“There is a crack, a crack in everything—that’s how the light gets in”
— (Leonard Cohen, “Anthem”)

The crack in the walls of the spiritual self are breached— but when does the destruction begin and why does it matter? The breach begins only once there is a crack—this truth is something mystics and poets know well. The crack within everything begins on the 17th of Tammuz leading up to the 9th of Av—the time of deepest darkness that simultaneously holds the power of luminal darkness.

There are five symbolic moments of loss happened to our ancestors on the 17th of Tammuz:

(1). The tablets crack and were broken;

(2). The continuous daily offering in the Jerusalem Temple ceased;

(3). The city walls of Jerusalem crack and are breached;

(4). A Torah scroll is burned in public by Apustumus;

(5). A graven image of an idol was placed in the Sanctuary by Menashe (mTa’anit 26a-b).

The first day of the fissuring process begins with a fast and thus begins the most melancholic three-week period of the spiritual journey of the year. But the process of fissuring the lower self to crack into the higher self takes time. Through that time known as the 3 weeks we are asked to deepen our self-reflection and strategize the reinforcement of the walls of our own inner holy city?

Daily self-reflection.

This process of self-reflection is an effective reinforcement that requires a self-understanding of what it is that breaks through the walls of egocentrism. The hammers of hate and the axes of falsity; the battering rams of shallow coarseness and the ladders of coarseness.

Light breaks through the deep darkness of the melancholy that imprisons us through egocentrism and can be illumined again by the torches of love and the bricks of truth, the innocence of naiveté and the integrity in the One shall rebuild the inner holy space of the soul.

Join us for a 21 daily doses of self-reflection on these cracks in everything to harness more light staring this Thursday, July 6-26.