Mattos/Masei

Parashas Mattos

Numbers 30:1 – 32:42

Haftarah

Jeremiah 1:1-2:3

Brit Chadasha

Matthew 5:33-37

Please pray this

Prayer before reading

Prayer

In the name of Yahushua

Our Messiyah,

I pray for the Spirit of Understanding

The Spirit of Knowledge and

The Spirit of Wisdom

As I read through this Parasha

That the Truth of Torah may

Come forth. Amen

This Torah Portion Mattos “tribes” is the 42 Portion of the Torah Cycle. With the exception of a leap year in the Torah Calendar, this portion Mattos is read on the same Shabbat with the following portion of Mesei, which is why they are discussed together  here.

Mattos is the second to last Portion in Numbers, and it began with a discussion of the Law regarding our vows. At first, this Portion does not seem to address anything important, but that in itself turns out to be the heart of a significant matter.                  

One clue we have is about the weight of these portion is that they contain lessons that Moses taught in the last moments of his life. What could be so important that Moses would need to wait forty years to reveal it? What is so profound about the portion of Mattos.

The lesson that Moses gives us is that if we want to bind our soul to the CREATOR, we have to make sure that nothing in our lives is mundane, that everything is holy. When nothing in our lives is mundane, including the negative Thoughts that lead to negative actions, then everything we say, everything we pray for, and everything that comes out of our mouth will have the power of life.

In this Parasha we have a law concerning vows, which had been mentioned in the close of the foregoing chapter. Here is a general rule laid down; that all vows must be carefully performed. There are some particular exceptions to this rule.  That the vows of daughters should not be binding unless allowed by the father “. 3-5”. Nor; The vows of wife or wives unless allowed by the husband “v. 6, etc”. Women liberation movement will have a field day with this chapter. Never the less this is what Torah says.

We begin this section with two question: Why did Moses speak only to the ears of the tribes and not to all of Yisrael? And What did it mean to be the head of a tribe? In answering, it is important for us to understand that we have to learn not to consider ourselves better or worse than anyone else, no matter what the circumstances. Spiritually speaking, we are all in the same boat, and our joint destiny and journey are much more important than and superficial differences between us. We all have a particular goal in this life, and until each and everone of us achieves it, Meshiach “Messiyah” cannot come and chaos cannot be removed from the world as a whole.

We have all experience times in our lives when we felt as if we were better and worse than other people. We sometime say I am older or younger. Richer of poorer, taller or shorter than someone else. Anyone of u who is on a spiritual journey need to understand the importance of working on eliminating both selfish pride and low self-esteem. Everyone of us was given the correct family, body, situation for us to overcome our selfish eqo or self esteem.

Those of us who are on our spiritual journey, we may have more tools to connect to the Light than someone else has. But the person with more tools also has more responsibility to reveal Light for himself and for others. Life is about using what we have been given to reveal as much Light as we are able too.

If we focus carefully on our own specific spiritual development, we will never think that we are greater than or inferior to anyone else in the world. Consider a ship: The one who has the most to offer by way of guidance is the Captain, but the Captain cannot run his ship by himself, he need  dedicated sailor, cooks, and even mechanic, each of whom has his or her own special strengths and abilities. The smooth running of the Ship require everyone’s cooperation and more importantly everyone’s dedication to following the correct route.

There is much to say about vows in this Parasha. The most important principle concerning how closely we must watch what we say. This is shown very clearly in the story of Rachel and Jacob. Jacob said that whoever had stolen Laban’s idol would not be allowed to live, but he did not know at the time that is was his wife. Yet once Jacob had spoken the words, the fulfillment of his prediction becomes inevitable, and Rachel died giving birth to Benjamin.

It is clear to us that we do not have the power to predict what we or others will do tomorrow. It is fruitless to make vows, it is always to simply reassure other that we will try to provide what they need. Watching our speech is important because every word we speak has great power for either good or bad.

We can ask ourselves: what is the real use of a vow? According to Kabbalah, the answer lies in the fact that it is easy for people to speak, but when it come to action, most people do very little. A vow gives us the opportunity to inject the power of action into our speech. The vow gives us the inalienable desire to act.

But there are people who use this power of a vow in a negative way. Instead of using the power to help complete their spiritual development, they use it to escape responsibility.

This is the way it is in our person lives, when we discover a flaw. We say I need to change everything about me. So we made a commitment to do so. Then life happens and we discover that the promise we made, we were not able to keep. So we do not succeed in changing anything, we end up changing nothing. Many of us come to Church and promise to completely forsake sin, when they fail they back slide, and say this journey is hard. The right way to achieve spiritual enlightenment and reveal as much Light as we can in our life is to be constant and consistent, every year, every month, every day, and every hour.

Regarding our speech, we can start by paying attention to the effects of what we say, as well as realizing the connection of our words to the higher spiritual level. If we change just that single area of our behavior as it manifest itself each day, things will change for the better, this alone can bring Messiyah, perfection in our lives. Hopefully, we will have the merit to see Messiyah in our days.

We have to keep in mind that the physical reality has no relevance except to act as our interference to execute free will. There is nothing but consciousness is all that we are about.

What is a vow? A vow refers to the physical reality only. When we say, I want to do this or that; we have already created the situation. So then, when we say we want to achieve the sixth days of creation, why does in not happen immediately? It is because we have to develop our consciousness to the point where it can be elevated to the state of certainty.

Then we will be in control of physical reality as Yahushua did. Only we can bring Chaos or enlightenment to our consciousness; it is we who are the perpetrators not the environment. The Torah in this week Parasha is trying to teach us that a vow refers to anything on a physical level that could represents chaos.
Psa 51:6 Behold, You desire truth in the inward parts, and in the hidden part You will make me to know wisdom. 7 Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;  Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. 8 Make me hear joy and gladness, that the bones You have broken may rejoice. 9 Hide Your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities.
 

Only by looking within ourselves can we eliminate the source of our chaos our iniquities. If we understand the source of the chaos, we can remove it. Psychiatrists and psychologists deal with the effect of chaos Torah deal with the Cause. I know someone who for 30 years has been going to therapy, and he keep saying I am getting better, close but never reach perfection.

The story about the annulment of vows is there to tell us that male and female have their own modes of consciousness. The female refers to the Effect the Creator, developer, the male is the channel. We know that the women are more important! If we read the Torah carefully, we notice that it says that the vow can only be nullified the day the father or husband hears it, not a week after or even the day after. It is to teach us that we can uproot chaos only on the day it appears, the moment we realize the chaos, we can uproot it. Once it is manifested, it can no longer just be nullified.

The spiritual Connection to be made on this Sabbath is the removal off any distance we feel between ourselves and the Upper world by taking away any sense of disconnection or emptiness we might feel in our actions, in our thought, words and deeds in all areas of our lives.

Parashas Massei

Numbers 33:1 – 36:13

This Torah Portion Masei is the 43 Parasha; it is read in conjunction with Mattos except on a Leap year. Masei “Journey,” as every man life is a journey to the mountain top, and that every experience we experience, while on that journey is a part of the process to correct our ego. Our ultimate destination lies in our correction of our ego.

The jest of this Portion, is that the most basic and most important understanding is that everything that happens in our life is from the CREATOR, and that every thought that comes into our mind is from the CREATOR.

He goes on to explain that even when a negative Thought comes into our mind, urging us to perform a negative action, if we do not have the Holy Spirit and the Word in our mind we will fail.

Too often when a negative Thought come to mind, we either fall victim to it because of the lack of the influence of the Holy Spirit and the lack of the Word written on our heart. When our ego is dominated by the flesh, we will either act upon the negative Thought or push it aside. Both of these actions does nothing to correct the Ego.

What then can we do? Within every dark cloud is a silver lining. When we focus on or  desire the Light that lies within a dark Thought, we will transform the Thought. When the negative Thought comes and we stop long enough to realize it is the Light of the Creator covered by a shell of darkness, we remove that shell, and exposed the Light.

If we do not believe this and we do not do it, we are not desiring the light as children of Light, we are the children of darkness, we are still in Egypt. Our Job as believers is to free the Light hidden within every negative Thoughts, but we do not believe that negative Thought are the Light of the Holy Spirit, then our mind are still in exile in Egypt.

To the degree that we do not see the Light of the Holy Spirit in everything, we diminish the domain of the Holy Spirit in the World. But as we come to a clear understand of the Holy Spirit, we expand the domain of holiness in our world. Therefore it is vitally important that we see every negative thought as Light.

When we see a person, situation or circumstances as negative, we dimes the gevul haKedushah, the borders of Holiness in this world. We have to realize how powerful our consciousness is. How we see people and circumstances is curtail to whether we are going to expand the borders of Light or the border of darkness.

We revealed the Light within us we diminish the influence of the spirit of Korach and Bilaam and increase the Spirit of Holiness.

Our purpose in life is to expand the borders of Light, even in the mundane thing in our lives. Our goal is to expand gervul haKedushah,  the border of Holiness, until we reach the Gemar HaTikkum, the final correction.