 | Spirituality is partly about how our consciousness flows – how we experience our own hearts, minds and spirits. This flow can change for many reasons – misfortune and suffering, shock and awe, profound joy and love. The shift can feel like a fever dream – intense, unreal but totally real, in us and also beyond us. Maybe the whole country is having a fever dream now. If so, we can take lessons from our spiritual ancestors... and there yet can be so much good. |
By Rabbi David Evan Markus
Vayera 5785 (2024)
Click here for last year's Dvar Torah, "On Spirituality and Judgment Amidst Trauma"
Have you experienced a fever dream? In the throes of illness when body temperatures rise, fever dreams can be especially intense, emotionally charged and repetitive. Fever dreams are likely to be lucid dreams in which dreamers experience their own awareness "in" the dream. Borders between dream life and real life blur: dream thoughts and feelings touch waking life.
It may feel like the U.S. is experiencing another lucid fever dream of distortions and emotional charge leaking into "real life." If this sense of things resonates with you, join me in noticing it also in this week's Torah portion, Vayera. Torah being Torah, the overlaps are uncanny.
Vayera (וַיֵּרָא) means "made seen" or, colloquially, "appeared." The portion begins (Gen. 18:1-2):
Vayera 5785 (2024)
Click here for last year's Dvar Torah, "On Spirituality and Judgment Amidst Trauma"
Have you experienced a fever dream? In the throes of illness when body temperatures rise, fever dreams can be especially intense, emotionally charged and repetitive. Fever dreams are likely to be lucid dreams in which dreamers experience their own awareness "in" the dream. Borders between dream life and real life blur: dream thoughts and feelings touch waking life.
It may feel like the U.S. is experiencing another lucid fever dream of distortions and emotional charge leaking into "real life." If this sense of things resonates with you, join me in noticing it also in this week's Torah portion, Vayera. Torah being Torah, the overlaps are uncanny.
Vayera (וַיֵּרָא) means "made seen" or, colloquially, "appeared." The portion begins (Gen. 18:1-2):
| וַיֵּרָ֤א אֵלָיו֙ יהו''ה בְּאֵלֹנֵ֖י מַמְרֵ֑א וְה֛וּא יֹשֵׁ֥ב פֶּֽתַח־הָאֹ֖הֶל כְּחֹ֥ם הַיּֽוֹם׃ וַיִּשָּׂ֤א עֵינָיו֙ וַיַּ֔רְא וְהִנֵּה֙ שְׁלֹשָׁ֣ה אֲנָשִׁ֔ים נִצָּבִ֖ים עָלָ֑יו וַיַּ֗רְא וַיָּ֤רץ לִקְרָאתָם֙ מִפֶּ֣תַח הָאֹ֔הֶל וַיִּשְׁתַּ֖חוּ אָֽרְצָה׃ | YHVH appeared to [Avraham] by the trees of Mamre as he sat at the opening of the tent in the heat of day. He lifted his eyes and saw three men standing near him. Seeing, he ran to greet them from the tent opening and bowed to the ground. |
Avraham's lucid dream? In Torah's plot, Avraham had just circumcised himself and his son Ishmael. (Yitzhak / Isaac wasn't born yet.) Without antibiotics or sterile conditions, our ancestors imagine that Avraham developed a post-circumcision infection with fever ("heat of day"). In Avraham's lucid fever dream, God "appeared" to him (to visit the sick), seeming to Avraham like as "three men" – a textual hint of an altered reality. After all, to a first monotheist Avraham, how could One be three?
Avraham's "dream" continued: he fed the "men" (angels?)... chased a calf to prepare their meal (chasing the calf into a cave that, in Zohar, became a portal back to Eden)... heard the "men" say that Sodom must be destroyed... bargained with God to save the city's righteous (what if there are 10?)... and then journeyed into Torah's fateful narratives about Ishmael and Isaac, and the Akeidah / binding of Isaac.
Dreams? Nightmares? Both? Altered consciousness? Spiritual experience? However we might explain them, these experiences all depict Avraham's consciousness itself shifting.
Most of us have experienced different states or qualities of mind-heart-spirit – different states of consciousness. Expansive consciousness (in Hebrew, mohin d'gadlut, or "Big Mind") isn't the same as routine errand consciousness (mohin d'katnut, or "Little Mind"). But these two "minds," by definition, can't be fully separate: after all, each of us is one no less than the One we call God.
We learn that spirituality is about the entirety of life's ebb and flow. Spirituality is about ways to bring some Big Mind, higher values and ultimate concerns that transcend us into the Small Mind that navigates our day to day.
We also learn that fever dreams aren't only the stuff of nightmares – and that even when they are, positives yet can come. Sometimes shifts of consciousness do come from misfortune and suffering; other times from disorientation; sometimes from shock. Other times, we are transformed by awe, intense joy, astounding beauty or great love – sometimes in the tiniest of things.
If we think about it, those moments of transformation also can resemble fever dreams – intense, unreal but totally real, as if our ordinary selves suddenly are a bit out of focus. We're still us, but also more. Heightened awareness shifts our perspective and leaves us changed.
Maybe the U.S. is amidst a fever dream – totally real, altering, out of focus. There is plenty of shock, anxiety and bewilderment to go around. Yet precisely in this fevered moment arises precious opportunity for heightened awareness that can incline our hearts toward our best selves, our highest values, our traditions of social justice.
It's been one of our people's superpowers all the way back to Avraham.
So lean forward. Sit at the opening of your tent, the opening of your awareness, the frontier of what you think you know. Don't be afraid to feel the heat of day. Lean in. If disorientation must come, let's resolve to harness it in the ways we can to rivet our awareness for the next chance for blessings, relationship and meaning.
After all, you never know who you might meet.
Avraham's "dream" continued: he fed the "men" (angels?)... chased a calf to prepare their meal (chasing the calf into a cave that, in Zohar, became a portal back to Eden)... heard the "men" say that Sodom must be destroyed... bargained with God to save the city's righteous (what if there are 10?)... and then journeyed into Torah's fateful narratives about Ishmael and Isaac, and the Akeidah / binding of Isaac.
Dreams? Nightmares? Both? Altered consciousness? Spiritual experience? However we might explain them, these experiences all depict Avraham's consciousness itself shifting.
Most of us have experienced different states or qualities of mind-heart-spirit – different states of consciousness. Expansive consciousness (in Hebrew, mohin d'gadlut, or "Big Mind") isn't the same as routine errand consciousness (mohin d'katnut, or "Little Mind"). But these two "minds," by definition, can't be fully separate: after all, each of us is one no less than the One we call God.
We learn that spirituality is about the entirety of life's ebb and flow. Spirituality is about ways to bring some Big Mind, higher values and ultimate concerns that transcend us into the Small Mind that navigates our day to day.
We also learn that fever dreams aren't only the stuff of nightmares – and that even when they are, positives yet can come. Sometimes shifts of consciousness do come from misfortune and suffering; other times from disorientation; sometimes from shock. Other times, we are transformed by awe, intense joy, astounding beauty or great love – sometimes in the tiniest of things.
If we think about it, those moments of transformation also can resemble fever dreams – intense, unreal but totally real, as if our ordinary selves suddenly are a bit out of focus. We're still us, but also more. Heightened awareness shifts our perspective and leaves us changed.
Maybe the U.S. is amidst a fever dream – totally real, altering, out of focus. There is plenty of shock, anxiety and bewilderment to go around. Yet precisely in this fevered moment arises precious opportunity for heightened awareness that can incline our hearts toward our best selves, our highest values, our traditions of social justice.
It's been one of our people's superpowers all the way back to Avraham.
So lean forward. Sit at the opening of your tent, the opening of your awareness, the frontier of what you think you know. Don't be afraid to feel the heat of day. Lean in. If disorientation must come, let's resolve to harness it in the ways we can to rivet our awareness for the next chance for blessings, relationship and meaning.
After all, you never know who you might meet.
RSS Feed