Paradise Principle

This week I want to talk about Ratzon, what it is, how to get it, how to become it, how to manifest it, how to teach it and use it to counsel other people, etc. So, let’s begin.

The reason I’m talking about Ratzon is because we’re in Elul, which is a month of primal, Divine Will to create a new world. Our will matches up with the Divine Will this month. It’s just in the air! And it behooves us to bring it to life.

Some of the best, deepest meanings I’ve found on this topic are these:

1) My will is basically my essence. It’s my Allness.

2) My will is my flow, my natural flow, when everything is flowing in-sync.

3) My will is my point of being fully alive. When it’s activated I am in love with living.

4) My will is my complete self-expression.

When I’m living from a place of Ratzon, from my core Ratzon point, and I attend to all the stimuli that are coming to me, all that’s happening in my life, from a place of Ratzon, what is that experience?

What I feel when I’m living from a place of Ratzon is that I am invincible, that I am an image of the Divine in the world, that I am fused and connected with G-d, that I am blissful, that closed doors are opening everywhere, that new things are being initiated in the world because (and ONLY because) of me, that I am motivating myself and certain other people, and that I am definitely moving towards my destiny.

And how does a person get their destiny from living from a place of Ratzon? My personal, most famous way of getting it is to be a transferor of Ratzon, meaning helping other people find theirs. I ask a person who they will be within a certain period of time and encourage them to declare their truth, out into the universe. And I help them watch that unfold in a Divine way, while pro-actively making it happen, at the same time.

It’s like a path, a road map of Ratzon. I also ask myself, constantly, throughout my personal process, “What is it that I want, and what is it that G-d wants?”

I ask, “Am I fully expressing myself by doing this and accurately reading the sacred texts and interpreting the highlights of my life?” And I also ask, “What are some of the things I have to do in order to get it, to make it real?”

And, once I get It, “what’s it like to be a Ratzon person? What does this Ratzon person look like?”

One of the things it looks like is that a Ratzon person is a lover of life. He or she is  a lover of his own life, and is able to help other people love their lives as well. He or she is clear about the WHY and in sync with the WHY.  So, these Ratzon people are able to help others become clear and get in sync, too.

A person like this is fully alive and focused on connecting his Ratzon with God’s Ratzon.

What does it mean to manifest the object of your desire, your will, your Ratzon? What does that process look like?

What you’re doing when you manifest your Ratzon is this – you are giving birth. You are giving birth to something that exists only as potential, but is being birthed, brought out into the world. You are taking it from a life of multi-variety and many details, scattered all over the place, to a place where everything fits together in your mind and your will. Everything lines up with your Ratzon.

You feel invincible when it manifests. You’re on an automatic, effortless track when you’re doing it. When you take notes of your Ratzon living, when you write it in a journal so you can see the highlights of your life and how they are inside of you, you can see your destiny, your Ratzon come to life.

Then, life become fascinating. There’s never a dull moment because you can see, at all times, how G-d is unfolding exactly what you need for your Ratzon to come through.

And you begin to see this happening in different increments of time, in a day, a week, a month, a year, multi-years and multi-lifetimes.

All in all, that’s the experience of Ratzon living.

What I want to talk about this week is being fully alive. The concept came to me in a poem and a see a connection with what I’m experiencing now, and what this week’s Parsha is describing as well.

The concept intrigues me… What does it mean to be fully alive?

So, what I’d like to present is explorations of ways to become fully alive, some practical ways, with philosophical elements, of living in a more full way.  Here’s a list of a few ideas:

1. To be fully alive is to bring down that which we don’t yet know, to begin to know and to grow and become more alive. That happens when we bring into our knowledge something we have not previously known.
2. To be fully alive it’s necessary to be willing for some things to die in order to live. That means we’re ready to sacrifice ourselves, and to get rid of everything that is not our “essential self.” That’s what needs to die. We need to “kill off” those things that are blocking us from fully living.
3. To be fully alive we need to be mindful and to embrace whatever we’re engaged in at the time, with our full attention, as if nothing else in the world exists. That’s how we can feel alive. Once I heard that our emotional, creative and intuitive intelligence are important to feeling fully alive.
4. To be fully alive we need to consider what makes a dead person, and then separate out the qualities that represent a live person, and build on them.
5. To be fully alive we need to bring our body and soul together, not just part of them but all of them. And we need to join together anything that can make us feel whole, instead pf partial.
6. To be fully alive we need to find our Achilles’ Heel, or something deeper… the reason we’re here. What are we coming here to fix up? We need to tap into that answer to discover wholeness and to feel fully alive. When we live from our core or Ratzon points, meaning the essence of who we are, and we could condense it into one word, we could live from that one word to be fully alive.
7. To be fully alive we need to dive deep into a concept, and get to know it from inside. Yesterday was the 10^th anniversary of my mother’s passing and what’s come up for me, to elevate her eternal soul, is to dive deep into my awareness of her, of her presence. I’ve done this for about the last three years on the anniversary of both my mother’s and father’s passing. That makes them more fully alive for me and it makes the part of me that’s connected to them more fully alive.
8. To be fully alive we need to join our imperfect self with our perfect self, to become one, whole self and G-d’s Tikkun Olam, his rectification of the world. We can be G-d’s right-hand person to make things happen, and that’s when we become more fully alive.
9. To be fully alive we need to be connected to our post-life experience, and the eternal reverberations and ramifications of everything we say, do, feel and think, then we’re more fully alive, right here and right now. And the same thing goes for our past-life, too. Between the past and the future we can have a life that’s more fully alive here and now.

When we reveal more of the Sephirotic traits in the here and now we are living more fully alive. And when we pick up on the patriarchs For the Patriarchs, every day was fully lived.  We, too, could be receiving the messages and all the opportunities being sent to us at all times, as did our Patriarchs.

Now that we’re moving toward the Rosh Hashanah, we’re looking at the highlights of our year 5778, and the collection of our days, weeks and months. And we’re looking closely to see what Hashem is guiding us to do.

I want my Mystical Musical Meditations to be more fully alive with my creative searching and expression of who I am. I think when we join our higher soul and our lower soul we give them awareness, identification, expression and life, and we also become more fully alive with them.

So, these are some ways to explore how to become more fully alive.

I call this week’s MMM The Power of Vulnerability, for a number of reasons. We are in the middle of the Three Weeks, the most vulnerable period of the entire Jewish calendar year.

Underneath the weakness, the Achilles’ heel of our vulnerability, which is very real and makes this a very dangerous time, beneath that we find some of the greatest power we can possibly imagine.

I have found wisdom from our Sages about the power of vulnerability in several different sources. One is a verse from Jeremiah that says, “All that chase her will capture her in this time period [of the Three Weeks] in the narrow straights.” That can also be interpreted as anybody who chases G-d can catch G-d.

So, at this very vulnerable point in time we have the greatest opportunity to catch G-d. The whole creation of the world is based on the fact that we come into this life in a place of darkness and vulnerability in order to find the power inside of it and to get ourselves out of there.

I saw a source which talked about how every trial and tribulation we’re put into is purposefully stretching us beyond our limits, beyond our comfort zone and into a place of vulnerability, from which and ONLY from which we can grow and become more of what we are.

So, that’s the power of vulnerability. That’s how we grow.

In general, we make strides when we get rid of the darker side inside our lives. Power comes about when we tap into that area, with psycho-therapeutic practices. The only way we can heal is to tap into the inner shadow side, find the vulnerability, identify it and then release it, to become free from it. And that’s when we begin to live, from that vulnerable point.

The power involved is talked about in different places, making the point that the fall is the cause of the ascent. The very place where the darkness is deepest, our mystical Sages teach us, is the place where the light is brightest.

What I know on a personal level, is that place of helplessness, where we are unable to help even ourselves, we’ve tried everything and given it all up to G-d, that’s actually the most empowering place. It’s the most liberating place.

The whole idea of repentance, of doing teshuva, is to identify and reveal the places where we are deceiving ourselves and living a lie. The idea is to release ourselves from that place. We have to go into a vulnerable place to make that happen. When we do teshuva we become completely new human beings. I think all the greatest of the greatest of our leaders got to the highest levels ever achieved by mankind because they tapped into vulnerability.

Nachon, when we were about to cross the Red Sea, made himself vulnerable by going into the waters of the Red Sea all the way up to his nose, thereby parting the waters, as he was listening to G-d’s instructions. His vulnerability paved the way for the parting of the Red Sea for all the Israelites.

Moses did the same when he said, “Erase me from your book if you don’t forgive the people…” He made himself vulnerable, being willing to sacrifice his name and his posterity.

And Queen Esther did it in her time, in the Purim story.

And Pinchas, in last week’s Parsha, did it when he single-handedly took on those who breached the sexual code in a public way. For doing so, he received a renewed relationship with G-d. That place of vulnerability was where he found his power.

I know this on a personal level as well. I see that the people I talk to who are willing to share their weaknesses, their vulnerabilities with me often turn out to be the best relationships I have. I think that’s true with others, too.

Let your guard down, show your weakness, your needs, your thirst, and so forth… When you do, that is when you bond and bridge your differences.

That is also what prayer is all about in our relationship with G-d. The more we can become vulnerable before G-d by becoming helpless and talking about our imperfections, the more we can go down into the shadow worlds to release and liberate our inner vulnerabilities.

The more we can speak from a vulnerable, heart place inside of ourselves, the more we can turn this whole thing around, especially during the Three Weeks. This is the gateway, the portal to the Messianic times, which may be the topic of my next MMM.

This week’s MMM topic is privacy. That may press some buttons for people, just hearing the topic. It doesn’t seem like much of a title for an exploration of higher consciousness, but it actually is appropriate.

I want to go in two different directions here, one is the explorations I want to explore and the other is the questions I want to ask. In a way, it’s all about questions.

As regards explorations, I have a feeling that our world, both personal and global, is suffering from a crisis, which is a lack of privacy. For the most part, we are not aware of it, or we’ve just seen the tip of the iceberg.

I want to understand what that does to the soul, even though on the surface we may the lack of privacy for granted. I have a sense that privacy is a part and parcel of the human condition, as well as the global condition. If we don’t have it, we’re missing something very vital in living.

Case in point, we were created from a private place. From the very beginning, we came from an individual, closed, hidden, invisible, personal level, and we have to grow to go on and learn to express ourselves publicly.

In order to share, you have to start by being private. I think it’s the key to processing thoughts. You first have to think before you speak.

It’s the key to creation of the world. First there was darkness and then there was light. First there was nothingness, and then there was creation. The darkest hour is just before the dawn.

We start out alone, and then we share with people. We should always think about the ramifications of our words and our actions. Thoughts start on a private level, and then we process them before speaking.

Our Sages say that blessings do not rest except upon something that is hidden from the eye. It’s about modesty and keeping the mystery intact. Keep the privacy intact. Don’t show it in everybody’s face until you first get a handle on it.

Think things through. Get to a place of quietness and clarity before going out and sharing with other people. Don’t say things until they are clear first. Don’t be so impetuous and share whatever comes to mind.

So, I think privacy is part and parcel of what healthy, organic living is all about. That’s the result of my investigation. My questions on the topic are the following:

In today’s world and in our private worlds, we need to understand when we need to share and when we need to keep things private. As regards our love, how much of it is something we share with others? When do we share? How do we share our love? And when do we wait to share it?

How much of our bodies do we show? How much to we keep private in terms of what we’re putting out there?

What about secrets? When do we keep a secret, and how, and from whom? And, when not to keep a secret?

The world monetary system… Everybody seems to be in public view now. There are advantages, I understand, but what happens when there’s no privacy left?  All the money is accounted for by Big Brother, or Big Banks which know exactly how much you have. They can sift from the top and they tend to do so. Where is the privacy there?

Internet privacy. It’s one of the biggest issues in the world right now. Everybody is out there on social media, and the more everybody’s out there, the less everybody’s out there. The more quantity there is, and the lack of privacy is growing, the less quality there is in sharing and connection.

How do you share your privacy regarding how much money you have?  And why and how, and how do you deal with that?

Your inner voice. When do you share your inner life with people? When is being alone a good thing, and when is it not a good thing? How much alone time do you need to keep the mystery in?

These questions, and others, will naturally perpetuate. And they are the things I want to explore in the week to come.