Guided Imagery Mar Cheshvan
We are here before you Hashem, vulnerable and open entering the month of Cheshvan after leaving the protection of Your Sukkah and your womb of Elul and Tishrei. We are apprehensive to fall from the state of connection that we have received over the past months as we enter into the month of Cheshvan with no holidays, and therefore no revealed light of its own. We are in need of rooting and structure, to nourish and ground the insights and the divine sparks that we had access to during the past few months. We need to continue to nourish the soil from which we planted new seeds...To maintain the relationship received from your closeness in Elul and your inspiration of your High and Holy days....
As our conception period was in Tishrei, now we are in the period of planting seeds and gestation until another rebirthing in Nissan...Hashem we need to know how to hold you in the dark, unknown months of the year that we are entering. We need to know how to find you and hold you in those places where there is potential for falling...
Please guide us hashem of how to ground and grow our vessels, our structures even bigger...Please show us how to make them impermeable to the outside influences of all the Yetzer Ha Ra...how to be the perfect vessels for letting in your light Hashem this year. Please show us how to make ourselves into a miniature Bet Hamikdash....A vessel for your light here on Earth....so that we know even in the dark months we are about to enter that we will be able to experience you and hold the vessel of light for the Beit HaMikdash Hashlishit to emerge in this month
Mar Cheshvan – "And everything is according to the preponderance of action (Rabbi Akiva Pirke Avot)": And everything follows the preponderance of action. Chassidim especially are familiar with the notion that following the holidays of Tishrei, once Cheshvan begins, it is time for action. It is customary for chassidim to spend the month of Tishrei by their Rebbe. At the end of Tishrei and the beginning of Cheshvan, the Lubavitcher Rebbe would send his chassidim off with the verse “And Jacob set on his way…,”7 implying that like Jacob it is time to get to work. Rabbi Yitzchak Ginzburg
Mar Cheshvan is a relatively quiet month. It comes on the heels of the busiest month, Tishrei. Rav Hirsch relates the name Cheshvan to the verb choshev - to think - teaching that we utilize this month to think about and integrate all that we did, or tried to do, in tefilla (prayer) and avoda (Divine service) during the month of Tishrei. This month is a time of great potential waiting to be actualized. The Mishkan and Bait Hamikdash were completed in this month, but they were dedicated in the month of Nissan. The month of Cheshvan still awaits its turn - to inaugurate the third and final Bait Hamikdash. Cheshvan is empty of holidays, a kind of hollow barrenness that is waiting to be filled. This energy affects us all. Rebbetzin Silber
The Letter of the Month נ corresponds in the Torah to the image of falling, Nun is a the “prototypical vessel letter” A vessel for receiving. Final ן - more than any other letter means kingdom and symbolizes Hashem’s Kingdom (dwelling) on earth “G-d will be King over all of the earth, on that day G-d will be one and his name will be one”
The Hebrew Letters, Channels of Creative Consciousness Rabbi Yitzchak Ginzburg
