Conditions for Connection with the Divine

It is possible to go through life assuming that religious observance automatically activates, influences, or bestows something, that the act itself establishes connection. But there is no connection unless certain conditions are established. Those conditions are set with intention. This is not automatic. Without the right intention, the action does not produce connection, regardless of how faithfully it is performed.

The feeling of supremacy among Israel illustrates this. They were told that what they do is different, that their keeping carries a special charge, and they translated that into the doing itself. Yet it was never about the doing. The treasure that their training was meant to guard was the light, and the light is no longer there. They are like guards and soldiers who still remember the training, still continue the rounds, still keep watch, but they are guarding an empty building. The structure remains while the light that gave meaning to it is absent.

All of that keeping, all of that training, needs now to be translated into searching for where the light is now, because only through that search can connection return. The intention must move away from merely keeping and toward finding what it is possible to connect to now. What was once the work of guarding must become the work of searching, and that search begins with the recognition that the light is no longer where it was thought to be.