A Gift

I Yam What I Yam.

Identity Crisis is a Gift:
Awakening to the Role and Goal of Your Soul
Kirk Douglas, the actor, once told me that when people compliment him on a performance, they often tell him how great he was at losing himself in the part. "You just became Vincent Van Gogh! You were so wonderful." And he answers, "No, you lost yourself in the part. I can't afford to lose myself in the part. I have to pay attention to the director, to the cues. I have to hit the mark just right so the action is in the camera frame. I must stay aware that I am an actor playing a role."

A good actor plays his part, but he doesn't get lost in his part. He can't even begin to think he is the character he is playing. On the other hand, he still embraces that role with a tremendous amount of love and gives everything he's got to play his character. But he doesn't get lost in the part and start to think he is in fact Van Gogh, or Napoleon, or the President of the United States.

Similarly, you -- the soul ---are playing a character. And you must always be aware of that.

I am not David Aaron. I am a soul. I play the character David Aaron. I play the role of a short red- headed rabbi, founder and dean of Isralight International, an author of several books. I may come back in a different life and play another character.

Another way of putting this is to compare your character to a garment. Your garment is never your essence. The clothes you wear are not you, they are on you. Similarly, your character is not your "self." So you must never confuse the two. You must know the difference.

You do not have a soul. You are a soul. But you have a character. And you--the self-- are a soul, a part of God - the Soul of all souls, the Supreme Self.

The key question in your search for true identity and self worth is what do you choose to identify with? Do you identify with your character?" Or do you base your identity on your service to God - the Supreme Self -the Soul of all souls?

Great artists have confided in friends that they have looked at their own work on the gallery wall and wondered "Where did this come from?" Writers, composers, sculptors, have expressed the same thing. Bob Dylan was asked "How do you write your music?" And he said, "I put my pen on the page and I know it's going to be alright." Go to school to learn how to do that.

I met a famous screenwriter who told me that everyday before he writes he says a little prayer "Please, God, use me." He explained that none of the films he wrote he wrote. Rather he experiences himself as only the typist in service of the true Writer. He sees himself as a tool for a God and believes that God is writing through him.

I told him that he was right about the good films but the bad ones are his.

Creative inspiration can sometimes be a very faint hint to the dynamics of prophecy. When the Torah says, God speaks to a prophet, it does not mean like a person speaks to another person. The prophet must transcend his character, free the soul and thereby bond and commune with the God - Source of all self; the Supreme Self. Only then can they hear "I--God--am your Lord."

The Torah teaches us that Moses was the greatest prophet ever. This is what Hashem said about Moses, "If there shall be prophets among you, in a vision shall I, Hashem, make Myself known to him, in a dream shall I speak with him. Not so My servant Moses, in my entire household he is the trusted one. Mouth to mouth do I speak to him, in a clear vision and not in riddles....' (Numbers 12:6-8) Moses sometimes reached prophetic peaks where Hashem would even speak out of Moses' mouth. This is apparent in number of places in the book of Deuteronomy where Moses talks about Hashem in third person and then suddenly pops into first person. Here is one such example, "It will be if you hearken to My commandments that I commanded you today, to love Hashem, your God, and to serve Him with all your heart and with all your soul, then I shall provide rain for your land in its proper time, ....... I will provide grass in your fields for your cattle and you will eat and you will be satisfied." Obviously it is not Moses who will provide rain, at this prophetic point God is speaking through Moses.

When we take a brief look at Moses early life, we begin to see the roots of his amazing ability for transcending his character and living in humble service of God's wisdom and words. Moses was born to a Jewish family during the time of their bitter oppression by the Egyptians. King Pharoah issued a decree to kill all the Jewish baby boys. In desperation, Yocheved puts her new born baby in a basket and placed it among the reeds at a banks of the Nile river. Thanks to providence, the princesses of Egypt comes along and finds this abandoned baby, names him Moses and takes him home. Ironically she ends up hiring Moses real mother to nurse the child so Moses grows up knowing he is a Jew and yet receiving the royal upbringing of an Egyptian prince. Moses, however, was a restless soul and wanted to share in the suffering of his Jewish brethren who were enslaved by the Egyptians. The first day he goes out of from being isolated in the palace he sees an Egyptian beating a Jew. Without hesitation he kills the Egyptian to save the Jew. Realizing the implications of what he had done he quickly hid the body and returned to the palace. You would think after a day like that he would just stay put and never go out again. However, the very next day Moses goes out. This time he sees a Jew about to beat another Jew. He is shocked. "Why would you strike your fellow?"

"Who appointed you as a dignitary, a ruler, and a judge over us? Do you intend to murder me as you did the Egyptian?" Moses was devastated--- the word was out. The Jew that he had saved must have spread the word. Pharoah also heard, and immediately issued orders to kill him. So Moses fled to the land of Midian. There he married a Midianite women whose family was excommunicated and harassed by the community. He moves in with her family and shepherds his father-in-law's sheep. We can understand why Moses named his first son Gershom which alluded to his intense feeling of alienation. "I have been a stranger in a foreign land."

It's just after these painful words of Moses that the bible narrates his first encounter with prophecy--- the vision of the burning bush. This is no coincidence. Imagine the identity crisis of this man. He was a Jew but rejected by his people. He was the prince of Egypt but now a wanted fugitive. He once enjoyed royal status living in the palace of the king of Egypt and now he is a simple shepherd grazing in the desert. Here is a very lonely man. He has no real identity. However, it's precisely his being stripped of his identity that freed his soul to bond with God. This identity crisis, the abandonment, loneliness and alienation freed Moses soul from getting lost in his character, identifying with any persona, and thereby freed him to only identify with God.

Most spiritual journeys start with an identity crisis. It is God's gift to us; to awaken us to the truth that only He is our source of self worth. As a soul we know that the only role worth playing is a humble servant of God; a vehicle for His loving presence on earth.

Rabbi David Aaron

I Yam What I Yam.
Prayer is not a normal part of the life of the natural man. We hear it said that a person’s life will suffer if he doesn’t pray, but I question that. What will suffer is his spiritual life; which is nourished not by food, but by prayer. Prayer is the way that the life of God in us is nourished. We look upon prayer simply as a means of getting things for ourselves, but the biblical purpose of prayer is that we may get to know God Himself.

We complain before God, and sometimes we are apologetic or indifferent to Him, but we actually ask Him for very few things. Yet a child exhibits a magnificent boldness to ask! Ask and God will do. Give God the opportunity and the room to work. The problem is that no one will ever do this until he is at his wits’ end. When a person is at his wits’ end, it no longer seems to be a cowardly thing to pray; in fact, it is the only way he can get in touch with the truth and the reality of God Himself. Be yourself before God and present Him with your problems— the very things that have brought you to your wits’ end. But as long as you think you are self-sufficient, you do not need to ask God for anything.

To say that "prayer changes things" is not as close to the truth as saying, "Prayer changes me and then I change things." God has established things so that prayer, on the basis of redemption, changes the way a person looks at things. Prayer is not a matter of changing things externally, but one of working miracles in a person’s inner nature.

Living in God's Light

I Yam What I Yam. Beware of not acting upon what you see in your moments on the mountaintop with God. If you do not obey the light, it will turn into darkness. "If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!" The moment you forsake the matter of sanctification or neglect anything else on which God has given you His light, your spiritual life begins to disintegrate within you. Continually bring the truth out into your real life, working it out into every area, or else even the light that you possess will itself prove to be a curse.

The most difficult person to deal with is the one who has the prideful self-satisfaction of a past experience, but is not working that experience out in his everyday life. If you say you are sanctified, show it. The experience must be so genuine that it shows in your life. Beware of any belief that makes you self-indulgent or self-gratifying; that belief came from the pit of hell itself, regardless of how beautiful it may sound. Are you working it out in the everyday issues of your life? Every detail of your life, whether physical, moral, or spiritual, is to be judged and measured.

CHASTENING

I Yam What I Yam. Oh, the pain.


"Despise not the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of Him." Hebrews 12:5

"It is very easy to quench the Spirit; we do it by despising the chastening of the Lord, by fainting when we are rebuked by Him. If we have only a shallow experience of sanctification, we mistake the shadow for the reality, and when the Spirit of God begins to check, we say - oh, that must be the devil."

"Never quench the Spirit, and do not despise Him when He says to you - "Don't be blind on this point any more; you are not where you thought you were. Up to the present I have not been able to reveal it to you, but I reveal it now." When El Shaddai chastens you like that, let Him have His way.

"Nor faint when thou art rebuked of Him." We get into sulks with God and say - "Oh, well, I can't help it; I did pray and things did not turn out right, and I am going to give it all up." Think what would happen if we talked like this in any other domain of life!

"Am I prepared to let God grip me by His power and do a work in me that is worthy of Himself? Sanctification is not my idea of what I want God to do for me; sanctification is God's idea of what He wants to do for me, and He has to get me into the attitude of mind and spirit where at any cost I will let Him sanctify me wholly."

ENLIGHTENMENT MUST COME

I Yam What I Yam.
"And he saw him no more." 2 Kings 2:12

It is not wrong to depend upon Elijah as long as God gives him to you, but remember the time will come when he will have to go; when he stands no more to you as your guide and leader, because God does not intend he should. You say - "I cannot go on without Elijah." God says you must.

Alone at your Jordan. v.14. Jordan is the type of separation where there is no fellowship with anyone else, and where no one can take the responsibility for you. You have to put to the test now what you learned when you were with your Elijah. You have been to Jordan over and over again with Elijah, but now you are up against it alone. It is no use saying you cannot go; this experience has come, and you must go. If you want to know whether God is the God you have faith to believe Him to be, then go through your Jordan alone.

Alone at your Jericho. v.15. Jericho is the place where you have seen your Elijah do great things. When you come to your Jericho you have a strong disinclination to take the initiative and trust in God, you want someone else to take it for you. If you remain true to what you learned with Elijah, you will get the sign that God is with you.

Alone at your Bethel. v.23. At your Bethel you will find yourself at your wits' end and at the beginning of God's wisdom. When a person has not perfected himself, there is a rift between his mind and his emotions. Intellectually, one may understand the correct path, but the heart and desires are not fully controlled by the mind. The disparity, if not corrected, will eventually lead to a spiritual collapse.
When you get to your wits' end and feel inclined to succumb to panic, don't; stand true to God and He will bring His truth out in a way that will make your life a sacrament. Put into practice what you learned with your Elijah, use his cloak and pray. Determine to trust in God and do not look for Elijah any more.

Prayer

I Yam What I Yam.
The only abiding reality is God Himself, and His order comes moment by moment. Am I continually in touch with the reality of God, or do I pray only when things have gone wrong— when there is some disturbance in my life? I must learn to identify myself closely with my Lord in ways of holy fellowship and oneness that some of us have not yet even begun to learn. ". . . I must learn to live every moment of my life in my Father’s house.

Think about your own circumstances. Are you so closely intune with
El Shaddai’s grace that you are simply a child of God, continually talking to Him and realizing that everything comes from His hands? Is the eternal Child in you living in your Father’s house? Is the grace of His divine love being worked out through you in your home, your business, and in your circle of friends? Have you been wondering why you are going through certain circumstances? In fact, it is not that you have to go through them. It is because of your relationship with God who is always ready to come into your life. You must allow Him to have His way with you, staying in perfect oneness with Him.