הִנֵּה-נָא הוֹאַלְתִּי לְדַבֵּר אֶל-אֲדֹנָי, וְאָנֹכִי עָפָר וָאֵפֶר
Behold now, I speak as the Divine even within dust and ashes ... Bereshit 18:27
On this phrase, in Out Of Context, n writes:
Rava in Tractate Chulin 88b says that the reward for saying this was that his children would earn the Mitzvah of the ashes of the Para Adumah (Red Heifer) and dust of the Sotah (a woman brought to the Temple accused of adultery was forced to drink a concoction which had dust from the foot of the Altar in it).
How are Sotah and Para Adumah a relevant reward to Afar v'Efer?
N sums it up:
This explains the Pshat of the Dubner Maggid, that Hashem took what Avraham said, and changed the context from dust and ash with all their negative connotations, to dust and ash as Mitzvos with all their positive connotations.
In other words,
Says the Beis HaLevi, Hashem inverted this, by giving the Mitzvah of Sotah, which cleans the woman's past, and Para Adumah which purifies the persons future.
Last night before sleeping, I drew mannaz, the rune of Divine Conciousness made manifest in the individual and within the race of humanity. Mannaz asks the question, "what does it mean to be human?"
I dreamt.
Like in the television series Lost, I was in Jacob's shack. There was something I had to face.
Outside, a storm-tossed ocean filled my view. The waves were as tall as skyscrapers. Driving the waves and all across the surface of the ocean were tornados made of water. One was coming at me. The natural instinct would be to run, but I just stood looking at it as it approached. Then, like Aaron of the Exodus, I ran toward and into it, face first. I encountered an underwater ship with a brief dreamstory of its own walking through the wall of water. The water didn't part, there was no water-water, I just walked completely through it as if I could breathe like a fish (נון, like Moses). [Interestingly, נון is the Aramaic word for fish - and, in follow-up to last week's Torah commentary (The Demon Dance), angels can't understand Aramaic. Human beings, with the ability to maintain wholeness even within the physical, can.]
I emerged in a sunny place. Climbing up an embankment by a river's edge, I saw a reddish cow wearing a cowbell standing near the edge of the earthen landing. Glancing aside while eating vegetation, she looked up at me, then turned and walked away.
In the place of the reddish cow, a white bull came toward me. Telepathically, the white bull communicated to me, "I can tell you."
Then, the white bull transformed into a bald man with his eyes closed standing in the rain. I was now standing at the top of the earthen embankment, face to face with the man. The man opened his eyes. Our gaze met eye to eye.
In our linked minds, we looked together and saw two women trapped in a hole in the earth.
I woke up.
Interestingly, mannaz is the "n" rune describing humanity as the progeny of the Divine. As n considers the mysteries of dust and ashes in Out of Context, n considers the mystery of what it means to be human.
