The Lubavitcher Rebbe, one of the great sages of the modern era, explains that the concept of Sefirat HaOmer is a 49-day process of refining the darkness of the world.
This is a journey that I have wanted to share for a long time. It is based on the book by Rabbi Ted Falcon, called A Journey of Awakening: 49 Steps from Enslavement to Freedom. It is “a Guide for Using the Kabbalistic Tree of Life in Jewish Meditation”. It also includes pieces and excepts from Simon Jacobson’s “Counting the Omer” to provide a more orthodox perspective, as well as “Seven Weeks of Transformation” by Shimona Tzukernik from which a deeper, more humanistic, interpretation of the seven sefirot that we are using for our 50 day journey from slaves to sovereign beings.
I will add more material as this evolves.
Meditation
This is a process of meditative possibilities, an invitation to deepen your awareness of the nature of your being. Meditation is a path toward that which is universal in human experience. And while that universal awareness transcends any particular religious or spiritual path, an authentic path is tremendously supportive of the journey.
In Jewish tradition, as in all authentic spiritual paths, meditation forms a strong foundation supporting the journey to more spiritual awareness. It has often been said that prayer involves talking to God (whatever one’s conception of that Being), and meditation involves listening to God. Meditation provides an avenue through which we become available for a more inclusive awareness of our relationship to ourselves, to each other, and to our world.
Some meditative techniques, such as those that focus on the breath itself, or on the continual flow of awareness in the conscious mind, are shared by many traditions. There are two Hebrew words that are used to mean “meditation” each expressing a particular path. Hitbon’nut, best translated “contemplation,” actually means "to look into”, or observe, oneself. Hitbod’dut, usually translated “meditation”, literally means “being alone with oneself”.
Jewish meditation springs from the culture, traditions, texts, and rituals of Judaism. Whereas Hindu meditations might focus on a word in the Sanskrit language, Hebrew, as well as Jewish images, language, yearly cycle, history, and symbols provide the grounding for Jewish meditation.
Specific meditative techniques help us direct our attention rather than simply allowing our minds to run away with us. As we focus, the mind tends to relax a little, and we slow down enough to hear its restless thoughts. As we develop the capacity to witness these creations without judgement, and without getting caught up in any particular image or story, we begin to appreciate that we are far more than the functioning of our minds. We have thoughts, but we are not our thoughts. We have stories, but we are not our stories. Through meditation, a more inclusive relationship begins to awaken. These fruits of meditation flower on the other side of words. Meditation opens us to spaces of knowing always greater than the words that attempt to describe them.
The Basic Shape of this Meditative Process
The meditations in this text are based on the energies of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. This “tree” is made up of ten sefirot, or facets—also referred to as emanations—reflecting the ways reality unfolds from the least manifest state of being to become the world as we know it. We begin with an introduction to these ten levels. Then we focus on the lower seven sefirot as they are utilised for the 49-day process of spiritual expansion called the Counting of the Omer.
In Jewish tradition, the Omer period marks the literal 49 days between the festivals of Passover and Shavuot in the spring1 of each year. Passover, called Pesach in Hebrew, presents narratives of an ancient Exodus when the Hebrew People made their way from enslavement toward freedom, and represents the ever-present challenge of stepping out from personal places of stuckness and limitation toward greater awareness and responsibility. The festival of Shavuot (literally, “Weeks”) occurs seven weeks later, when we stood at the foot of the mountain called Sinai to receive the Revelation of G-d we call Torah.
This seven-week period probably also existed to honour an agricultural rhythm beginning with the spring barley harvest and concluding with the later harvest of wheat. The Bible indicates that on the Shabbat following Passover (interpreted by the early rabbis to mean the second day of Passover), a sheaf of barley (in Hebrew, an omer) is waved, and then the 49 days that lead to the later harvest are counted.
As time went on, these days of Omer counting which were related to the historical journey of our ancestors from enslavement toward freedom, during the mystical expansion of the sixteenth century these 49 days were recognised as a paradigm for personal renewal and spiritual awakening. Spiritual awakening is begins with the process of releasing ourselves from our inner enslavements to old patterns, old definition of self, old beliefs.2 At the end of the series of 49 meditative readings and focus phrases, there are meditations of culmination. When used during the actual Omer period, they occur on Shavuot.
Whenever in the year you take the journey, and do the 49 day practice, these concluding meditations will help complete a process of opening more fully and grounding your awakening that you might better translate your spiritual awareness into clearer and more truthful and compassionate action in the world. Kabbalah and its teaching in general provide another language and approach with which to interpret the world.
Omer Tradition
Whether or not you use these meditations during the actual Omer period, the seven weeks between Passover and Shavuot, they provide an invitation into a process of personal expansion. Spiritual awakening depends more on an “allowing” than it does on a “trying”. Meditation encourages a deepening of this posture of allowing ourselves to appreciate the integrity of our own being as we discover the deeper nature of the Being we share.
One of the clearest and most enduring paradigms of spiritual awakening in the Jewish mystical tradition is represented by the ancient journey from the enslavement in Egypt to the awakening of Revelation at Sinai. The steps in this process are reflected in the 49 days between Passover and Shavuot, the Feast of Weeks, which commemorates the receiving of the Ten Commandments while standing at Sinai—often referred to as “The Revelation at Sinai”.
The word “Egypt” in Hebrew is Mitzrayim, signifying “narrow places,” or “places of contraction and stuckness.” Internally, this stuckness refers to times in which we are caught in our lesser identities and are, indeed, limited by our contracted consciousness. From that place we are not available to hear the greater teaching. The tight or stuck places for which Mitzrayim (Egypt) is a metaphor exist within the self, to be discovered and released as we grow.
This metaphor describes a journey in which all spiritual seekers engage. Many have noted that it is far simpler to get the person out of Egypt than it is to get the Egypt out of the person. While we might at first imagine that we are enslaved by others, and by events in the outer world, during the early stages of a spiritual process it becomes increasingly clear that the responsibility for our experience and our evolution is our own.
Unfolding of Awareness
This realisation always opens from the inside out and, in the very telling, we tend to gradually replace the actual lived realisation with the story we tell about it. Our tendency is to about these moments but actually avoid the lived moment in Itself.
Through this series of contemplations, you are invited to move beyond words so that you might taste what mystics through the ages have attempted to convey. It provides you with support for the deeper exploration of your own journey of awareness as you become more familiar with some of the key concepts of this mystical tradition while engaging in your inner explorations. The meditations invite you to engage directly in the Awakening that is our birthright.
The text follows the 49-day paradigm developed in the Kabbalah based on that ancient biblical journey. At Sinai, we are available for what we cannot hear from the places of our stuckness. At Sinai, we open ourselves to the deeper truths of our own beings, and to the deeper Reality of the One Being we share.
In this text you will find readings for each of the seven weeks of this process, followed by daily meditations adding the unique energies of each day. Weekly and daily focus phrases provide steps along a meditative path toward self-awakening.
No matter what your previous experience with meditation or with spiritual process, this text is designed to support your growing. If you like, you can turn to any page in the text and begin there. Or you may use the introduction to the framework of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life to help you further understand how the meditative focus for each day emerges, and to guide you on your own journey to that place of hearing.
Here, then, is a handbook to support the unfolding of your greater Awareness.
Meditation Journal
To maximise your ability to appreciate your own development, keep a meditative journal. This record of your meditations can be extremely supportive of your process, allowing you to recognise changes in your awareness. Note your experiences, your perceptions, and your feelings. Record moments of resistance as well as those of release, blockages as well as insights. Regular journaling can help us remain conscious and provide a natural way to review growth and celebrate deeper aspects of our being.
During the various weeks of this journey, you will be asked to consider your intentions. What is it you wish to release and what is it you wish to enhance in your world? What is it you wish to discover, or realise you have discovered? What is you wish to actualise? We advise you record your responses.
An intention, or kavvanah, provides a channel through which energy can flow. Our goals and purposes in life, when made specific, serve as beacons toward which we move, and provide criteria with which to determine how far we have come and how far we have yet to go. Without clear intentions, our energy tends to be fragmented, and our personal evolution is slowed. Awareness of our individual intentions begins the process of choosing more significant intentions for our relationships, our families, our communities, and our world. The most helpful intentions follow from an understanding of the fuller nature of our current experience in the world as well as from the direction in which we choose to travel.
A journey which has clear intentions helps manifest those intentions. Explore your goals as your journey continues, and state them as affirmations along with those already presented here. Write your goals as if you already had them. Visualise yourself coming into the “land” of your greater vision.
Using this Text
While you can turn immediately to the meditations in this text, the following information will provide grounding for a more fruitful experience.
This guide is designed to allow the greatest flexibility possible while at the same time sustaining a clear focus on a process of authentic spiritual growing. It provides an invitation to personal spiritual expansion that can be used at any time. You can count back fifty days from a particularly significant moment that is approaching, like a wedding ceremony, birthday, or anniversary, and use the process to encourage greater wakefulness leading to that time. Some have used it to prepare for surgeries, or to support physical healing. Still others have found it helpful to simply open the text at random and “check-in” to the energies and meditations that they discover there.
Footnotes
This non-matching of the seasonal festivals and celebrations of our faith is something that those of us that live in the Southern Hemisphere struggle with. How do we celebrate a harvest festival when it is autumn. If I take the Omer as being a universal story of being released from the bondage of the winter, how do I deal with the fact that we are entering our period of winter bondage? ↩︎
By old, I would take it to mean those beliefs, patterns and self-definitions — especially of the limiting kind — that no longer serve you. ↩︎