Yesod ShebeKhesed Foundation, Establishment, Setting the Foundation, Fundamental; the Foundational Torah with which The Divine One created the universe within Lovingkindness, Grace, Compassion, Benevolence, and Loyalty; qualities central to Jewish ethics.
Quality: Love your neighbor as you love yourself - this is a Divine expectation because the Divine One expects you to love yourself. This self-love is foundational to creation, family, community, humanity, peace.
Life is a tapestry. Each of us is connected to one and to another of us. Each of us has our humanity wrapped within all of us. Another as foreigner or another as non-human is a fiction created and cultivated over recent centuries. According to the human genome project, we are 99.9% the same. With origins in East Africa, we have a mitochondrial Khava/Eve, the most recent common matrilineal ancestor of all human beings.
The only true foreigner is what we find strange and foreign within us. We judge events in our lives as making us unworthy. We identify with our "bad" experiences or actions or emotions and inaccurately conclude that we are “bad.” We project uncomfortable feelings or behaviors on others because we judge ourselves to be damaged, unlovable, or worse.
When we meet others that embody our internalized alienation, we judge them the way we judge ourselves. We act against them with a zealousness that is irrational because we seek to annihilate in them what we cannot stand in ourselves.
To love our neighbors as we love ourselves means to embrace what The Divine One knows: We are lovable. We are loving. We are to love. And, we are to be love. We are each made in the Divine image and the Holiness of the Eternal is also within us.
Yes, even within each of us who has been traumatized there is the Holy Spark. The Spiritual Essence pull us into connection every time we remember we are already connected to Life – and often when we don’t! This is especially important for us to remember when we are isolated by circumstances of our own creation and those beyond our control. At these times, it is easy to have our traumas scratched the way our funny bone can be hit and reverberate. We need to remember that the reverberation is an echo of the past feelings of being isolated or invisible or overwhelmed.
What is similar is moving into the unknown, and though the circumstances are different, we know how to handle that. We begin by ceasing to be at war with our circumstances and ourselves, accepting our experiences for exactly what they are – how life is showing up for us, now! Then we can release ourselves from the illusion of control and open the river of compassion for us. We love us. We comfort us. Lovingkindness for us floods our being, our homes, our communities, our worlds.
When we fill our own cup, we have enough for ourselves and plenty for others. We also are ready to name the energy suckers in our lives and begin to place respectful boundaries. Yes, it will be scary and uncomfortable – AND as loving ourselves becomes our practice at least two things happen: we cease being desperate for unhealthy love and we actually hear and take in the various ways others show their love and appreciation.
I invite you to fill the cup of connection and taste the sweetness of lovingkindness and connection; savor the freedom, the openness of self-love and self-acceptance. Drink deeply from the Divine Cup of Holy Radical Compassionate Self-Love and never thirst, again!
Blessings!
Sabrina
© Sabrina Sojourner 2020
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