If you don’t touch a piano for years, its keys will become stiff. The strings won’t resonate at the right frequency when you do tap on the keys.
If you only play certain keys, but neglect others, the keys you play frequently might become too loose, the strings will fray, and they won’t play at the right frequency.
Whatever music you try to play on this piano will be out of tune, unable to harmonize with other musicians.
This is what happens to human beings too.
Overplaying some of our keys and ignoring others eventually throws our whole system out of whack.
In the body, if we consistently move in a certain pattern, we will over-use some muscles and underuse others, leading to muscle imbalances that affect how we can move. We might find ourselves living in a body that is tight and stiff, causing pain to our movement. Joints that get over-worked might become too lose, leading to injury.
Cognitively, if we focus only on one subject we might get very fluent in that subject but unable to converse about anything else, leaving us out of conversations and unable to connect with others on anything but the topic we know well.
If we consistently experience the same emotional states, or suppress all emotions, we lose our capacity to experience the wide range of emotional states that make up a well-rounded life.
And if we always look at life through the same perspective, if we hold on to the same belief systems and stay at the same level of awareness, we lose our capacity to expand our potential.
When we don’t resonate at our natural frequency, we are unable to play in harmony with other people — and with life itself. We can’t make the music of our soul.
When our strings are frayed and our keys are stiff, we need a process to help us attune to our natural frequency so we can make the music we are here to make.
This is the journey of the Omer, the period of time between the Jewish holidays of Passover and Shavuot, or between Easter and Pentecost.
It is a process of coming home to yourself, of attuning your instrument — your body, mind, emotions, and spirit — back to your true nature so you can play the music of your soul.
This journey of attunement has 3 elements:
Element 1: Time
The first element is a defined period of time. You need a period of time to get physical and emotional distance from the oppression, and to allow the nervous system to settle.
But the time frame is not unlimited. If there is no definition of time, we don’t know when we are healed. Consider that in the Jewish tradition, even mourning rituals are given timelines. There is the initial seven day period of sitting shiva. Then a thirty day period of extended mourning. And in the case of the death of a parent or a child, there is an 11-month period of extended mourning. The timelines are fixed.
The time period defined for this process of attunement is 7 weeks. This is the period between Passover and the holiday of Shavout, as well as between Easter and Pentecost.
Seven is a symbolic number in Judiasm and in many mystical traditions. Here are a few:
- The 7th day (Sabbath) and month (the month of Tishrei) are dedicated for rituals of rest and reflection, for coming home to yourself and tuning into spiritual matters.
- Many Jewish laws rely on cycles of 7 years.
- There are 7 colors in a rainbow.
- There are 7 notes in a musical scale.
Element 2: Ritual
Time is irrelevant if you don’t mark it in some fashion. In Jewish tradition, rituals are used as a way of defining time.
For example, we light candles to welcome the Sabbath and holidays, signifying the distinction between these days and regular week days.
During the Omer, we use the ritual of counting the days. Each evening, we say a prayer and then announce the daily count, using specific linguistic framing:
For the first week, the language takes the form of announcing the day:
Today is the first day of the Omer.
After the first week, we announce the day, followed by the week and day count:
Today is the eighth day of the Omer, which is one week and one day.
Element 3: A Process
The third element is that we need a process, a system, or a structure for attuning our instrument. We need a framework that helps us find the individual keys that are stuck and those that are overused.
In spiritual practice, we have many frameworks we can use to guide ourselves back into attunement. Astrology, yoga, tarot, meditation practice, elements of nature, and the Chinese magic square are some of the different frameworks we can use to do the work of attuning ourselves.
In Kabbalah, the study of Jewish mysticism, the framework for attunement and self-study is the Tree of Life.
The Tree of Life contains ten spheres, called Sephirot. Each of these sephirot describes a character trait and emotional capacity that helps us take what we receive from Divine consciousness and manifest it on Earth.
The top three spheriot correlate to our vision and intellect. The lower seven sephirot correlate to seven core emotional traits that live in the body.
The Tree of Life is not only a theoretical framework; it is also a map to the emotions and the physical body. This allows us to find the correlation between the character traits and emotions and how they manifest in our physical body, and to embody the teachings of this wisdom.
With the Tree of Life as our guide, we systematically work through a process of attuning each of these lower seven sephirot, with a focus on one per week for seven weeks. The sephirot are also fractals, which means that each one contains the others. Thus, each week’s attunement is divided into seven days, with each day focused on one aspect of that sphere.
By the end of this journey, we will have covered all 7 facets in all 7 lower spheres, attuning all notes of our personal musical instruments, so that we can play in harmony with life.
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