Tagged with Judaism

Humanity plays a key role in the repair and restoration of the world. The purpose of evil is to provide a context for humanity's redemption, which puts evil, humanity, and God himself in their proper places within the cosmos. (more)

Many persons who have been labeled "mentally ill" by the psychiatric system have had spiritual experiences or visions, often messianic, and thus they have a contribution to make to the redemption of humanity. They could be the midwives of the messianic age. (more)

If you're still hoping for nonduality to cohere, to make your life better, to make you happier, you're still clinging to spiritual materialism.  Better for it all to be for nought.  Surrender even the hope of progress, and progress will happen on its own. (more)

We're told that without integrating spiritual insights into our daily lives, even the greatest of peak experiences is just a narcissistic thrill. We say true spirituality, and certainly Jewish spirituality, is about being in the world. But I think we integrate too quickly, and use this language to avoid making the changes that true spirituality would demand of us. (more)

Our True Nature is who we already are, not something we can become or attain in the future. We somehow don't recognize this fact and spend years searching for something that was never lost, and if we're fortunate, we'll run into a teacher along the way who will simply point out what is perfectly obvious. (more)

Western religion can be so focused on God that it forgets the world, and it criticizes those who love it as "pagan," as too entranced by the world of appearances. But I like the world and its pleasures.  I am convinced that God is dancing right now, and not to take Her up on it is a little bit offensive. (more)

Tell the children of Israel to go forward. But lift up your rod, and stretch out your hand over the sea and divide it. And the children of Israel shall walk upon dry ground in the midst of the sea.... Pharaoh and his armies drowned in the flood of material existence and unassimilated sense-perception, not so much through a want of piety as through a lack of philosophy. Jesus would later walk on similar waters, as did such of his disciples as understood the significance of the act. This art was lost to later Christians at the same time that they severed their connection to Judaism. (more)

Some believe that without free will, we are mere biological instruments, with no soul.  But from a nondual perspective, this argument is theologically backward. The autonomous soul isn't the gateway to God; it's the gateway to delusion.  This is the yetzer hara, the selfish, separating and, occasionally, evil inclination that sees the self as the center of the universe.  (more)

The sages of Kabbalah often start with what we would deem the conclusion, if the proofs were satisfactory: that God exists, and is Infinite. They ask, if God is infinite, then what is your body, your heart, and your mind, but God itself? What are joy and terror, other than the skin of the Infinite? (more)

In my dreams, the religion most directly associated with the global collective is Judaism. The story of exodus and diaspora is everyone's story. To find the Promised Land, every person must wander the desert for forty years. (more)

Imagine a world in which everyone understood that all of us are God. According to one interpretation of prophecy, the messianic age is already unfolding, and the gradual emergence and dissemination of nonduality is among its signal phenomena. (more)

Zen-ish people are always saying "This is it, there's nothing to get, it's all here now," but I never really thought they meant it! Did they really mean this is as good as it gets? Surely they must be referring to some other version of this that will come along later, once I really understand that "this is it, here and now." (more)

Religion can be fairly straightforward; it brings us together and marks important occasions. But what about those of us who make spirituality the center of our lives? Are we sick and scarred? (more)

The concept of tsedeq (world in balance) brings powers to the ecological struggle which are only unleashed by religious belief. In doing this we are entitled to the name of Melchizedek, the title of the old Canaanite priest-king, the royal warrior who defends sacred ecology and resists the forces of capital. (more)

Are peak experiences real? How do we know anything is true? Certain things are logically provable, but many other kinds of truths are not. Secret mystical teachings are not esoteric; they are experiential. (more)