חסד
Chesed
Lovingkindness; Mercy, Love, Kindness; Expansion
Transformation through Love
Love is the single most powerful and necessary component in life. Love is the origin and foundation of all human interactions. It is both giving and receiving. It allows us to reach above and beyond ourselves. To experience another person and to allow that person to experience us. It is the tool by which we learn to experience the highest reality – G-d. In a single word: love is transcendence.
This first week of the journey we focus on opening ourselves to receive from the Fountain of Love, and to be nourished.
Kindness in Love
I take moments of quiet each day this week to appreciate more fully the nature of my experience. I allow myself to expand into the omnipotent and abundant flow of Life behind each feeling I find. This week I embrace the abundant outpouring of possibility.
The Sefirah on the Tree of Life
Chesed is also known as Gedulah, which means “largesse” or “greatness”. It is the place in which the energies are expressed through unconditional giving, allowing everything to form, and flourish. Just like the Sun that always shines upon everything on earth, the tall and the short, the good and the evil. Chesed presents an abundant flow of that which is not yet differentiated into specifics.1
Name of G-d
is El,
אֵל
Traditionally, El reflects the Universal attributes of Compassion and Mercy. At Chesed is the ever-flowing, ever-providing, ever-sustaining energy of unlimited abundance and possibility. Each feeling we experience is itself a shell containing the unlimited flow of Divine Energy. Open yourself to the abundance of that offering, beginning the to experience more fully the flow of Life that is always available to us.
Chesed presents the abundant flow of that which is not yet formed into specific feelings. It is the sefirah on the Tree of Life where the energies expand without limit.
Meditation for the First Week at Chesed
We begin without a clear image of where we wish to be. From a place of bondage, it is not possible to know the Promised Land. Mitzrayim, as the ancient kingdom of Egypt, represents our enslavements, both internal and external. The true slave is the one who believes in his enslavement, and thus his enslavement becomes self-enslavement. In order to find freedom to express what we are, we need to believe in the message of freedom. As long as we are bound in negative statements, whether self-to-self or self-to-other, and negative messages about the world, we remain slaves in Mitzrayim, which manifests as a place of stuckness.
From this place of limitation, this place of contraction, it is not possible to know the goal which appears only through self-expansion. Every time we think we know from the level of our difficulties the answer to our problems, we discover the resolution to be preciously short-lived.
Our journey thus begins with Chesed, the sefirah of ever-flowing, over-flowing, energies of life. This week in Chesed, we honour this energy with which we are nourished.
This Energy is the force that is the impulse contained in each event. The greater the impact, the greater the Energy it contains. But there is nothing in you great enough to contain that Energy. Each feeling, each thought, each memory can only hold a piece of it.
I acknowledge the abundant outpouring of potential this week. I acknowledge all my feelings this week, honouring the energy they contain. I embrace the energy of each feeling, with the feeling of that energy behind all awareness.
Reflections
I am the channel through which the energies of the Creator of the Universe, blessed be His Name, flow. I am aware of His potential within me to bring blessing. Today my physical energy are nourished by the Spirit of Love which is the manifestation of HaShem’s compassion and mercy, May His Name be remembered forever.
Next → Transformation through Love
Footnotes
The sefirot of force, on the right side of the Tree express energy before it separates into the polarities brought about through particular forms or specific expressions. ↩︎