Yom Kippur: Cosmic Empowerment

Meta-historically, Yom Kippur was chosen as a day of teshuvah because it was the original day of forgiveness at the time of the birth of the Jewish people. A mere six weeks following the monumental Divine encounter at Sinai, when absolute Unity was clear and transparent, the newly formed Jewish nation danced around the Golden Calf and proclaimed, "this is the god that took us out of Egypt."

The desire to idolize and worship an image was so powerful, the human binary need to conceptualize and contextualize so overwhelmed them, that they were not able to assimilate Sinai properly without an image. Some eighty days later, after much prayer and beseeching, Moses secured forgiveness, a means to re-access the highest levels even after one has fallen. That day was the tenth day of the seventh month of Tishrei, the day to be designated by the Torah as Yom Kippur.

On Yom Kippur, "the essence of the day brings atonement." The day of Yom Kippur calls forth sublime measures of transcendence which overshadows and eliminates all externalities and thus all negativities. Whether we fully consciously participate or not makes little difference, so long as we minimally accept the healing power of the day, and certainly don’t interfere.

As a reflection of this joining of heaven and earth, inspiration and participation, "arousal from above" and "arousal from below" these two complimentary ideas are alluded to in the two verses in the Torah which mention Yom Kippur as a day that is a 'Shabbat Shabbaton'--a Shabbat of total rest;

1. "Shabbat Shabbaton Hee lachem (Vayikra, 16:31), which means "A total day of rest it (literally she) will be to you"

2. "Shabbat Shabbaton Hu lachem" (Vayikra, 23:32), which means "A total day of rest it (literally he) will be to you"

So there is the feminine and the masculine quality to Yom Kippur. On a cosmic level, the feminine represents the receiver, whereas the masculine the giver. The feminine reflects a passive mood of receiving, whereas the masculine is the proactive. On Yom Kippur there is a total melding of the two into one, beyond duality, beyond separation of inspiration and perspiration.

On Yom Kippur we have the ability to attain transcendence, and become angel-like. Yom Kippur is a day of rest from normative bodily necessities. The restrictions of the day are not primarily intended to cause a suffering to the body—if inflicting pain was the intention there would be many much more effective ways of doing so—rather, the focus here is to cease operating in the normative physical sphere and ascend to function angelically. It is a day dedicated to the achievement of transcendence of the physical, as well as a transcendence of all negativity and indiscretion.

Sadly, hopefully infrequently, it may occur that the way we act and behave is not consistent with our inner truth. Our outer does not accurately reflect our inner. We may stray from our true path and in the process eclipse our essential light - yet, no matter how far or alienated we may have become, our inner light can never be extinguished. At our core we are pure and transcendent, and any negativity we engage in is not who we are, rather, that which we have done. The essence of who we are remains unscathed. Actions occur on the level of manifestation, the level of experiences, but beyond the experience is the experiencer, beyond the fullness of manifestation is the emptiness of non-manifestation. The consequences of our negative actions, as all actions can only penetrate the surface, and can attach themselves to us merely as appendages. True, they may weigh us down, burden us, cloud our vision, but they cannot affect nor influence the deepest infinite part of ourselves—the part of self which is always present and unified.

Yom Kippur give us the power to tap into our deepest, infinite, non-dualistic selves. It is a day when we rise above our ego and fully access the deepest recesses of our free self.

[From iyyun.org]