Parashat Noach: Be Your Own Greatest Spiritual Inspiration and Teacher

Why is Tiferet, an attribute of God, associated with “beauty”? Tiferet also means harmony, and for me, this beauty includes harmonizing every part of who we are. And we don’t need to search for ideal harmony; it will reveal itself.

The essence of elegance is unforced harmony in a world that is always in motion. 

You can experience this all the time. For example, while finishing my second book recently, I wanted a new photograph of myself for the cover, but none of the pictures felt right.

Some time later, I went for a walk with a friend in a pair of new shoes that felt tight (the details of why are irrelevant). By the time we were far from where we had started, my feet were in a lot of pain. Along the way, an interesting piece of art caught my attention, and I stopped to have my picture taken with it. Instead of asking me to say “cheese,” my friend told me to say “foot pain.” I started laughing. That was the moment my friend captured, and that spontaneous photograph was the perfect photo which I ended up using for the back cover of my book. The thing I was trying hard to search for, eventually revealed itself when I was not trying.

And while the earlier photographs may not have been right for the book cover, nothing is wasted.

I called my first book Better Than You Wished For, and its title expresses the trust I put in life: that whatever I do will unfold in ways better than I wished for. Again and again, I find that it does.

Wherever you are in your journey, there is enjoyable synchronicity with all that you desire in your life.

In Parashat Noach, the people want to build a city with a tower up to the heavens, reportedly because they don’t want to be scattered over the earth (11:4). Superficial unity shouldn’t be forced; rather, our inherent unity needs to be revealed, just as it was for me with the right photo. Among the sefirot, Tiferet is what provides unity, connecting the others together in ways that are not always revealed.

In my new book All Ineffably Divine I explain:

“In Genesis 11:4–5, the people are building a tower to reach for the sky. Some commentators say that this is because they want to become God, but I disagree wholeheartedly. Do we really want to be the Infinite and have to think of all the details in the universe? We are as much “God” as we can possibly desire.”

Better than being “God”, we are co-creators, always connected with other people, whether they are spiritually like or unlike ourselves. (Of course, our soulmates share a fuller connection with us than strangers, but we are all connected). Whether you realize it or not, we are individuals that are always helping one another to move towards what we desire, both individually and collectively, in perfect divine harmony. It is fun having to discover how!

Later, in the same discussion in my book, I wrote:

“… it’s not like God is predominantly in the sky and can be reached in such a way. Up until this point in the Torah, it seems to me that people did not have the strange notion that God lived in the sky, so it’s not clear that this is actually what is going on here. So the problem, in my opinion, is that they didn’t have a relationship with God.

It is true that just after the people do this, the Torah says that God ‘came down’ to see what they were doing and mix up their language. This does not have to mean literally coming down from a physically higher place. Nevertheless, this may indicate the beginning of a perception by humans that God ‘lives’ above, rather than a perception that everything is a part of God. At some point, ancient humans probably decided that God was in the sky, assigning this limited identity because it was plausible to them, since the sky was the most mysterious part of the universe to them.” 

What you perceive (and therefore believe) is a fundamental attribute of God, Yesod, which is directly connected to the physical world. For more on this subject, see my recent video about being your own greatest spiritual teacher:

I briefly mentioned God’s emanations, or sefirot, and it is the center column that I focus on: Keter as desire, Tiferet as harmony, and then Yesod as perception and beliefs. Again, these are the emanations that directly connect to the physical world.

In all of my work, I try to explain the beauty and then power (or sometimes power and then beauty) of focusing on these central emanations of God, which are already in unity and balance within you and your experience. 

In All Ineffably Divine, I explore these ideas through Torah commentary, poetry, and a romantasy novella, in which even its little-known folkloric characters express mysticism, inviting you to discover Jewish mysticism within your own experience. I wrote this book spontaneously, and yet it all came together to be very harmonious!

I would love to hear your thoughts on these subjects. You can also connect with me on social media: YouTube, Instagram, or Facebook