This article was originally published in 2017.
In the portion Chayei Sarah, it says that the Creator blessed Avraham with everything. This means, therefore, that there's an opening for us during the week of this portion to bring ourselves closer to also being blessed with everything. So, what is the awakening of consciousness that can bring us to that level of Avraham? And what does “Avraham was blessed with everything” actually mean?
To explain this, there’s a teaching that begins with the verse in Psalms,in chapter 119. King David, as we know, had a very challenging life; people tried to kill him and hurt him. And one of the great teachings from King David is the concept of certainty throughout even the worst challenges. So, in this verse in Psalms, King David is talking about one of those moments in his life when people were trying to kill him, and he says, “At that moment, I learned the Creator’s teachings.”
On a simple level, most of us would think that if somebody were holding a gun to our head, the chance we're going to be learning something from the Creator is very slim. But King David said, “No. In the moment when I felt that they were going to kill me, I was searching and finding Your teachings.” That is the first part to this three-part verse. King David goes on to say in the second part, “But I saw that there's an end to all negative things.” Then, in the third part, “And the path, the direction, of the Creator, is a very wide path.”
When most of us reveal Light, help people, and bring Light into this world, it usually comes when we're feeling inspired, when we learn something, or when we're connected; then, we use that Light and energy to share with other people and the world. However, the entire Book of Psalms was created when negative things were happening to King David. He, therefore, found another way.
The Book of Psalms,a very elevated book filled with tremendous secrets and Light, came from the moments when terrible things were happening to King David. As he was experiencing negativity, which in this case was somebody trying to kill him, he would stop and meditate on the pain and darkness and say, “I need to find the Light manifested through letters,” (manifested through, eventually, the Book of Psalms), “I need to find the Light of the Creator.”
Whenever King David felt in danger of losing his life or felt his enemies coming, he would stop and say, “I feel that pain, I feel that fear, and I am going to stop and not think about the fear, but rather, think about the Light that must exist within that darkness. King David knew there was Light within that darkness, and understood that the fear being awakened whenever negative people were trying to kill him had within it sparks of Light. And through meditating into the fear, pain, and darkness, he extracted the Light for the Book of Psalms.
This is a very important and practical tool we can use whenever we experience pain, sadness, darkness, or challenges. We can stop, as King David did, and say, “I want to look into that darkness and extract the Light.” For King David it first manifested as Light and the letters that he began to see, and then as the Book of Psalms.Therefore, when we experience pain, we need to think about that darkness and ask the Light of the Creator to help us see the Light that exists within them.
King David says, “I revealed the Book of Psalms from fear and challenges, but I know that there's another way.” And he asks that he start learning in peace, in what's called the wide way, the way that is not necessarily physically comfortable, but with a state of mind that is in peace. It's very important to understand what’s happening; he's experiencing the pain, the fear, and the people coming to try to kill him. And he meditates, and says he is not going to connect to the fear or the darkness, but rather, to ask the Light of the Creator to help him extract the Light from this pain. And in so doing, what we now know as the Book of Psalms, which holds within it a tremendous amount of Light, becomes revealed to him.
But in that same moment, he says, “I know I'm learning, I know I'm revealing Light, I know I'm receiving Light that will exist for eternity for the rest of the world… but I have a request. I want to stop learning in this way, and start learning in a way that's peaceful. I want to start learning and revealing Light from a place where I am calm; I know there is another way to learn.”
Therefore, it's really a three-step process. The first is that when we are experiencing pain, challenges, and darkness, we meditate upon that darkness. We do so not to connect to the fear or darkness, but to know that there's Light there we are going to extract from that fear. And if we do this, we actually feel the Light being extracted.
King David, even while the people were trying to kill him, even while the darkness still existed, knew that darkness was going to end, which is the second step that brings us then to an end to the darkness, and to the third step, when King David says, “I want this to be the last time I have to learn from pain, darkness, and fear, because I know that there's another path.” Therefore, because King David asked, and his consciousness was awakened to these three steps, he got to learn in that way.
So, to go back to the beginning, what does it mean that the Creator blessed Avraham? Avraham was learning all of his life; he learned through the binding of Isaac, he learned through the fire that he was thrown into. He learned in many different ways, but eventually he got to the state where King David was when he said, “Now I ask that I start learning in a peaceful way, in the way where my mind can be settled.”
The secret, therefore, of when it says that the Creator blessed Avraham with everything, is that it means while the learning Avraham was doing all the time wasn't new, and his connecting to the Light of the Creator wasn't new, what he received on Shabbat Chayei Sarah,and what we want to connect to on this Shabbat, is another path of learning. That other path of learning comes from what's called being broad, from when the mind can be settled. And through that path of learning, Avraham began receiving from the Tetragrammaton, the Yud Kei Vav Kei.
That's the understanding; besides the way King David teaches us to extract Light and wisdom from the darkness, we learn also to always ask that the way we learn become more and more of the wide path. It’s important that in the moment when we're experiencing a challenge and extracting the Light from it, we ask to start learning right then in a different way, in a way where our mind can be settled. It is one of the understandings and awakenings of consciousness from the words, “Avraham was blessed with everything,” and is available to us in the week of the portion Chayei Sarah.
