ESSAY: Desert Suffering As Growth Process (Parashat Eikev)
This experience is to help you grow into your own heart, the fullness of your own soul. (Click image to read more)
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Meditations
MEDITATION: Desert Suffering As Growth Process (Parashat Eikev)
The Israelites’ 40 year sojourn in the desert was an extremely challenging one, with snakes and hunger and thirst and difficulties at every turn. In this week’s parsha, this desert experience is described as a growth process, its purpose to help us learn something about our true nature and relationship to God. In this meditation,
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MEDITATION: Both Growth and Rest (Parashat Matot-Masei)
In parashat Masei, the Israelites’ travels through the desert are detailed with 42 stops, each one described in the form vayisu, “they travelled,” and vayachanu, “they camped.” In this meditation, we consider the two energies implied by these two verbs, on the one hand, movement and growth and becoming, and on the other hand, rest
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MEDITATION: Standing Strong Like the Daughters of Tzelafchad (Parashat Pinchas)
In this meditation, we look to the daughters of Tzelafchad — who petitioned and won the right to inherit land — as models of empowerment and agency. We consider their movements, first circling inward and then standing with integrity before others, and we remember God’s supportive ken, “yes” to their self reclamation and to ours.
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MEDITATION: Listening to the Pain, Listening to Our Donkey Part (Parashat Balak)
We are sent angels — signs and symptoms, obstacles and experiences of pain — along our journey to help guide us to the path of blessing (not curse) for which we were created. In this meditation, we practice listening to these angels. (Click image to read more and listen)
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MEDITATION: On Ben Pelet, The Sons of Korach and Our Capacity to Change (Parashat Korach)
Though difficult, change is possible when we listen to our heart’s whisper. (Click image to read more and listen)
MEDITATION: Looking Inwards Instead of Outwards (Parashat Shelach)
Through the story of the spies and the mitzvah of tzitzit, we notice our tendency to compare ourselves to one another and practice looking inward instead, knowing our own completeness. (Click on image to read more and listen)
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MEDITATION: Learning From Ruth Not To Abandon Ourselves (Shavu’ot)
Will we be a Ruth towards ourselves or an Orpah? (Click image to read more and to listen)
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MEDITATION: Taking A Sabbatical From Our Inner Work (Parashat Behar)
In this meditation, we look at the laws of the shmita or sabbatical year — abstaining from growth-promoting work on the land– in relation to our inner work on ourselves. We notice our strong tendency to strive, and we explore ways of relaxing into the divine abundance that nourishes and heals us without our effort,
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MEDITATION: On “Sefirah” and the Growth Process (Parashat Emor)
At the end of the 49 day count known as Sefirat Ha-Omer, the Torah says that we are to bring a minchah hadashah lashem, a new gift to God. In this meditation, we look at this Sefirah period as an incubation or gestational period of inner growth in which we gradually come into a new
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