the wave and the ocean
Hearing the same message from a totally different source is always a welcome confirmation for me, both that what I heard is true and that the Holy Spirit is working in God’s people everywhere. So when I saw the excerpt from yesterday’s Center for Action and Contemplation meditation in my inbox, I felt the yes of extending Sunday’s message into the week ahead.
Everywhere you look you see God, not as an abstract spirit but as the True Being of all beings…
The surprising part was that this week’s focus is on Judaism and the Hasidic mystics, a lovely example of hearing the message through a different facet of the prism. I especially appreciate the analogy of the wave and the ocean, like the story of the fish becoming aware of the water surrounding them.
The ancient Rabbis taught, “God desires the heart.” They themselves, however, seem to have preferred the head. Judaism has struggled through the ages to find a balance between heartfelt yearning for God and the intellectual mastery of God’s Word. Generally speaking, it was the head that won out. Yet, when things got too heady, the pendulum would swing in favor of the heart. The eighteenth-century Jewish revivalist movement called Hasidism was one of these heart swings. . . .
The concept of d’veikus (“clinging” or “cleaving”) is found in the Torah [the Hebrew Scriptures] where the verb davak signifies an extraordinary intimacy with the Divine: “To love YHVH your God, to listen to His voice and to cleave to Him, for He is your life and the length of your days . . .” (Deuteronomy 30:20). To achieve d’veikus is to realize that God is your life. While later Hasidic masters spoke of d’veikus as a union with God requiring the dissolution of the self, this was not the original understanding. God is your life, but your life is still yours; that is, Torah speaks of d’veikus as an experience of feeling the fullness of God present in your self without actually erasing your sense of self. . . .
The essential message and practice of early Hasidism are simple. The message: “. . . the whole earth is full of God’s glory” (Isaiah 6:3). The practice: “. . . I place God before me always” (Psalm 16:8). Understand these and you understand Hasidism. . . .
Although the Hasidim themselves do not use this analogy, the relationship of a wave to the ocean aptly captures the situation Hasidism says we are in. . . . Focus on yourself as a wave, and you are increasingly frantic and worried. Focus on yourself as the ocean, and you find tranquility and peace of mind. . . . Hasidism tries to wake the wave up to being the ocean. Awakening to your true nature is what it is to “place God before you always.” Everywhere you look you see God, not as an abstract spirit but as the True Being of all beings. . . .
May we seek God with our minds and our hearts. May we become more aware of the ocean of God’s love. May we recognize the Spirit at work all around us.
-Renée