The greater your spiritual yearning, the more you will receive in prayer and meditation. Spiritual yearning in Judaism is not a sign of lack. In the physical world, we consider a lack as not having something we want. In the spiritual world, yearning is actually a measure of the degree of spiritual attainment.. The greater the attainment, the greater the spiritual yearning will be. Spiritual yearning is itself a spiritual gift; as it ‘fills the heart with sweetness. The greatest teachers embodied the most intense yearning. Think of the psalms, and all the yearning contained within them.
The famous Kotzker Rebbe of the nineteenth century said, “God lives where we allow Him to enter.” We must actively choose to create the opening for God. In meditation, we create the space for God to enter us. We get out of the way. We let go of the concerns of the day, the demands of the ego to receive, and actively choose to welcome and experience God in our most inner being. The Midrash, the Jewish book of oral teachings, quotes God: “Open to Me the size of the eye of a needle and I will open to you the size of a grand ballroom.“ Though God is not visible to our physical eyes, God is very real and present. God is not a figment of the imagination. Kabbalah refers to this process as “the arousal from below that awakens the arousal from above.” Though God does not have needs and desires in the way that we do, Jewish sages and prophets have said repeatedly that whatever steps, whatever opening we make toward God, God responds to us. God “wants“ us to open to Him, and assists us in opening. It is important to know and constantly recall that one of the most basic and important teachings of Judaism is that God created this world to bestow the highest goodness. Our spiritual quest for God is not one-sided. As Rabbi Isaac, a great kabbalist of the twelfth century, said, “More than the calf wants to suck, the cow wants to give suck.” God wants to give and to bestow goodness. When we open to receive from God, we allow God to give His goodness. This is God’s desire. We actually contribute to God’s realizing His intention. In this way, we give to God by allowing God to be more present and expressed in our lives.
The word kabbalah literally comes from the Hebrew root word that means “to receive.“ You will receive from meditation what you open up to within yourself. No one can do it for you. You can read about meditation, but unless you experience it directly for yourself, you will never know it. I can describe my experience of eating an orange, but my description will be inadequate. You will know what it is only when you eat an orange yourself.
–extract from “Everyday Kabbalah” by Melinda Ribner
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How can the drops of water
Know themselves to be a river?
