Putting it Back Together

With Mount Sinai hovering above, Hashem places the choice before us.  

Accept the Torah, a life of redemption and spirituality, and if not, be buried where you stand.

What does this have to do with today?

שם תהא קבורתכם, You will be buried in that place.  Everyday, we are faced with a choice.  Sometimes it becomes totally clear that Hashem is real, and that there is a definite purpose to creation that we can almost taste.  This can be a terrifying moment for people who come to this realization.  We are all afraid of the unknown, unsure of how to really tranform ourselves, and afraid to fail in the effort to do so.  Yet we are all made aware at times, of the Truth.  It could come from a silent moment of contemplation, a deep niggun, a piece of torah that penetrates our core, a warm breeze.  We carry this God Awareness at all times deep inside, and occasionally, no matter where we are, it manifests itself outwardly.  This is the moment of the mountain hovering above us.  Everything is Clear.

If we retreat in fear and don't cross the line in the sand that faces us, 

שם תהא קבורתכם , a piece of you will be buried at that moment.  We will carry that brokenness around and always be affected by the   שם - where we felt something so real, but couldn't move forward with it.

Rav Nachman teaches that when a person is on a path of spiritual connection and growing closer to Torah and Hashem, they will face many "friendly faces" who seek to undermine that person's newly found conciousness.  These "Friends" (friends, parents, family)  encourage us with comments like "Live in the Real World"  "This isn't who you are"  " This isn't real".  Rav Nachman explains that anyone who does this has been at a point in their own lives where the mountain hovered over and they felt deeply what was real and what was a mirage.  At that point, they walked away.  Every person who has embraced Jewish Spiritual Torah life awakens the old pain in the person who never was able to do so.  They can't tolerate to see someone who " swallowed the blue pill" and entered the matrix.  So, they criticize and try to devalue.

We all have flashes of inspiration and realization.  The moment of acceptance is not a singular moment in time.

Hashem is giving the Torah again every day.  Meaning that each day we have the ability to summon the courage to embrace and accept that which we weren't able to previously.  Mount sinai is an unkown location because it wasn't an isolated moment in time.   Its happening right now.

Redemption can happen to a single person.  Every Jewish life is a microcosm of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, may it be built speedily in our days.  Perhaps this is the meaning of how we end the Silent Amidah every day.  The Silent Amidah is a moment of God Consciousness that we can either bring down into our lives or walk away from.  At it's conclusion we say                ושם נעבדך ביראה. And There we will serve you.  We are recognizing that we can get back to the ושם of שם תהא קבורתכם,  The place where we once walked away from, that we have been silently crying over for all of these year, and we can fix it.

May we be blessed with the courage to embrace our destiny, live according to our inner awareness, and together merit the fulfillment of the prayer

שיבנה בית המקדש במהרה בימינו ותן חלקינו בתורתך ושם נעבדך ביראה.