Freeing Sparks

From this life and light proceeds the divine "spark" which is hidden in every soul. Not all men succeed in rising to this close union with God at prayer, because this spark is imprisoned in them. "Yea, even the Shechinah herself is imprisoned in us, for the spark is the Shechinah in our souls.
-Paul Philip Levertoff
Love and the Messianic Age

My heart says of you, “Seek his face!” Your face, LORD, I will seek.
-Psalm 27:8

Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls...
-Psalm 42:7

There's something of God in each of us. I don't mean the "indwelling of the Holy Spirit", but after all, every person was created in God's image. We each have a soul...something of the divine in every person. In Judaism, it's thought that man has two spirits: the nephesh and the ruach. The nephesh is our "animal" soul or the type of spirit any living creature possesses; our "personality". The ruach is a "spark" of the divine within each person and is only possessed by human beings.

When we die, it's believed that our nephesh goes with our bodies into the ground and perishes with us. Our ruach, on the other hand, rises up, like sparks from a fire, seeking to return to the source; to God.

When we pray, we have the potential of connecting the spark of holiness within us directly to God, but this doesn't always happen. As Levertoff has already said, we can imprison our spark, the living Shechinah, within us. The Vine of David commentary on this passage explains more:

Although every man has the divine potential of a godly soul planted within him, this is not a guarantee that every man will enter into a relationship with HaShem or even that every soul will be redeemed. Instead, the soul is separated from God by a wall of partition - sin and guilt. HaShem removes the wall of partition between man and Himself through the work of the Messiah. When the wall is removed, then the soul can connect with HaShem. Then He can "use it for the gathering of these 'sparks'."

Through sincere and heartfelt prayer, we can breakdown the wall separating us from God and let our spark connect to the flame of God, but it is our faith in the Messiah that provides the conduit for our prayer. I wonder if the Vine of David commentary has given us the true meaning of the following event?

And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit.

At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks split and the tombs broke open. The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. They came out of the tombs after Jesus’ resurrection and went into the holy city and appeared to many people.

When the centurion and those with him who were guarding Jesus saw the earthquake and all that had happened, they were terrified, and exclaimed, “Surely he was the Son of God!” -Matthew 27:50-54

This passage is often quoted by traditional Christianity as "proof" that, with the death of the Messiah, that the Jewish sacrificial system was destroyed, that the Law was replaced by grace, and that Judaism was replaced by Christianity. Given Levertoff's point of view on Jesus, prayer, and the divine, perhaps what was really torn down was not what God had instituted, for after all, God established His Temple (and will do so again as recorded in Ezekiel chapters 40-48), but rather, the barriers that all men create between themselves and God. Through the Messiah, humanity has been given a unique opportunity to connect to God in a way we never had before. We can set our sparks free.

However, the process isn't completed automatically. The removal of the wall is like opening a door. Entry is now available, but we still must walk through to the other side.

God is waiting for us to have faith and to pray; to release the sparks trapped within us, so that they can rise up again and be gathered by God.

Is that joy?

Good Shabbos.

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.