Judaic Mysticism is the Way of Holiness.
Judaic Mysticism is called Kabbalah. The most important Medieval Jewish philosopher, Maimonides, famously summarised the Divine relation to Creation:
“The foundation of all foundations, and the pillar of all wisdom is to know that there is God who brought into being all existence. All the beings of the heavens, and the earth, and what is between them came into existence only from the truth of God’s being.“
THE WISDOM OF THE RABBIS
Everything that God,
the source and substance of all,
creates in this world
flows naturally from the essence
of God’s divine nature.
Creation is not a choice
but a necessity.
It is God’s nature
to unfold time and space.
Creation is the extension of God.
Creation is God encountered in time and space.
Creation is the infinite in the garb of the finite.
To attend to creation is to attend to God.
To attend to the moment is to attend to eternity.
To attend to the part is to attend to the whole.
To attend to Reality is to live constructively.
~ Pirke Avot 6:2
Shimon ben Gamliel said:
I grew up among the Sages.
All my life I listened to their words.
Yet I have found nothing better than silence.
Study is not the goal, doing is.
Do not mistake “talk” for “action.”
Pity fills no stomach.
Compassion builds no house.
Understanding is not yet justice.
Whoever multiplies words causes confusion.
The truth that can be spoken
is not the Ultimate Truth.
Ultimate Truth is wordless,
the silence within the silence.
More than the absence of speech,
More than the absence of words,
Ultimate Truth is the seamless being-in-place
that comes with attending to Reality.
~ Pirke Avot 1:17
THE CHAIN OF BEING
God is unified oneness–one without two, inestimable. Genuine divine existence engenders the existence of all of creation. The sublime, inner essences secretly constitute a chain linking everything from the highest to the lowest, extending from the upper pool to the edge of the universe.
There is nothing–not even the tinest thing–that is not fastened to the links of this chain. Everything is catenated in its mystery, caught in its oneness. God is one, God’s secret is one, all the worlds below and above are all mysteriously one. Divine existence is indivisible.
The entire chain is one. Down to the last ink, everything is linked with everything else; so divine essence is below as well as above, in heaven and on earth. This is nothing else.
~ Moses de Leon
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