B'riahTeachingp. 110.01
Higher and Lower Levels of Identification
The Sh'ma's first line as the Higher Unity (all is God), Barukh Shem as the Lower Unity (God is all).
Reb David’s words, typed
We find that the first line of the Sh'ma points us to the "upper unity" and the Barukh Shem K'vod Malkhuto L'olam Va-ed points us to the lower unity (Tanya, in the introduction to Sha-ar Hayikhud V'ha-Emunah from the Zohar). Saying the words while experiencing the changes in identification explodes our boundaries of our small selves and then helps us to reconstitute them into a more permeable gestalt than previous to the Davvenen. Trying on these different perspectives prepares us for the Amida.
שמע ישראל יהוה אלהינו יהוה אחד
יחודא עילאה
Yikhuda Ila-a
THE HIGHER UNITY
ALL is God
ברוך שם כבוד מלכותו לעולם ועד
יחודא תתאה
Yikhuda Tata-a
THE LOWER UNITY
God is ALL
The essence of light, life, and love, inhabiting every dimension of being and non-being in the multi-uni-verse, evolving and adventuring, playing through our consciousness across life, death, rebirth, and redeath, over aeons of time, and, ultimately, beyond time, beyond the age of the Moshiakh, until consciousness consumes matter itself.
"Thus the seer
With vision clear,
Sees forms appear and disappear,
In the perpetual round of strange,
Mysterious change
From birth to death, from death to birth,
From earth to heaven, from heaven to earth;
Till glimpses more sublime
Of things, unseen before,
Unto hir wondering eyes reveal
The Universe, as an immeasurable wheel
Turning forevermore
In the rapid and rushing river of Time."
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
"One unified being and becoming,
surrounding and filling all creation,
including all things in mystic coherence,
spanning all time as it unfolds and evolves,
giving each being its part in the whole,
calling us now to extend its unity,
bringing this oneness to all human life."
The Aquarian Minyan Friday Night Siddur