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Elul: Achat Sha’alti: Only One Thing Have I asked

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Tehillim 27:4
Elul 5767

The art of equanimity

Travel is stressful. Journeys are full of surprises. They have beginnings and ends, they start with goodbyes and end with hellos. They entail waiting in lines, making new connections, crossing boundaries and encountering different cultures. We have to pack and unpack, live in strange surroundings, hear strange sounds and smell strange odors. Journeys include adventure and exploration, risk and reward, loss and gain. By their very nature they create memories, they inspire, they excite, they exhaust. That is what journeys are. Through all this the greatest art is to retain a degree of centered, no matter what.

Even at the speed at which we travel, we can experience quiet tranquility. If one is fortunate, one can relax, enjoy music, a good book or a movie, engage in conversation, or just sit quietly and think or learn. This is the art of movement: retaining a tranquil balance even during times of rapid and sometimes turbulent motion.

Life itself is a journey: it contains all the elements of the shorter journeys we take throughout our lives. And in life, just as in travel, equanimity is key to our surviving or even thriving through rough times. When we are centered and balanced, we can connect to our source no matter what is occurring around us. Connected to our source, we remain anchored and fulfilled and we can experience wellbeing on spiritual, emotional and physical levels.

This idea is core to a statement many of us too routinely skim over twice a day during the month of Elul: “One thing have I asked of Hashem” says King David, “and that I shall quest after, all the days of my life: that I may stay in the house of Hashem all the days of my life”[1]. On the surface David is wishing to be relieved of his royal duties so that he may spend his time in the Beit Hamedrash (house of study), studying the Torah and reflecting on the Divine. Yet at no time in Tanach does King David express a desire to retire. On the contrary he suffers terribly when he is temporarily deposed. This cannot be his meaning.

Hashem’s Palace” a state of being

I believe David is expressing a different much deeper and more universal idea. He asks that during each and every day of his life he should experience life as being lived in the home of Hashem no matter where he is or in what activities he is engaged. It is so clear from much of Tehillim, that David saw the whole world, the universe, as G-d’s palace. He sought to live every moment with that heightened sensitivity. He didn’t just pray for that. He committed himself to a lifetime quest to find it: “Otto avakeish” (that, I shall quest after).

We too can live that way. It requires a quiet mind and a deep sense of equanimity even in tempestuous times. Walk in the street noticing all the little wonders of G-d’s home: the colors, the wildlife, the sounds and fragrances. Each aspect of every detail was placed there as deliberately as a home-owner decorates their environment. Each item in the universe is there for a reason, either pragmatic or aesthetic. Notice, admire, wonder, reflect, absorb. I try to do this not only when I walk, but when I drive too. Often I turn off my cellphone while I drive so as not to be distracted from noticing – noticing everything. After all, if we were admitted for a short time (and a life is a short time) into the private garden of a great king, would we wander around chatting on our cellphones? Imagine if King David were to have experienced Hashem’s house, our world, distracted by “cellephony” and other technology that speeds life up.  Would he have composed the majestic beauty of the Psalms? There is good reason why more than anything he craves “shivti”- to slow down, to stay, to pause, to rest – shivti as “Shabbat”. For only by pausing, by slowing down, can you be in Hashem’s House.

This is not a prayer about geographical location. King David is not asking to be moved from where he is to some other place known as The House of Hashem. This “House of Hashem” is a dimension of being that anyone can enter at any time, if they develop equanimity, spiritual attentiveness, and a level of personal sanctity. David strives to be in that state of being, one of “Shivti Beveit HashemKol Yemei Chayai, each and every day of my life”.

Hashem’s Pleasantness

King David goes further. He says that by such deliberate awareness and equanimity he will be capable of accessing the pleasantness of Hashem (lachazot be’noam Hashem). We can know Hashem, we can believe in Him, fear Him or even love Him. But to experience His unadulterated pleasantness (a feeling of total pleasure from being near to Him), we need to spend quiet time in His House, every day of our lives.

If we achieve daily mindfulness of the sanctity of our surroundings and the pleasure of Hashem, then we might have the occasional opportunity to visit His Heichal, that special place where His essence resides. That can only be an occasional visit (“Levakeir”), we cannot live there, the atmosphere is too rarified for ordinary mortals to spend more than a short visit at one time. [2] Yet, even those short visits align our moral compasses to Truth, expose us to the Divine and change us forever.

Elul is the month in which we develop our sensitivity to our spiritually exotic surroundings. On Rosh Hashanah we intimately experience the pleasantness of G-d. On Yom Kipur we are mevakeir beheichalo: we visit His holy Heichal, just for a precious moment in time, just for one single day. It is a day in the midst of our busy year during which we reach the art of movement: On Yom Kippur we learn how even during times of rapid and sometimes turbulent motion in our lives, to retain a tranquil balance. In that exquisite moment of sanctified balance we reach a new level of mindful awareness and experienceno’am Hashem:  the unparalleled pleasure of the Divine.

Notes:

[1] Psalm 27:4

[2] The Ratz Vashov (the to-and fro-ing) referred to in the Sefer Yetzira.

Latest update: October 07, 2014

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