Merkava - 6th class

Chochma- "Tap The Flash"

My Pre-Dawn Chochma Experience

Everybody's got a personality trait in which one finds oneself "resonating." One feels empowered, more confident, more alive and more "in one's element," as they say!! The same is true in dimensions of time and space. This corner of one's 24-hour day is one's power spot. This particular place is where everything clicks. Fortunate is the person for whom all three areas come together- one's trait and time and place. All of which brings me to describe to you my daily pre-sunrise experience.

After spending a number of precious concentrated hours in nighttime learning, I feel creative and inspired. My energy level is abundant. The original thoughts are coming at me fast and furious. Usually, at this hour I engage in transcendent, self-actualizing activities such as dunking in the purifying waters of the mikve while focusing on the releasing realization that all the negative experiences of the previous day were the best possible thing in the world that could've happened to me for my own divine-guided-perfection process. Also, I meditate on how I can get past all obstacles in my upcoming day to make it as enjoyable as possible. All the dilemmas which I foresee are instantly answered up with my expanded, clear perspective on my life. In addition to this holistic expansive mindset, I feel an almost mystical surge or onslaught of associated thoughts born out of the amazing Torah insights I learned earlier. I try to capitalize on these insights to create the outlines for a number of different classes which I'm busy preparing. The amount of progress I make in this empowered mindset is exponentially more than otherwise. And all is wonderfully pleasurable and effortless. It is almost like opening up one's eyes and taking in the gorgeous landscape.

Intro to a Collection of Scholarly Approaches to Translating Chochma

My very real daily experience was not meant to be some type of resume or boasting about myself or my transcendent abilities. To the contrary, when in the midst of this mindset, I feel very non-egocentric, as if it's all a gift from Hashem and not the product of my dedicated efforts. The reason I just elaborated about my experience was to illustrate what I understood is "chochma consciousness!!" Let me share with you a small collection of different scholars and authors who each attempted to describe the chochma mindset. Judge for yourself if my pre-sunrise experience is the expression, partial or total of this state!!

Genesis of Thought

1) Australia's Rabbi Laibl Wolf beautifully describes how chochma is essentially the genesis of thought, ie. that mysterious magical moment or that split second flash of lightning light in one's mind where one takes in the entire vista or an entire process or dynamic. The thought came out of nowhere but one sees it in its entirety. This recalls the statement made by one of the most ancient of Kabbalistic texts, the Sefer Yetzira (the Book of Formation), attributed to Abraham or Father and even earlier, that "the end is wedged in the beginning and the beginning is wedged in the end." This flash of holistic reality contains in the beginning a glimpse of the end, and the end clearly illuminates how it evolved from the beginning. There is one basic problem- just as a streak of lightning lights up the scenery of the dark night only to disappear leaving you only with an impression, so too does this flash of chochma-mindset disappears, and as we'll see in this and in our next essay on the sefira bina, the whole drive of the bina-mindset is to capture and nourish this flash.

The Arizal's Seeing of Chochma

2) The Arizal brings from the Zohar the following amazing correspondence- the act of seeing corresponds with our sefira chochma. The other three paradigm sefirot of partzufim of bina, tifferet and malchut correspond in that order to the other senses of hearing, smelling and speaking or tasting. In Hebrew the vowel point corresponding to the sefira chochma is patach (-) which means open and in our case an opening of the eyes or an opening of consciousness. When one sees he sees the entire picture, ie. he receives a holistic perspective. This is to be contrasted to hearing where one cannot but hear one thing at a time. In addition to its holistic nature, seeing also demonstrates a dependence on other human facilities in order to actualize the object of its desire that it sees. That is to say, as our Sages put it, "the eye sees, the heart desires and the vessels of action complete the job." This dependent nature of seeing can spell the downfall of mankind if they prematurely actualize the desired object of their seeing (this is also brought by the Kabbalah to be the service of the cosmic cataclysm called the breaking of the vessels, ie. the great fall of mankind) without careful, logical well thought out processing of when and how to best actualize. This is the subject of many of the trials and difficulties brought in the Torah portions of Bamidbar, the Fourth of the Five Books of Moses. However, our concern here is to show that just as seeing involves holistically taking in the whole picture and patiently waiting before drawing any conclusions, so too with healing-rectified-chochma. Allow yourself to see the whole picture and then be silent without yet drawing any conclusions. The conclusions will come in good time. Our Sages say that an aid to admiring chochma is quiet, "siyag l'chochma shtika," and therefore, one of the outstanding character traits of a wise man is his silence, especially when he is accessing new information.

Chochma Equals Self-Nullification

3) This self-effacing, holistic approach also explains another descriptive translation term used by Kabbalah to define chochma, a term derived from the construction of the very word chochma. If you rearrange the first two Hebrew letters of chochma, khet, khaf, mem, hei to koach mah, literally meaning the "power of what" or the "power of what am I" (ie. I'm nothing), a statement uttered by the humblest of all humans, our teacher Moses- then the idea is that if one is truly holistic and truly gets himself out of the way in order to get the entire holistic objective picture, he is the chocham or wise man. There is an insight here also from our sages describing the wise man as one who is so self-nullifying that he is willing to learn from all people no matter how simple. "Who is the wise man? He who learns form everyone." This power of self or ego nullification ('bitul' in Hebrew) also explains the response given by Rabbi Issack the Blind approximately eight or nine hundred years ago to an aspiring novice seeking to join his Kabbalistic meditation inner sanctum group, "If you have so much self nullification that it makes no difference to you if people praise you or humiliate you, then and only then are you fit to join our chochma based mystical group." Soon we'll see what the connection is between mystical mindstate and chochma.

Chochma- the Realm of Bringing Hassagot Out of Nowhere

4) Another aspect of the chochma mindset is depicted by an old Kabbalist adage, "Chochma me'ayin tima tzei," meaning chochma is made available or comes into existence from the realm called "ayin" or nothingness. Essentially, this means that the energy source or essential nature of chochma is nothingness. Nothingness is as it implies -a non entity, non verbal, non graspable, non divisible, non definable- in short, an area beyond our normal mind limitations and delineations. Rabbi Arye Kaplan in his commentary in English to the Sefer Yetzira (the Book of Formation) reveals that the ancient Sefer Yetzira, at least in part, is a guide book to accessing chochma consciousness. He defines it by contrasting chochma consciousness with bina consciousness by pointing out that even though chochma and bina are inseparable partners, similar to a father and mother or husband and wife, nevertheless, they are essentially different (just as are husband and wife). Chochma, he points out, is a consciousness of subconscious or superconscious or supernatural insights which defy any restriction in terms of space and time or words, for that matter. One can gain a "hassaga" (a term for supernatural insight) as long as the very definable conscious-restrictive-bina-type thinking stays out of the way, at least until a second later when the chochma flash has disappeared and then, to the contrary, bina must step into the picture immediately to nurture, capture and encompass the illusive chochma, nonverbal flash or hassaga.

Right Brain

5) Along the same lines as R. Kaplan, Rabbi Mattis Kantor in his psychological or personality approach to the ten sefirot ("Ten Keys for Understanding Human Nature") also compares and contrasts the experiential aspects of chochma and bina. He also brings biological proofs from the comparison of right brain to left brain findings. The right brain's key role is found in the more experiential and holistic areas of the personality. For example, the spatial, creative, visual, musical, associative, synthetical, mathematical, chaotic, inspirational, and artistic areas of the psyche.

The Role of Chochma in Hitbonnenut

6) A final aspect of chochma that we would like to look at is brought by the Mittler Rebbe of Chabad (the son of the Baal Tanya), who describes in the text "Shaar Hitbonnenut" ( The Gate of Contemplation) a dynamic of processing knowledge by making use of all the intellectual faculties or sefirot systematically. Besides being an amazing system in and of itself which I hope to touch upon more in upcoming merkava essays, here I'd like to point out the skeleton of the system and the role of chochma. Very briefly, a piece of knowledge is depicted something like clay in the hands of the potter to be formed into any desired shape. The wisdom is first expanded upon in a horizontal fashion bringing out all associative ideas connected in any way with the subject at hand. This expansive, holistic process is the role of chochma in the system. The knowledge is further processed in dimensions of depth in analyzing the essential point of all collected information. Once a central point is arrived at, one taps the vertical dimension of explaining or "bringing down" the point in such a clear and simple way that even a small child could understand. Actually, to tell the truth, this expansive chochma role we have described is actually chochma of bina. In other words, this whole contemplation process is a "bina process." The very Hebrew name for contemplation, hitbonnenut, is built on the root word bina and the whole process of processing or packaging already existing data or knowledge is the essence of bina. The real role of chochma is to make this raw piece of data or wisdom appear out of nowhere. What we learn here is that bina is a complete unit (actually all of the sefirot are complete units or personas in and of themselves. They manifest mainly their own unique nature but contain a representative role from all of the other sefirot. This holographic role is one of the key factors in the "tikkun," rectification of reality). Bina comprises ten sefirot of its own and the specific chochma contributor to the bina contemplation process is its role of holistically expanding an idea.

Tapping the Flash- Chochma's Essential Point

After that relatively long collection of chochma approaches, let us do our own processing of this information and try to arrive at the essential point. What is this phenomenon called chochma?! It's basically a flash out of nowhere of a complete piece of wisdom, and in order to be produced, it demands of the person a certain orientation. He must be egoless, holistic, expansive, inspired, creative, associative, open to extraordinary mind states, for the sake of accessing a brief anchor statement containing all these ideas. We¹ll choose "Tap the Flash." The idea of flash is self evident. The word suggests eliciting of opening oneself or tapping into a new idea or consciousness. This tapping or focus demands all of the orientation characteristics we just brought for maximum results.

Chochma's Place in the Overall Ten Sefira Merkava Mindset

At this point we need to see how "chochma" is part of an evolving overall ten sefira merkava mindset. Until now, we've developed a divinely motivated ratzon or vision. Now we must give that vision tangibility. The first step is to see the entire scope of that vision in our chochma flash. Afterwards we'll need to ultimately package the vision until the point of actualization.

Practical Ways of Tapping into Chochma

I invite you to test out my experience reported at the beginning of this essay. It is a good example of tapping the flash, totally or partially. This in itself is a good exercise to use to internalize this concept. What I mean is the following: Try to tap your own flash. Find your own best time of day and best place and set up a challenge(s) to achieve the dilemmas you need to solve in your life. There are a number of possible ways at this point to tap into a chochma state which will meet the challenges and solve the dilemmas.

The Mikve Approach

1) Mikve- with real or imagined purifying waters, envision in your mind the challenge or problem and realize that this is the best possible thing that Hashem could cause to happen to you since all that He does is for the best. Then say to yourself that the probable solution is the following.... and then dunk (really or imaginatively) and wait for the answer. The more you do this relatively simple exercise, the more you'll awaken and generate your own chochma capacities!!

The Projection Approach

2) Picture to yourself a projected scenario of your upcoming day or week or afternoon and journey through this picture of reality with as much vivid detail as possible. Get used to projecting as much as possible prior to your actual entrance into a future time zone. See not only the passive scene, but also how you maximize it by transcending all obstacles standing in the way of a wonderful experience. Here, again, if you get used to doing it, it comes naturally and the experience deepens and expands out into other parts of your day. Here is another angle of chochma brought by our Sages, "Who is the chocham? One who sees future outcomes (ie., the nolad)."

The Associative Thinking Approach

3) Any time you record or write down a piece of wisdom that you just learned (this is always a good practice to do for the sake of clarity and review), have a separate column next to your writings that you entitle "associated ideas." In a stream of thought fashion, tap your memory banks and unleash all associated ideas connected to this idea. Here too, with practice, soon you will be a natural, overflowing wellspring of ideas in all areas of wisdom.

The Spider Chart Approach

4) Last, but not least by any means, we have the tool of spider charting. To access your chochma consciousness in a simple, fast, yet powerfully effective way I invite you to be a spider chart freak like myself. Always have a pocket notebook or any piece of paper available. The basic idea is to draw a bubble and in the bubble write down your dilemmas, challenges, plans, yearnings, ideas, etc. Extend out 10-15 lines all around the circle or bubble and without thinking, just let the answers come from your right brain or sub or supra consciousness. Recently, I came across a Kabbalistic source stating that the structure or map of our brains is identical to the letter aleph, the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet (aleph bet). The aleph has four sides and as a spider chart the form would be a bubble in the middle with four branches representing four branches or subcategories of the brain each having extended lines to be filled out. What you now have is a photocopy of a brain map turned into sophisticated spider charts. Experiment and create new worlds!!

My Apologies and Sign Off

I apologize for being too lengthy in this essay, but I'll excuse myself by saying that the nature of chochma is an expansive flash and I was just sort of getting into it!!

See ya,
Yitzchak