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'divine manifestations' = sefirot

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And on to the last sefirot to finish out Part II:

The level of Tiferet-Splendor has the potential to mirror divinity in this world. From the viewpoint of Kabbalah, from Splendor upward, humans interact with God and with other forces greater than humanity. From Splendor downward, humans strive to direct the world as ambassadors of God, intertwining human and divine will. Our of the human potential to co-create, each generation faces the task of sustaining and caring for the world. By bestowing kindness on all creation, humanity can actually imitate God.

This task requires harnessing the energies of Netzach-Perseverance and Hod-Surrender. These are the sefirot of life force, the energies of survival and procreation. They manifest as desires for food, for sex, and for the means to ensure those necessities, including power and wealth.

Perseverance parallels or is similar to Expansiveness (chesed) but on a more personal level - instead of spreading out to the levels of universe and creation, Perseverance (Netzach) relates more to personal power and the will of living things to live and grow (whether us or a plant), in our physical strength for instance, we can see 'perseverance' as a quality.

Surrender (Hod) parallels Restraint - it is the inclination to yield/pull back, or to work cooperatively with others. It is the willingness to sacrifice ourselves for a larger goal, or the ability to pull our ego out of a situation.

In a negative sense, Hod can express itself negatively - depression or isolation. The negative side of Netzach is being manipulative to get what you want - ignoring others' wishes for instance -
Looks like too much Perseverance could be like a sociopath, while too much Surrender could be someone in total withdrawal. Like with Strength and Restraint, these are end-members always in tension.

and like Gevurah (Strength) and Chesed (Expansiveness), they 'resolve' into a kind of unification, called Yesod (Foundation).

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Yesod - Foundation keeps the dynamic pair of Perseverance and Surrender from disconnecting from the divine source, says Frankiel (they have a tendency to become materialistic and self-worshiping - either extreme egoism/narcissism to extreme self-negation).


Yesod is also portrayed as the sefirah of reproduction (generation, transmission). Perseverance combined with Surrender works together - Perseverance wants to 'succeed' and Surrender is willing to forego things in favor of others: cooperation and competition: an 'ecosystem'. This level of the sefirot is a nice model of evolution, by the way.

But besides the 'genetic' level of transmission (which we share with all life) humans also transmit culture and history through narrative and story. Yesod is this kind of transmission or 'reproduction' also. Frankiel calls is 'the divine quality of memory'. And in some kabbalistic systems, another name for Yesod is 'ALL' (as in, the totality and comprehensiveness of 'everything').

Since our parental and cultural heritage is available through Foundation, we can access the merit of the good deeds of our ancestors.

(Judaism has always - back into the Torah - had the idea that 'the merit of the Fathers' - that is, the patriarchs - is a factor in God's continuing interest and love. Kabbalah is using this idea and explains how it operates through this idea of the sefirot).

The Jewish prayers each day include thanks to God, 'Who remembers the devoted acts of our ancestors and Who brings a redeemer to their children's children.'

Remembering is also...reuniting the broken pieces. Divine remembrance infuses the sefirah of Foundation, because God pieces together and holds the memory of past goodness for us.

Frankiel didn't quote this, but she should have - another daily prayer asks God to 'remember us unto life', which is a reference to resurrection at the end of time. Our souls (in Judaism) are not innately immortal. Instead, when we die, our souls return to God (because our souls are 'stuff of the divine') and then at the end of days (or as some believe, though a process of reincarnation and return over time) God will (or won't!) 'Remember' us and restore us 'to life', that is, to resurrection at the End of Days. Yigdal (a prayer/hymn) says 'in love, our God restores the life of all our souls'. The daily morning prayers say: "The soul that You, my God, have given me is pure. You created it. You formed it. You breathed in into me: You keep body and soul together. One day You will take my soul from me, to restore it to me in life eternal....Praised are You, O Lord, who restores the soul..."

The prayers recited in memorial services particularly dwell on God 'remembering' the dead - May God remember the soul of my mother/my father/my husband/my wife - they all start that way.

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All humans manifest the sefirah of Foundation when we pass on a heritage, whether to the next generation or to our contemporaries. We do this in the initiation rites of the generation, but also in the casual stories we tell of our ancestors and our past. The rites of transmission begin in childhood with schooling and continue throughout every passage in adulthood. Such stories and ceremonies are literally the 'foundation' for a world that is about to be born with each new generation.

Most of all, the heritage we pass on through Foundation must be inclusive, connected to wholeness. It must be connected to prophetic vision, which takes history and forges it in accord with a vision of the future....In Jewish tradition, prophetic vision and history are intimately related...Both history and prophecy involve the ability to see the big picture of processes going on in a temporal framework. ..

Suddenly I am reminded of my current' signature' (see below) which is a quote from the guy who draws Calvin and Hobbes, by the way - about how we continually refer back to, and reinterpret, what history 'means' as we understand more fully what happened in the past and what we think about the future.

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Frankiel's example is the example of Joseph, when he spoke to his brothers:

Now do not be distressed or take it amiss that you sold me into slavery here. It was God who sent me ahead of you to save people's lives...

Joseph is reinterpreting past (terrible) events to fit into a new understanding of what it 'meant' or what is was 'for'.

So we should be retelling the stories that work to 'save people's lives' - or to make the world a better place. Tell stories of heroism in disaster - tell stories of success in the midst of struggle - we DO tell this kind of story, and these are the kinds of stories we 'remember' best. Every year we retell the Exodus story, which although it starts in slavery and child murder, doesn't END there - it ends with liberation and a unification of the community.

And we must tell stories of miracles. We can only break through the vise grip that mechanistic science has on our consciousness by recognizing the role of God in everything. The Baal Shem Tov, founder of Hasidism, taught that no leaf falls without God's willing it....God is in our midst, with the force of cohesion rather than mere causation, bringing people and events together for an ultimate good.

(this harks back to 'miracles are in the eye of the beholder)

I'm also reminded of something I read recently by an important evolutionary biologist -
that there is a difference between Philosophical Naturalism (Nature (that is, the natural universe) is all there is - this is the position of Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett) and Methodological Materialism (we must ACT AS IF Nature is all there is WHEN we are doing science or something practical with nature - this is the position of Francis Collins and Stephen Jay Gould).

Frankiel's statements here are firmly in the 'Methodological Materialism' camp, and kabbalah positively insists that Nature is NOT 'all there is' but that there is this greater or more important spiritual world lying behind everything and every event in the Natural world - but (I believe) that what we see as 'Nature's Laws' are actually 'God's Will'. I think. I'm not quite certain on that point, but it seems to fit. Again - it is all in how we 'look' at things: miracles are in the eye of the beholder. If the 'eye' doesn't 'see' a miracle, the eye sees only 'natural events'.

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Yesod-Foundation is heavy with potential and difficult to carry. At this point, we recognize the enormous responsibility we have to be channels for a reformulation of perspective. We must take everything in heaven and earth and add our own creative spark to transmit to the world. When we are aware that Foundation is the transmission of divine will that began at Crown, we can express our gratitude and move forward with freedom.

Bringing Energy Into Form: Malkhut - Manifestation

Divine energy has constellated itself in many transformations, through each of the sefirot. This energy now results in something: what exists. Present existence is Malkhut - Manifestation. Normally it is all that we see and hear and touch. All the other levels are invisible. They are, as Kabbalah says, hidden worlds.

So now we are in 'the real world' which - for many people - is all there is. Kabbalah tells us that the real world we see is just the final 'manifestation' of the energy of God. It is in this world of 'manifestation' where we can ACT and transform - everything.

Only in the arena of Manifestation can we complete the circuit of thought, emotion, speech and action. When we consciously act, we make changes in the physical world....In this way, truly new things come into being. ..The capacity to initiate decrees (that is, to make real changes)and have them carried out...in kingship - the literal meaning of the Hebrew word malkhut. In Kabbalah, Manifestation means that our true intent, whether unconscious or conscious reaches completion.

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Here is where our choices become really critical - not just for ourselves and the world (the 'malkhut') but for ALL levels, because our actions HERE ripple back through all the 'worlds' of the sefirot - all the divine manifestations are affected by our choices. This is no small thing.

Humans have the gift of being able to be conscious of the depths of being and experience them. One of the amazing adventures of humanity in the past two hundred years is the discovery of undreamed levels of existence: the mysteries of the genetic code,the forces within the atom, distant stars and black holes. We we exercise conscious, ethical control over our knowledge of other dimensions of existence? We we ask what God wants us to do with it? Will we consider the larger implications of our actions? Or will we follow the most enjoyable or profitable path and leave the results to chance?

OK folks: THIS is where it all becomes Real. THIS is where the metal hits the road. How then - What then - will we, as humans, choose to act?

The big temptation for us, says Frankiel, is our tendency to built rigid structures - a little bubble universe with ourselves as the individual and most important 'star'. But that isn't the way we should think. We should think about Responsibility -

Responsibility isn't something we HAVE - we don't 'own' it:

Responsibility is the ability to respond, which implies a larger context, a community, a world of other actors and thinkers, and God as a major player too, with intricate processes linking heaven to earth. This is the Jewish concept of covenant. We are all responsible for one another, and to one another.

...the concept of a way to walk with integrity and responsibility runs throughout Judaism, and similar ideas appear in every truly spiritual path. A way of responsibility must mark Manifestation - a way of responding collectively as well as individually to the divine intent. Then Malkhut-Manifestation becomes the mirror of Keter-Crown, not only in vision but also in reality.

(Jewish law and tradition is 'halakah' - the way to walk. Jesus talked about 'the Way'. Buddhists have 'the Noble Eightfold Path')

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Basically, all major religions have a 'path' or a 'rule' about how to live. (examples: the Rule of Saint Benedict, the Tao, the Eightfold Path, halakhah)

The rule is the manifestation of divine will, to the extent that human beings can understand it.

Judaism says 'The way of the earth is the foundation of Torah', meaning that the ethical rules and codes of civility recognized by all humanity are basic rules for Jews as well. On those general ethical principles is built the further, more detailed path of halakhah. The rule in each religion usually urges people to a higher path than is prescribed by society at large. In each religion there is also another, still more demanding kind of path, a personal path that much be blazed by each individual.

Nowadays for a lot of people, having 'rules' isn't terribly popular. But this tends to remove us from our connections to the past.

Our concern about superficiality and rote practice is not only a result of modernity. ..all the mystics (of every faith) urged that we put our heart into our observances. The message of the mystics is: Find your own connection to Tiferet-Splendor and beyond. Learn...

...an ancient Zen teaching...says that if you see someone pointing to the moon, you shouldn't mistake the finger for the moon....this means don't mistake the rules of religion for ultimate reality or God. ...(but) if you are looking for the moon - or, to use a better analogy, trying to find a constellation in the sky - you would be a fool to ignore the finger pointing you in the right direction. The finger that points is the rule...

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Here's something cool (and totally relevant):

h**p://www.sltrib.com/home/4133695-155/treks-g ... ns-a-taste

The LDS does this every year - people (adults and teens) do a living re-enactment of the iconic pilgrimage of the early Mormons from the east to Utah, by wagons, by hand carts, on foot -

Do read the article! Part of the story is about the desire by some people to add some of the less pleasant (or less uplifting?) historical events - attacks by enemies, the deaths of infants along the trail -
The point I'd like to make is that this is an exercise in 'remembrance' which reinterprets historical events for 'meaning', in order to pass along the meaning and the lived experience to the next generation - many if not most participants look at their trek as extremely spiritually uplifting and really reinforces their allegiance to their faith and heritage.

Jews do something like this at Passover (except indoors and a lot more comfortable and with better food). Christians do this when they celebrate Palm Sunday and Easter with parades through Jerusalem, for instance.

This is the sefirah of Yesod playing out in Malkhut 'properly' - that is, aligning what happens HERE with Keter (Crown) by human actions.

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Judaism says you can't do without the 'rules'. We have a concept called 'arguments for the sake of heaven' - strong disagreements, but the participants are each sincerely trying to determine whether something is or isn't 'divine will'. But they still stay inside the 'rules'.

Jewish mystics have always insisted that we can't break the laws and still achieve spiritual freedom.

The feelings that we have risen above the laws of society and religion usually comes from egotistical perception, not spiritual insight, says Frankiel.

Kabbalah teaches that if one focuses intently on a divine commandment, one can achieve higher levels of spirituality.

many mystics would engage in meditations related to the observances of various commandments..a way to unite directly with the divine will is to perform a commandment

(obey a mitzvot) correctly (without ego, by putting our will subservient to God's will).