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Jewish

God Spots and the True Self

April 27, 2011 by Eliyahu Yaakov

Inspirational experiences are called inspirational because they put in spirit—they infuse a spirit of passion that leads the individual to an elevated awareness and/or motivates him to action. Interestingly, the inspirational experience does not create a new ability in the inspired, rather it awakens a pre-existing resource that was within all along.

When acting on inspiration, one experiences a higher side of one's self. The inspirational experience connects who you are to who you could be. It brings down the theoretical potential hidden within to the practical actual that is being brought out. An inspirational experience results in the merging of the Potential You with the Actual You.

Just as we experience this as individuals, the world experiences this as a whole.

Whenever the prophets describe the Messianic era, experiencing God is the end-goal. For most of us, that sounds like a foreign concept. Many of us have trouble knowing there is a God, let alone experiencing God. This is the gap the Messianic era is coming to fill. The Messianic era is that time when God will go from an abstract idea being learned about and discussed to an experiential reality one lives and breathes.

This is what all the mourning, yearning, and praying for the Temple has been about all along. The Temple was and will be the place of the ongoing, most intimate inspirational experience the world has ever known. In a sense, it is the place you meet the real you and are moved to become that person in actuality. It is the place of unification of Potential You with Actual You. And it is the place the world meets the real world (i.e., its higher potential) and is motivated toward elevation and unification with its higher truer self.

The God Spot
In a sense, the Temple is comparable to a spiritual Hot Spot. That is to say, just as there are hot spots that receive satellite beams and activate your laptop's internet, so too, there are God Spots—spots that access God-perception and activate the soul.

Imagine we had an advanced satellite, its beams existing equally in all places. Still, that does not necessarily mean I would have access to those beams. To access the ever-present beams I would need a receiving device. In the same way, God is equally "present" in all places. The difference between a regular spot and a God Spot is in our ability to dial in to God's presence. What makes a spot a God Spot is not a change in the God aspect of the spot, but a change in the spot aspect of the spot.

This is what we mean by a holy place; it's not that God is more in that place than any other place—that would imply physical limits to God. Rather, the holy place is a location more susceptible to God-consciousness and matters of the soul.

The Hebrew name for the Temple is the Beit Hamikdash, translated literally as The Holy House; it is the God Spot. But just as the Temple is holy, a place of God-perception and experience, Kabbalah teaches that each of us can make ourselves into a mini-Temple, a mini God Spot, by being templesque. At that point, God "dwells" (i.e., is perceived and experienced) within each one of us just as God "dwells" within the Temple. And similar to the manner in which people would go to the Temple in Jerusalem for a God experience, they can get a piece of that just by meeting up with you for a cup of coffee.

(Interestingly, there is a Chassidic custom to visit a righteous person during the festivals while the Temple is not built. This is because, in the days of the Temple, the festivals were times when the Jews would ascend to the Temple for the unique God-experience happening there at that time. However, in non-Temple times, when we do not have that ideal God Spot as an option, we should opt for the next best thing to achieving that God-experience—the righteous person, the one who has made of himself a mini-God Spot, a mini-Temple.)

Becoming Templesque
For many of us, this idea sounds distant. How can I be a mini-Temple? Do you have any idea what I have been? Do you have any idea what I have done?

This whole initiative seems totally out of touch.

However, if we take into account the fact that our true essence and what we are made of is a Godly soul, turning into a God Spot may not be that far off after all.

Can you think of anything you do that is goodly or Godly . . . even the smallest thing? Of course the answer is "yes." If your essence is a soul, a spark of the Infinite, it is impossible that this not be reflected somewhere in your life. If you have answered "no" to the question of whether you are involved in anything goodly or Godly, it just means you have to keep searching. It is impossible that a soul not show its true self whatsoever.

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4/27/2011 4:00:00 AM

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About Eliyahu Yaakov

Rabbi Eliyahu Yaakov is a sought after international speaker on Kabbalah, relationships, parenting, and life. His newly released book, Jewish By Choice: A Kabbalistic Take on Life & Judaism, recently hit #1 on Amazon's Best Seller list.

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