Angel’s on Earth: Cultivating a Deep Inner World

On the treadmill next to me was a woman wearing headphones and singing as she ran. She may have been unaware that only she could hear the music. When a person has a headset on, they can easily forget that everyone’s reality isn’t illuminated by that music. It got me thinking: a vibrant religious life can be like wearing headphones. One sees and feels spiritual realities through ritual and prayer that others may not be experiencing. That music, when authentic, continues to play at work, home, or anywhere one goes.

All people have their own unique subjective abilities to perceive deep spiritual truths. Rabbi Yaakov Tzvi Mecklenburg, the nineteenth century author of the Biblical commentary Haketav Vehakabbalah, wrote:

The truth is that the people of Israel were not all equal in their spiritual level. And they did not see or perceive the same kind of revelation at Sinai. Rather, each one was only able to receive this revelational experience in accordance with the spiritual condition of his (or her) soul. Every Jew saw something, but what he experienced was directly proportional to the preparation he had put into it. When a person was less prepared, he only experienced a minimal level of revelation at Sinai. And the one who prepared more received more. And this is the meaning of a “consuming fire.” The perception of God’s greatness is exactly the same as the way fire takes holds of various objects. There are items that are by nature combustible and when you touch them with a flame they produce an enormous fire. But, there are other items which when you put a flame to them remain immune and nothing will happen to them. Just like nature has made certain materials receptive to fire, so it is with the Sinai revelation (Commentary on Exodus 24:17).

The Kedushat Levi taught that there are two types of wonder a person can cultivate: Yirah penimit and yirat chitzonit – internal and external awe. It is well in our ability to cultivate simultaneously a deep spiritual relationship with the world and a profound inner spiritual life. Emmanuel Kant wrote: “Two things fill me with wonder: the starry sky above and the moral law within.”

Those who are on fire, who keep their finger on the mission and their eyes on the prize can resemble angels on Earth. In the Jacob’s ladder story, the angels were “going up and coming down” on the ladder. The ancient rabbis point out that the order seems wrong. Angels should descend first and only then ascend back to the heavens.
Rabbi Larry Kushner offers an elegant explication of this thought based upon the Midrash (Genesis Rabbah 68:12):

But there is another, even more obvious interpretation. The angels did not reside in heaven at all. They lived on earth. They were ordinary human beings. And, like ordinary human beings, they shuttled back and forth between heaven and earth. The trick is to remember, after you descend, what you understood when you were high on the ladder (God Was in This Place, 13)

If we are connected to heaven and we are connected to earth, then people should be committed to ideals that call for creating pragmatic change: to sit in the light and to sit in darkness; to be on fire and to recharge; to ascend and to descend. If we wish to cultivate ourselves to live and lead in the world of externalities then we must look inside ourselves for the true spark of spirituality, developing our inner point (nekudah penimit).

Rabbi Dr. Shmuly Yanklowitz is the Executive Director of the Valley Beit Midrash, the Founder & President of Uri L’Tzedek, the Founder and CEO of The Shamayim V’Aretz Institute and the author of seven books on Jewish ethics.  Newsweek named Rav Shmuly one of the top 50 rabbis in America.”