Beyond Things

Often before davenning, I stop and "collect" a few thoughts. Today I as I sat with the siddur in my lap, I closed my eyes and began thinking about the spirituality that was the real matter of created things, directing my thoughts toward G-d. "If I could just for a moment really truly see the spirituality...but I know that requires a level I'm not at...but if I only could... if I could just open my eyes and see the spirituality that "is" this book..."

The train of thought -- or was it a response? -- was quite profound. I just don't know if it was me going off in a strange direction or an awareness of some truth. Given the sense of comfort with the experience, though, perhaps the latter...

So, as best I can reconstruct it it went like this: "Why open your eyes? They are only capable of seeing the physical thing. Why are concerned with that? Lose the physical thing. Look beyond it."

So, I left my eyes closed and "saw" the book no longer as an object occupying a physical form and space, but more as words, thought, connections to minds and souls of those who wrote the words, who translated them who printed them; to thoughts and conceptual realms that have no physicality; to the connections that are made within the siddur and with G-d when one davens from it.

The mental constructs flew by quickly... but that is the general idea. And when I then davenned, I felt more aware of connections -- almost a particpant in the completion of the "spiritual" form of the Siddur. And I wonder, in restrospect if that was not connected to the concept of elevating a thing when it is used for a G-dly purpose (in this case davenning from it).

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