Unpacked: A Walker Returns Home

Guest Blogger- Simcha Frischling

Tonight, we begin the Jewish holiday of Purim. Beyond the external aspects of the holiday the costumes, the parties, and mad drunkenness, I would like to delve into the deeper meaning of the holiday as an experience to deeper our relationship to G-d and all of the relationships in our lives. I think it would be most appropriate to start at the beginning, the creation of mankind.

Ultimately, the creation of a self was in order for that self to be in intimate relationship with our Creator, He that was, is and always will be. In Hebrew the word for such intimacy is dvekut. On a certain level of intimacy there no longer exists a subject who is in relationship to an object that is separate and therefore other. There exists a level of intimacy that is so much in and with the moment itself that the focus of my love is not elsewhere and not, not now.

It is my faith that G-d chose to bring forth the Beri’ah (Creation) as an act of love and that mankind was formed in a way in which each and every individual could be the conscious, grateful recipient of G-d’s love. The greatest expression of this love would be in giving us the opportunity to experience His Oneness, His Love and His Immanent Presence (remember “one” and “love” have the same Hebrew letter-numerical value). And, in order to draw close to and experience G-d through these attributes, we needed the ability to emulate and therefore resonate with them. Therefore, allowing us to emulate His capacity to be loving (create oneness), must be the ultimate expression of His love for us. To have the capacity to be loving gives us the greatest opportunity to resonate with His love for us.

In order, therefore, for us to emulate G-d’s ability to be loving to another and to consciously experience receiving His love for us, we have to be created as independent selves. In order to be independent selves we need the ability to distinguish and make choices based on relative value (good and evil). The more of a choosing, independent self one is, the greater is his/her capacity to experience being loving and the greater is his/her experience of gratitude for being loved. Being loving in relationship, again, is what allows us to emulate and therefore draw closer to a loving Creator.

The ability to choose, in a world of significance, between good and evil, is therefore just the necessary condition that allows this to take place. The ability to distinguish and choose is not, in its most fundamental purpose, to make things better. Without real good and real evil there would be no significant choices to make. Without significant choices, there could be no independent self who could consciously give and receive.

We are seduced into using the distinctions we can make between good and evil to feel better, to change for the better, to hope for a better future, to despair or become cynical about expectations. We are seduced into being or feeling or looking good, and that becomes our god, and there is always a better possible good in the future. We choose good to get better. We wait for the objects of our love to improve or for our capacity to love to increase. We are forever seduced away from the present, the only place where true intimacy exists. Evil is opposite good, but the profoundest evil convinces us that defeating it on its own level is the best we can do. G-d did create the possibility of good and evil, but He did this in order to have an arena for the evolution of a partner in creation and therefore a partner in meaningful relationship. Our true royalty distinguishes the entire battle for what it is: a vehicle to transcend to a deeper possibility of love.

In the very beginning of the Torah, in the presence of the King, a woman was seduced by a snake, in a garden (Story of Adam and Eve). King, woman, snake, garden. This seduction ultimately caused us to go into exile from a womb that nurtured us unconditionally, into a field that we ourselves needed to cultivate.

The story of Purim (the last holiday in the yearly cycle) is the story of a woman, Queen Esther. (The name Esther means “hidden,” as in the subjective presence that can never itself be seen or identified; try looking for the part of yourself that chooses to look). Haman, a powerful subject of the king, has requested the king’s approval to kill all of Esther’s people. Haman, we are told, is again the snake from the original garden. (Haman is sourced from the very beginning of the Torah where it says ha’min ha-etz, “from the tree.” Haman and the snake represent the beginning of distinguishing between good and evil.)

At the end of the story, Esther invites the King and Haman (the snake) back to a garden. Woman, King, snake, garden. Esther exposes Haman for whom and what he really is, evil. She distinguishes him as evil; evil created in order to allow for the possibility of free choice.

In the first garden, the woman was seduced by the snake. In the second garden, the woman distinguishes the snake for what he is, the seducer. Simply a necessary ingredient in G-d’s plan that provides us an arena for free choice, and therefore a condition for being a self, and therefore the opportunity to experience intimate relationship with the One. Distinction is the ingredient we need in order to co-creatively participate in the evolutionary process.

At the time of Purim, we (Mordechai) chose not to bow down to the evil that seduces us away from true intimacy. More, we distinguished evil to be nothing more than a servant for a higher purpose. And, in making that final distinction, we transcended to the level of Distinguisher, and to a greater capacity to be loving, and therefore more resonant with our loving Creator. It is said that the feast for the weaning of Yitzchak (Isaac), who represents distinction, took place on Purim.

Purim is a time that we distinguish distinctions for what they are. On Purim we transcend to a level from where we can distinguish good and evil as laughable accessories that were needed to create independence from the One with whom we have never been other from. Evil (Haman) helped us evolve. And evolve we did, until we got to the level where we saw him hung by the same noose he set for us. On Purim we mock the separating identities behind which we normally hide. And we spend the day giving and taking without judgments.

Ekeyeh Asher Ekeyeh, “I will be that which I will be,” (a name for G-d from the Torah) which, because the second Ekeyeh is identical to the first, can logically be read, “I will be that which I already am.” It is on Purim that we read the Megillah of Esther, the only book of the Tanach in which G-d’s name is not mentioned even once. When is a name used? When one (subject) talks about an “other” (object). Purim is a day of such intimacy and joy that it is higher even than “I will love another.” Because there is no other and there is only now.

Purim Sameach,

Simcha

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This entry was posted on Thursday, March 20th, 2008 at 11:52 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.