As excerpted below from yesterday’s NY times article, the truth about Ebola is far more serious than is being publicized; “The deadly Ebola outbreak sweeping across three countries in West Africa is likely to last 12 to 18 months more, much longer than anticipated, and could infect hundreds of thousands of people before it is brought under control, say scientists mapping its spread for the federal government.”
Both the time the model says it will take to control the epidemic and the number of cases it forecasts far exceed estimates by the World Health Organization, which said last month that it hoped to control the outbreak within nine months and predicted 20,000 total cases by that time….but researchers at various universities say that at the virus’s present rate of growth, there could easily be close to 20,000 cases in one month, not in nine.”
Before it’s brought under control? Under what fairy tale ending can a deadly highly and extremely contagious virus that’s already infected hundreds of thousands of people be brought under control?
Whose to blame?
In spite of the noble efforts of a relatively few and very brave medical volunteers, the Western nations responded too late with too little and failed to contain the spreading and mutating virus when they had a chance. There is even a second more potent Ebola strain that has independently broken out in the Congo in central Africa.
We can blame some of the same people who failed to respond to the ISIS threat in a similarly untimely fashion, and we’d be right, but we also have to blame ourselves. As the cells in our individual bodies act as an eusocial community to function as a single unit with the sole purpose of preserving our life and housing our soul, so should the 6 billion individuals who inhabit our planet. Unfortunately we don’t, not on the physical level anyway. We do, though, as the kabbalists explain form one greater soul and thus even though we don’t like to think this way, our individual actions have unforeseen consequences around the planet. According to the Arizal, plagues are created when ego and self-interest is injected into our mission of raising the primordial holy sparks; in other words when we do good for the wrong intentions, some of the essential light we should have gotten and should have channeled back into the universe gets blocked and ends up feeding the dark side.
Put yet another way, when we take credit for a good action, we place ourselves in the role of G-d, and leave no room for His (most necessary) participation. In kabbalistic terms, and this is very important to repair the imbalance that’s going on in the world right now: We’ve severed off the YHVH (יהוה) and the EHYH (אהיה) from the spelled out names of G-d respectively.
The Hebrew letters represent energy paths, connections to spiritual portals and their depiction in the correct sequence represents a map for us, so what should look to us like this:
יוד הי ויו הי
יוד הי ואו הי
יוד הא ואו הא
יוד הה וו הה
Because of our actions is now a map that looks like this, with the mercy of the YHVH (יהוה) disconnected from the lesser energy of the spelled out letters. Instead of channeling the energy, we’re causing spiritual blockages.
יהוה – וד י יו י
יהוה – וד י או י
יהוה – וד א או א
יהוה – וד ה ו ה
One of the most misunderstood concepts in Kabbalah is that we have to build our vessels (a metaphor for a vehicle to hold the light/essence of the Creator). A vessel by definition is an end; it has a bottom and sides that block the light from flowing, and thus the bigger our vessel the more light we’re not sharing and indeed blocking from the world. Think of it this way, if one person’s vessel was so big that he controlled all the money and resources of the world, everyone else would starve to death. Instead, what we want to achieve is to increase our ability to channel the light. The bigger our pipe (metaphorically) the more light we can channel, share, the more everyone benefits. As our open pipe grows wider and wider we eventually reach a state where we are one with the universe.
Echdut (אחדות), unity with the kolel for the 5 letters has the gematria value of 424, the same as Moshiach Ben David. At the route of echdut (אחדות) is the Hebrew word Echad (אחד, One), as in G-d is One. And that is what will bring Moshiach, our unity, everyone striving to be the biggest channel they can be, everyone striving for oneness.
