Balaam, The Magician by Artist Phillip Ratner
Ariel Ben Avraham
Let’s reexamine our ancestral memory, intellect, feelings, emotions and passions. Let’s wake them up to our true Essence. Let us engage in the delightful awareness of Love as the Essence of G-d. The way this book is written is to reaffirm and reiterate its purpose, so it presents its message and content in a recurrent way. This is exactly its purpose, to restate the same Truth originally proclaimed by our Holy Scriptures, Prophets and Sages. Our purpose is to firmly enthrone G-d’s Love in all dimensions of our consciousness, and by doing it we will fulfill His Promise that He may dwell with us on Earth forever. Let’s discover together the hidden message of our ancient Scriptures and Sages. In that journey, let’s realize Love as our Divine Essence, what we call in this book the revealed Light of Redemption in the Messianic era.
Parshat Balak: The blessing power of Love
In this parshat the Moabites, one of the Canaanite nations, and the Midianites appeal to the wizard Balaam to curse the children of Israel. Both peoples are symbolically related to superstition and divination which always distort the Truth of life: “And the elders of Moab and the elders of Midian departed with the rewards of divination in their hand, and they came onto Balaam (…)” (Numbers 22:7); and Balaam represents ego’s destructive inclination and wicked approach to life in order to subjugate it to negative traits and desires. And, what are the main rewards of ego? “Because I will promote you onto very great honor, and whatsoever you say to me I will do (…).” (22:17). Honor and commanding control are ego’s main pursuits and rewards.
Balaam enjoys the same access to G-d that the Hebrew prophets have; and obvious questions arise. If G-d is good by Essence and does not cohabit with anything different from His ways and attributes, how is it possible that He doesn’t deny access to a wicked character such as Balaam? Before we answer the question, we have to remark some of the basic fundamentals of Judaism. G-d is One and does not have any form, body, image or shape, and His Essence is beyond human comprehension which means that we can’t grasp the ways He directs His Creation. The little we know about Him is by inference of what He is not; and though that still is insufficient, Judaism conceives Him as good and Doer of goodness, and His Creation is the resounding proof of this absolute principle. Judaism also believes that He rewards the good-doers and punishes the evil-doers, which is a reaffirmation that He is good. This means that He is on the side of those who do good, and not on the side evil doers. In this context we understand what we said many times in the book “God as Love”: G-d, Love, does not cohabit with anything different than His ways and attributes; and we define His ways as His Commandments, and His attributes as those mentioned in the Torah (Exodus 34:6-7), all-positive and all-encompassing.
In “God as Love” we say that G-d created evil in order for us to have free will, and it is a reference to discern good from something not good. We also mention in the book that evil and its negative derivatives are two-folded expressions or reflections. One aspect of evil is what conceals Love and keeps Him concealed, and the other as the result of separating our consciousness from the Oneness of Love: the result of choosing ego’s fantasies and illusions instead of Love and His attributes. This is the inner and outer struggle that defines the connection between Israel and G-d: by choosing Him, His ways and attributes, the Israelites are able to conquer the “nations” that represent ego’s fantasies and illusions, as well as the negative aspects of emotions.
With this necessary preamble, we can put in perspective Balaam and what this parshah says about him. Another fundamental aspect of Judaism is that G-d has absolute control of His Creation and directs it according to His will, and this includes the evil He created in order for us to enjoy free will, with such evil doers like Balaam included. We have to highlight from this episode is that evil is always subdue to Love, and it can’t curse, endanger or damage Love’s ways and attributes. The passage tells us that the four times that Balaam tried to curse Israel, only blessings came out of his mouth because Love subdues evil. Love always blesses not only those who choose His ways, but also those who have the potential to be and manifest His attributes. We all are blessed as long as we remain in the tents of Love: “How goodly are your tents, O Jacob, your dwelling places, O Israel!” (Numbers 24:6). If Love is for us with His blessings, what could be against? “How shall I curse whom the Lord has not cursed? And how shall I execrate whom the Lord has not execrated?” (23:8). With Love in our side all illusions and fantasies of the material world are destined to disappear. We said already that Divine Love endowed us with free will, and He gives us not only the choice between the blessings and the curses but the Commandment to choose life, with is represented by His blessings.
The episode with Balaam teaches us once more that Love empowers us to transform all evils, superstitions and curses into goodness and blessings, as long as we live in Love’s ways. The choice is always ours. After all, we are the ones endowed with free will by Divine Love. Let’s celebrate living in Love’s blessings:
“For from the top of the rocks I see him (Jacob/Israel), and from the hills I behold him: lo, it is a people that shall dwell alone, and shall not be reckoned among the nations. Who has counted the dust of Jacob, or numbered the stock of Israel? Let me die the death of the righteous, and let mine end be like his!” (23:9-10). Israel represents the realized Divine Love consciousness that we are destined to achieve in life, because it is our mission to reveal the Divine Presence in all Creation that we have concealed in the darkness of the illusions of the material world. The complete awareness of Love is perceived and achieved from the high levels of consciousness (“from the top of the rocks”). In that sublime place we are alone, all-One with Love, and the negative aspects of consciousness (the nations) are not with us (we are not counted among them). In this realization of Love is how we want to live and to die because it is G-d’s Love: “G-d is not a man that He should lie, neither the son of man that He should repent: when He has said, will He not do it? Or when He has spoken, will He not make it good? Behold, I am bidden to bless; and when He has blessed, I cannot call it back.” (23:19-20).
The blessings continue reaffirming that when we live in Love’s ways and attributes we can transform darkness into Light, and revealing Love whenever and wherever concealed: “None has beheld iniquity in Jacob, neither has one seen perverseness in Israel; the Lord his G-d is with him, and the shouting for the King is among them. G-d who brought them forth out of Egypt is for them like the lofty horns of the wild-ox. For there is no enchantment with Jacob, neither is there any divination with Israel; now is it said of Jacob and of Israel: ‘What has G-d wrought!’ Behold a people that rose up as a lioness, and as a lion does he lift himself up; he shall not lie down until he eats of the prey, and drink the blood of the slain.” (23:21-24). It is essential to reiterate again that Love does not cohabit with ego’s fantasies and illusions (enchantment and divination).
Among the blessings that followed (23:5-9, 24:17-24) there is a significant sentence:
“Blessed be every one that blesses you, and cursed be every one that curses you.” This may sound like an excluding, separating and retaliating statement. Although it may, it is not about that. In the context of the messages of the book “God as Love”, Love is all pervading and all encompassing, meaning that He is inclusive and not excluding. Our ego’s illusions are the ones that exclude us from the Unity of Love, therefore when we curse our consciousness with them we are indeed cursed.
The parshah ends with the sad fall of thousands of Israelites into the seductive arms of lust during their conquest of Moab. As it is true that our permanent awareness of Love liberates us from the illusions and fantasies of the material world, by falling into them we lose our connection with Him, and they become our own punishment: the plague that killed 24 thousand Israelites at that time. As many wisely say: “Sin is its own punishment”. In conclusion, the message is reaffirmed again: When Israel realizes his Oneness with G-d, indeed the Divine Love present in the Creation can be revealed and manifested with all His Glory.
Ariel Ben Avraham : Born in Cartagena, Colombia in 1958. After studying Cultural Anthropology in Bogota, moved to Chicago in 1984, where I worked as a writer, reporter and producer for WSNS/Telemundo for 18 years. Produced video documentaries related to art, music, history and culture, such as “Latin American Trails: Guatemala”, distributed by Facets.org. For more than thirty years studied spiritual traditions from all over the world, and the mysticism of major religions, understanding the mystic experience as the personal means to connect with Divinity. Since 2004 study and write about Jewish mysticism and spirituality, mainly derived from the Chassidic tradition, and the practical philosophy of the teachings of Jewish mystic Sages from the last 2000 years. The book “God as Love” is the compilation of my last three years studying and learning Jewish mysticism, and the messages of the book are part of the content, exercises and processes of a series of seminars, lectures and retreats that I facilitate in several locations in Israel.
