Daily Sketch No.10

Fractal Nature of Existence, the Torah and Humanity

Just because it's difficult for us to recognize it doesn't mean it is not true. This sentence went through my head over and over again as I was painting away on the above scribble. Not only because I kept losing sight of what I was doing there, but because it's a common problem for our readiness to surrender a thought we have difficulties to follow along with as it becomes more and more complex.

My suggestion is to follow for as long as it is possible and then apply what we've learned back towards more simpler sections of it and the things that seem to belong to that easier form. Not only can we rest more easily there, but we can recognize more of its nature based on what we've experienced beyond that point.

This is how I am reading scripture and it turns single sections into vastly more complex revelations, shows a certain fractal depth of its meaning. Once another layer becomes clear or even just clearer, I can follow along this very layer into parts that previously appeared rather obscure and a veil is lifted or at least becomes more and more see-through, so to say.

Esau and Jacob, Edom and Israel. They are another great moment to begin recognizing the fractal nature of not just the Torah, but existence in form of mankind or at the level of it.

If you look at the Torah as a description of the Self, the growth as a single being and the periods one has to go through along with its specific traits or defining moments, you can recognize that Esau and Jacob represent character traits we all have in common. Depending on our choices we may favor one over the other, but ultimately only one can truly rule at a time.

Esau, Edom stands for materialism, selfishness, greed, envy, ignorance with a yearn for permission, since the universal understanding always deposits its information inside of us, whether we accept it or not and we know that selfishness and all the above traits are not righteous or beneficial to the whole and we abandon our intended purpose, possibly even corrupting the process and thereby voiding our function as being. However, it still is tethered to our means to survive and the Self, even if overemphasized in that form, remains holy and our duty to respect and nourish.

Jacob, Israel stands for awareness, altruism, conscious need, generosity and connection to our divine origin and divine goals with a yearn to be forgiven for ones mistakes in the process of learning and the challenges that come with all the decisions that are to be made, even if their righteous nature may require a judgement of our own. This is where Jacob and Esau meet and revisit their positions toward each other.

To fight and kill each other would destroy the vital Self that is shared between the two, the holiness of it. Edom remains an impulse to everyone of us, but Israel needs to prevail so that we may continue toward a destiny we all share and that was given to us by divine origin, that was determined at our conception and handed to us at our birth. It is the Spirit within, our major ability, trait, desire to perform as part of the whole. It defines our activity beyond procreation, even if that sounds a little funny. If everyone of us was ready to recognize the personal Spirit within and acknowledge gratefully the Spirit within others, we would create and maintain a most powerful society.

And this is where the fractality of it all becomes interesting and probable. If you look at the way in which fractals leap from one layer of complexity to the combined higher layer, composed of a multitude of those prior complexities, one may argue that the land of Israel is the fractal equivalent to ones own destiny, elevated to an entire people. But all the traits that one has to uphold for oneself would equally apply to such a nation. As we have to invite and deal with others kindly and wisely and demonstrate our understanding for the need to thrive in all of us towards a common goal, so does the Jewish nation have to observe the same and invite the inhabitants of this land as alien bothers, and deal with them as they'd deal amongst themselves. Favoring the self is a trait of Edom, not of Israel. Righteousness is not a birthright, but a lifelong commitment and it is to be upheld at all times towards everybody. If there is a transgression recognized, it requires support and not condemnation until all other means fail and even then it is yet about finding a solution that still honors the existence of the other and helps it into an integration that is not detrimental to the whole or even beneficial in some other way. The Jewish nation is not automatically righteous, as I've said already, and it need only to open the Torah to find out again that a failure to recognize the significance of its mission will lead to exile again and again.

Israel is, as far as I believe now, a symbol to all of mankind for everyone's own righteous destiny and the need to groom it with a constant awareness of our divine mission as both the Self and the Whole of us. Further more I tend to believe that our fulfillment of this symbol will enter and turn the key to a gate into a divine time for all of mankind. We will recognize that all our labor, all our toil will heighten our encounter with all the love and happiness on the other cup of the scale. We will use our ingenuity to sanctify our Spirit and heighten our powers, nourishing the genuine traits of ours to rise to the greatest heights of our human potential and provide a world and a wisdom to our coming generations that will idealize the process of our fulfilling of the divine purpose. We cannot know the wonders that await us, but we can imagine the joy it would be for us to truly do what we were given to want on the deepest level and not corrupted by shallow whims. Together we may build the next temple to the Infinite and recognize what this actually means to us.

Everyday we linger in the shadow of human might, we disrespect and neglect the divine powers that are offered to us in the light. And as this applies to each single one of us, so does it apply to the lot of us in the fractal nature of existence.