Inner Truth and the Maelstrom’s Gullet

Quite often, when I sit down to write one of these blog entries, I swear under my breath, since my laptop is almost 10 years old and has become somewhat of a ‘hated’ machine. I purchased the thing from Costco (when they still had the return policy intact on computers), but ended up lugging it with me to Israel when I moved anyways. This computer has been through a lot. I used to strap it to my back, while pulling Cody, my three legged dog, in a Burley trailer behind my full suspension mountain bike (another antique that I still use) in Boulder, on my way back and forth to work at my custom cabinet shop. I never fell, but Cody did once. He tried to chase a prairie-dog and pogoed out of the trailer, but since he was leashed in with a harness, the trailer just flipped over on top of him. When I looked back, I thought he had snapped the leash and run away, since he was thoroughly hidden by the turtle-shell of a trailer, running along beneath the upended red and yellow thing that was now dragging along the ground on its aluminum safety bars…

Having visited the States recently, I was once again overwhelmed at the resources that are available. In Israel, it is just not the same. You can find anything and everything in the US! It is just so, so…, comfortable; and when I say comfortable, I mean the ‘sitting on a couch’ type of comfortable, not the satisfied kind. What? You didn’t know that satisfaction was a result of completion and not comfort? OK, OK, take the name Noah for instance; you know… the guy with the big boat, animals two by two and all of that? In Hebrew his name is Noach, which ‘means’ comfort. His wife’s name was Na’ama, which means ‘nice’ (Yeah, they were nice and comfortable, I’m sure!). The boat or Ark in Hebrew is called ‘Tevach,’ which is also a word for container, a controlled space that separates from chaos, or it can even mean a ‘word’.

Yes, words are also containers. Think about it. A word is used today to describe something, right? Well, how do we know what to call the thing we are trying to describe in the first place? If no one ever taught a person anything, a ‘rock’ would be named for its intrinsic qualities, as perceived by that person; the rock would ‘speak’ its name first, so to speak…

This is how Adam ha’Rishon (you know, the half man / half woman proto spiritual being) was able to name the animals. They all ‘spoke’ to him on a kind of spiritual level. He was able to see right into the genetic nature of each creature and the name of the animal ‘jumped’ out at him. This is all a great theory and everything; but, what I am trying to figure out is that when Adam named the animals, were they really animals in the sense that we understand animals today? I mean, how is it that the snake wasn’t slithering on and eating dirt yet? This happened to the snake only as a result or ‘consequence’ of attempting to fool Eve into having a fling with him, while Adam was reportedly snoozing in the bushes somewhere nearby. The snake, based on the consequences of his actions, goes on to be the oh-so-phallic, slithering, dirt eating, ‘extremely’ physical creature that we see today.

I guess I gotta bring in the heavy hitter, the Rambam, who explains that the animals in the Garden were humanoid in form, but with very specific animal traits. The ‘snake,’ therefore, must just have been another one of those Cro-Magnons running around with a club, I guess. Well, there is that whole, “Likeness of God” thing to consider here, right? "And the Almighty said, 'Let us make Man in Our image, as our likeness...' “(Genesis 1:26). This verse, seemingly, is about an 8.7 on the Torah Richter Scale of strangeness. I mean, how is it possible to say that a finite human being is in the image of an Infinite, Formless, ‘Everything’ Being?

Is it time yet? Yup; it’s time to bring in that whole... ‘levels of soul’ deal. "And the Infinite, Almighty, formed the man as dust from the ground, and He blew into his nostrils a living soul, and the man was life for a spirit" (Genesis 2:7). Human beings are a combination of a physical self (dust from the earth or a ‘Nefesh’) and a spiritual self (a soul or ‘Neshama’). The physical self was created from the ground, from physical matter or form that God had already created in the universe. The spiritual self or soul was "blown into" human beings by God Himself.

So, these “animals” or “Cro-Magnons” running around must have only had the first level of soul, the Nefesh. Adam ha’Rishon, and later on Adam and Eve, had both levels of soul, which explains the reason that God had to send Noah and Na’ama into a big boat-like container and spend exactly 365 days on the high-seas. The world was inhabited by Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons… running amok and challenging God with all sorts of nonsense, like Babylonian towers and cave-man technology (the likes that only Thomas Crapper’s mother would have appreciated!), murder, and emptiness. Mankind had united ‘against’ God. They chose the lowest valley that they could find, so as to not utilize any of the God-given hilltops or mountains to build from, and began their technological feat from bricks, not stone (for the same reason). Mankind had lost its connection to the Creator and the only reason for existence in the first place.

OK, back to comfort; maybe we can understand what comfort is in a different way. In Psalms 105: 3-4, it states, “The heart of those that seek God shall rejoice. Seek God and His might, constantly seek His countenance.” Yes, this is, apparently, a very comfortable position to be in, rejoicing in God, but it also sounds suspiciously like effort to me… Yeah, it definitely is; but, didn’t I already say that comfort wasn’t akin to a slacker on the couch, but success through effort? I read that Rabbi Simcha Zissel of Kelm stated that the above Psalm can be explained like this: “Spiritual quests are qualitatively different from physical ones. In worldly matters, a quest is futile if one finds nothing and the disappointment is frustrating (think tower to nowhere). Not so in one's search for God, wherein the search itself brings joy, for the very inquiry elevates the searcher!”

Noah, it seems, was named ‘Comfort’ for a reason by Lamech, his father. It would appear that his father knew that he was going to be the last man on Earth to know God... in a world that had utterly abandoned Him. Noah was named Comfort so that all the future generations could have the ability to feel the success of becoming aware of meaning, of becoming aware of our purpose, the continual search for meaning throughout human history, of our collective awareness of God; but, it isn’t until this very generation that meaning has been reduced to things like down-time, vacation, killing-time, physical comfort, and couch-time... Oy... ‘Killing time...’ Can you imagine what a dying man would give for just one more day?

Seemingly, we are living in a time where the Tower of Babel is rising rapidly in the world, bringing ever wider gaps between the generations, between individuals, between the right and the wrong, the Left and the Right, and the East and the West. Technological development has become so rampant that we can never get enough of the latest and greatest, since there is always the next big thing perpetually right around the next corner. And yes, our level of satisfaction with the latest and the greatest ramps off suddenly ‘exactly’ as we rejoice in our new ‘time sucker, space filler’ of a thing. I fear that our collective container, our Ark, has burst its seams and is beginning to let in the dark, murky abyss that has been swirling around us, waiting patiently for us to forget.

We, as in the Human Race, are being scattered to the far reaches of our collective understandings. We, as in the Human Race, have forgotten how to let the inner world speak to us. We, sadly, as our predecessors in Mesopotamia once did, seem to be progressively forgetting about our Creator, as we easily glide down the slip-and-slide gullet of a maelstrom of babble and ultimate nothingness. I guess maybe that my broke-down and hated machine is teaching me something after all. Maybe being comfortable is overrated. Maybe it is all written in the words, written in the containers of everything around me. Maybe it is all meant to be and I just forgot how to actually see into it, in order to name it with truth...

Yalla and Shabbat Shalom!

Womb World and Birthing a Spiritual Singularity

Now that we all know that we don’t really exist (assuming that you have been following along), we can move on to more important things, like how we can have the most joy in life and how we can avoid the pitfalls of poor decisions. Yeah, sounds just like a parental lecture; doesn’t it? Actually, I don’t really remember too many of those ‘parental lectures’ growing up. In a lot of ways, I grew up in a vacuum (not a dust sucking machine, but the vacuum of space). I didn’t get the ‘birds and bees talk,’ for instance, until I had already been singing with the birds for a few years and had been stung by a few bees too... Maybe it was the radical difference between my parent’s generation and mine. After all, they may have looked like hippies, with their long hair, beard and ponytail, loose clothing, and general ‘free-love appearance,’ but, for all practical purposes, they acted like they were on the set of Leave it to Beaver. My dad, beard and all, even drove this great, custom VW van (real hippy style) to work, five days a week, 8 to 6 or 7 everyday, as if he was ‘actually’ a corporate zombie.

When I think back on those times, I get a fuzzy feeling inside, like I entered a sacred space or something. Then again, maybe it is just natural to want to reminisce, like closing your eyes and remembering the beginning, experiencing the womb. I don’t have a lot of memories, but the ones that I do have are pivotal to who ‘I think’ I am today. Yeah, I know, I don’t really exist, but let’s just move on from that concept for now (no use beating a non-existent dead cow).

I guess I bring up the idea of who ‘I think’ I am for a reason. As it turns out, recently I ‘have’ been really trying to figure out who I actually am. We all go through these types of ‘soul searching’ events in our lives, some of which become new pathways and others that seem to grind us down even more. For instance, five years and four months ago, I moved to Israel from Boulder, Colorado. I had lived in Boulder for 15 years, steadily building a custom woodworking business. I had everything I could ever dream of wanting, but I was not happy or satisfied with life. Now, five and a half years later, after learning a new language, a new culture, a new religion, and a radically new way of life, I find that I am still grappling with the same problems, just a bit different, somehow...

Maybe it is because of being on such a crossroads in so many ways. I mean, so many things are in the process of seeing closure now. Take Gilad Shalit (sorry, poor choice of words) for instance. He was on a border patrol inside Israel and was captured at the beginning of the Second Lebanon War by tunneling terrorists, just two weeks after we moved to Israel. Seeing him returned was incredible. His kidnapping and subsequent imprisonment has been a constant reality to my experience living in Israel. As long as my family and I have been here, he has been denied his freedom, rotting in a tiny cell with no light and no outside communication. Now he is home with his family and friends, thank God!

Thanking God is a strange business as well. I had a conversation with a friend recently, in which I said that I was ‘absolutely’ positive that there is a God and that He runs the world, injecting His energy into it multiple times a second. I really do feel this is a fact, based on the learning that I have done in a variety of subjects, such as history, physics, and philosophy. Now, keep in mind that I am an artist, not a scientist, mathematician, or historian, but I really try hard to understand the nature of existence and, when combining all these subjects, it does seem to inextricably lead to the understanding that God runs the world.

So, why is it that I am so unsure and even somewhat depressed? During this time of Sukkot, we are supposed to be joyous; oh... maybe that is the issue... We are ‘supposed’ to be joyous. I mean, how do you force something like that, anyways? Being depressed is like being void of joy, just a vast empty space to be filled, which, of course, reminds me of how, in the beginning, the Universe was ‘void and formless.’ Everything in the Universe was compressed into something smaller than a mustard seed and then, all of a sudden, it expanded with a really ‘BIG BANG.’ Before the Universe had time to coalesce into anything, it was, yup, first void (empty) and then formless (a useless blob), as if the emptiness was filled in by some kind of form (which was still formless), eventually to take shape and resolve into the form of the Universe that we understand now.

If you think about it, ‘the beginning’ is the same process wherever you look. Think about the womb. This is a place that starts as only potential. It takes action (you know, like the birds and the bees…) to create life there. Once a life has begun, it is no longer void, but now has form. The form then grows and expands, physically, mentally, and spiritually, until it begins life again by becoming birthed into the physical world; the ultimate embodiment of pure potential and one of the biggest joys in life that can be had, I might add.

I was born on October 30th, 1962, which on the Hebrew calendar is Bet ve’Cheshvan, 5723 (celebrated on the same exact day this year!). But, why do we celebrate the beginning of potential anyways? After all, nothing has been achieved yet… Really, the celebration of a birthday should be for the moms in the world. My mom (if you have been following) is clinging to life now in a hospital bed on the opposite side of the planet from me. I recently unearthed some letters from her to her mother about me when I was a baby. Joy was very evident... Maybe that is what it is about. Not joy for the birthed, but joy for everyone, because of the birth.

The last blog entry I wrote, two weeks ago, developed the idea of how death is really a birth and therefore, the beginning and not the end (as well as pontificating on the nature of non-existence). Well, non-existence is not exactly what I mean. It is just a very different type of existence, kind of like life inside the womb, followed by birth into the physical world. This would be to say that when a soul is birthed into this world, it dies at the same time in Womb-world.

There are actually some ideas about what Womb-world is like. Of course, these ideas are similar to the ideas on the Spiritual world; you know… things like the Angel Gabriel, tucked into the womb with a soul that is growing there and whispering all the secrets of the Universe into the consciousness of the soul, only to remove that knowledge later as the transition to the physical world begins… Gilad, in a very week voice during an interview, said, "I thought I'd find myself in this situation for many years to come," when he was released from captivity. This must be what it is like to be born, to come into the world with no idea about anything, having been forced to forget it all and being left with a sense weariness after a long day’s work, but only emptiness to show for it. This must be the void, which, if God really does run the world, would have to be followed by the form; may it fit perfectly as we impress upon Gilad and his family the joy we ‘all’ feel at his return to the world of the living.

Blessings for a complete recovery and much joy in life to Gilad Shalit... home at last!

Chag Sumeach and Shabbat Shalom!!

Deciphering the Real World



Space and Time: Finite Reality is Born into Non-existence...

Having jetlag is like living in another dimension. I could swear that over the last week I saw rainbow trails in the air, as I turned my head this way and that. Often, my feet were behind me and reacted to my mind’s sluggish commands as if slung from a rubber-band-gun with all the sound effects reverberating in slow motion. I tried to work the day I returned from my emotion-filled flat-line adventure, only to find that it was like swimming under water fully dressed and wearing rubber galoshes. I know you have all experienced this—other dimensional feeling—whether from jetlag or other sorted endeavors; it reminded me of my youth, while exploring the cosmos from the confines of the straitjacket of physicality. It also reminds me of a few amazing occasions when I learned something about the Universe, while walking with a distant hazy view of the hills of Judea and Samaria, listening to Rabbi Ipod (R.I.P. Steve Jobs) and feeling like my feet were floating on a cushion of spiritual levity.

When I was young, I knew everything and I could honestly live forever, safe in that knowledge. Today, I can assure you that I have spent a good deal of time learning that I know nothing of the true nature of reality. You know how it goes, ‘the more you know, the less you know, and the more you want to know?’ Yeah… ignorance ‘is’ bliss, no matter how dumb you end up…

Seeing as this blog entry is the last of my year long flirt with tying in the weekly parsha, I feel a need to cover some of the knowledge that I have gained, leading me to the understanding that I know absolutely nothing in ever increasing amounts as I move through my life. Let’s try and cover some ground as quickly as possible and since you read (all of) the blog entries from the past year, you should have no problem keeping up. I broke it all down to 7 basic sections (because I like the number 7):

# 1. We don’t really exist. (1)

# 2. Quantum physics with a spattering of Rashi and Ramban, perfectly explain the six days of creation as written in Genesis, for the scientifically inclined mind. (2)

# 3. Finite reality, which doesn’t really exist, is a two dimensional reality in which each dimension contains its own sub-dimensions of a combination (or lack thereof) of space and time. (3)

# 4. We already possess the ‘original’ plan that God used to create Finite Reality; we just don’t necessarily know how to read it. (4)

# 5. Deciphering the plan is only the beginning; the ‘real’ in reality is ‘building’ Finite Reality, which is tough and confusing, because Finite Reality doesn’t really exist. (5)

# 6. In a world that doesn’t exist, the EGO and its cohorts rule (if you let them). (6)

# 7. Death is an inevitable part of Finite Reality, but since Finite Reality doesn’t exist, it cannot be and ‘is-not’ the end, which is the subject of today’s blog entry.

In this week’s parsha, V'Zot HaBracha (Deuteronomy 33-34), Moses knows he is going to die. This is not the same as wondering if and when you are going to die, but actually knowing it, as if God Himself told you so. Psychologically, we all ‘know’ that we are going to die ‘someday,’ but choose to bury that knowledge if we can get away with it. If a deadline (excuse the pun), however, is presented to us, it just seems to hit home all the more so. For instance, when my dad was given his death sentence from brain cancer, he started to try and change his life. I don’t think he was very pleased with the way he had lived it. Visiting his (very soon to be rectified) unmarked grave recently has brought back some of those memories, memories of his abrupt decline in physicality and rapid incline in spirituality at the end of his life. By the time he was ‘days before crossing over,’ he literally had one foot in each half of Finite Reality, the Physical World and the Spiritual World.

In our parsha of the week, Moses delivers a speech in his last words to the Israelites and bids his farewell with glorious blessings. Moses, knows that he is going to die and he is not afraid. This entire episode is meant to serve as an example for us all. Sure Moses had a direct relationship with the Creator, but if you think about it, we all do as well. We may be riding the pond ripples as opposed to a tsunami, but we can still feel the truth when we approach it. If we quiet our minds, we know! My dad, for instance, towards the end, was full of spiritual light. If you really concentrated, you could see his aura glow and he seemed almost to float off his sick-bed. His physical true-self was letting go, his Nephesh was starting to detach from the world. That was easy to see, but his spiritual self, his Neshama, was also letting go, which took a little more effort to notice. (7)

While visiting my mom last week on the other side of the planet, I wondered if she too was starting to let go. She’s a strong woman (well, parts of her personality are anyways) and at least said that she wanted to live, but she seemed so tired… Her mind appeared to be continually dreaming. When I looked at her while she slept, I felt that she was already flying beyond my (supposed) knowledge of this side of Finite Reality and into the next. She had surgery last week and now she is unable to speak. She isn’t moving either. I had the nurse hold the phone to her ear and spoke some encouraging words to her, but I don’t know if she heard them or not. Since I cannot see or hear her, I imagine her just like I saw my dad, with one foot in each side of Finite Reality. I hope and pray that her physical self pulls back from the spiritual side and attempts to put two feet on the physical ground, but time will tell.

The place between the Physical World and the Spiritual World is so hard to understand. In the Physical World there are consequences to our actions. In the Spiritual World there are no actions, only the consequences that we accumulated and carried over from the Physical World. Yom Kippur is around the corner and this is a day that we ride that line, between the Physical World and the Spiritual World. We starve our bodies of physical sustenance and fill our souls with a spiritual feast, the opposite, mostly, of what we do for 364 days a year.

Even though I wasn’t always accepted as a Jew in the world, this time of the year has always been a heavy time for me. I was born during this time. My little brother was also born during this time. My dad died during this time. My brother and his son were shot at while standing in their living room in California by a crazed hoodlum during this time. I converted to Judaism during this time. And now, my mom is in the hospital, riding that same line right now, during this time. This time is the place between the Physical World and the Spiritual World for Moses in our parsha of the week and this time also separates the last parsha in the Torah from the first parsha, Genesis, the beginning of Creation.

Let's go a little further. By adding an Infinite dimension to the Finite by tying the end of the Torah (also known as the Chumash or Pentateuch) (V'Zot HaBracha – Deuteronomy 33-34) together with the beginning (Bereishit – Genesis 1:1-6:8), we learn that the level we can reach on the Day of Yom Kippur is comparable to the level that Adam and Eve attained, prior to mucking up Finite Reality by eating from the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden. Yom Kippur is a day to balance the levels between the physical and the spiritual, the two halves of Finite Reality. According to Nachmanides, this is also the same level that we reach in the Messianic era. In this era, we will no longer have the option to follow the Yetzer Hara (Evil Inclination) and it will become an automatic instinct to follow the will of God. Free choice in moral and ethical matters will be automatically removed and we will all ‘know’ the true reality.

Yeah, I gotta shore up these ideas a little with gematria: The numerical value of the word Ha-Satan (The Satan or Evil Inclination) is 364. As you know, this number is one day short of the 365 days that we have in a solar year. This is how we know that on one day a year, on Yom Kippur, Satan does not prosecute us and therefore, we are bereft of the pitfalls of ethical and moral murkiness. As a matter of fact, the Midrash tells us that on Yom Kippur, the Satan actually defends us. The spiritual plane becomes on par with the physical plane, once again, though our efforts to create that perfect balance within Finite Reality, or more to the point, bringing into being the Garden of Eden, if only for a day…

Thanks to all the loyal Brave New Land followers for sticking with me over the past year, while I continued to learn how much I already don’t know!

Refua Shelemah to my mom,

Shana Tova,

Have an easy fast this Yom Kippur,

Gamar Chatima Tova,

And Shabbat Shalom!!


Notes:

1. Because we live in a finite world (everything with an end or edges including atomic particles and the entire Universe both in time and in space), it is impossible to deduce that at some point reality stops, as this would mean the end of our ability to perceive existence. The only way to explain our perceived existence is by becoming aware of the Infinite, something without borders, an Original Being or Ain Sof. And, because an Infinite Being can only be understood by finite beings from a finite perspective, i.e., everything, everyplace, and all the time, we (as in finite beings) don’t really have any reality to exist within. Yet, when we look around, we see something that, without a doubt, appears to exist; we must then assume that whatever this dimension is, it cannot be real in the true sense of reality. Therefore, if we perceive our own existence, it is only immaterial to the reality of the Universe that we believe we perceive and thus, un-real. In other words, we don’t really exist.

2. Time is an element of the Finite World; therefore, as the Universe expands from its central region, time is also being stretched. If we position ourselves at the center of the Universe and watch it expand away from us, we can mathematically formulate an exact calculation for the time dilation that occurred from the time of the Big Bang (or what the 12th Century Torah scholar Ramban wrote, “The entire Universe was once contained in a space no larger than a mustard seed,”) to our current state of time and space within the perceived Universe. With these calculations, we can ‘extremely’ accurately account for 6 days of creation, or simply put, a ‘day’ before the Sun (Sol) even exists, has nothing to do with the spin of the Earth. For more on this topic, refer to ‘Genesis and the Big Bang’ or ‘The Science of God’ by noted MIT Physicist, Dr. Gerald Schroeder.

3. Finite Reality is made up of two dimensions, the physical and the spiritual. Each is bound by its own finite rules. The physical world is made up of time and space, where the spiritual world is bound only to time. Each dimension, both the physical and the spiritual, have shared characteristics, such as waves; however, the physical dimension also contains particles. Light is a good example of this phenomenon, as in the physical world, light is both a wave ‘and’ a particle. In the spiritual realm it is only a wave, transmitting data through the cycling and recycling ‘conceptually’ upward spiral of time, without the baggage of space.

4. A Torah scroll is written with black ink on white parchment, but there is a rule that every letter must be completely surrounded by the parchment. This makes the white parchment an integral part of the Torah itself and incredibly enough, the white space around the letters is ‘actually’ considered a higher form of Torah then the letters themselves. The white space is analogous to the white fire of Mount Sinai, a hidden Torah that cannot be read in the normal way. This is why we already have the plan for the Universe, as God looked into the ‘Torah’ in order to create the Universe, but because the Torah is both the written and what the writing is on, it is impossible to understand the true depth of Torah, or the Universe, by reading only the black letters.

5. Building Finite Reality is based upon the principle of connecting the dots. Each construct in our Physical World connects to the next, via edges and sides that have physical and spiritual attributes. The way we effect change in this reality is by being active in the physical world, while not abandoning the spiritual. Larootz in Hebrew means To Run. The Physical World that we exist in is called Ha-Aretz or The-Land (The-Earth). The word ‘Aretz’ is based on the same root as the word for ‘Run’ and that is how we know that this world is the world of action. Shamayim in Hebrew means Heaven or the Spirit World. Its root is Sham (There). It is also the word for ‘Name’ as in “The Name (Ha-Shem),” referring to the unpronounceable Tetragrammaton. The point being that in order to build Finite Reality, we need to ‘Run’ to ‘There,’ ‘Run’ to ‘Hashem.’ This is broken down like this for a reason. You see, we are now in a world where we ‘can’ do something. When we pass over to the Spirit World, we have to let the cards lay where they landed. Ultimately this same principle applies to the Next World or Olam Haba as well. Once we are there, we are as close to the Creator, the One, the only Reality that there ever was, is, and will be, as we are ‘ever’ going to get.

6. The Ego tries, always, to make this non-existent world, Finite Reality, the real world. If we follow the Ego, we will exist ‘only’ in Finite Reality and cease to exist within the Infinite or the ‘ONE.’ To understand how the Ego rules in a reality that doesn’t exist, we need to break down the entire structure of the spiritual realm and understand how ‘we’ fit into this part of Finite Reality. This is a very complex endeavor, but one that I have explained somewhat within the bowels of this blog, so I will just leave it with these 15 main elements that, if you are truly seeking spiritual oneness or ultimate enlightenment, you should already be aware of: a. Gan Eden = The Garden of Eden or Complete World of Perfection b. Olam Ha Neshimote = The Spirit World c. Kachote = Forces that govern the Spirit World and the Physical World d. Malachim = Angels or agents that carry out tasks in the Spiritual and Physical Worlds e. Adam Ha Rishon = The Proto Adam, made of both Man and Woman f. Eze Kedegdo = The “Helper Against” or Chava (Eve), meaning Love g. Yetzer Ha Tov and Yetzer Ha Ra = Ego or lack thereof h. Nefesh = Our Animal Soul from the dust of the Earth i. Neshama = Our Human or Heavenly Soul that was blown into us by Hashem j. Ruach = Our Free Will or Soul / Spirit that chooses between the Nefesh and Neshama via the Ego or lack thereof k. Olam HaZe = The World of Action where our Ruach can operate l. Gehenom = Purgatory or the Cosmic Washing Machine that cleans our Neshama / Nefesh of the mistakes made by our Ruach when we pass over to the Spirit World / Sheol m. Sheol = The Abode of the Dead (also known as Hell or Lake of Fire) where our Nefesh (Animal Soul) goes to wait until Olam Haba is manifest n. Mashiach = Human Being that is the Savior in the World of Action to usher in Olam Haba o. Olam Haba = The Next World or the world that will be

7. Click here for link to the blog entry entitled, “My Dad and the Beit Din”