This weekend marked
the passage of Yom Kippur, the most powerful day in the Jewish calendar. Its
liturgy and rituals press the worshipper, issuing fierce demands. Yom Kippur is
not for the faint hearted.
On Friday night and
Saturday, I observed Yom Kippur. The liturgy and rituals spoke loudly, but not
to me this year. They did not seize and hold me captive. My heart, mind, and
soul strayed from the prayers and occupied themselves elsewhere.
It was seventeen
years ago when Yom Kippur services helped restore me to the religion of my
upbringing. On that day, I was emotionally overcome, partly from abstaining
from food and drink (and coffee!) for approximately twenty-seven hours, as is
the custom. Fasting intensifies the solemnity we participants feel as we engross
ourselves in self-reflection, examining our thoughts, words, and actions from over
the past year for all traces of mean-spiritedness, dishonesty, and dishonor. We
spend the day in synagogue confessing our transgressions and asking God (the Father,
the King, the Deity-out-There) to forgive them. We come clean, and we pledge to
behave more virtuously.
For many years, Yom
Kippur’s activities have inspired me. They have invigorated me. On Yom Kippur,
I have affirmed my alignment with what is right and what is good.
What made this year
different? Well, throughout this entire year, I have held closely to the
practice of examining my thoughts, words, and behavior. Being in the habit of
self-examination robbed this year’s Yom Kippur of its singular importance.
Yet there was an even
more critical factor. This year, Yom Kippur’s confessions contrasted jarringly
with my deepened ongoing spiritual practice. The Yom Kippur prayers felt empty
and inauthentic, foreign to my evolving mode of spiritual immersion. For the
first time, I felt not at home in this liturgy that has so enraptured me.
Increasingly, I
immerse myself within a loving force, a force that I enter, a force that enters
me. Rarely any longer do I turn to a heteronomous God who judges me. Imagining
myself as observed and judged by an external force seems only to reinforce the
illusion that I am separate from the source of all power. Yom Kippur, in my
experience, asks me to stand before God and quiver. At no point during worship
do I feel lifted and carried by a loving current.
This Yom Kippur, I
couldn’t bring myself to stand before God the Judge. I could not dam myself off
from the current of love that carries me to infinite expanses.
Throughout my time in
prayer this Yom Kippur, my focus drifted away from the confessions at hand.
Instead, I found myself meditating, confirming my oneness with the One. Instead
of begging forgiveness from the heteronomous God, I focused on my soul’s light and
invited it to fill me. I did not stand before God. I melted inside God.
Inside God, the One
Energy flows through me. I am powerful, a conductor for the One Energy. I do
not cower before an external God who sits in judgment.
