Malchut: Embracing Shechinah as this here & now world [Kabbalah Root Medicine]

For six weeks, since Passover, we have been on a journey, preparing ourselves for receiving Torah anew on Shavuot. With each sephirah that we have blessed and internalized, we have, in effect, been making ourselves into a more open container. As Reb Zalman would say, the Omer count helps us to sand down our ego’s barnacles, polishing the rough edges of our personalities, opening ourselves wider so that we can better receive.

The seventh and final week of our count is Malchut, sits at the root of the Tree of Life, the container of all life and all the sephirot. Malchut is the Shechinah, the sacred Feminine, the here and now—what theologians would call the imminent aspect of divinity. Just in case we are still thinking of God as way up in the heavenly heights, an unfathomable cosmic mystery, mind the gap!

Malchut will chuckle as she trips you on the root of her tree, bringing you down into the present. Smiling at us, she brushes us off and reminds us that we have a body, itself an unfathomable cosmic mystery. So don’t get too far afield.

This week we train ourselves to see Shechinah’s presence in what is showing up right now, in our bodies, and in every face, place and event that crosses our path. Malchut is the ground of our being, the floor beneath us, and yes, our own mortality.

As we get older, we are gifted once again with a new year, a new opportunity to receive. This week, on the precipice of receiving Torah anew, we take our places at the base of the mountain and ready ourselves.

This week, ask: What is the Torah I am opening to, inviting in this Shavuot?

What do I want to be shown? What am I praying to understand?

Text 1: Rabbi Moshe Cordevero
Pardes Rimonim 6:8

The essence of God permeates every realm, every strata of the spirit realm, within the angels and between them, within the celestial spheres and between them. It penetrates all the elements of the universe, and within the Earth herself, as well as between the earth and her children.

Text 2: Rebbe Nachman of Bratzlov

Every leaf, every stone, is a camouflage of divine mystery. But remember always, that the mystery is not contained in nature, but rather nature herself is part of the mystery.

Text 3: John O’Donohue

Upon Awakening

I arise today
In the name of Silence,
Womb of the Word,
In the name of Stillness,
Home of Belonging.
In the name of the Solitude of the Soul and the Earth

I arise today
Blessed by all things,
Wings of breath,
Delight of eyes,
Wonder of whisper,
Intimacy of touch,
Eternity of soul,
Urgency of thought
Miracle of health,
Embrace of God.
May I live this day
Compassionate of heart,
Clear of word,
Gracious in awareness,
Courageous in thought
Generous in love.

Text 4: Professor Art Green

Transcendence means rather that God—or Being—is so fully present in the here and now of each moment that we could not possibly grasp the depth of that presence.

Transcendence thus dwells within immanence. There is no ultimate duality here, no “God and world,” …only one Being and its many faces. Those who seek consciousness of it come to know that it is indeed eyn sof, without end…”Know this day and set it upon your heart that YHVH is Elohim (Deut. 4:39)—that God within you is the transcendent.

(from Radical Judaism: Rethinking God and Tradition)