Messiah in Shavuot Chapter 6
- The subjugation of our Self-life
- United as One Body (Person) on the day of the 42nd encampment
- The Gift of Torah
The subjugation of our Self-life:
At Sinai, the Divine wisdom was revealed to us. Obviously, we could not attain to the Divine wisdom on our own. So although Adonai instructed us to study His Torah, ordering that our spiritual intellect should serve as the vehicle by which we apprehend His truth, we had great trouble doing what we were told. We discovered a crucial prerequisite to Torah study is that our natural mind that was subjected to our self-life (our socially conditioned life) was at war with the will of the heavenly Father. We discovered that only when the Spirit of Truth helped us void our conscious lives of all pretensions that we could attain to the truth all on our own, did we become “fit vessels” to receive the treasured conscious life of the Holy One as He apportioned to each of us according to our measure of faith.
Together we learned that “an empty vessel can receive; a full vessel cannot receive.” So the day that “Moses did not say anything at all” to us, this was an integral part of our being prepared to receive the wedding gift of Adonai’s Torah. This wisdom of “denying self” (the cult of me) to gain the greater Presence of Adonai in our conscious being is symbolic of the day of our salvation. The day of our salvation is the day when we undertake the most important task of emptying our spirits and souls of all our personal deceits and vanities, so that we might become a dedicated vessel fit to receive the redemption of Messiah our Deliverer, and the gift of our Father in heaven, His Living Torah; which is the gift of eternal life that is ours through our receiving (forever) the Indwelling Presence of the Spirit of the Holy One.
United as One Body (Person) on the day of the 42nd encampment:
Only on the day of the forty-second encampment at the foot of Mount Sinai were we united as “One Person” (one treasured vessel). Prior to our arrival of at Mount Sinai and the day of our 42nd encampment there was much divided speech expressed among us. However, on the day of the 42nd encampment no one spoke, not even Moses. It is on this day when even prophecy ceased so that we might be united as one Person who in (our) silence was waiting only to hear the Voice of God.
The paradox was and continues to be that when we have taken the initiative to zealously strove to do the will of God—to strive to do all that we can before Adonai—we have lived in dissent and dispute. However, when we have ceased in our labor to prove the will of God (teach) one another—when we have done nothing and rested before Adonai—we have lived in unity, friendship, and peace (echad, shelem, and shalom).
The simple explanation of our behavior is that in the time of our first forty-one encampments, in our journey from Rameses to Rephidim, we were living in a state of agitation, self-assertiveness, and intellectual vanity. However, thanks be to God, when we became completely exhausted, both physically and spiritually, we were able to finally achieve a general state of unity as we “rested” at the foot of Mount Sinai (on the first day of Sivan). So we have learned that in whatever circumstance that we are in, whether in want or in prosperity that It is in our time of “Resting” at the feet of the Divine Presence of the Holy One that we can enjoy our greatest time of unity, friendship, and shalom.
We entered into His Rest on the day of the 42nd encampment.
In Resting at the feet of the Divine Presence we are able to best exercise the twin virtues of humility and patience. Both are available to us only when we have come to the end of ourselves. It is when we are tired, beaten, and exhausted from the vain and futile practice of self-reliance that we are comforted with the boundless wisdom, authority, and power Adonai Eloheinu (the LORD our G-d). Therefore, when we are proud we are weak. When we are self-righteous we become spiritually impoverished. When we are humble we are strong. When we are meek (poor in spirit) we are immeasurably enriched by the relational affluence of the Spirit of Humilty, the Spirit of the Holy One.
The Gift of Torah:
It was when we lived in silence awaiting the wedding gift of Torah that was not in any way dependent upon our own works that we were able to establish the new camp of Adonai’s new nation that existed “as a single person with a single heart.” So through anticipation of the gift of Torah from the Father, on the first day after our long and wearying journey, we became one body for the first time. What we could not achieve on our own in our many busy and exhausting journeys and encampments, Adonai now accomplished for us in a single day: We entered into His Rest on that day of the 42nd encampment. All by the gracious works of Adonai Avinu we found our unity of friendship and shalom. For in our one day of silent rest we learned that all of the works of our nation must not come from us but only from Adonai (the LORD) Who is our Father and our God!