Letting Go of Who I Was Yesterday |
Parshas Vayikra opens with a discussion of “karbonos,” the daily service in the Temple where offerings were brought on the altar. We begin every day’s prayers with the recitation of the order of “karbanos,” which is translated as “offerings” or “sacrifices.” A more literal translation of “karbonos” would be “closenings,” as the root of the term is “karov,” which means “close/near.” The intent of the temple service was to draw us ever closer to God. Yet if we believe, as we profess in the shema prayer twice daily, that God is One and therefore omnipresent, how is one to draw closer to Him if He is already everywhere? How is it possible to become far from Him such that we need to become more near in the first place?
The nature of the material world is concealment, because physicality disguises the spirituality that resides within it and gives it life. Though in fact we are never (and can never be) distant from God, we often feel as though we are. Because we cannot always sense Him, we therefore forget that He is right here always. The question is not whether He is present, but whether WE are present – are we aware of the truth of God’s immanence, or are we distracted and deluded?
Therefore, we begin each day with karbanos. In the temple this was a very physical act in which we brought physical offerings on the altar and allowed them to be consumed in heavenly fire. The kavana/intention was to draw close to our spiritual reality by removing the concealing barrier of the physical. Today, we no longer perform the offerings in the temple, but we recite the verses of karbonos in order to direct our consciousness to this idea of shedding the physical and uncovering the truth hidden beneath it.
In essence, we begin each day by letting go of who we were yesterday and beginning completely anew. We place yesterday’s me on the altar and offer it to God with the awareness that it served yesterday’s purpose, but it will not suffice today. Please accept this former version of myself, we say to God, with all of its merits as well as its imperfections, and let me begin today with a brand new rendition of myself that will allow me to be more close to You and more conscious of Your infinite presence.
Tomorrow, I will bring You the self that I inhabit today, and begin once again at what I hope and pray to be an even closer level to You and an ever greater awareness of Your Oneness. Every day we shed our husk and continue to approach You until eventually we will internalize and externalize the ultimate truth that You are, and have always been, right here.
— Pnei Hashem is an introduction to the deepest depths of the human experience based on the esoteric teachings of Torah. www.pneihashem.com