Daat (Integrating)
Daat Orientation- Putting Things Into Perspective
Let's put things into perspective. We've come a long way in developing our merkavic or sefirotic consciousness. We still have quite a ways to go. We've interfaced with the Divine inside and outside of ourselves and with a Divinely inspired paradise-primal-desire. We've tapped and packaged a flash or vision of this desire. What do we do now with that packaged flash which represents the culmination of all the transcendent consciousness derived from the highest aspects of keter all the way through bina? The next step is to make that consciousness or any other type of knowledge our very own. Our challenge is to integrate and synthesize it so deeply that we can see and judge the world based on this new knowledge. It's now our new outlook, our new glasses. Even beyond this, we can now use this knowledge to bridge or unite higher and lower levels such as the intellect with the emotional and actualizing parts of the psyche. And for that matter, we can unite all disparate elements of anything as diverse as they are into a unity. This unity can connect ourselves with all knowledge and with our life calling and with Hashem in all aspects of reality.
The Step By Step Process
This is all what makes up daat. Acquiring it is a process; a step by step process of first bonding or properly receiving our packaged flash (bina), then synthesizing or integrating it, then seeing and judging life with it, and finally unifying or bridging disparate parts of any dynamic until we access the awesome daat levels we just mentioned.
Let me illustrate this daat reality in each ....
- Bonding with the subject or information
- Synthesizing or integrating it
- Mature judgment based on it
- Unifying or bridging
- Knowing one's calling
- Knowing Hashem
lllustrations
1. "Bonding" illustrations-
A. Rav Tzvi Cheshin (Shlita) is a local Jerusalem, brilliant Torah scholar who each week takes the next two lines or three out of R. Nachman of Breslov's classic Likutei Maharan and "walks with these lines" all week. He goes over the words, concepts, underlying concepts, associated concepts, and novel ideas that are born out of his "walking" or bonding with these lines. The fruit of his bonding is one of the most popular weekly classes in Jerusalem (based on these two or three lines).
B. Rav Pinchas Sheinberg (Shlita) is one of the Torah giants of our generation that has been known to bond so powerfully with a piece of Talmudic wisdom that he doesn't need anesthesia or any other pain killer undergoing some type of normally excruciatingly painful dental procedure.
C. Rabbi Arye Kaplan (of blessed memory) describes in his book, "Jewish Meditation," a state of mind called "locking on." Briefly, the "lock-on" state allowed him to solve and clarify incredibly difficult and involved investigations and problems in the areas of Kabbalah and physics. After coming out of this blissful state in which he reported to transcend the need for eating or sleeping, Rav Kaplan couldn't believe how brilliant and involved his answers were.
(note: Just recently a friend of mine encountered an elderly gentleman who had developed his own version of bonding which he called "zoning." In his zoning state he has created numerous scripts for television and other Hollywood productions over the years of his life. The zoning state seemed very similar to R. Kaplan's transcendent "lock-on" state.)
2) Synthesizing or Integrating Illustrations-
- A. One of my long distant phone call students integrates these merkava classes in the following way:
- She listens to my taped class over and over paying close attention to specific parts that resonate with her.
- She then goes out for a walk around the neighborhood speaking to G-d and receiving inner messages from above all based on our merkava class theme.
- She returns home and in an "altered" state of mind, she writes down brilliant compositions (sometimes influenced by the Patriarchs and referred to as Psalms, and other times dreams with Divine interpretations).
- These compositions are read back to me the following week (and appear on my internet site so far in the archived section until more of my lessons are integrated and expressed in their own link on the site by others also), and invariably she reports not only how they have been integrated into her life but also how they transformed her and aligned her with the sefirotic reality of the merkava!!
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B. I have other students and friends who masterfully integrate a teaching of mine that particularly speaks to them. Briefly, here are some samples:
- The acupuncturist and Chinese herbalist who takes a Kabbalistic principle and converts it into an article or a class and ultimately into an entire system of Jewish healing. (For more information tune into www.JewishHealing.com on the web)
- My friend the writer has converted my Kabbalistic ideas into cosmic weapons in the ongoing battle of the warriors of light in his sci-fi novel.
- A professional business strategic consultant is in the process of transforming my Kabbalistic principles into bigger and better way to identify one's calling and placement and strategy in the world of work.
3) Decision making illustrations-
This level of daat demands thorough acquisition of the first two levels. That may sound a bit unrealistic since we are called upon to make decisions countless times every day. However, consider that what we are dealing with here is the proper and ideal internalization of daat. Everyone else can measure themselves against this ideal level to determine how truly "daat-like" their decisions are.
A. The first illustration of this level is of a very close friend of mine. He has been a teacher and counselor for more than 20 years and very important and influential people are among those who flock to him for advice. Any time I take counsel with him (which is very often), I know that his decisions are based on a thorough working knowledge of the subject that most often he has integrated into himself. What consistently characterizes his decision making process is to take the problem, dilemma, or doubtful direction and to see it in a different and wider perspective. His expression is "go up a koma," which means recall what your primal desire or your underlying motivation is and realign all the different angles accordingly. What you originally saw as contradictions or problems are now just puzzle pieces fitting in beautifully to your newly realigned broader perspective. Daat is also referred to by the Arizal as the external manifestation of the keter. To translate that, the applied solution (daat) based on clarity of perspective was accessed by my counselor-friend by revealing the underlying motivation (keter).
B. A similar process is found in the decision making process of a halachic "poseik" (determiner of the proper halachic direction in various real life situations). The poseik must be totally familiar (or bonded) with the halacha and this knowledge must be absolutely integrated in his own day to day experience. At this point he can view the world with his halachic view of life and put any life situation into its proper perspective as the Torah's halachic prioritization dictates!! This type of daat perspective also of the poseik often qualifies him to determine many non-halachic situations with greater expertise than the appropriate authorities!!
4) Unifying illustrations-
A. Unfortunately, we live in a time characterized by a lot of divisiveness and lack of integration and I am much more equipped to discuss groups of people and individuals who seem to give the impression of being complete in all respects, but upon closer inspection they inevitably display one or two very strong character traits and the other traits that make up the totality of the psyche leave a lot to be desired. For example, I know a man who is an awesome visionary, and has motivated tens if not hundreds of thousands of people to rally around his cause. However, when it comes to his ability to teach and communicate these visionary ideas, well, let's just say a visionary he is, but a teacher he is not. Also, I've been acquainted with a certain seer, ie. a person of incredible powers to see futures and other things inaccessible to other people. However, this same person upon being confronted by emotional pressure or interpersonal confrontation breaks down like a small child. I believe the idea is clear. The daat person is a unifier and an integrator either within himself or else one who can coordinate a group of people who are strong and healthy in all aspects of the persona. Hopefully, I'll be a able to devote a lot more to this crucial topic in discussing what is the partzuf or the merkava.
5) Knowing one's calling and knowing Hashem's illustrations will have to be deferred to separate compositions with Hashem's help.
Exercises
Let us suggest at this point a few possible exercises representing the different steps in acquiring daat:
- a) Bonding-
repeat or review an idea or concept continually until you acquire it (ie. "walk with the Torah").
- b) Synthesizing-
make a piece of Torah or wisdom yours by composing a song or composition about it or by teaching it, etc.
- c) Judgment-
list at the beginning of the week on a piece of paper a list of the dilemmas you have in your life and at the most powerful time of your day. Seek to answer and solutionize these either alone or with a partner and use the approach of asking yourself, "what is my underlying motivation" and thereby realign all the elements into their proper places.
- d) Unifying-
practice holistic perception. For example, don't just see a person for who he is now but consider all of his past and his potential future. Do the same for groups of people in society.
- e) Knowing my calling-
base all decisions of the day on your deepest, most underlying motivation.
- f) Knowing Hashem-
for a day, ask yourself "vos zogt G-t," ie. what would Hashem say about this!!
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