Urban Guru your inspired guide to urban living

Had a real [experiential] (almost life altering) epiphany the other day.

All i did was add a prefix to every thing i thought about touched, felt experienced

the prefix was ‘divine’

and my divine-hand divinely-touched the divine-touch brush … etc… this almost joking play continued for a few minutes, and then it dawned on me, and i was stuck naked, in divine awe of; the divine i was in - the divine i am - the divine created illusion that we are journeying in and i both cried and laughed at the same time – the light was blinding.

Like a rabbit in front of oncoming headlights, I froze, grateful, humbled, unable to move, aware of being in the presence of the divine, that every moment a huge amount of energy was being provided to recreate every moment, a huge amount of love and patience. But that the divine, was not out there somewhere in some alternate (higher) consciousness, but right here, right now.

This was not like my previous ‘mystical’ experiences of loosing myself in the ONE, or the dissolving of self in the oneness of the universe. Here I was stuck in self but realising that everything, including my ‘self’ was actually divine.

One of the most important theologically charged statements in the Bible, which is recited perhaps 4-5 times a day by the Observant Jews is the ‘Shema’.

the first word of the Shema - is the word Shema - and it simply means LISTEN!!!

It itself is a profoundly important and potentially life altering message from the author of the Bible - Moses - God etc..

The primary theological step we are compelled by the Shema is to learn how to listen.

(Loosely paraphrasing the Previous Lubavitcher Rebbe:) ‘Listening means having room in oneself for another, for Other, internal; mental, emotional and spiritual space for the existence of another being and another opinion, even one that is completely different to your own.’

The ‘Ethics of our Fathers’ teaches us ‘who is wise those that learn from everyone’.

Then they go on to say that anyone you learn from you must treat them with the same respect that you would the Divine Presence!

The point is, each and every human being has something to say about theology, and Jews, by virtue of their ontologically divine nature (according to the Alter Rebbe - every Jew is a part of God [although God doesn’t have parts]) have something to say about Jewish theology no matter their religious affiliation, level of intellectual honesty or otherwise.

Kabbalah is the mystical tradition found within Judaism, it is said to be as old as civilization itself, it is the myth of a science as old as time, an understanding of life that pre-dates the Bible by some 3000 years.

It is a mystical understanding of the nature of the world and the nature of Self, that helps you to successfully navigate your way through life and the world.

In truth Kabbalah is a whole bunch of ideas that a wide group of people over thousands of years have thought about and contributed to, some were a little wacky and others were pure dam genius!

And although some things may sound strange at first, the more you hear them, and begin to understand them, the easier they are to comprehend and the more they appear ‘pure genius’.

It is said that Kabbalah contains the existential secrets of the universe!

The first Kabbalistic ‘book’ is said to have been taught to Adam in the Garden of Eden by God, sworn to secrecy and quietly passed from Master to pupil from one generation to the next, where the ancient academies learnt these Kabbalistic teachings.

These teaching were eventually passed on to Abraham and then Moses, from Moses to the Men of the Great assembly and from teacher to student in the Talmudic era, up to and including Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai, who, tradition has it, taught and wrote the ‘Zohar’, as you’ll learn, one of the most important of Kabbalistic works.

Then to Abraham Abulafia, the influential 13th century mystic (who believed that the study of Kabbalah could induce states of personal redemption) and later to Rabbi Yitzchak Luria expounded the Zohar’s deepest meanings.

Then it passed to Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov the founder of Hassidism and to many his disciples. It has remained the secret knowledge of the initiated, that is, until now.

Kabbalah is Judaism’s secret science, and it is the most important, relevant and interesting Jewish stuff you’ll have come across in ages.

The nature of these ideas means that, you might need to go away and think about them for a while, before they really sink into your head.

Why is Kabbalah Dangerous?

Kabbalah is a philosophy of the nature of Humanity, God and the Cosmos. It is a science of the art of living. It is a path though life, a knowing and enchanting dance between the spiritual and physical. It shows you how to live in complete balance, to live successfully and fully. It can empower you to be at peace with yourself, and to magically transform the world around you. It is a way of seeing and understanding the world that, compels you to find meaning in every moment of everyday.

All the great Jewish thinkers have studied Kabbalah and its teachings have influenced every part of Judaism, yet it has for the most part remained the secret knowledge of the initiated, that is, until now.

The reason why it the Kabbalah has been passed from master to pupil from generation to generation and why there are so few genuine books on Kabbalah is quite simple but extremely profound, and it’s all about effective communication.

When you talk to someone face to face, there is an opportunity for real communication, to can see if the other person is really understanding what you are getting at, and you can adjust your language, tone and hand movements accordingly to help them understand. However, a book is not a dialogue, it is a monologue, it’s me talking at you and not with you, and there is no opportunity for hand movements and gestures, how are you supposed to ‘get’ what it is I’m talking about if you can’t see my hand movements and I can see your bemused face?

The real danger with a book is that, not only will the reader misunderstand and misinterpret what the author meant, but also worse still the book gains some ‘holy’ or ‘sacred’ status and everything in it becomes the open to a more literal interpretation. Or ever worse becomes the rhetoric and dogma of a new ‘religion’, which actually goes against the original intent of the author, which is to help them become more free and happy and discover their own inner teacher, and not enslave them to someone else’s ideas, words and mystical poetry.

There is however, good reason why its teachings have been so closely guarded, over the passed 6000 years. The Sages warn that if the Kabbalah falls into the wrong hands, it could cause madness, destruction and evil.

If the truth be known, even to this day the true secrets of Kabbalah have been shielded from the less initiated, the deeper and more dangerous Kabbalah, remains a mystery to most, and an unspoken subject of the secret Masters of Kabbalah.

Kabbalah in a sense like Rocket Science or Nuclear Physics it is very powerful – but only if put into practice. Likewise without the right type of safety precautions or ideological or ethical maturity it can be very dangerous, not just for the person involved but (believe it or not) for the entire cosmos.

With the ideas contained in this website you have the ability to open a door not only in your mind but they have the power to rip open an alternate gateway within the very fabric of reality itself.

However, this is only if you actually put the knowledge you learn here into practice, otherwise it might just end up being another bookmarked website or rss feed, but unless you take these ideas seriously - you’ll still be living the same relatively superficial and spiritually unrealised life you were before you read this infomation, which would be a big shame, since this might be your last incarnation!?

But it is also ‘dangerous’ on an other level – if you’re scared of being truly happy, of living a profoundly meaningful life, of living your dreams, of taking responsibility for your actions, if you are scared of the divine potential you innately possess – to be yourself and to radically and permanently positively effect the whole world – then this book is dangerous – dangerous because it works – dangerous because it puts the entire responsibility of your life and the future of the world squarely in your own hands - right now!

Stop running Way From Yourself !

I’ve always been puzzled by young, intelligent, movers and shakers in the Jewish community upping and moving to Israel, it seems so dualistic, and short sighted.

The primary motive they cite is that they don’t feel comfortable in the Diaspora and that they feel really Jewish in the Land of Israel even if they don’t keep any of the religious laws etc… What’s up with that?

Surely if you were more comfortable with your own identity why would you need to move to a country with millions of other people just like you? If your cultural identity is so important, why don’t you do something about it here and now? Why do you think that nationalism or in deed a ‘Holy land’ – where you can be yourself is really going to solve your deep problems?

The question isn’t just about Jews and Israel, its about all of us, why do we think that over there, in some distant future things are going to be ok, if I only had this or that, that then

I’d be happy? If I lived in a big house, or a small house, drove this car, or had that job, money, if I only had a boyfriend of girlfriend, a cat or a baby then all my troubles would be over?

In the messianic era the kabbalists teach us that the Holiness of the Holy of Holies will spread to the whole of the temple mount, that the Holiness of the Temple will encompass the Whole of Jerusalem, the Holiness of Jerusalem will spread to the entire biblical land of Israel and the Holiness of the Holy Land will spread throughout the entire world.

The Whole world will become as Holy as the Holy land.

Some great Kabbalists go further – they claim that the holiness of the Holy of Holies will in fact be accessible to each and every individual that the land we are standing on might be ‘Israel’ but we are in deed the Holy of Holies.

What i’m saying is that, happiness is not found outside of yourself. If you push off, happiness and bliss to some future time, you are destined always to be unhappy and miserable.

Also that the Messianic Era is here and now, it is a state of mind a state of enlightened being, one that is accessible now.

That running towards a better future, doesn’t always work, ‘progress’ is sometimes fuelled by stupidity, greed and emptiness.

Real spiritual, and personal progress comes from a place of contentment, happiness and a desire to spread that around.

Can you see the difference?

Separating the World from God is Suicide !

The Ethics of the Fathers teaches that ‘If you are learning and meditating on God and you stop to look at a beautiful tree or a beautiful field you forfeit your life.’ That to me has always seemed a little harsh coming from the bastions of morality. Thankfully however, the great Kabbalist Rabbi Yaakov Yosef of Polnoye explains this teaching slightly differently, he says:

‘If one is learning and meditating on God and one stops – that is, one makes a distinction and does not continue to learn – when one looks at a beautiful tree, or field then you forfeit your life. If you do not see the divine within the world you subsequently make a separation between the holy and mundain then the separation you have made, separates you from the source of all life.’ “

I am a pissed off peaceful person, I don’t think that I can have a more honest reaction or approach to the nature of being human and particularly being Jewish in this day. I have a pure soul, I was a baby, and am still in many way, naive and confused about what exactly this experience, that everyone seemed to have so comfortable eased them selves into, called life, I found so utterly alien.

I still look at my hand, move my fingers and really wonder, what the hell, how can I do that? And what a weird trip to be in the world, to be alive, my underlying voice, is one of wonder, acceptance and confusion. I am always willing to say I’m wrong, to listen, to hear. I realise that I alone can never have all the answers, that truth, whatever that is, is something that is a collective reality. ‘An accurate description of what is.’ I feel in someway passive to this experience, it’s almost as if I’m just along for the ride, looking as a child, in a perpetual state of not knowing. Whatever it is I do know is just a small piece of the whole, and probably corrupted and misinterpreted by my own personal perception and crippling life experiences, that must undeniably filter and colour my view of what is.

Where have I been? in my search for my self, in search of some sense, trying to make sense, of this world, make sense of my life and experience of what is.

From early on I was attracted to ideas that tried to make sense of the whole thing, being Jewish, I liked to explore Judaism’s more mystical teachings, and my pure an holy soul, with honest and truthful yearning, lusted after a life that made sense, a life full of meaning, a life that had answers.

And for a moment or two I did find peace, or something similar to peace, being so preoccupied with doing what God wants, that I didn’t have a moment to think about anything, that I momentarily lost, that special twinkle in my eye, that wonder why. I lost myself in the undercover of God’s world, killing myself to be, this pure and pious Jew, to rebecome, a myth of a soul transcendent, embodied.

I dissolved myself in the rich velvet, of smothering, intoxicating Jewish mysticism. Unable to breathe, for dusty books, of messianic longing, entangled in my souls desire for a global utopia, to become the servant of Moshiach Consciousness. To mend this broken world, shattered shards of God’s divine light, redeemed and whole.

But as I learnt and internalised as best I could, the teaching of the Messiah Himself, The New Torah, my body and mind lifted themselves up from where they thought they had been. From this new place I could see much further, had begun to taste the future. He had glimpsed me a taste of truly forbidden fruits, of ideas so tempting, so utterly dangerous that the very fabric of everything I even thought I may have known, seemed to unravel itself at the seams.

He taught me things that I dared not utter, things and signs that blinded me, with its dark light. A whirlpool of maddening darkness, so utterly dark that it shimmered and shone.

Madness, everyone thinks I must be mad, to call the Rebbe a heretic, because the Rebbe is a righteous man, a Ztadik, and I just a mad, sad and stupid idiot – who, by my own admission, doesn’t know anything.

So my Rebbe is a smiling, Cheshire cat, Buddha-like Jewish heretic, he is my Rebbe, not anyone else’s, but mine. They say the Rebbe is a mirror and you see who you really are, call the Rebbe whatever you want, he is you.
But nonetheless, he showed me things that I, on my own could have never seen or even imagined.

It has been a long journey, so far close to fifteen years of trying to make sense of what the Rebbe said, what he meant, and how and who I am supposed to be and do with it.

I’m not intolerant, just slightly impatient, some things are so clear to me that I get frustrated when otherwise intelligent people show an absolute stupidity towards things.

Obviously every lunatic fanatic thinks that they are right, they are correct, that what they believe is so simple and so utterly obvious, and I’m probably no different.

They say that the Torah of Moses is Hevel (Breath/Nothing/Vanity) compared to the Torah of Moshiach. This I know from personal experience is true.

So much more to say, some other time…

We are sleeping giants,

Formed from dust by the great sky,

Our souls are more powerful than angels,

Our bodies shine brighter than the sun,

Our dreams now our destiny!

Every moment we’re born new!

Children with innocent eyes, hearts, minds wide open, lives of unlimited possibilities.

It’s our choice to be the same as before or to change.

Classic Cartesian views of reality have fallen away from my sight, effervescent, oscillating glittering fireworks of divine energy pulsating so fast that, it appears to be joined up,

each gap in the in-between of coming into existence from the source of nothingness, seems to be longer than the next, where the possibility of falling through the silence between frames seems all the more possible.

who brings every minuscule of existence into being in complex shapes and constructs? into existence every moment. we do. the very essence of being co-directing my own ‘reality’ every moment from the absolute blank nothingness of pre-existent reality (gOD),

I choose to remember, to perceive, to be the person’ality that i seem to be, moments are disjointed, the force which brings into being, literally ‘creates’ existence, my existence, is my true self, not me, but me, us, you, I, my me, your you.

Our culturally conditioned worldview is merely a shell, a shallow wrapping, which simplifies, sterilises, contaminates the eyes that see. I have chosen to come into existence, to flesh myself, to become body, to embody, to flesh out my dreams, our dream, to explore, and discover who I am.

I am the great unknown. the thick darkness that separates you from me, me from me. The great unknown that will always remain so utterly hidden that we never become aware of it’s existence, it is the unknown that fills the in-betweens, each dot of energy, from between this point and that, the silence between notes.

It is the thickness of unknowing that keeps us apart, that keeps us happy in our bliss, our everydayness, in the lightness of being.

spiritual - means beyond time and space - and what we normally see as physical, isn’t actually physical it is in fact beyond time and space, by virtue of its (multiple) quantum oscillating core. It comes in and out of existence 10×26 per second.

Blessings are metered by OUR ability to receive, not the Universes ability to give. It’s almost like, the Universe would like to give us everything but it is us that says no.

In some sense, as a friend suggested, sometimes it’s our ‘personality’ which gets in the way of blessings. And that sometimes we need to let go of our selves, put our sense of ‘Self’ to one side to simply allow God’s blessings into our lives.

Some say that we have to make a “vessel” a way and a path, for the Universe to bless us. But I believe, more important than the creation of a mere ‘vessel’ or conduit of divine blessing, we ourselves, must become spiritually able and willing to receive blessing into our hearts and into our lives.

The questions we are forced to ask are; are we open enough, receptive enough, willing enough to allow the divine to give us everything and more? Are we ready to accept bliss into our every moment of our lives?!!!?

Say to yourself; “I’m sorry for having previously been a barrier to receiving blessings, I forgive you for the past, I now allow you to accept all blessings into your heart with joy and love. I allow the source of all blessings to flow through me, so that peace is my very being and the abundance of blessing my inheritance!”

Escape from the city, and from the humdrum and stresses of everyday life…

Sometimes we all need to escape from the din of city living, step outside of our everyday selves and reassess the way we live, to help us gain new and different perspective on our lives.

Our Weekend ‘Shabbaton’ Urban Guru Retreat is the perfect time and place to do this as it’s entirely dedicated to your personal spiritual growth and development. It is an ideal chance to breathe and focus on becoming more relaxed, spiritualy centred and balanced. It is an opportunity to reassess your life, discover your souls path, and a chance to focus on cultivating your own happiness, inner joy and peace of mind. So when you do return to your life you can begin to live it on a higher plane, were you can be more focussed, calm, and alive.

Urban Guru Retreats, usually take place over a weekend (or Shabbaton) Friday - Sunday, in a converted farm near Buxton in the Peak Park UK. They are very laid back and relaxing, the weekend is a mixture of lectures and workshops, focusing on wide variety of themes.

This included workshops in various forms of Kabbalistic meditation, from the early Merkvah school - to modern day forms of Hassidic consciousness expanding techniques.

The themes of the lectures vary - and they can focus on that weeks Torah reading - although not always so. We try to keep some semblance of a traditional Shabath from Friday to Saturday night although we are not dogmatic about it.

As participants are asked to refrain from using there mobile phones throughout their time at the retreat etc…There are group activities and ‘prayer’ workshops, as well as one on one learning and mentoring.

All the activities are completely voluntary… if someone doesn’t wish to participate and even just spend the entire weekend in their room that’s fine - if that is what they need to do.

The food is Kosher* and Vegetarian and were possible locally produced and/or organic. It is generally for small groups with a maximum of 12 people.

(If you could put all of the Urban Guru’s wisdom in to a couple of dozen quoteable quotes this is what they might look like - Read the following to save yourself from reading anything else the Urban Guru has written or is likely to ever come up with.)

That whatever you see in others is a reflection of yourself. - Urban Guru

Personal redemption is not only possible and achievable but - that it is your natural state. - Urban Guru

The classical teacher pupil hierarchy is fictitious. - Urban Guru

There is no distinction between spiritual and physical. - Urban Guru

The world is divinely miraculous. - Urban Guru

Your state of mind can and does transform reality. - Urban Guru

We can choose to be like the sun or like a backhole. - Urban Guru

There is no messiah! (except the one that says You are Your Own Messiah). - Urban Guru

You have the answers to Your life! not me! - Urban Guru

The Essence of God is not found in heaven but here on earth. - Urban Guru

You can always discover new things about yourself, if you realise you can never truly know yourself. - Urban Guru

If you cannot empathise and sympathise you are utterly alone. - Urban Guru

Life’s journey is a lesson in compassion for ourselves and others. - Urban Guru
You only see what your heart desires. - Urban Guru

Nothing can help you, help yourself, except you. - Urban Guru

Life is too short to be in a rush. - Urban Guru

There is no one in your head, except you. - Urban Guru

It takes two people deeply listening to each other for one person to communicate. - Urban Guru

It is not what is said that matters, but how it is heard. - Urban Guru

Life is perfect just as it is! that’s the irony. - Urban Guru

I believe in the divinity of all matter, everything matters! - Urban Guru

Worry is good if you’re worrying about the right things. - Urban Guru

We can seriously fail to take our life seriously. - Urban Guru

If you only lived once, it would be your eternity. - Urban Guru

This is your heaven and your hell, isn’t it simply divine? - Urban Guru

Your mind shapes your world and only You shape your mind. - Urban Guru

We get so caught up with the way we think the world is, without taking time to ask her. - Urban Guru

Life and the world are a mirror to teach us who we really are. - Urban Guru

Nothing’s Perfect! Or is it? - Urban Guru

Every moment you don’t know the simple bliss of being, your life is a hell of your not knowing. - Urban Guru

You Are The Buddha! - Urban Guru

One of the greatest things I teach you is that - There is nothing I can teach that you don’t already know. - Urban Guru

Within us we have all the answers to all the questions, but most don’t even know where to begin to look. - Urban Guru

Whatever you do, both individually and what we do collectively comes straight back and either slaps you or kisses you. - Urban Guru

You create your own reality every moment. -Urban Guru

Nothing you buy can bring you happiness. - Urban Guru

We live in a supremely intelligent universe but most of us don’t think we are part of it. - Urban Guru

Think good and it will be good. - The Rebbe

Think Rich and You’ll Be Rich!. - Urban Guru

You have everything you need. - Urban Guru

It’s not only what you eat but also How you eat. - Urban Guru

It’s not what you drive but in what state of mind you travel in. - Urban Guru

The time of your redemption has arrived, it is now, in this very moment. - Urban Guru

Realising who you are, starts with admitting that you are not the only thing that exists. - Urban Guru

Becoming who you are, involves loving all of that exists – which includes you. - Urban Guru

Everyone is redeemed –but most people don’t know it. - Urban Guru

The natural state of any human being is joy and bliss. - Urban Guru

To empty oneself of separateness and fear, is the first part of living with joy and contentment. - Urban Guru

Everyone is far more beautiful than they realise. - Urban Guru

Your body is far more intelligent than you give it credit for. - Urban Guru

Trusting in the Universe is a gamble –but if you truly trust then whatever the outcome, it is the correct one. - Urban Guru

Things are either a lot more complicated than they appear to be or a lot simpler, the truth could be both. - Urban Guru

Enlightenment can sometimes be like trying to start a fire with two pieces of wood, or a flint and at other times it’s like turning on a light bulb. - Urban Guru

Happy Happy! – these are the words of the wise. - Urban Guru

Enlightenment can be triggered by reading the side of a cornflakes packet, or not ever reached through the study of all of the world’s sacred writings. - Urban Guru

It’s not the message that’s important. - Urban Guru

When ‘Love’ is the answer, you don’t need to remember the question. - Urban Guru

It’s OK to regurgitate other people’s ideas, as long as You remain authentic. - Urban Guru

All the answers we search for are the questions we fail to notice. -Urban Guru

In order to hear another, you must doubt yourself. - Urban Guru

If you can create a void/womb within yourself, only then can you give birth to an idea. - Urban Guru

Reading this or anything will not bring you enlightenment. - Urban Guru

There is no competition. - Urban Guru

We all focus on the external, but are not happy, we spend billions on beauty and looking good, because deep down we don’t feel beautiful or good. - Urban Guru

Who is strong? He who is the master of his/her imagination!. - Urban Guru

We are all the greatest untapped resources! - Urban Guru

This is your last incarnation! - Urban Guru

You are the fountainhead of infinite wealth! - Urban Guru

You are a king/queen or prince/princess! Start living with this awareness. - Urban Guru

Your joy and happiness are only found within you! - Urban Guru

There is nowhere to run! - Urban Guru

I got chatting to the ex-nun that lives next door (as you do) about the benefits of going to confession. And although I’m not Catholic by any stretch of the cosmic canvas (not even in previous incarnations it seems) I was still attracted to the idea of coming clean about who you really are, exposing your darkest and deepest thoughts and issues, to someone that isn’t gonna tell your mum or dad, or broadcast it on national TV.

That’s probably why counselling and psychotherapy was invented, to give us non-Catholics a little bit of a chance of getting into heaven, or at least sorting our own shite out before we die?

And it got me thinking about how we all see ourselves, am I a sinner or am I righteous?

I know that for the most part, most people think that they are right, correct and that everything they do, everything that we do is justified.

However, on a deeper level many people don’t seem to be truly happy, deep down they don’t feel righteous, but probably consider themselves bad, wrong, stupid, dumb, fat, ugly, sinners.

Not that everyone has a Catholic soul and should feel like a big bad sinner, but from a more humanistic perspective each of us is in some way guilty of at least one sin, the sin of not truly fulfilling our innate divine potential. We are guilty of not living our dreams, of not trusting life, of ultimately letting ourselves down.

The bible says that Noah, (the guy with the boat and the animals, “2 by 2”) was ‘righteous in his own generation’, (cite) which seems to imply that his ‘righteousness’ was a ‘relative’ rather than an ‘absolute’, righteous-dudeness.

Which leads me to this; most people’s conscious mind, for the most part, thinks they’re right and justified. Their unconscious mind however knows the truth.

Heartfelt confession or being truly honest with yourself brings the two minds together, the unconscious mind teaches the conscious mind what the true situation is.

As my spiritual teacher once wrote, ‘the heart is the portal to the transcendent’ it is through our heart, that we are able to be honest, to marry our deepest part of ourselves with our everyday state of mind.

And it is in that union that we learn that, if we listened more closely to our true inner voice, we would make better choices in our lives, we would become righteous in the deepest resources of our very being.

So that unlike Noah we can strive to become more than just righteous in comparison to the generation, culture and society we live in, that is ‘righteous in his generation’ but on some much more profound and substantial level that we actually become beautiful through and through.

It is my wish that this inner beauty and righteousness become manifest within you, because it is who you are already righteous and beautiful, but nobody told you.

“I AM THE LORD YOUR GOD YOU SHALL HAVE NO OTHER GODS BEFORE ME!”Tradition has it that the Ten Commandments may have not been exactly like the Hollywood version by Cecil B. De Mille staring Charlton Heston as Moses and Yil Brynner (who seems to play all the baddies) as Pharaoh.

Let’s just set the scene for those of you who haven’t been to Sunday school recently, the Hebrews are camped out at the foot of Mt. Sinai, Moses goes up to receive the Two Tablets of stone with the Ten Commandments, there is thunder and lightening, and just before God Utters the Ten Commandments, the entire known world becomes silent, the wind rests from blowing, the crickets stop rubbing their little legs together, the rivers stop rippling, and the birds stop singing and there is absolute silence because God is about the speak not just to one man in on his way to Jericho but to an entire nation, to the whole world.

The commentaries explain that what followed was very scary. As God spoke the first two commandments, it was like an explosive spiritual tidal wave ripping the souls straight out of the bodies of the Hebrews and leaving them for dead, it is told that God had to continuously bring them back to life in order to finish the sentence. So quite sensibly they asked, no, begged Moses to ask God to shut His Big Mouth and let Moses explain the rest of the commandments.

So out of the Ten Commandments as we know them (I’m not gonna test you on them, so don’t worry) only the first two was actually said my God and the last eight were said by Moses.

However, the same tradition also explains that the first two commandments were actually said at the same time, or that there were in fact One commandment, but the Hebrews heard the two elements of the One Commandment as two distinct Commandments. The Kabbalists explain that although only one statement was made because the Hebrews, who had just been emancipated from Egypt as slaves where not able to actually hear the singular nature of the One Statement and because of their dualistic mindset they actually heard two.

The first two commandments are:
1. ‘I am the Lord Your God who took you out of Egypt’
2. ‘You Shall Have No Other God’s’

From the First Commandment the Hebrews learnt all of the positive commandments some 248? And from the second commandment all the negative prohibitions which there are some 365.

However, it is quite obvious on closer examination that the first two commandments are actually one sentence with a comma between them, i.e. ‘I am the Lord Your God who took you out of Egypt, you should have no other gods except me.’

So whether God said these two parts of the sentence at the same time or in a linear fashion is rather irrelevant. It’s clear that God only really said One statement.

There are those that explain that in fact God only said the First Word of the First Statement, this word is ‘I am’ (Anochi) it is actually an Egyptian and not a Hebrew word.  They explain that from this one word which expresses the existence of God, the Hebrews learn the entire 613 commandments.

There are some more modern Kabbalists that take reduction thematic even further, they claim God only Said the First Letter of the First word of the First Statement.

Now those of you not familiar with ancient biblical Hebrew let me explain, the first word of the first statement is the letter Aleph that is also coincidentally the first letter of the Alphabet and has the numerical value of 1.

However, and here is where I add my two cents to this reductionist fashion, and this is just a grammatical observation, the letter Aleph, is the closest thing in Ancient Hebrew to a vowel, and on its own it actually doesn’t have a sound at all.

So we may conclude that what was actually reveal on Mt. Sinai was the silent letter Aleph which represents the One, the Absolutely Silent and Unitary Singularity of the entire Cosmos and Beyond. And from this awareness and realisation the Hebrews learnt all the positive and negative Spiritual Laws that they may live their lives in peace and enlightenment.

In truth each of us are already truly enlightened. Call it buddha, moshiach, God or whatever you like. Only when you or I completely surrender to our divine nature do we begin to live a life that fulfills all of our potential.

what does that even mean?

I’ve got an idea about what I mean, what place that this stuff comes from.

We all have ideas and beliefs about ourselvles and who we think we really are. Most people have bought into the theory of evolution and just think that they are little furry monkeys on a tinny spinning planet in some distant backwater of the milky way.

But that is just an idea, which trys to make sense of this world we live in, to give us some wider perspective on the human condition.

But what i’m suggesting is that by limmiting ourselves to a purely mechanistic, darwinian worldview, we limit our potential for growth , for developemnt and for discovering the Unknown within us, everyone and the entire world.

What’s the point of discovering the Unknown within us? Call it buddha, moshiach, God or whatever you like.

- to help you decome a better, happier and more inspired, responsive, gentle, caring, awesome furry monkies of course.

In the strange and sometimes manic but perfectly peaceful personal utopia that I inhabit and co-create, there are occasions when I dialogue with local sages, mystics, high priests and priestesses and even groups of young trainee rabbis.

On one such occasion debating the benefits of rigorous study over the comforts of staying in bed. I was willed, and this is not the first time such a statement has ushered forth from my lips, in a almost Krishnamurti-like utterance; “All I’m suggesting is that you take your life seriously! What you do from then on in is your business.” I continued.

Of course as with any discussion with students of the Talmud, it couldn’t have been left alone, the entire statement had to be dissected, analysed and proved to be utter stupidity, before they were to even hear what it is I was trying to convey.

“What does serious mean?” one asked. They concluded that language itself was problematic because “serious doesn’t mean anything” they insisted.

Anyways, I bravely tried to explain what the opposite of “serious” was and how living a life o