In the Torah's account of the first day of creation, we have looked at the void, which is represented by zero and holds all potential life. We have seen the reference to water, which also represents the void. We have looked at the first thing created out of this void; on the first day of creation came the light, and the shattering of the Sefiroth. Now we turn to the Torah's account of the second day of creation:
1: 6 God said, "There shall be a sky in the middle of the water, and
it shall divide between water and water."
1: 7 God (thus) made the sky, and it separated the water below and the
sky from the water above the sky. It remained that way.
1: 8 God named the sky "Heaven." It was evening and it was morning, a
second day.
I believe the story of the Sefiroth in the Kabbalah sheds light on the second day of creation. We have talked about the three parts of the story of the Sefiroth, the energies used to create the universe. The first part is the forming of the ten Sefiroth from the void. The second part is the shattering of the Sefiroth when the light entered, and the third is the reconstruction of the shattered fragments into the five pairs of Sefiroth. I understand this reordering into pairs as what happens on the second day of creation.
The Hebrew word for "sky" in the Torah is rakiah, which is more precisely translated as "barrier." According to Sheinkin (92), "The word "sky" in Hebrew is rakiah. A rakiah is a barrier or an interface; either meaning is acceptable." The word barrier is defined in the dictionary as a boundary or limit, and interface is defined as "the place at which independent and often unrelated systems meet and act on or communicate with each other." They interact or coordinate harmoniously. It looks as if the "sky" performs two functions: to separate and to join. Here we have again the separating out and the coming together.
The second day of creation starts with "There shall be a sky in the middle of the water, and it shall be divided between water and water." This means the sky or barrier will be in the middle of the water; sky is separating the water. The text goes on to say, ".and it (sky) shall be divided between water and water." Next the Torah says, "God (thus) made the sky, and it separated the water below the sky from the water above the sky. It remained that way." This shifts the image of the vessels to above and below. This is important because it sets the stage for the third day of creation.
Turning to a numerological approach, Lynn Buess (5) describes two as the first movement:
With first movement comes sentience and the primal duality, the number TWO. TWO brings creation or manifestation, and this primal duality is the understructure to all later dualisms we experience in life - such as day/night, man/woman, good/evil, for example.
When I think of Divine energy, it is always in terms of flow, the wave, expansion and contraction. Also, I can't help but think of what Jesus' words "Where two or more are gathered together there will I be." He says, in so many words, I will be in the space between the two; in relationship you will find Me. Over the years I have passed through phases of different understanding of what I was doing as a Numerologist, and one phase brought me to realize that we were here on earth because this is where we experience relationship: the magnificence of relationship to others, to the sunset, to a snow flake...
As a Numerologist I usually refer to the number two as the germination process. The seed itself is the zero, holding within it the potential of all life. As LaVigne (1999) has written: "The one, then is the vital animating force of God, while the zero the fecund egg of potential energy." The shattering of the original form of the seed begins the separating out, the two. If you lift up the soil as a seed germinates, what you would find is a seed that has split its shell. Coming from it is a shoot going down into the earth and a shoot reaching upward. The separation that is taking place is necessary in order for the potential of this particular seed, be it flower, vegetable, or tree, to be realized. The separation is the beginning of the process of defining what the seed is, i.e. that which distinguishes the seed from its surroundings. As human beings this process is in constant interplay. I believe every cell in our body goes through this process.
In writing this paper I experienced this very thing. My husband is a technical editor and helped me get the paper into final shape. Once, as we talked about the paper, I could feel an energy shooting across my chest, a horizontal shattering across my fourth chakra which was physically uncomfortable. I identified it as the shattering energy I am writing about and realized it was a physical clue to help me separate out: me from him. We are very different people; his logic is not my logic. I realized my work was to hold my difference and his without diminishing either. Holding the difference allowed for integration to occur, and helped me to understand a lifetime of experiences of shattering. My husband is very bright, as was my father. I am very bright but in a rather different way. My whole thought process works differently than theirs. As a child I experienced this shattering at home, in school situations, and with playmates. I took that shattering and saw the differences in me as bad rather than good. These physical sensations were too much to feel and because I was so young I was not able to define properly the difference between me and the other. I just meshed, defended and began my co-dependent relationships.
Our awakening skills give us tools to work with this process of separating out this from that, me from you. In the interchange with my husband, the experiencer within me was noting the shattering across my chest, the asker was wondering what information was held in this physical and energetic experience, and the witness was taking it all in. My conscious awareness of my particular wounding was defining the shattering for me. Being consciousness of how I defend, (putting on "everything is fine" love mask, or going into attack mode with the lower self) all helped me stay in contact with my husband and helped me be more present to the sorting out of what was mine and what was his. I lost very little contact with my husband during this encounter.
Lynn Buess (8) describes the male/female pair of Will and Wisdom and their interactions in a way which is very reminiscent of this experience of relationship and the potential in reflective relationship for the emergence of new life, and Love:
The Will factor emerges from the center of Being; as an expression of Divine Will, or desire, it reaches out to initiate elaboration of consciousness. The receptive or Wisdom quality seeks to absorb the benefit of experience in the manifest existence. The condition of reciprocation and oscillation between the facets of Divinity allows for a point of reflection or awareness to emerge. The two energies reunite and resonate in harmony, through the third quality of Love, having the added perspective of insight received through experience. In a sense, even the Creator is constantly adding to and improving upon the Creation.
D. M Dooling (2) sums this up quite beautifully: "Without difference there is no relationship. Unity begets diversity."
The function of the two is to separate out. The two asks the question"Who am I?" I am understanding this question at a deeper level. Without defining difference, there is little chance for a full relationship. In my meditation experience described earlier, in which I saw the image of the light within the oval, I had the experience of clarity of the feminine and the masculine. I understood that if unity begets diversity, then diversity embodies unity. I experienced the unity of the zero and the one, which was two.
In a sense, the shattering presents an invitation to experience pairs of fundamental opposites as unified wholes. Our defenses arise out of a search for safety, and are based on the belief that one side of a pair of opposites is safer than the other. Light is safer than dark; love is safer than hate. Or, in some cases, dark is safer than light and hate is safer than love. This does not bring about a sense of safety. When we habitually cling to one side we begin an energetic imbalance restricting the flow of energy which eventually creates an imbalance. This can emerge as illness or pain, of an emotional, physical or spiritual sort.
While writing this paper I had an experience of this dynamic of the opposites. A friend read my second draft, and her comment was, "I don't get it." When she made this comment I began to cut off the flow within me. My acid reflux condition became very painful. I attempted to restructure my third chakra, but that gave only temporary relief. One night I awoke and was so uncomfortable I couldn't even put my hand near my third chakra. I held myself in that place. An image came to me of a snake precisely and coldly killing its prey. I knew instantly what this image held for me. My acid reflux was about me, like the snake, precisely and coldly cutting off my flow. The next day I spoke to my healer and she suggested that while it was true that I had cut off my flow in the face of my friend's judgment, there was also another truth present: I am flow. I tried to hold both sides of this paradox, restriction-of-flow, and flow. First I held the image of the snake cutting off my flow; then I held an image of the snake as the ancient symbol of the flow of the kundalini. I could feel an energetic shift and an almost immediate lessening of discomfort in my abdomen. A new third thing had emerged, the realization that these two images are one and the same, and reveal not two different snakes but one snake with two opposite aspects.
I now have more compassion for my clients and for myself regarding this illusion that one side is safer than the other. Once, in a session with a client, I became aware that he had come to me because of physical issues that presented energetically as a lack of flow associated with a shattering in his life. As a healer I held this client and allowed the flow to well up and pass through me to the client. There was no rigid division between the healer's flow, and the client's restricted flow. Both together represented the tension of the opposites, and brought about the mysterious third thing, the creation of something new. When the two, flow and restriction, meet each other the judgements and narrow perspectives of each dropped away. What I saw in my client was not a restriction to be fixed, but his Divinity and his Wholeness. Then I become more aware of how my defenses are just like my client's. Dooling (3) writes about the universality of this dynamic:
One brings forth its own two sides; male-female, plus-minus, for and against, the eternal contradiction which continues indefinitely in opposition until one side "wins" in which case nothing new happens; or until something else enters; a third thing.
I realize that holding this tension is a surrender to the paradox which opens the door of the creation process.