The Ten Sefirot: Associations to Khesed

The Ten Sefirot- A s soc i a ti o ns Khesed The Sefirot are the qualities of the Divine, thus, they are qualities that transform you. If you try to describe the qualities of God as if they were objects to be described by color, mass and weight, you will always fall short of the mark. They are called the qualities of God because they are transformative: they change you when you touch them, but they themselves are not things to be touched and do not allow for perimeters to be drawn around them. This is not to say that they are completely infinite and ungraspable. This is said only about the Infinite Light. The Sefirot have some kind of limitation, aspect, associations. But they are, in some sense, still Divine, egoless. Think of the interference (blurred) pattern of a hologram and you get the level of sophistication that the Sefirot exist on. The language of the Sefirot is best understood as a process language, not an object language. By this I mean that the Sefirot come alive when one experiences them and speaks them in one's own language, explaining them through one's own associations. The following are my associations with Khesed, ideas that I have been able to cull from Hassidut as well as my own associations. I leave space for you to add your favorite associations with Khesed, as I see this enterprise as a collaborative project, rather than as a defining or personally idiosyncratic definition. Khesed Awakening Expansion Kindness Abraham My associations to Khesed • Two special keys to understanding this aspect of God, are the concepts of expansion and awakening. The expansion of Khesed is not in the kindness of giving to another, a concept related more to the heart, the sphere of Tiferet. In the arena of Khesed, the energy is not yet formulated, not yet developed. It is in Khesed that a burgeoning of consciousness takes place, an awakening, as if the energy is waking up from a deep sleep and becoming alive, filling out, spreading to its farthest limits, exploring of its possibilities. Its character is to be upbuilding (anabolic), a job countered by the Sefirah of Gevurah, the boundary setter whose character is down-breaking (katabolic). • Filling out; expanding to the farthest limits. Broad principles. Liberty and freedom. •The quality of Flow, liquidity, movement that is graceful and without jerkiness or stops and starts. • Light that flows on fast and forever. A photon released at a certain point could be anywhere within a 186,000 mile radius a second later. • The conductivity of metals. •Water that flows down to the lowest point, symbol of generosity to the needy. • Miriam in whose behalf a well of water followed the people around the desert for forty years. • Mother Theresa tending to the needs of streetpeople and ill castaways in India. • Activity- the dominant arm (for right-handed people, the right). •Warmth- The South (for those living in the Northern Hemisphere). • First day of the week. Sunday - day of the sun. •Gedulah, Greatness, bigness, large scope. • Ayl- the Force- Godname of Hesed. •The oxygenating life-giving rainforests. • The planet Jupiter. • A lightyear. •The creation of heaven and earth from the explosion of the Big Bang. • Dreams of possibility- the unlimited imagination. •The vision of love. • The earliest human beings. • Abraham the magician, who, as a friend of God, awakened matter to life, creating Golems and souls. •The growth principle that makes evolution possible. Selection of the fittest has to have something to select. Hesed gives it a field to work with. • The color purple. • Vices- gluttony, addiction, tyranny. Your associations to Khesed