Kirk’s Blog

I dreamt that I was washing dishes and my mom told me to wait because she wasn’t available to dry them at the moment.  Yesterday I had a dream that a fat man kept reheating 3 items of food in the microwave.  I’m not sure what either dream means at this point.

I find it hard to believe that so little time has passed and that we still have so much time in front of us yet to come.  It seems like it’s been much longer than a few days and the past couple of days have been magical.

On day 3 we went down to the Dead Sea, the lowest point on earth, and we floated to the top of the water as expected because of the high salt content.  I also grabbed a whole bunch of salt crystals from the bottom.  It was really interesting how the salt coagulated into balls that littered the sea floor, so it was perfect for picking them up and putting them into a bag to take with me.  We split up to get food at different places in the area and then tried to meet in one place to eat together, but when my sister came over to the pizza table with shwarma (turkey), the woman who worked at the pizza place told her to leave because it is not kosher to mix meat with cheese in the same meal, and apparently even to sit together.  I had a falafel sandwich, but I think she suspected everyone with a pita in their hands of having meat.

While we ate, we were given another piece of paper with a question to ponder and discuss in groups (the meaning of the question became clear on day 4):

The Rabbi of Kotzk said: One should always have in his pockets two pieces of paper.  On one should be written “I am only dust and ashes”.  On the other should be written “The world was created just for me”.
1 - What does this mean to you personally?
2 - Which piece of paper do you regularly need to look at?
3 - What things in your life do you use as these pieces of paper?

I interpreted it as the ancient fate versus free will debate, which I’ve had some experience with considering my experience with astrology, and Kabbalah addresses the issue even more definitively.

After the Dead Sea, we stayed in the En Gedi kabutz, which was really nice.  As far as I can tell, the industry of the En Gedi kabutz is tourism and dates, so tourists made up a large percentage of the inhabitants.  For some reason, I had been aching to listen to some live guitar music, perhaps because someone had asked one of my roommates to hold a guitar, and it ended up sitting in our room for days, and we weren’t quite sure who it belonged to.  My thirst was quenched at the kabutz, where we all sat around in a circle on the grass in camp fire style singing various songs in Hebrew and English.  During that experience, I got a second wind and I ended up doing Capoeira with some others.  The level of humidity at the kabutz was much higher than in Jerusalem because of its proximity to the Dead Sea, so I was quite sweaty.

After that, I decided not to sleep in my room that night.  A couple of guys from a previous Livnot trip wandered into ours for a couple of days to join in our festivities, and there was not room for them to sleep in, so they slept outdoors on the land of the kabutz.  I decided to join them so I could get a look at the stars.  The view was much more impressive than in light-polluted Jerusalem, and after my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I was able to see more stars than I can remember seeing in a long time.  I saw Jupiter before it set and some other vaguely familiar constellations that I wasn’t able to identify.

After my 3 hours of sleep, we woke up well before the sun was due to rise, and we took a 5 minute bus trip to the base of Mount Yishay (Jesse).  I woke up feeling alert and refreshed, which I have been feeling for most of my naps at this point.  I get a lot of my sleep on the short bus trips via power naps, which help a lot.

As we began our hike up the mountain, I was able to identify Venus in the morning sky before the orange fiery globe of the sun peaked over the horizon.  I originally thought it was Mercury, but then I remembered that it passed below the horizon on the 18th of the month, and at that point it became an evening star (Mercury is stationing right now btw).  Most of our hike was in shade, so that was nice.  The view from the mountain was really spectacular.  We could see the Dead Sea and the kabutz and other mountains.  The desert looks like a giant was playing with sand and poured a pile of sand in various spots, them bam! we have mountains.  When we reached the summit at about 7:00 am, we ate breakfast.  Amazingly, despite having a maximum of 4 hours of sleep per night since arriving, I felt fully awake and elated.

On our way down the mountain, we stopped at an oasis and lounged in the Dodim Cave.  The transformation from lifeless desert to lush tropical garden was sudden, and we found ourselves splashing around in the pools after a hot, sweaty, and intense morning hike.  When we reached the bottom, we had lunch, and of course I fell asleep instantly on the bus.  After waking from the little nap (probably the usual 10 minutes or so) I put in my ear plugs in to block out the obnoxious laughter for the remainder of the 1 hour trip.  I must have woken up in the middle of a sleep cycle because I was groggy after waking.  After checking back in to the youth hostel for the last time, I set my alarm for 25 minutes for a power nap.  When the alarm sounded, I turned it off and went back to sleep.  Two hours later, my roommate was shaking at my feet to wake me up, and I was really groggy that time. |-)

The last planned activity for the day is what brought light to the previous day’s question about fate versus free will.  We were taught about shabbat and what would be necessary for preparation the following day.  The explanation for the meaning of shabbat made me realize that there is a greater degree of spirituality in daily Judiasm than I thought, even though there are still some fuzzy areas and contradictions that I have yet to understand.  The concept echoes the same sort of things discussed in the Power of Now by Ekhart Tolle.  Remaining present in the now and appreciating existence is in contradiction with planning for the future and creating in the material world.  Therefore, we spend 6 days of the week moving and creating and working.  The 7th day is reserved for rest.  However, the term rest is oversimplifying the matter.  The central concept is that we cannot create in the material world.  In more understandable terms, we do not want to think about anything beyond the day of shabbat or work for something in the long term.  The object is to be in the present moment and realign with the spiritual self and internal sense of direction.  An analogy was made with a swimmer.  Every now and then, the swimmer has to come up for air and realign his sense of direction, otherwise he’d swim right into the wall.