Feeling Success, Feeling Love: Tiferet in Chesed
Galapagos Perspective
Tonight begins the 3rd Day of the Omer (Arpil 22-23, 2008).
May that part of me that is broken in Tiferet in Chesed be healed on this day.
Tiferet is the peek of sefira mountain. See the diagram.
Tiferet helps with perspective. In combination with Chesed, committed love, it's about getting a clear vision of one's own successes, about feeling the love that others have for you.
I definitely have my struggles taking in my successes. I'm quick to add a "but" when friends congratulate me.
So I thought I'd take a moment to create a short list of recent experiences I've had when I was able to take in the love or accomplishment.
- Giggling moments with my kids as we teach each other a faux Italian, invented in our house.
- The love and generosity from Sarah in making me a 50th birthday party, and the love I felt from my friends who attended.
- Early successes in my new business
My we find the mountaintop, that place of clarity, close to our hearts so we can fully take in the love directed toward us. May we fee the gravity of our daily successes.
This is one of the hard ones, isn't it? Taking in love or accomplishment. I realized the other day that I should celebrate a small success in my relationship with my son that some kind of guilt was trying to have me overlook. This is a great reminder for me.
I have a feeling from these pictures that The Galapago somehow changed you. It must have been quite a trip.
It was indeed quite a trip. In my teens, place and travel meant so much to me. It was a physical assertion of my intention to grow and learn and be influenced by the world. And then in my thirties and forties my journeys, inside my self, in the realm of the intellect, in local community, in my marriage—that were not journeys of place. I think I forgot just how powerful a journey of place can be. And the Galapagos surprised me. I didn't plan or initiate the trip. And I wasn't expecting the wildlife to be so abundant. Thanks for pointing that out. I'll reflect more and possibly direct a blog post more directly unpacking that experience.
And thank you so much for blogging this omer journal!.
You're very welcome! Thank you so much for writing these.
You describe my own journeys in my thirties and forties. Your distinctions among journeys helps me. I traveled a lot more in my twenties than I have at any time since, and I suspect that I'll be traveling again more now that I'm in my fifties. But I'm so reoriented to these other kind of "journeys" that my wife accuses me of being a homebody.