Elul, a time to be new

Amazing, to reinvent my Self just as the month of Elul begins. It is mentioned often that the letters in this months's name spell "Ani L'Dodi v'Dodi li", the words from the Song of Songs that couples say under the chupah on their wedding day, "I am to my a Beloved and my Beloved is to me". The same connection, I to my Beloved and my Beloved to me, exists between me and the organizing geometry that creates and recreates the kaleidoscope that is this whole world. If "I" is that small bit of this world's matter that is entrusted to .....well, me...... then the month of Elul is for rebalancing the symmetries in me, as I live in all four worlds, Assiyah the Physical, Yetzirah the Emotional, Briah the Intellectual, and Atzilut the Spiritual (the four worlds are much much more rich and complex than this). 

*My world of Assiyah, my physical body, the places where I tread. For me, a new house to furnish with flow. Our first Shabbat dinner in the dining room we have lovingly furnished brought Shabbat to the physical ground in our new house. "It was a house", my Dad said. "Now it is a home." May I furnish my living space so that energy can flow. 

*My world of Yetzira, my emotional world. May I accept all of the emotions I find myself feeling. May I nurture the child in me, acknowledge fully that she is feeling and reacting. I loved yesterday's teaching from Dov Baer of Mezrich, through the Velveteen Rabbi, suggesting that when we feel anger at someone, we direct the anger not at the individual, but at the broken shards that are stuck in that person. May my reactions help to release the spark of pure light in each person I connect with. Including myself. I am to my beloved self. 

*My world of Briah, the mental world of ideas and thought. May I expand. May I listen to opinions I don't agree with. May I hold ideas in my head, follow through. 

*My world of Atzilut. May I open to the wonder. I feel no need for my intellect to ponder questions of faith. None at all. It doesn't matter how each person or group define the wondrous oneness of all things in these four worlds. We can each experience and share the wonder, find metaphors when the spirit moves us, share the metaphors when we feel so inclined. But not push our own metaphors as some copyrighted version of what's really there. And not forget the each metaphor is a costume.