Netzach: Enduring enthusiasm to bring our truth into the world [Kabbalah Root Medicine Series]

Netzach takes the beauty of the heart found in Tipheret, and energetically brings that beauty into full expression. The week of Netzach is about the energetic YES! needed to fulfill our purpose. Netzach is also the sephirah of Prophecy, nevu’a. Think of Moses and of Esther, two heroes who energetically channeled God’s word into the world. But to channel beauty and truth, we need to carve out time, space, and silence to feel into what God is saying to us. This week, take that time and space to connect to your deepest purpose, then go forward energetically to fulfill the profound as well as the mundane tasks of your life. The Holy One is served through all our conscious loving acts, no matter how small!

If every week of the Omer Count were a room in a mansion, each one with a different hue, quality and purpose, I imagine Netzach as a long decorated hallway leading to a ochre-colored chamber filled with sunlight by day, and firelight from a hearth by night. It is a room where we can be ourselves and free ourselves of our burdens and drop down into sweet contemplation.

This week, the sephirah of Netzach invites us down such a passageway into a space that allows us to bracket the overpowering noise and driving speed of the world around us, so that we might hear another, more subtle whispering.

For each one of us this receiving will be different. But for all of us it will entail some form of intentional work. In the same way that Michelangelo took up his chisel to liberate the beautiful forms that were awaiting him within lifeless granite blocks, so we too, must carve out the interior spaces within our lives to hear more intimately the voice of our soul that is awaiting to be heard.  This is the Kol Demamah Dakah, the still, slender voice of the Shechinah who is always there but requires us to turn toward her, to do the counter-culture work of quieting the works, lending our ear.

Hers is the prophetic voice that pulls us toward our fullest destiny.

Mythically, Netzach is represented by Moses, who put in years of labor at his father-in-law's home. While he worked as a shepherd grazing and watering the flocks, he worked inwardly as well, opening new channels of perceiving and receiving within himself. Then one day while grazing sheep, he was ambushed by a spectacle of God's radiant presence in the form of a thorn bush in flames.

Would Moses have even turned to see this miracle had he not first opened his interior channels, enabling him to take in the guidance he received that day?

On the feminine side, Netzach is Queen Esther, herself a radiant jewel, who like Moses lived with a foreign host in whose confines she learned her secret purpose. One fateful night, Esther prepared herself inside and out, screwed up her courage, and walked down the long hallway to the King's chamber to appeal to her royal husband, Ahashverosh. In his inner chamber she put forth a strategy to save her people. She too, had done the inner work to align herself with a larger destiny, and she was prepared to surrender all.

In both the stories of Moses and Esther, there was enormous effort, sweat, and the deepest angst that helped them open their channels for the presence that guides us all. Torah tells us that prophetic guidance comes not in the drama of wind, nor in the earth's rumblings, nor in the fire, but in the still, slender voice of our soul.

This week, carve out some time and space to hear more deeply. Don't put off the discipline of a lone walk, praying from the heart, writing in your journal, listening to music that moves your soul.

In the cavern of your soul what will you hear?

Verse & text for the week:
But God was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake; but God was not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake a fire; but God was not in the fire; and after the fire, a still, slender voice.

V'achar ha-esh, kol demamah dakah. (Kings I:19)

The Holy Baal Shem Tov: from the Spiritual Will of the Ba’al Shem Tov #20:
Hold fast to the quality of zerizut (energetic enthusiasm). Arise with energy from sleep, because while asleep you have been sanctified and made a different person, fit to generate new things. You have been formed in the image of the Holy One who generates worlds. Therefore, everything you do should be done with energy and dedication, because in every act you are able to serve God.

Image for the week:
Carving out channels in which to receive the still, slender voice of your soul.

Poetry for the week:
Last night I learned how to be a lover

of God,

To live in this world and call nothing

my own.

I looked inward

And the beauty of my own emptiness

filled me til dawn.

It enveloped me like a mine of rubies.

Its hue clothed me in red silk.

Within the cavern of my soul

I heard the voice of a lover crying,

"Drink now! Drink now!"

I took a sip and saw the vast ocean—

Wave upon wave caressed my soul.

The lovers of God dance around

And the circle of their steps

becomes a ring of fire round my neck.

Heaven calls me with its rain and thunder—

A hundred thousand cries

Yet I cannot hear…

All I hear is the call of my Beloved

— Rumi, From In the Arms of the Beloved (translation by Jonathan Star)

Today, like every other day,

we wake up empty and frightened.

Don’t open the door to the study

and begin reading.

Take down the musical instrument.

Let the beauty we love be what we do.

There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

— Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks