Tiferet: Heart at the Center [Kabbalah Root Medicine Series]
Middah of the Week: Surrender to the Heart
Tiferet, which literally means BEAUTY, lives at the center of the Tree of Life, and as such, sits at our own center point: the heart. Tiferet is a place of paradox, for it is both our deepest self and the Self that is us but far beyond us, one that we can never truly know, "for no one can see me and live." (Exodus 33:20)
Hold this: Tiferet is the locus of our deepest personal suffering, yearning, and love, and at the same time, the Suffering, Yearning and Love of the Cosmos.
So the riddle of Tiferet is to be fully, authentically, even ruthlessly ourselves, and at the very same time, surrender ourselves to God’s purpose. The harmony that sets in when we consciously cease to effort, drop in and remember we are a chelek Elohai mima'al, a facet of the living universe: this is Tiferet. At such moments of clarity, when we who seem to run the show manage to let go, there is a kind of kismet, kesem, or magic. We can sense that beyond our necessarily small picture of things, there is a much larger play going on. It all makes sense somehow: meaningful, beautiful, sense.
During the week of Tiferet you may feel some help in aligning yourself with divine energies. This is a week to renew yourself in nature, to meditate under the stars; to unveil yourself with a friend or teacher; to go beyond your doubts and pray fervently, and freely; to go to the "limits of your longing," as the poet Rilke said.
Allow yourself a big view, remembering yourself as the wise and ancient being that you are.
Every year, the week of Tiferet arrives on the new moon of Iyyar. This is a time of transcendent freshness! Since Passover we have been shedding old patterns and advancing to occupy new spaces, physically, mentally and spiritually. So continue to discard the old! Trust that what you need on your new journey will be provided.
This week, look to see what moves your heart, the seat of Tiferet within you. Whether it is a poem, a film, a child, the news… allow it to move you beyond yourself into the great heart, the one heart we all share.