Netzach, the primal growth

According to the Jewish calendar we are in the weeks between Liberation (Passover) and Action (Simcha Tora, receiving the Torah from Mount Sinai).

Between the decision of getting rid of all that which chains us and stops us from moving forward in our lives (Passover) and the moment when we compromise ourselves in a style of living and principles that can help us achieve a better life for the greater good (Simcha Torah) there is a period of time that we need to understand where we are, what we want, and where we want to be.
And if we already know what that is we can use that time to be sure we are ready, really willing and able to receive it, do it, and be it.
That’s the time of Contemplation or Omer.

It is a period of 7 weeks, each week is devoted to a different lumination of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life.
The luminations are 10: the first 3 –or upper emanations – are Crown (Infinite will of God and the Ethereal Idea of what Is), Wisdom (The energy of Synchronicity, Intuition and Life beyond time and space) and Understanding (The energy of Time, Discipline and Creation), all related to the idea of Self, which is beyond us as individuals.
The 7 lower luminations are Mercy, Severity (judgment and analysis), Beauty (love and balance), Eternity (relationships, Mother Nature,repetition and pleasure), Splendor (communication and magic), Foundation (death and transformation) and Kingdom (the material world), related to the experiences of the Ego which is what we experience as humans and therefore it’s what we need to tame and understand if we want to achieve what we want.

In addition, according to the Hebrew calendar we are in the month of Iyar, the month of Taurus which Kabbalisticaly is the month of healing given that it is the month imbued with more Light than any other.

Paradoxically the time of Omer is a time where according to Kabbalah there is no energy in the Cosmos: if we are meant to spend some time reflecting about our lives and ourselves why would we need energy at all? Why would we need to move and do and create anything?
So during Omer we restrain from traveling, engaging in new activities –unless we had planned it before Omer, moving to another house, another city or country; marry, invest in new projects or sign important contracts of all kind, and sex.
All we do is work hard, reflect a lot and enjoy the every day of life.

We are now in the week of Eternity.
I’ll quote my astrologer and author Gahl Sasson: “Eternity in Hebrew is ‘Netzach’ that has the letters of the word “tzanach” which means ‘to drop’…serves to transport all the airy intellectual and fiery emotional axioms of the Tree of Life down Earth. It grounds us in natural physical processes that maintain our existence”
“Eternity yields all internal action, it proliferates through replication, it is the most practical energy in the right column of the Tree”

In other words: get your stuff together because your emotions, analysis and theories about “whatev” will be put to work ASAP! In the most unusual and unexpected ways, because if you think you know and you believe you know then you may have no problem in proving that is so, right?…oh well, doesn’t matter, the Cosmos will check it up BIG TIME.

And so here we are, starting the week of our finals and finishing a round of theoretical learning.

I started this blog talking about Fertility and how excited I was in learning about Indra. Later in my research I left Indra in favor of Vajrapani one of it’s later ‘encarnations’ for very selfish reasons: I needed a role model and a mythological guide to keep my hopes up and give my hard work an ‘it’s hard but it’s naturally good and worth doing it’ value.
Then right at the nick of time Indra came back to the forefront with a bang!
At the chat room with my friend Pia, we were talking about the wonders of our respective myths. She then commented that Indra could destroy worlds in the blink of an eye at his will and that was like if Indra had thrown one of his thunderbolts right into my head!
Really? Indra could destroy words at will?
No wonder the Buddhist didn’t like him!

You go man!(?)

And then I was watching a DVD for another class, an interview with Joseph Campbell and he mentioned Indra’s nest.
I’ve heard about it before, in fact at the beginning of my Internet research when I typed Indra lots of Internet, software and computer companies showed up in my results, but I never paid attention to it because I was focused in knowing his origins and the reason why those companies chose his name.

But Campbell’s words resonated deep inside and I lost the rest of the program looking for the story of Indra’s nest over the Internet…

It is about interconnection and how life is about ‘apparent’ random circumstances and people we meet out of nowhere that once we look back we go: OH! So that’s what it was all about!

Like studying at Pacifica, or more specifically, studying this term at Pacifica.
Right at the end of the rope I find myself questioning my stay.
What I thought would be a great and fulfilling learning experience is turning out to become a dreadful academical nightmare.
I’ve been fighting the feeling of obligation from overtaking my relationship with my classes, trying to maintain the sense of wonder and discovery but the load of work and the grading parameters are making the task a challenging chore of its own.

Not only that, I’m also questioning my staying in the U.S.
I’ve been literally struggling to have a life in this country.
It has been as productive as planting a living dove -yes a dove- in the desert, waiting for it to grow rose-colored pears in its beak, and expect it not to die -minimum, from boredom.
I’ve been in so many countries in the world, and nothing compares to this.
Nothing.
What kept me here up until now is the feeling that I have to stay for some reason unknown to me at this point, and that every step I’ve taken in my life have always showed up before me first…if no other place had showed up in my radar then I assumed that it meant I had no other place to go because, literally, I can’t go back to my home country (I mean, I can, but I value been alive enought for me not to do that) and going back with my parents wouldn’t change much of my present circumstances: it’s still the US and worst, is part of the US I never liked since the first time I went there when I was 10 and my dad’s health is deteriorating and I can’t do what I used to do back overseas to help: get hold of thousands of resources of all kind –whatever was in my mind or I deemed as useful I just grabbed and got it- here, ‘we’ as new immigrants in this ‘new’ post Sept 11 America are nobody and ‘I’ haven’t been able to get hold of any effective resource even for my own survival anyways.

And so Indra comes back to the rescue, to keep my hopes up, or at least trying to: it is easy to destroy worlds at will, but every random decision we take can have ripple effects (the Eternity character of the kabbalistic lumination of this week, the lesson of Indra’s net) beyond what we see.
I may now be in automatic, passing by my days as low-key but satisfying as possible fulfilling many of my academical requirements without really meaning it, which for me it’s already a great loss.
Nevertheless I’m doing my best to follow Vajrapani’s fierce will towards good, fighting against the illusion that is negativity and pessimism, looking up for the power of fertile creation and harmonious survival I have in my hands, like Indra, and stay still, experiencing the wonder of Light of this month of Iyar, learning, practicing and honoring in contemplative awe the 7 luminous emanations of the Tree of Life until the time of revelation finally comes through, and my goals’d move on and show up right in my front door…. Because I say so!

Reference: Sasson, G. & Weinstein, S. (2003). A wish can change your life: How to use the ancient wisdom of Kabbalah to make your dreams come true. New York: Simon & Schuster.