided into ‘sparks,’ which are the ordinary souls.
If Adam and Eve had not sinned in the Garden, then these souls would have all incarnated in their proper places, with their intended families on earth. Everything would be in harmony, as it was intended. Each of us would live one life on earth, perfect ourselves through that experience, then return to our destined places in the heavenly realms.
But, because of Adam’s sin in the Garden, everything is now mixed up on earth. Souls come into the world without awareness of their spiritual connections feeling lost and bewildered. While on the earth plan, they make mistakes and sin, causing themselves to reincarnate over and over again. Some manage to redeem themselves, and some even become Zaddikim. But others continue to spirial downward, becoming more entangled in the cycle of death and rebirth.
However, we are not left to flounder hopelessly. The “great souls” – the holy Zaddikim – also incarnate on earth, to help guide us out of the tangle of sin and lead us toward redemption. Moses was such a Zaddik, as were Noah and Abraham and all the great prophets. In every generation there are also hidden Zaddikim – at least thirty-six of them- who work for the redemption of the world.
This is why the Hasidic Rebbes taught each of us that we must ‘search for the Zaddik’ and find the righteous teacher that we are meant to follow, the one who is connected to the “sparks” of our own souls. For some it will be one Rebbe, for others it will be a different Rebbe, each according to the roots of his or her own soul in the body of Adam-Kadmon. Through their reconnections with their Zaddikim, all the souls can eventually reconnect with their spiritual roots and find their way back to the heavenly realms.’
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Roots of the Soul
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While God was still forming Adam’s earthly body, wihch lay lifeless as a lump of clay, He showed him all the future generations of humanity. Adam saw clusters of souls clinging to every part of his spiritual body: the hair, the arms and legs, the eyes, ears, mouth, and nose. For every bone, muscle, organ, sinew, there was a ‘soul root’ leading to specific clusters of souls. Altogether there were 613 soul roots, each one representing the 613 mitzvot in the Torah.
When a Jewish soul incarnates on earth, it remains connected to the specific mitzvot that it was originally attached to in the spiritual world. (Non-Jews are also connected in this way, through the Seven Laws of Noah, which are included in the 613 mitzvot.) That’s why each person feels drawn to a different part of the Torah. Some want to serve God primarily through charity, others through prayer, still others through observing the Sabbath and holy days with extra joy. Whatever mitzvot is connected to the soul, that is the mitzvah it feels called upon most to do.
In the early days of humanity, it was clear where each soul belonged and what its root was because it was still close to the origins in Adam’s body. Thus we read in Genesis that Yubal was the father of all those who played harp and flute, Tubal-Cain was the master of blacksmithing and Nimrod was the great hunter. Each soul was born into a specific nation, family, and occupation best suited for its individual gifts and skills.
As time went on, and the souls reincarnated a
gain and again, some of them became separated from their spiritual roots and forgot their connections with each other. Nowadays souls are often born into the wrong family or place. When that happens, they feel utterly lost and alienated. They sense that something is missing, but they have no idea what it could be.
At the same time, these lost souls still feel a pull toward their original root in heaven and the specific mitzvah attached to it. This is why, as the sages taught, every person should choose one person to be extra careful about. Not, heaven forbid, that we neglect the rest of the mitzvot and do only one of them! We should always do as many as we can. But for that special mitzvah, we must go above and beyond the call of duty, using extra care even when it becomes inconvenient. In this way, we can reconnect to our soul roots, and from there, to our place in the heavenly realms.
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Thinking of the first story….it reminds me very much of life the way it is and the differences among people. It also seemed to clarify something that I’ve been feeling for a long time…I’m looking for a teacher, one that speaks to me. I’ve been doing it and I don’t think I really realized it until I read that…it makes a lot more sense now, at least to me. As for the second, the second made me wonder which one speaks to me…so I read them all and it was easy. Only three were possible. There was a bit of thought as to which one was right and even then it was easy. My mitzvot is the two-hundredth-and-fourteenth. To fufill what what was uttered and to do what was avowed. There is absolutely no question of that. No question at all. It’s funny how I went from knowing so little about mitzvah to understanding so much more about them….and even funnier still that, knowing that each person has one that is there own, how looking down the list once, just once reading every single one that there were only three that could be for me. Then looking inside, only one from there.
There’s more too, of course, more things I’ve been seeing…the ones that remind me of Jacinta…of my past and of us….this one just comes from an overview of a chapter of stories, one explaining the basics for people who might not otherwise know.
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In addition to the general task of tikkun olam – repairing the universe – which all humans participate in, there are specific missions and tasks for individual souls to perform when they are reborn on earth. Sometimes these are karmic repairs of one’s own soul. In other cases they are tasks that one individual must perform on behalf of another. Still other mitzvot are connected to a particular ‘soul group.’ Underlying the entire tikkun process is the will of God, which mysteriously guides the various souls to find each other at just the right moment. Sometimes this process results in frustrating detours, delays and hardships along the road, which are, in themselves an indication that the journey is for the purpose of tikkun…”
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This is EXACTLY how I feel about Jacinta and about Lindsey and Jessica, too. They all came at JUST the right times for things to change the way they did…and they all did huge things as far as changing my own life…changing it for the better. So it makes sense to me that these things happen for something like tikkun…there just seems no other way that the things would fall together in place the way they did so perfectly any other way. I’m lucky, but I’m not THAT lucky. I’m beginning to feel like Jacinta told me once….that I’m meant to do something, something big. I just never looked at it that way before, but everything in my life, too, seems to say just the same thing. How else could I ever have been so lucky as to meet all these amazing people? To have all these incredibly positive impacts on my life that helped me come out of the darkness I used to be such a part of into a better life and better state of mind? I’m better equipped to help people now, to actually perform my own positive actions and to bring the world back together as much as I can.
I wonder, though, how much more Jacinta and I are supposed to be together. Not in the relationship aspect, but what else is there to be between us? Lindsey and Jessica both drifted away very, very quickly after what was meant to happen did, but Jacinta has not. In some ways I feel closer to her now after the fact…because I’m less dark, less devoid and less ignorant than I was before…and I’m more like her, I think. I’m more faithful, more loving and more accepting and caring. I realize, too, that I’m part of her family, too. Part of her people, our people. And we haven’t stopped talking…so what more is there supposed to be? Is there anything that is supposed to be? I can’t seem to wrap myself around the idea that it might just be chance that she and I kept in contact where I didn’t with the others who’ve done similarily powerful things to my life. It reminds me of another story I’ve recently read…but I don’t really feel like I should put it down. It might be saying too much. Believe it or not, I’ve been working on saying less and less….I say too much a good deal of the time.
I wonder about her a lot. Jacinta, that is. I wonder how she feels about me now and what I’m doing. I know that deep down it’s not an acceptance thing so much…I’m going to keep walking on this path whether or not anyone tells me I’m being foolish…it speaks to me too much, it feels like something I should be doing, something I ought to be doing that I never was…it feels like somewhere where I actually belong. So it’s not because I need reassurance that I’m doing the right thing. I already have that. But I still wonder if she thinks so. Maybe I’m doing it wrong a little and could be doing better. She could tell me if I was, I think, help get me back on track. She was always good at doing that. I wonder if she still loves me sometimes. Deep down in my heart I’m pretty sure she still does (how could you just extinguish something that strong?). I think…I’d like it very much to hear her say it. Not because it’d herald a new relationship or anything like that. I’m not looking for that, not sure I even want that anymore. But it’d mean a lot to me if she would tell me she still did (if she does). I’d like very much to know, even if it’s only just to know.
And now I’m babbling, the other story is getting to me, I think I’m going to lay back down and catch some more rest before class. <3 and such.