The “Bereshit” meditation practice

The meditation practice I take out of Bereshit:

On the creation chapter, there are couple of words that are written seven times, but don’t make any sense: “And God saw that it was good”. When we are doing something, we need to stop, see what we had done, check if we had created exactly what we had intended to do, and at least to see if our creation is good. But to claim that God needs to stop for observation is weird. To say that God checked if he created the exact thing he intended is problematic. And more than all, God checked if the creation is good?

There are probably plenty of deep and enlightening explanations, but the most simple of all, is the one most relevant for us, here in the group on Jewish meditation. “The Torah Speaks in the Language of Man”, meaning that there an important principle that we need to learn from this.

“The road to hell is paved with good intentions”, more then once we intend good, but on the way we had caused so much harm that it was not worth it. Or we had been so focused on the goal, that we had not seen all the other who suffered on the way.

On the verse we are not told that god had check the thing he had done, to see if he created good. But God checked if “it is good”. He had checked if every thing is good: the creation, the side effects, the intention and the consequences.

One of the main reasons we meditate is to check yourself, as instructed for mindful speaking:  Is it true? Is it kind? Is it useful? Is it timely? Is it conducive to concord? If God has paused while creating the world for self observation, it is without mention that we Jewish meditators need to phase and meditate for better understanding of our intention, action and consequences. That’s the only way we will get on the end to “… saw all that he had made, and it was very good”.

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