Hearing, Yearning and Being Spiritually In-Tune

“If you will listen to the voice of God your God…”

– Dvarim (Deuteronomy) 28:15

Perhaps this statement in the Torah is talking directly to crazy people who hear voices. It clearly seems not to be talking to people who don’t hear voices – and yet this verse is found throughout the Torah! Either the Torah is specifically geared to people who hear voices or it is entirely irrelevent…or profoundly deep.

“The Torah contains within it everything that will ever happen in the Universe, from the biggest events to the smallest details…”

- The Vilna Gaon,
In the introduction to his commentary on the
Sifra D’tzniuta of the Zohar

How can the Torah contain within it the entire universe if it is merely a collection of stories that happened thousands of years ago? From the story of creation, Adam & Eve, the Jewish people in Egypt, etc. – where is there anything more than the mere stories? But rather, the Torah is the blueprint of creation and reality, and in order to uncover its depths and secrets one needs to know how to unlock the code, how to truly understand its meaning and infinite depth – which is why the Jewish people study and immerse themselves fully in the Torah day and night, taught by spiritual masters who have been taught its secrets.

The secret of listening to God’s voice is that deep inside everyone of us we are absolutely connected to God as we are part of God. “There is nothing other than God” (Dvarim 4:35) means that there is nothing in existence that is outside the realm of God, and everything in and of existence is God and is an expression of God.

“Rav Yehoshua Ben Levi said, everyday a voice from heaven calls out and says, woah to anyone who has not immersed themselves in the study of Torah – for a person is only free through the study of Torah…”

- Pirkei Avot, 6:2

The above teaching is a description of reality. The reality that anyone who is deeply and truly connected to the spiritual realm, to the real world, hears a voice of yearning, a voice calling upon the world to experience the soul and heart of life, to connect to their truest selves. A person who is in a place of yearning, of growth, of looking beyond the veil of this world to a deeper world, a world of oneness, a world of relationship with God – will hear this voice.

In truth, perhaps people who hear voices are on a higher level.

May we listen to the inner yearnings of our heart and of God’s calling out to us. The Hebrew month of Elul is a spiritually opportune time to listen to the yearning of our deeper selves, as expressed in the sounding of the Shofar throughout this month.