Weekly MMM - Parsha Shemot

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This week’s Parsha is Shemot which leads us to the era of exile and redemption, as we move out of the era of the Patriarchs. One interesting aspect of this Parsha and some of the others is the concept of transcendent speaking.

That idea comes up in several places in Parsha Shemot. For one, Moses had difficulty speaking and getting his words out properly. And this quality of Moses’ speech has been explained as a reflection of his slave brothers and sisters who had the same predicament. They were not able to speak properly either.

In fact, the whole idea of the Passover holiday, which is called Pesach, meaning “the mouth speaks,” represents, among other aspects of freedom, the freedom to speak. One of our responsibilities is to speak about how we were slaves and we became free. We are called to speak about transcendence, about freedom. This concept comes out of Parsha Shemot.

The period of time associated with Parsha Shemot is represented by Yesod, which represents the part of the body containing the sexual organs, but also represents the mouth. Conceptually, speaking is a kind of sexual act as well because we are putting something out into the world.

There are many ways of transcendent speaking. The Baal Shem Tov teaches us how to “go into a word,” and find its transcendence, to discover and experience its spiritual DNA. We find the consciousness of the word to speak that consciousness into the world.

We also see that G-d created the world by speaking the world into being. G-d spoke and the world was created.

My weekly MMM is also all about speaking, my way of transcendent speaking, my poetic way of speaking and sharing with others.

There’s a type of meditative speaking we can do, either saying one word over and over, or saying many words.

There’s the idea of speaking from the brain or speaking from the heart. From the soul or from the emotions. Or speaking from creativity, or from love.

There is the idea of speaking to the Shechina, to G-d’s Divine Presence, in a G-dly way.

Speaking empowered by love leads us into speaking things into being, by speaking them into consciousness, into transcendence.