Hod she’b Chesed
Day Five of Week 1:Humility in Love
You can often get locked in love and be unable to forgive your beloved or to bend or compromise your position. Hod introduces the aspect of humility in love; the ability to rise above yourself and forgive or give in to the one you love just for the sake of love even if you're convinced that you're right. Arrogant love is not love.
Know that the ability to love comes from a greater, higher place; from G-d. Swallow your pride and reconcile with a loved one you have quarrelled with.
Today we explore Chesed, Lovingkindness, the expression of Love’s energies, reflected through Hod, Glory, the container that shines with the beauty of these energies. Hod represents physical form, that which limits the expression of life energy at Netzach. The sefirot for today radiate through the body from the right shoulder to the left hip.
The Universal expresses Itself in the material world. That Which Is
Without Limit manifests through that which is always limited. We, who span both realities, seek our balance between the two.
How often we grow confused between what is real and what is not real. We cherish the form, the container and glorify that. We forget that its true meaning derives from that which is not material that it contains. Having forgotten the Truth that is at the core, we worship and create shells which dissolve before our very eyes.[1]
Focusing on these external forms, we expend much energy striving to shore them up without attending to the essence that in fact is their real beauty, their glory. We ourselves cannot help but become caught in this dilemma. The form that holds the Spirit of Love and Light always reflects that beauty, but only when we honour it for what it truly is. The challenge of Hod in Chesed is just this kind of remembering where that beauty really resides.
Reflections
This is not easy to achieve. But it is a worthwhile goal.
Footnotes
Just as we need to learn to balance our bodies by working with both our right and our left legs, until we find the harmony within to enable us to stand and then to walk. ↩︎