Generate, Organize, Destroy

Years since writing - but now am feeling the necessary push to get me to express myself with words again. Yet, silence beckons me constantly...

Here is something for the new year.

As we have heard so far, t'filah, tzedakah, t'chuvah are the three threads that ties us wandering Jews to our annual introspective journey of self awareness. This year has brought to me all three of these understandings, in much greater and spiritually enlightening ways I've felt thus far.

I find myself returning to the answer this year, more so than I ever have before.

It is mid-June in the desert of New Mexico. Mountains rise in front of me as I slowly rock with the forward motion of the truck. Below cries the sleeping valley of meth heads, young boys selling newspapers on the corner, and taqueria after taqueira. Above lies the waking village of consciousness, very intentionally placed on the exact opposite side of the globe from one of the most spiritual places in the world: Amritsar, India, drawing me closer. Digging into the core of the earth with our energies, all 2000 of us hoped to return to the answer together. As yogis, as activists, as parents, children, healers, and businesspeople - All coming together to return to the answer in our own little ways.

On top of this mountain I float into a perfect space of T'chuvah. But more than a state of repentance of sins or sorrows, I attempt the simple act of loving all that is unloved, all that has hurt me, all that i might consider my "enemy" or "darkness". I embrace that energy, I hug it tightly, wrapping it around my third eye, deep breath in, down to my heart center, out through my lungs, capillaries, sprouting through my fingertips. Rooting it through my feet into the very source that birthed my human experience. Then I ask it to please transform. Strengthening my roots, blossoming flowers instead of broken fingernails, emptying my lungs so they fill with compassion, a heart center so full of intention it might burst, and then finally back to my third eye, where I remain neutral, simply seated in the valley of meth heads, indigenas workers without jobs, and the endless aisles of Wal Mart's spend less get more mantras. For when I return to the land most of us know -- the one where I, as a struggling human being trying to heal the open wounds of this Earth, of my people, of all people, of all living beings - I must be able to teach without attachment, to let it all in and show some compassion.

My repentance lies in the idea that GOD exists everywhere, and that I forgot that for most of the year. All that generates, organizes, and destroys - everything with energy, holds the utter transformative nature that GOD contains. As I stand on the mountain, and as I continue to gaze up at that mountain's significance from wherever I might be standing in this human world, I remember the answer I've returned to: be more compassionate and give my heaviness a hug - for we all have the power to generate, organize, and/or destroy all that holds us back as creative beings. deep breath in, deep breath out. L'shana tova, I love and miss you all so much.