Indwelling of Eternity, 28 Days of Omer 5781

Today is twenty-eight days, which is four weeks of the Omer, in the year 5781. שחינה שבנצח. Shechinah ShebeNetzach. Indwelling of Eternity. Is it possible to touch the Eternal? Is my Will a conduit of Divine Endurance?

Becoming a God Knower

One of the reasons I continue meditating into the Omer publicly is that these Sephirot are the most concrete definition of God that resonates with me. I was highly skeptical of Kabbalistic theology fifteen years ago. I grew up firmly rooted in rational, scientific intelligence. No natural compartment in me existed to file mystical knowledge. I try hard to remember back to my initial skepticism when explaining my convictions today. I recognize that some people will never choose a mystical path to God knowledge. Some people cling to agnosticism as a badge of honor, a sign of intellect. Some people root themselves in atheism, secure within a humanist understanding of human flourishing.

Counting the Omer is how I sunk into the reality of the Divine and the importance of continuing Jewish wisdom. Our concepts and rituals are deeply soul nourishing. My soul expands with every revolution around the sun because I track time by the moon and hold myself accountable to the changing seasons.

Sefira: Emanation, Sefirot: Emanations

A sefira means "number," and in Jewish mysticism it reflects an aspect of the Divine that can be understood by humans. Jewish mysticism built on neo-Platonism in developing an emanatory system of Ideals that lead towards the Infinite / Unknowable Essence of God. Through the ten sefirot (-ot is a common plural ending for Hebrew words), we reach towards the Eternal. While the language is multi-vocal, it is not meant to proclaim multiple divines. Rather, it is a way of concretizing the multi-faceted nature of divinity.

There are ten sefirot. The top three are the hardest to fully know, closest to the knowing beyond language. They live purely in the realm of Ideals and are not part of the counting of the Omer.

The Lower Seven

The Omer counts the lower seven sefirot. These emanations connect most closely with humans. They exist as triads. Shekhinah stands alone in exile. Chesed begins a triad. He exists in tension with his opposite, Gevurah. Tiferet synthesizes their energy. In the androcentric, pre-modern understanding of creation, life begins on the male side (Chesed) and its opposite, the receptacle, the feminine, can also be a conduit of evil. The Other Side, the Sitra Achra, enters the world through Gevurah, the Strength that lives in tension with Chesed, Lovingkindness.

Sefirot tree mage from

WalkingKabbalah website

via a Google search

Another confusing thing about the sefirot is that some of them go by multiple names, and there are multiple ways to describe a sefira in English. Again, this is because the Infinite is beyond the stricture of language.

Also, I choose to learn Jewish wisdom without apologetics. I am not going to try to explain away misogyny, although I do have sympathy for the triumphalism inherent in many of our texts. After all, for the majority of our history, Jews have been a nation without political sovereignty, a minority used by authorities to carry out unsavory elements of government (like tax collection), and cast out / slaughtered of when our power grew too deep (especially when sovereigns could not afford to pay back their loans).

With all this in mind, my meditations on the Omer count attempt to connect the eternal essence of these sephirot with my lived experience.

Ascending towards spiritual liberation

The Omer count is a way to count time from the beginning of the barley harvest (at Passover) to the beginning of the wheat harvest (at Shavuot / Pentecost) in ancient Israel. The commandment to count 49 days between Passover and on the 50th day declare Shavuot (literally Weeks) is Biblical. Overlaying iterations of the sefirot is a Kabbalistic invention. It is a meditative path towards shedding some of the spiritual shmutz keeping us from understanding Divine truth.

We physically leave Egypt on Passover. It takes spiritual fortitude to become vessels worthy of Divine revelation. The rabbis declared Shavuot as the day the Ten Commandments were revealed to the Israelites. Originally, it was just a harvest festival. So now, we walk 49 steps towards deeper understanding of the Divine, deeper insight into our soul's experience, to create space for deeper revelation of Divine truth on Shavuot.

Indwelling of the Eternal

The Jewish people and Shekhinah connect as dual manifestations of Divine exile. When we make space for the Indwelling Presence, the Immanent aspect of the Divine, we help heal the core brokenness within ourselves and within the world. This Indwelling can hold space for the Eternal.

When I align my Will with the highest ideals within me, my soul flourishes. The space for the Divine within material reality grows. The pure Indwelling of Endurance allows the Mother of Being to expand, spreading Goodness and Deep Meaning throughout the world.