Vayechi
What is the blessing no one can take from us?
Reflection by Ariel Dominique Hendelman, the Or HaLev Team
"In this week’s parsha, Vayechi, Yaakov - Yisrael, is on his deathbed and gives a blessing to each of his 12 sons, who represent the lineage of the 12 tribes of Israel. In classic Yaakov fashion, he switches the positioning of his hands when giving the blessing to his grandsons, Ephraim and Menashe, so that the order of eldest and youngest is once again reversed, as it was with Yaakov himself and his older brother Esav, when Yaakov takes the blessing that was `supposed` to go to the eldest son. We can see here that Yaakov is the archetype of vertical disruption. The traditional or normative hierarchy, vertical like the ladder of Yaakov’s dream, become horizontal, mixed up, in Yaakov’s hands. But even with the ladder, the angels are described as ascending first and then descending. Again, a reversal of the normative order. Angels `should` be coming down from shamayim, and then go back up. Not so with our Yaakov, whose entire life is marked by a fluttering back and forth between two names, two states of consciousness, the Yaakov or heel-state, and the Yisrael or expanded, Divine wrestling state.
What does it mean to be a holy disruptor of vertical systems?
We can begin to answer this question by looking at our own bodies, where the head is situated above the heart. In this hierarchy, the mind `should`rule over the heart. But in our meditation practice, we see again and again, how thoughts give way, dissipate and settle, and what is left standing is a loving, unshakeable presence at the very center of our beings. Even emotions crest and crash like waves of the sea. Our practice shows us how emotions and thoughts are linked; how they feed each other, loop back into one another in seemingly endless cycles. But while the mind chatters away, chained to linear, vertical time, the heart is bound by one thing only - the present moment. In the present, in the Mystery of What Is, the heart finds Havayah, the Eternal Presence. Like a sail in the wind, the heart can harness the constant changes of thoughts and emotions, desires and aversions, and anchor itself to the breath, to the rhythm of a horizontal truth that Love and Truth are the blessings we receive.
Our meditation practice, then, is also a holy disruptor of the vertical system; the one that tells us we must `figure it all out,` try to control all of the moving pieces to make some `sense` of things. But the heart whispers, no my dear child, every question gives birth to more mystery and in that mystery lies the heart of truth - you are sustained every moment by Love. Love is where you came from, where you are, and to where you are always going. Love is the land of promise and it is your portion. This is a blessing no one can take from you because it exists in the soft center of this moment, right now."