Laws.

THE BIG IDEA

Time to get practical. 

According to the Torah Omens this is a favorable time to imagine your arrival in your best possible life, (think ‘promised land of flowing milk and honey’ or whatever that perfect life might look like to you). 

However, instead of some idyllic future fantasy void of life’s challenges, the Torah Omens encourage us to imagine our happy place in real life, amongst real people, fully conscious of all the inevitabilities found in human co-existence. 

Take time this weekend to examine your relationship to practical laws. 

How prepared are you emotionally, mentally and spiritually for the possibility of damage to your property, lending money to a neighbor in need, or addressing a person that is sexually attracted to animals?

Do you know how to respond to all of life’s potential accidents, disputes and aggressions BEFORE they happen?

Only after you accept the practicality of “doing” within life, will you begin to “hear” the call of your inner voice that takes you to a higher plane of reality. 

Try your best to expand your notion of ‘paradise on earth’ to be a fully embodied state.

SOMATIC EXCERCISE 

POSITIVE SHAMING

This week the Torah offers slavery as an example of a life that should be avoided. However, instead of forbidding it altogether (for people that see no other life option), the Torah offers a system of enforced liberation (after 6 years the slave goes free, or if there is injury or neglect caused to the slave). 

However, even after being set free, the slave has the ability to choose, from his/her own free will to remain a slave. In this case the “master” is commanded to physically mark the “slave” with an earring on their left ear, so that person will be marked as a slave for all time. 

And so the question: Is there a positive value of shaming someone who willfully gives up their own freedom forever? 

In a world aggressively working to de-stigmatize everything, can you imagine a place for shame’s positive influence on long term choices? 

Try getting quiet and going into the body. Find the places you have worked to overcome social stigma and shame —- did it lead to a positive outcome? 

Take time this weekend to feel in your body a decision that would have been better left undone. All yourself the full range of emotions.

Remember to drink water, and have a blanket and comfort food ready for after the process.

RITUALIZE IT

One thing that is missing from modern Torah practice, and modern life altogether are the ritualistic elements that bind spiritually minded people in a shared experience.  

As unsavory as sacrifice might sound in a sanitized animal loving world, the ritual of sacrifice or ‘blood sprinkle’ might actually help tie a people together. 

This weekend imagine standing in front of an altar with Moses in front of you. Imagine him collecting the blood from a sacrifice in a bowl and giving half of it to the fire, and half of it being sprinkled directly on you and your family, and everyone you know. 

How would this visceral act tie you together? 

Use your felt sense to put yourself in that ancestral moment and bring the feeling of ritual into your own life.