Reward. Eikev

Jul 29

THE BIG IDEA

According to the Torah Omens it’s time to check in on your emotional, spiritual and mental flexibility.

Note the places you are ‘stiff necked,’ stubbornly attached to ideas of yourself, the world, or your notion of God.

As the light continues to return to Jerusalem, take notice of the shadowy aspects of yourself still available to be activated. Do you insist that the world is filled with suffering or that change is hopeless? Do believe that God is punishing father or that you are the overlooked child? Perhaps you prefer to cling to the thought that there is no ‘god’ and you are all alone in this world?

Take time to notice the way your worldview effects your sense of personal responsibility to be an active participant in our shared reality. Notice where you get ‘stuck’ thinking that thought. This is an excellent time for opening your heart and softening the body and practice your ability to flow with the ever changing nature of our interconnected reality.

To deepen the process sense into the motivations Moses lays out for the people; the reward that comes with following rules, the fear of punishment when you break the rules, or the sweetness in a practice of love for the absolute?

DEEPER DIVE

This week in Eikev, translated as reward, Moses begins his next wave of first person transmissions to the people by describing the incredible reward that comes by following the laws and rules of spiritual alignment. Those born into the Abrahamic line, entrusted to practice conscious awareness of divinity will be incredibly blessed… but not because they personally deserve it.

It seems Moses, who is fated to die outside the promised land, has some hard feelings to share with his people.

Remember, Moses was elected to lead these people to physical, emotional and spiritual liberation by the Source Energy of the Universe. This man was tasked with more than political oversight of these disconnected traumatized slaves, at it’s essence, Moses was chosen to lead a collective conscious awakening. And it is only now, at the end of his tenure, that we get insight into his perspective on that experience.

This human man, (not a god nor a demigod), like all human men, had his own inner work to accomplish, and it seems that his unprocessed resentment for the resistant people cost him the experience of entering the promised land. Instead of being part of the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob he too will die part of the process — just like the ‘stiff necked’ people that drove him to hit the rock.

But what if this was his greatest lesson of all. What if Moses’s fate teaches us the imperative to grow the limitations of our human masters. Perhaps we are meant to look at Moses, our best model of the aligned masculine, as a teacher light and also of shadow. Perhaps the nation's stubbornness that drove Moses to sin is, in actuality, the manifestation of his own shadow self finding it's way into consciousness through the behavior of the nation. A nation that lives out his shadow so he can see it, so we can see it, and adjust it within ourselves.

The torah of the soul.

Maybe all the Torah’s men are here to show us the challenges to our masculine alignment. Abraham, the father, who's unconditional love for the infinite oneness had him bring a knife to his son's neck, passing the first religious trauma along with the blessing. A trauma that (perhaps) created Isaac’s desire to bless his physically strongest son creating the conditions of jealousy, fear, anger and resentment that played out through Jacob’s life and legacy, carried by this bloodline until this day.

Trauma, Fear, Jealousy, Anger, and now Stubbornness.

How do these emotions stir within you? Is it helpful to see their noble origins? Is it helpful to process them outside of your own personal story?

While the laws and rules of the Torah are the tools to help align spiritually, the narrative helps us with the intergenerational psychological blocks and characteristics that continue to haunt us.

And with it the lesson - all shadow teaches us to see blocked light.

Moses saved the nation by his ability to challenge God, his ability to push God to forgive the people time and time again, his stubbornness. This week he reminds the people how he fasted for 40 days and 40 nights (twice), continually appealing to God to save their lives. He is both clear and harsh, teaching the way to use this gift of stubbornness to expand the compassion of God and save a nation.

And yet it in this transmission another shadow appears. Perhaps it is here, in these speeches, we can trace the origin of ‘jewish guilt’. Perhaps here, in these speeches, Moses commits future generations to dig deeper into the characteristic of stubbornness so that our sense of ferocious attachment can be transmuted, as his was, to champion the good of all, for all time.

Unlike those that left Moses to die in the desert without offering a single protest, perhaps we are here to learn to activate our stubborn souls to settle for nothing less than the manifestation of absolute good.

INNER WORK GUIDE

How do you like your truth served?

The aligned masculine seems to speak in way that can feel harsh. Yet, as unpleasant as ‘straight talk’ can feel in the moment, consider the times you might long for that clarity. Take some time this weekend to shift between each of the motivational techniques Moses offers and notice what it activates in your body.

The promise of reward,

the guilt of messing up,

the fear of punishment,

the bliss of a spiritually aligned existence.

For extra points, take your meditation one step further, consider these ideas and journal what it brings up in you.

1) Remember you have personally merited nothing. ‘say not to yourselves, “The LORD has enabled us to possess this land because of our virtues”’

2) Contemplate a broader notion of sustenance. “man does not live on bread alone, but that man may live on anything that the LORD decrees.”

3) Bring your spiritual practice into the body. “Cut away, therefore, the thickening about your hearts and stiffen your necks no more.”

4) Do it for your own good. “keeping the LORD’s commandments and laws, which I enjoin upon you today, for your good.”

Try to note places where you can soften, or strengthen.

Or perhaps you might simply notice the places you too stubborn to accept adjustments.

Love to all,