Chukat: Finding Your Teacher

As we go about our days in current times, we may start to question the meaning of freedom. Our society is governed by laws and we have been taught to not ask questions and just abide. Restrictions seem to grow daily. And what were once seemingly insignificant tasks, like going to the grocery store or catching a movie now seem to be beyond our reach. Understandably, this causes anxiety and confusion. So let’s start with defining what freedom truly is.

Many people, especially Americans, see freedom as the possibility of doing anything you want. No restrictions and no questions asked. But at the end of the day, this is just an illusion. “Everything you want” is really nothing. True freedom only comes from being disciplined enough to choose what’s right for you, even when everything is at your fingertips. That is the moment we have self-worth and internal value?

Everything physical that surrounds us is an illusion. We choose what is important to us and our reality changes. Reality is the only constant in our lives, and to be able have a meaningful reality, we need to accept that we are not just surviving–we must connect spiritually and disconnect from physicality. No one said it was easy, and it truly isn´t, but this does not make it impossible. Do you control your reality? Or do things control your reality?

We are surrounded by good and bad, and we are constantly filtering everything that enters our space with our 5 senses: sight, smell, hearing, taste, touch. However, these only filter the physical aspects, and it is often difficult to set these aside and focus on filtering what we allow to enter our spiritual lives. There are sections in the Torah with decrees and there are sections in the Torah with laws. Laws come with spiritual and logical explanations of why to do things, making these quite easy to digest. Decrees, on the other hand, do not. To help you better understand these let’s look at the Red Heifer

Although Red Heifer may sound quite exotic, it is in fact a red cow, and we mean completely red, yes, eyes, mouth, everything. Anyway, in the times of the temple it was burned, and its ashes used to purify those who for one reason or another had become impure. Let’s say someone got close to a dead person, death represents the end, whereas the living person represents continuity. These two energies are incompatible and so the High Priest would use the red heifer to return them back to purity. However, by doing so, the High Priest would become impure himself. Still a bit confusing, right?

Not really. He who purified the person who was impure became impure and the person who was impure became pure. A bit of a tongue twister, that one. This represents a metaphor for life. We are all exposed to death. We all have imperfection, and there is nothing we can do about it. When you feel you have absolutely no imperfection and can solely help others to rid their impurity–deep down this really means that you have issues of your own. When you understand that you also need help and need to be purified, at that moment you become cleansed too. This is what the impure system tries to teach us.

One of the key takeaways from this lesson is that if we’re truly interested in a more wholesome, authentic reality and life, then we need help to become more spiritual. This help comes in the manner of a teacher. Teachers can take all shapes and forms, and we should look at them and accept them in all forms. The man begging for change on the street is a teacher if we are listening to him with open minds. Society is a teacher if we “trust the process.” Our partners are teachers if we have the courage to look in the mirror when we are criticized.

But children in grade school learn from real teachers–from professionals. Universities aren’t typically run by our spouses, or the homeless or society, even though these folks may deepen our life perspective. Universities, colleges, places of “higher education” are run by masters of art, chemistry, philosophy, engineering, science and more. Thus the same is true for us to grow spiritually. We need a real teacher–someone who has chosen the path of SPIRITUAL purity and enlightenment–just like any teacher of any specialty has chosen their craft. We must care for our very existence by choosing a spiritual guide, a spiritual teacher to lead us through our lives. And the point is this: It shouldn’t be more than one teacher showing us the path. It should be one particular teacher who is willing and ready to guide us through every part of our lives down a spiritual path.

This is a fundamental reason why we created Vital Transformation. To teach. To lead spiritually. We are spiritual teachers, so come to us and work with us to live an AWARE life on the spiritual path.

Rabbi Isaac Luria confirms that the red heifer is all about numerology. When you take the word in Hebrew “Para’ which means heifer, this Hebrew word equals 285. Two of the letters equal 280 and are equivalent to the sum of five letters that change form in the Hebrew alphabet when they appear at the end of a word, and the number 5 stands for the actual 5 letters. It is written that after the sin at the Golden Calf, the Israelites lost their jewellery. In reality, the jewellery represented those 5 final letters which stood for immortality: all the goodness that came from the Divine. Currently we have 22 Hebrew letters that are vehicles for the Light of the Creator, but there should be 27 if we were to include the 5 final letters. Within the Red Heifer there is a code that those letters come into fruition. And by them coming to fruition the individual is purified. So, to sum it all up, the red heifer was used as a vehicle to channel purifying energy.

We cannot achieve anything alone; guidance is key in all stages of our reality and our journey. We’re imperfect and we will never be pure without help. Thus, never distance yourself from others by believing you are better. Always look to someone else for guidance, every student needs a teacher and even more applicable to YOU: every teacher needs a student. So where are your students? Who are you teaching? And who is your teacher? Respect what you are taught and who is teaching because as soon as doubt comes into your mind your objectives become more distant and your reality becomes more of an illusion. Trust one person, one teacher, and accept that you are not in charge. We all play a role, and no one in the game of life is more important than anyone else.

Everything negative in your life can turn positive when you connect to your source of energy. We need to let go of our ego and confront what we are doing wrong to progress and achieve a true awareness of others. Guidance is necessary. We need a teacher or a leader to attract the energy necessary to leave behind the physical illusions and follow the guidance of the spiritual reality chosen by each of us.