Days of Transformation - 6

When we think of the word "echad" which means "one" -- there are various levels of oneness.
For example, Jews pray the Shema: Hear O Israel, Adonai is our God, Adonai is One, as a monotheistic statement of faith. And yet, I have often said, if it was that, the writers could have said, "There is one God and that God is Adonai."

Because of the way it is written in the bible, I interpret it Kabbalistically: that there is a Oneness that includes the divine and the human and all creation. Echad -- One. We are all part of the Oneness of creation. Namaste - the divine in me salutes and honors the divine within you.

This brings me to another aspect of Oneness -- the union or balance between our mind, our body and our soul. Very often in this hectic and chaotic world, we find ourselves living in an unbalanced fashion, and this brings about a dis-ease. As we prepare ourselves during these days of transformation, it behooves us to meditate on our sense of internal balance.

We read so much about diets and weight loss - just look at a rack of magazines at the supermarket check-out counters. And yet our body is more than just a vehicle to look good. Caring for our body is an aspect of personal responsibility that we are hearing so much about in the health care debates. Is it responsible to smoke and ask others to pay for our medical bills? Is it responsible to allow ourselves to become obese and ask others to pay for our joint replacements?

But more than personal responsibility, there is the spiritual aspect to maintaining healthy bodies - something our ancestors knew and we may have forgotten.

Today's thought comes from Rabbi Nachmon of Breslav, an 18th century rabbi:

Evey human should tend very compassionately to the flesh of their body in order to be able to share with it all the dimentions of enlightenment and visions of which the soul is capable, for the body, too, is capable of such perception.

You ought not hide your eyes from having mercy upon your flesh (Isaiah 58:7), that is the flesh of your body. You must have much compassion for your body, to see to it that you purify your body so that it can become conscious of all the enlightenment and visions that the soul perceives.

from Gershon Winkler's Daily Kabbalah.

As we prepare for the Day of Atonement -- let us rememer that we are preparing for our At-One-Ment.