Parshas Vayera devar torah

By Yosef Serebryanski

“And YHVH appeared to him in the plains of Mamre while he was sitting at the entrance of the tent in the heat of the day.” (Genesis18:1) Since Abraham was living totally in the present (which is also what the word YHVH means) he was able to have the experience.

Hebrew words have various meanings. Another way of understanding this passage is: And within he had a revelation, with the sound of the trees, and at the same time he was experiencing the opening of an encompassing sense in all its glory.

The spiritual realms and the physical world reflect each other. Sometimes the spiritual causes things to happen in the physical and sometimes the physical creates spiritual realms. Whatever occurs is an issue of direction. It may be that it is time to act in the opposite direction of what a person thinks because that is how the balance occurs.

The internal power of a revelation has no real words, yet often people put a name to it. The Jewish people were taught to connect with a Creator that is one and has no description. Description often creates worship of something that does not connect to the source that is beyond the description. Having an experience often causes people to expand yet they may also think about it in a limited manner.

When people believe in or act upon something, they create the spiritual energy for their beliefs. After a while it might become difficult for people to differentiate between what was originally created and what man created.

This is part of the issue when people have a revelation (or deeply spiritual experience) and misidentify where it comes from. In order to have clarity you have to separate those things that come from the origin from those that were created by other beings. This is a blind spot for many people. Thus it is difficult to propose to a person who believes that they had the ultimate revelation that there is actually a different explanation for what happened or that it only happened on a specific spiritual level.

The spiritual interpretation of the setting here is amongst the trees. From this there is an important lesson to be gleaned. Pruning a tree is healthy for its growth. In life there are aspects that are attached to us that need to be cut away. On the other hand while cleansing the body is healthy there are things the body needs. Thus too much cleansing or pruning can also be damaging. The same is true of all aspects of our physical and spiritual life, there are times that we must discard the old and move with into a new opening.

In each thing there needs to be an ability to connect with the Creator and for the Creator to connect with the creation. If the creation has come to a point where it will no longer accept to connect to the Creator then it must be removed. We should always give people a chance, since we are not God. Only God knows if the creation will reconnect or needs to be cut away. Too often people have played God and cut others away in the name of God. This ultimately destroyed the person doing it as well as the victims.

Now is also a time of quiet contemplation as we wait to see how the underlying universal current will affect us. Ultimately it is a quiet before a brewing storm. Free will can mean that will is given freely but it comes with a cost. It can also mean that will is captive and needs to be freed. So feel free to sit quietly and listen to the vibrations of nature that will tell us when to move. It is in this quiet that a true revelation of the Creator can come through.

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