Q & A

The way you communicate the messages of God as Love seems easy to understand, yet difficult to adapt to (the material) reality. How can we experience more Love in our lives amid the negativity we have to deal on a daily basis?

Indeed it sounds easy because at some point in our lives we have experienced full awareness of Love and its attributes. We know that without Love is simply impossible to live and sustain life. This means that also at some point we adapted Love to our surrounding reality, either as children or as parents, brothers and sisters, friends and loved ones. We have pointed out countless times that the main obstacle to let Love lead in all circumstances is ego's “personal” agenda. We have said that the problems in our relationship with others begin when when we trespass the boundaries set by mutual respect, care and protection of each other. In other words, our freedom ends when the freedom of others beings, which means that we must not gain, enjoy or profit at the expense of others' loss, suffering or lack. In this sense, Love implies a win-win situation in which none of the parties involved loses. This is why we say that Love is the cause and the effect, because it must be in that way in order to be true Love. Ego's obstruction manifests when we want something at the expense or detriment of others, and Love's ways manifest when we share goodness for the advancement and betterment of all. This is the kind of consciousness that defines the Final Redemption in Judaism. We say in God as Love that “democracy” is not about 51% ruling and 49% ruled, or 51 winning and 49 losing and reduced to be “the opposition”, because we believe that true “democracy” (we put it on quotation marks because the term belongs to the “nations”, therefore alien to Judaism) is about general consensus. We all must agree on that which is for the individual and collective benefit. We also have mentioned that our mystic Sages teach that we fight darkness (negativity) not by declaring war on evil but by expanding Light (Love's ways and attributes), meaning by doing good and positive actions (what we call in Judaism “learning Torah and fulfilling its Commandments”) we dissipate evil and its derivatives. To answer your question, we experience more Love in our life when we follow its ways and practice its attributes. In this sense the more you love, the more you dissolve negativity in your midst. It may not be an easy process, but if you start with your own self trying to be mindful about Love as our true Essence and common bond with the Creator, His Love will guide you to clear the darkness that may be around. Be mindful that you love because Love is your Essence and identity, and you do it just for the sake of Love.

I have difficulty to understand passages of the Tanach (the Torah and the Hebrew sacred scriptures) though I am aware of their inner meanings beyond my discernment. Is there any way to assimilate the messages of those passages that seem to be far from our human understanding?

You already know what our Sages say regarding the levels of perception and/or understanding of our Hebrew scriptures, which are literal, allegorical, indirect, by ethical/philosophical deduction, and through esoteric/mystic understanding. They also remark that we must perceive, discern and assimilate all these levels, meaning that we have to understand and accept them as truthful ways and means to learn and know the Creator's messages in the whole Tanach. A fundamental example is the Exodus from Egypt that indeed occurred literally as mentioned in the Torah. We were slaves in the most depraved nation of ancient times, we were submitted to forced hard physical labor, we were exploited, humiliated, abused and murdered amid the most abject conditions. Our oral tradition is abundantly clear in this respect. At the same time, this particular historical facts reflect the level of spiritual awareness almost close to none, from which the Creator lifted our ancestors to freedom in miraculous ways. The conditions were so negative that only through direct Divine intervention was possible to exit the lowest levels of consciousness, and cross over to the highest levels in close contact with the Deliverer of such freedom. We also must be fully aware that the Torah is written in human language in order for us to understand the ethics and morals of God's Love, and His ways and means to relate with Him. Our Sages also explain that the entire content of the Hebrew Scriptures is Divinely intended as strict ethical rules and guidelines to safeguard our individual and collective well being. The strictness of this rules reflects the fundamental principle that Love does not cohabit with anything different from its ways and attributes. We must understand this strictness not as restrictions or limitations to our individual and collective freedom but exactly as the opposite, because Love is about inclusion and expansion unlike the excluding, subtracting and restrictive qualities of ego's fantasies and illusions. The strictness of Love's ways and attributes are aimed to eliminate anything that threatens their goodness and positive qualities. In this way we understand what our mystic Sages mean when they say that we must be always “eternally vigilant” in order not to go off the “straight and narrow path” of righteousness.

What are the signs of the Redemption promised by God and our Prophets?

Maimonides (Rabbi Moshe Ben Maimon, the Rambam) elaborates about this in his Mishneh Torah (Laws of the Kings), as well as other Sages, based on the books of our Prophets, and we have to understand these signs in the context of our current times. In other words, we must assimilate the Messianic era as the time in which Truth prevails. We have repeated in this blog that such Truth encompasses Love's ways and attributes as the material reflection of God's Love for us and His Creation. This means that living in the Truth is living in Love's ways, because Love is the cause of Truth. In a practical ethical and moral sense, when we live from, by, with, and for the Truth there is nothing different or opposite to it. Living with the Truth individually and collective is a clear sign that we are living in the Redemption, opposite to living in the lies of ego's illusions. The moment we abandon ego's illusions and choose to embrace Love's attributes as the real Truth, we are redeemed. Mutual cooperation and solidarity are also signs of the Messianic era, and in Judaism we refer to them as tzedakah (usually mistranslated as “charity”, and its true meaning is “doing righteousness as justice, or as the just thing to do for others, which is doing goodness”), and makes perfect sense because Redemption is about doing goodness to each other permanently. A definite sign of Redemption is when we fully enthrone Love as our true Essence and identity, as the sovereign conductor of all levels and dimensions of consciousness. In this sense we understand Love as “the flourishing power” of Redemption.