God Consciousness: Living With Meaning and Purpose Robert M. Haralick God Consciousness: Living with Meaning and Purpose Robert M. Haralick Second Edition This book was prepared with LATEX and set in 12 pt. by Robert M. Haralick. Copyright ©2014 by Robert M. Haralick 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher. except in the case of brief quotations in reviews for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast. The Tree of Life on the cover was designed by Sarah Bracha using a com- puter program that she wrote to generate the fractal tree. Published by Torah Books 27 Tara Drive Pomona NY 10970 Printed by CreateSpace ISBN 0-9722273-4-2 To Sarah Bracha Contents God Consciousness Living With Purpose . 1 God Consciousness . 4 Consciousness . 7 Emotions . 11 Our Reality . 15 Authenticity . 16 Aliveness . 27 Darkness and Light . 28 The Dark Side Of The Moon . 34 The Heroic Act . 35 Metaphysics . 38 Whispering Silence . 39 With Faith . 41 The Message . 42 Put Away Two . 44 Control . 45 The Ego . 46 Ego Versus God Consciousness . 47 Three Worlds . 48 Ideal World . 52 Encountering . 55 On Identity . 56 Cleaving . 58 Appearance and Essence Two Tortoises, A Well and The Sea . 59 Kabbalah . 60 Become Holy . 68 Consciousness of The Mystery . 71 The Story . 72 i Understanding the Story . 73 Inner and Outer Reality . 74 Garment . 80 Appearance and Essence . 81 Introduction To The Commentary . 85 First Commentary . 86 Second Commentary . 89 Third Commentary . 91 Unifying . 92 Connection . 93 Essence Responds To Essence . 94 God, The Tetragrammaton, The Infinite Game, Change . 97 Appearances . 107 Running and Returning . 109 The Many And The One . 110 God’s Mirror . 111 The Winds . 112 Western Winds: Malchut . 112 Eastern Winds: Tiferet . 113 Commentary . 114 Walking The Path . 117 The One Wills . 119 Meditation . 121 Giving and Receiving Transforming and Unifying . 122 Giving and Receiving . 125 The Good and Evil Prompter . 130 The Onion . 135 Kavannah: The Intention . 138 Complete Receiving . 141 Balanced Receiving . 142 The Beloved . 144 Revealing The Light . 146 Revealment of the Light . 147 Receiving . 148 Concealment of the Light . 149 Transcending . 150 Practice . 154 The Good And The Bad . 155 The Divine Abundant Goodness . 157 In the Fullness of the Moment . 158 Working The Sefirot: Vices and Virtues The Sefirot . 160 Proclaiming The Name . 171 Government . 173 Crown, Wisdom and Understanding . 176 Unification . 178 Levels . 180 Do God’s Will . 181 Two Trees . 182 The Tree of Death . 185 The Tree of Life . 192 Vice, Virtue, and Spirituality . 199 Preparation For Prayer . 202 Vice Virtue Prayer Ritual . 206 Invocation . 210 Voiding The Other Side . 211 Our Vows . 212 Transforming . 213 Being Transformed . 214 The Torah of Moshiach . 215 Index 217 Living With Purpose 1 Living With Purpose People who consciously live with meaning and purpose have an individual value and belief system1 that guides their interpretations of everyday situations, guides their thoughts, their emotions, and their actions in a way that transcends the ordinary. There are a variety of signposts that are associated with living purposefully. They include spending productive time on activities that matter the most and living through those activities with authenticity and passion. People living pur- posefully feel content and have an inner peace. The way they live not only makes a difference for themselves, but it makes a meaningful difference for the others in their circle. They live in the moment, in the eternal present. They are ethical and they meet all their commitments. They live life with intention. They live honestly, decently, joyfully, and authentically. They carry out what they hold to be their calling in life. They find meaning, purpose and significance in the ordinary everyday activities: eating, reading, working, and loving. From a spiritual point of view, we are each a child of God. Our calling in some way shape or form is to manifest the glory of God that is uniquely within us in a useful and worthwhile way with balanced excellence. It means having a higher state of consciousness, a consciousness in which attention and intent is refined and a greater awareness of reality is present. It means being morally enlightened, serving a purpose greater than ourselves alone. It means passionate living in the manyfoldness of the world and yet perceiving and living in its unity and oneness. It means living life as sacred and holy. Of course religion has a role in guiding people to recognize that there is something beyond themselves, guiding people to ethical and moral behavior. But when religion gets institutionalized with fixed ceremonies, or prayers, that are performed by rote, by force of habit, without feeling, without passion, auto- matically without conscious intent or choice once the ritual begins, spontaneity and consciousness of the eternal presence tends to be lost. 1Not all individual value and belief systems are equal. For example, consider someone whose value system is that the most important thing is to make it to the top, or a value system in which the most important thing is to ostentatiously have more than your neighbors. How about a value system in which the most important thing is to be a success, the goal, and any way to get there is OK, or a value system that without constraint maximizes their self interest. Such people will lie, take advantage of others, cheat and be ruthless, in general be corrupt, but they may make it to a roaring material success. Once there, some never get past that stage. Others find that eventually this is empty and without meaning. Other examples of shallow goals include having power, status and money. For people with these goals, whatever they have it is not enough. Since the goal is everything, their path to the goal can be unethical and unmoral. 2 Living With Purpose When the external form becomes dominant. the main shell of what remains is the group social part, identification with the group and participation in the group. When the group shell becomes primary, the group is considered better than other groups. Self righteousness, elitism, prejudice and bigotism result. The same kind of thing happens in politics and it has disastrous consequences.2 Consciously living with meaning and purpose intensifies the living experi- ence in ordinary everyday life, including in religious ceremonies. It is not only living in the present. It is living that transcends the present by becoming who we really are being. In the religious context, it provides a more intense form of re- ligious experience than is generally found in normative religion. We experience peace, harmony and depth. Our issue is what do we have to do to live with meaning and purpose in a spiritually authentic way. The approach we take involves understanding and practicing God Consciousness. First we deepen our understanding of conscious- ness and emotion so that we may be open to be more God conscious. Second we learn what kinds of behaviors promote God consciousness and what kind of behaviors lessen God consciousness. In this volume, God Consciousness: Living with Meaning and Purpose, we do this from the discipline of Kabbalah: the teachings of giving and receiving; the teachings of unification; and the teachings of the Tree of Life. The teachings on giving and receiving and on unification set up context by which we can use the pattern of vices and virtues on.