Wednesday, August 7, 2013

After finishing one’s prayer

After one finishes his prayer with the goodwill from his Master (that is, after one says, “May it be Your goodwill to accept it”), one needs to imagine that he is giving up his life, with perfect love – and that is called “Tachanun”, or “Supplication.”

Once he does this, he is forgiven all the mistakes he had made, and if he did things that are not befitting a Jew, and did them in public – which amounts to the profanation of the Name of God – even that is forgiven. That is why initially it was called “Falling on one’s face on the ground” – because ground and land are connected to Rulership, the lowest spiritual level, from which there is no way but up.

He thus falls into the kingdom of Evil, with the goal of finding the small particles of goodness there, to bring them up when he straightens. He then goes together with them to the level of Rulership again, but this time in the highest world of Nearness.

The source for this is the Zohar at the top of
this post. But how exactly does one imagine it? By giving up his life in four different ways, corresponding to the four methods of capital punishment as they existed when there was such thing as Jewish capital punishment, with Sanhedrin. This is explained in the second picture in this post, from the Siddur HaRashash by Rabbi Asher Anshil Braun.

2 comments:

  1. Thank you, definitely something to think about. I do not understand the explanation of the Rashash, could you please elaborate on that for me.

    I see that he is associating the 4 types of death penalty with the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th letters of the three Divine names (vertical columns on the right) and with different spellings (מלא) of the Tetragrammaton.

    (1) Why does he associate that way, and not some other way?
    (2) How does this help answer the original question - how does one practically imagine giving his life up in 4 different ways?

    Thank you very much.

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  2. Dmitry,

    all very valid and good questions. You imagine the letters in your mind, as they are written, and let them fill your mind completely.

    However, what you really need is this book, http://www.amazon.com/Meditation-Kabbalah-Aryeh-Kaplan/dp/0877286167/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1375975847&sr=8-1&keywords=kabbalah+and+meditation+kaplan, and I can send it to you if you give me your address. (You can post and remove, or connect in any other way).

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