Discipline of Gratitude: Prayer, 30 Days Omer 5782

EthicsKabbalahMussarMysticismPrayerSoul Journey

May 15

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Today is thirty days, which is four weeks and two days of the Omer in the year 5782. גבורה שבהוד, Gevurah of Hod, Discipline within Gratitude. What defines your gratitude practice? Do you acknowledge the work that goes into growing and cooking food before you eat it? Is prayer meaningful or arcane? Do you have deeper faith in spontaneous prayer? Or do you express gratitude through more physical acts?

Landscapes: Meditations into Gratitude

Forget the mass murders happening daily. (Buffalo grocery store, Laguna Woods church)

Sink into the timeless beauty of landscapes. Swim in the brilliance of skilled photographers.

Choose expansive consciousness

"There is no poverty like the poverty of consciousness." --Babylonian Talmud, Nedarim 41a, quoted in Pillar of Prayer: Guidance in Contemplative Prayer, Sacred Study, and the Spiritual Life from the Baal Shem Tov and his Circle.

How do we cultivate expansive consciousness? By making fixed times for prayer. Contemplate things that ground you. Wrestle with God. Allow yourself time to sink into gratitude.

The Baal Shem Tov taught "one needs to study and to pray with the presence of mental clarity and open awareness." (Pillar of Prayer, 23).

"For implicit in a person's thought is the entire Divinely emanated cosmic structure...Now, thought is the expression of the attribute of Wisdom, and speech is the offspring of thought; and indeed, thought is also [subtly] composed of letters. Thus, when one's thought is not connected with one's words, it is like wasting seed; for one's words are one's very life essence." (Pillar of Prayer, 25).

Prayer is Unpopular

So many people are turned off by prayer.

People are afraid to invite others to join them in prayer.

Having set time for communal prayer is inconvenient and requires people to change their habits and commit to a counter-cultural act.

Yet, prayer is an equal-opportunity technology: available to every soul to help us expand our consciousness and sink into gratitude.

I am dedicated to making prayer accessible and meaningful to as many people as possible. I hope you will join me in building communal space for soul expansion.

In 14 days of the Omer, 15 days by the solar calendar, I will be ordained.