Poetry Wednesday 04/29/09: The Tree Of Life

The Tree of Life
Gustav Klimt
Oil on canvas

The Tree of Life
Rabbi Isaac Luria, (1534 – 1572)

Behold that before the emanations were emanated and the creatures were created,
The Upper Simple Light had filled the whole existence.
And there was no vacancy, such as an empty atmosphere, a hollow, or a pit,
But all was filled with Simple, Boundless Light.
And there was no such part as head, or end,
But everything was Simple, smooth Light, balanced evenly and equally,
And it was called the Endless Light.
And when upon His simple will came the desire to create the world and
manate the emanations,
To bring to light the perfection of His deeds, His names, His appellations,
Which was the cause of the creation of the worlds,
He then restricted Himself, in the middle,
Precisely at the center,
He restricted the light.
And the light drew far off to the sides around that middle point.
And there remained an empty space, a vacuum
Circling the middle point.
And the restriction had been uniform
Around the empty point,
So that the space was evenly circled around it.
There, after the restriction,
Having formed a vacuum and a space
Precisely in the middle of the endless light,
A place was formed,
Where the emanated and the created might reside.
Then from the Endless Light a single line hung down,
Lowered down into that space
And through that line, He emanated, created, formed, and
Made all the worlds.
Before these four worlds came to be
There was one infinite, one name, in wondrous, hidden unity,
And even in the angels closest to Him
There is no force and no attainment in The Endless,
As there is no mind that can perceive Him,
For He has no place, no boundary, no name.

–The Ari, The Tree of Life,

Hello, and welcome back again to Poetry Wednesday 04/29/09.

You can sign in today and take the tour thru Thursday, so take your time.

I’ll be your hostess again this week. My sister, Sans Souci, is on a break, putting together her own poetry book, but she will check in.

Before we get started, please make sure that your post has a link to get back to this page to make it easier to take the tour:

1) Copy and paste the following link that I have provided for you from this page to somewhere on your poetry post.

Link back to the Poetry Wednesday tour on Laurita’s page

2) Leave the link of your poetry post in the comments section below. This is the link guests will click on to read your poem.

The Tree of Life poem was written by a great 16th century Kabbalist, Isaac Luria (also known as the Ari) to show us the origins of our existence.

Rabbi Isaac Luria (1534 – July 25, 1572) was a Jewish mystic in Safed. His name today is attached to all of the mystic thought in the town of Safed in 16th century Ottoman Palestine. While his direct literary contribution to the Kabbalistic school of Safed was extremely minute (he only wrote a few poems), his fame led to the school and all its works being named after him. The main popularizer of his ideas was Rabbi Hayim Vital, who claimed to be the official interpreter of the Lurianic system, though this was disputed by some.

Interpretation of the poem by Bnei Baruch:(Bnei Baruch is the largest group of Kabbalists in Israel, sharing the wisdom of Kabbalah with the entire world. Study materials in over 25 languages are based on authentic Kabbalah texts that were passed down from generation to generation. www.kabbalah.info)

In the midst of this Light, the thought of creation appeared. It was the epitome of a mother’s womb, and the Light surrounded the fetus with warmth and nourishment, providing for all its needs Kabbalah teaches us that we began our journey in this womb as one united soul called Adam HaRishon, or “first man.”

In the perfection of the Light, we were united as one soul, but like a fetus, the soul was unaware of its own existence or the process it was undergoing. In order to advance from this state of unawareness, Adam HaRishon had to pass through several spiritual states until it reached a point where the soul could experience its own existence and a desire for the Light. Along the way, a breaking occurred which Kabbalists refer to as “the breaking of the vessels.”

Through this shattering, the soul split into individual sparks which became detached from the Source of Light and abundance. Just as light can only be appreciated if you know darkness, the soul could only appreciate the abundance surrounding it by first experiencing scarcity. For this to happen, the Light had to be concealed from the soul. Each tiny fragment of the soul began to sense itself as separate and unique: a person. This detachment from our Source and from each other, or the absence of Light within each soul, is what we feel as “this world.”

We fell into this world, but this was not the end. We kept on falling. For thousands of years, our sense of isolation and egoism grew. We suffered and cried out from the pain. When it became unbearable, the cry formed into a question: Why? What is the purpose of our existence, our suffering, our life? When asked in full earnestness, the question awakens a single “point in the heart,” a point that had lain dormant for all those years that had gone before. This point remembers the abundance of the Light and longs to reconnect with all the other sparks and return back to its Source.

Thus the quest begins, but the road to return is not easy. It involves personal struggle, revelation of the true nature of the soul.On one hand, we experience the desires and motivations of this world, which is all we know. On the other hand, there is this elusive pull of the point in the heart, which tells us that this is all a dream, and that there is something much greater available to us. If we allow that point in the heart to pull us forward and upward, we begin to get glimpses of the abundance that awaits.

Using these glimpses to drive us onward, we climb the ladder of life, returning through the exact same path by which we descended. Through these remembrances of our previous states, one begins to understand that the descent was there for the purpose of ascent. From this perspective, this world is only a stepping stone for the soul in the world to come. We are all more than our bodies. We are a collective piece of one soul, and deep down we yearn for that connection. It is through reconnecting with each other while we live in this corporeal existence that we attract the Light that moves us back to our Source. Through this process, we begin to experience the abundance of beauty, joy and love intended for us.

Informatation for this post:
http://www.articlebiz.com/article/186457-1-kabbalah-and-the-tree-of-life/

“If you believe that you can damage,
then believe that you can fix.
If you believe that you can harm,
then believe that you can heal.”
— Rabbi Nachman of Breslov

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