We each have a pure soul that partakes at all times of another world, even as we live in this one.
Shemini Atzeret is the holiday of this other world. As the eighth day of Sukkot and yet a holiday unto itself, it epitomizes “eighthness,” the quality of being beyond the world that was created in seven days.
As the mishnah famously says, everyone has a helek, a part, in the world to come. The Sefat Emet points out that this phrase is said in the present tense — yesh, “has,” as opposed to yehiyeh, “will have.” We each right now, here, already have a share in the world to come. It’s not that we will ultimately receive such a share, but that we have it now, even as we struggle and suffer in this world
Taking helek, “part,” to mean “part of us”, we might say that we each always have a part of us that remains connected to that other world no matter what is happening in this one; no matter what our other parts are saying and suffering and doing, there is this place of peace inside us, a place that, in IFS terms, is actually less “part” and more essence, our truest self, the soul implanted in us from above.
We cannot disinherit this aspect of ourselves. It may be covered over by suffering and distraction and busyness, but it remains steadfast, always fully alive, always a present tense yesh, “there is.”
It is the place of connection to the divine, the place of peace and wholeness and contentment, the place where we can tap into the many qualities we struggle to attain in our human capacities — infinite patience and gentleness, calm, compassion, love, confidence and fierce strength of will. We actually have access to all of those right now; they are always a present tense “part” of us.
Shemini Atzeret is a good time to remember these capacities of ours, not in order to escape our other suffering parts — the parts of us that are needy and hopeless and jealous and restless and all the other normal ways of being human — no, not in order to escape all that, but in order to bring the much needed strengths of soul into our daily lives and into the care of all those suffering parts of ourselves and others. It is precisely all those needs that the fierce love inside us was brought into this world to care for. We were given a soul in a human body to do this work.
We are ending the season of intense holidays and moving back into daily living. The peak of what we take with us is this knowledge of our purest otherworldly part, the knowledge that it is always here now, amidst the anxious whirlwind, that, no matter what befalls us internally or externally, we have that otherworldly part of peace available to hold it.
