After six “days” of the difficult and taxing work of creating the universe, God rested. Have no misconception, creating a physical world was a mighty effort. God, purely spiritual by nature, set about to create something completely new, never before existed. Nothing about this new world bore any resemblance to the harmony, limitless, and absolute peace of the Heavenly realm which initially constituted everything.
In order to bring into being a material world, the 100% spiritual Deity had to alter the natural order. Before Creation, ALL was homogeneous and eternal. God had to create thought, a material characteristic needed to move forward in this project. Thought is the antithesis and nemesis to the harmony of celestial existence. Our worldly mental processes are a distraction from such an otherworldly plane, which preceded Creation of the physical.
Then, a corporeal reality was introduced, but it could not be part of the incorporeal heaven. If the two were intertwined in any way, if any physicality intruded into the celestial realm, then the 100% spiritual would become less than 100%, and, therefore, non-existent. You can’t be fully immaterial and also contain its opposite. Adding the smallest material content makes God and Heaven physical entities. That is no longer God or Heaven.
Introducing earthly structures and concerns turns the spiritual realm into a material realm. God constricted the “spiritual everything” to allow a dimension in which the “physical something” could exist. Each would have their own nature, but would add something to the other when bridged together by human effort. At least, that was the plan.
The material world was created with spiritual potential. Once human beings arrived, Heavenly powers could be called upon by sentient beings (us) to finish the work of Creation and repair this new universe. Accomplishing this task required self-aware minds, associated with souls, focusing on meditative activities. Successfully pursuing mindful meditation involves clearing away thought processes. This precludes, first and foremost, thinking and emotion. Suppressing this interfering brain and hormonal activity opens the door to infusions of spirituality. Controlling the inborn and incorrigible production of thought takes energetic mindfulness without distraction.
God, being 100% spiritual, is, naturally, not physical. But to create a material world, God used material forces, which are not part of God. The effort to do this is immeasurable. The energy involved is all the energy that ever existed in this creation. It is the energy of the Big Bang. God provided that energy. God created it, formulated it, and instigated its appearance.
That’s a lot for a spiritual entity to achieve. Of course God needed to rest. God finished the work on the sixth day, immediately seeking refuge in the harmonious, stable, and conflict-free Heaven. Now it would be up to we humans to complete the work.
There was no embryonic source material or data storage unit to explode into becoming the physical universe. The initial spark, which was finite albeit immense beyond comprehension, was made to appear from the incorporeal and ethereal heavenly nothingness. It then detonated and occupied its newly created “space,” providing the observable and measurable material of our universe. This entire process and location remain separate from the spiritual realm. The physical universe has an address; the spiritual has nothing.
God must use all this energy without coming into contact with the product in any sense. Any interaction of the physical Creation – any “contact” with it – would make God less than 100% spiritual. If the earthly was umbilically bound to God, God would no longer be 100% spiritual. Then God would be more like the Greek or Roman gods than its own immaterial, eternal, and infinite self. God is constant, altered by nothing.
God is never attached and never separates. Separation requires an unbelievably awesome expenditure of energy. Try doing almost anything without making a physical connection to it, either directly or through some machination. It can’t be done. It requires superhuman extension. That takes a lot out of you. God got worn out.
Having created the chaos of a physical universe by separating the earthly from the heavenly without content loss from the spiritual realm, God’s exhaustion requires “resting” entirely in the celestial.
So, as the Torah states, God rested from the work of Creation. God’s “rest” is to be away from this mighty act, and the resultant Creation itself. This rest is a renewed focus on pure harmony and stability. What God found in “resting” was the perfect meditative experience, which preceded, coincides with, and will survive Creation.
God’s “resting” automatically became a Sabbath for humanity. This “time out” became a necessity for those with meditative powers: humans. God used the “rest” to engage in purely “being” God.
Our Sabbath should be for the same purpose, except we each need to focus on being the person that we are. LIke God, we need to abandon thought and emotion. We must each concentrate on our individual and unique soul, which is intrinsic to our nature, having been created in the image of God. The observance should be to submerge oneself in a purely spiritual state of mind. Indeed, most religions describe the Sabbath in just this way.
Then, religious instruction describes what activities to do and which ones to not do.
Instead of this list of approved tasks, we should use the Sabbath to develop the ability to mindfully focus our energies on celestial pursuits. In this way, we are not only imitating God on the seventh day, we are following God’s directive to Be Holy and align the earthly and heavenly powers for the benefit of both.
Performing rituals, studying, doing good deeds, and praying are among the most common practices to observe a religious sabbath. None of these are “being Holy (that is: being different) as I the Lord your God am Holy (different).” Being Holy, as described in an earlier blog, means becoming more mindfully spiritual.
Of course, rituals, prayer, and study can be highly focused meditative experiences that draw the heavenly and earthly powers together. This purpose needs to be explicitly taught and emphasized to achieve the desired goal.
Designating one day a week to developing, perfecting, and pursuing the ability to separate from worldly distractions brings holiness into our lives. A physical universe with people, who have the capacity and drive to bridge the earthly and heavenly powers, creates a new phenomenon. Before the creation of the world, no adjustment of the spiritual existence could be contemplated or attempted.
WIth this new capability, truly novel wonders became possible. Spiritual enhancement of the earthly powers adds infinite and eternal choices to a confined and limited material existence. Something new also became available to the perfect harmony of the heavenly powers. Our world, through us, could add emotion, thought, and hope to inertness. God judged that the material contribution to the heavenly realm was “good.” Until God’s Creation began functioning, the effects of joining these two separate worlds was speculation. The collateral consequences were a surprise contribution.
So here we are. Creation with a purpose. A calling with a path.
Health and Spirit by Dr. Jack Zoldan 