An aspect of mysticism that fascinates me is the concept of awareness. In kabbalah, specifically, awareness is the sloughing away of our self-importance--pride and the characteristics born of it.
Years ago, I read Rabbi David Cooper's book God is a Verb. These are his thoughts on awareness: "One of the more important concepts in Kabbalah teaches that whatever happens anywhere in the universe reverberates throughout the totality of creation. Thus, our lives are affected by what is happening everywhere; moreover, whatever we do in our lives affects everything in the universe....[A]wareness is a holistic continuum. Once we enter a holistic frame of reference in which all parts are complete and are replicas of the whole, then everything in the universe, by definition, is integrally connected."
I've been working on a poem that reflects this view of self and universal responsibility. Here's the first verse.
I am insignificant. I sense it
as I sense the approach of rain
as I hear it in its sounding--
each drop hitting the sidewalk.
It is the mantra of a wise man:
I am one drop of rain in the storm.
I am a grain of sand in the vast
universe and it is eternity.
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