Angels Walk with Me

 

Everything is holy! everybody’s holy! everywhere is holy! everyday is in eternity! Everyman’s an angel! 

Allen Ginsburg

Here is a podcast I did with Tal Rabinowitz from the Den Meditation about Angels: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/gahl-sasson-get-to-know-your-angels/id1391968482?i=1000514984826

From an early age, I had a fascination with angels. They did not appear to me as chubby little winged toddlers, the favorites of the Renaissance, nor were they clad with a shining halo, or dressed in white flowing gowns, they did not have a visible set of feathered wings albeit some did show them off at the end of our encounter, and to be absolutely honest, I never saw them with my eyes open. They only made their appearance when my eyes were wide shut, which I assume encouraged my third eye to open.

I kept their existence in my life hidden, as a teenager I had enough problems and didn’t want to add angel sighting to the list, as they say, an angel feather can break the camel’s back. But I did patiently await their random arrival, which usually happened when I was ready to go sleep, with my head under the covers, waiting for an encounter of the metaphysical kind.

When “my” angel did arrive, and I call him a he because that was the appearance my teenager self projected on the angel, had grey skin (no, he was not an alien, I asked that the first time we “met”) he was smoking a cigarette (I didn’t smoke neither anyone in my family), and had a bit of an attitude. He always leaned against a bricked wall, maybe because it was around 1983 and Pink Floyd’s “the Wall” came out, but it was way before I was aware of the “Wall Angel” rehab exercise. The Grey angel had a distinct James Dean vibe, he was wearing jeans, and a white tight T-shirt, as you could imagine. At first he only listened to me yapping, but as we got more familiar he also started offering advice, saying this like:

— No, I’m not an alien, and yes, aliens also have angels, they just look different.
— How do you know I’m real? Well, what is real anyhow? And it wouldn’t matter if you did.
— How can you talk to me? Think a loud thought and the answer will be even louder. 

The grey angel helped me a great deal even if he was rather cryptic and had a haze of white smoke around him. When I asked him what he was smoking, he said nonchalantly, as if it was common knowledge, “Clouds, of course, what did you think?”

What the angel taught me more than anything was that I wasn’t alone in my teenager confusion, and that he was there, available when I needed reassurance, or just some divine inspiration. It wasn’t what he said that made me feel safe but rather his proximity, his nearness. It taught me that angels, or spiritual guides are not always there for information, words, or witty conversation. It was his presence, what in Kabbalah is called Shekinah, that helped me through the trials of adolescence. What I gathered from my time with the smoking angel:

The way to connect to angels is by what he called “loud thoughts.”  When I later studied psychology in university, I was excited to learn that the grey matter in the brain includes regions that control muscle, and sensory perception such as seeing and hearing, memory, emotions, speech, decision making, and (this they don’t teach in the academy) – angel sighting. When I later studied Kabbalah it all made sense. Thoughts are associated with the sphere Wisdom, which is colored silver grey.

 Angels “wear” whatever they can find available in your subconscious wardrobe that fits their size and sense of fashion. If you think angels are funny, they would wear clowns’ red nose, if you grew up being told angels are winged and haloed, they would do the best to accommodate your desires pulling out of your memories the appearance that best suits you.

Angels “speak” to us using our own thoughts. These angelic thoughts are the kind you never actually thought of before, hence, original. What I’m trying to say is that whenever you have a thought that pops out of nowhere, that cannot be traced to any other thought, a deliberation that is so original and unique it makes you go – “wow,” that’s probably coming from your guide. These angelic thoughts are also “louder,” in the sense that they override your regular mundane thoughts, especially those of doubt and skepticism. 

Angels do their best to bring us closer to the light, in other words, making your feel at one with Oneness. 

The word angel comes from late Ancient Greek, ἄγγελος angelos which means “messenger.” It is a translation from the Hebrew word מלאך mal’ach, which means messenger. One of the most fascinating stories of angels is detailed in Genesis, the book that brought the whole idea of angelhood into humankind’s awareness. In Genesis 5:23-24 we read: 

כג  וַיְהִי, כָּל-יְמֵי חֲנוֹךְ, חָמֵשׁ וְשִׁשִּׁים שָׁנָה, וּשְׁלֹשׁ מֵאוֹת שָׁנָה.23 And all the days of Enoch were three hundred sixty and five years.

כד  וַיִּתְהַלֵּךְ חֲנוֹךְ, אֶת-הָאֱלֹהִים; וְאֵינֶנּוּ, כִּי-לָקַח אֹתוֹ אֱלֹהִים.24 And Enoch walked with God, and he was not; for God took him. 

 
Enoch is a very interesting character, 7th generation from Adam, from the line of Seth. His name shares the same root as “educate,” as well as “inaugurate,” and indeed it is believed Enoch taught humanity writing and astrology. He lived for 365 years, very symbolic for the first astrologer to walk the earth, having lived the amount of years it takes the Sun to complete its transit in a chart befor he was “no longer.”

As you can read from the verse above, it is said that Enoch walked with God, which means he must have really done a great job being a good person, probably seeing God in everyone he met. It must have felt to everyone who encountered him that indeed God was walking with him or within him. In Kabbalistic terminology, Enoch was at one with the one. And then, just like that, the same verse that asserts that Enoch walked with God, also claims that Enoch stopped being since God took him. Wait, what?! The bible is not shy of detailing gruesome deaths, murders, and beheadings. So what is this all about? God snatched him?

Scholars date the Book of Enoch to about 300BCE, that is about 180 years after the story of Prince Siddhartha attaining enlightenment and transforming into the Buddha – Light. This remarkable period in human history, what is called the “Axial Age” by the German Philosopher Karl Jaspers, was a pivotal era in human evolution that brought us the journey inward. The period lasted from about 800BCE to 200BCE and featured a formidable line of spiritual celebrities and masterpieces: Buddha, Lao Tzu, Confucius, Homer, Pythagoras, Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, the creation and compilations of the Old Testament, Upanishads, Yoga Sutras, to name a few. 

In the story of the Buddha, upon the last temptation of Mara, Mother Universe herself came to witness the Buddha’s right to illumination, saying, and I quote Joseph Campbell: “This is my beloved son, who through innumerable lifetimes has so given of himself that there is nobody here.” How about that? What a beautiful parallel that shines a great deal of light on the obscure biblical verse. Enoch walked with God, just as Siddhartha sat down with Mother Universe, and as we saw, she witnessed that “there is nobody here,” just as Genesis tells us that Enoch “was not. Taken by God.” In many traditions, the symbol of God is light, and while the Buddha attained enlightenment, shedding his ego, name, princely title, and transformed into light, so did Enoch let go of his existence as a human and went hiking with God to the heavens.  

Stories of Enoch circulated in the Talmud, Midrash as well as the Zohar tell of how Enoch once ascended to the heaven became the king of angels, above the four archangels: Michael, Gabriel, Uriel, and Rafael. The name Metatron is shrouded with mystery. Some rabbis, like the great mystic Nachmanides (1194-1270) claims the name means, “pathfinder,” or “guide,” while modern scholars believe the name comes from Greek, Meta (adjacent, or before) and Tronos (throne, seat). In Kabbalah he is called the “young one,” the lesser YHVH. When I first read the story of Enoch transformation into Metatron, I got chills. The implications are tremendous to us human caught in our mortal coils. Someone on our team managed to get all the way to the top and sit by the throne of God. A human can become God’s buddy, favored among angels and messengers. Metatron is there pleading our case, and not only that, it means that each one of us, as human, have the potential to walk with God and become an angel, a messenger of light.

I’m sending you the best angelic wishes and hope you can find a way to identify how you are IS connected to you.  

I hope to hear you at Clubhouse or see you at the classes this Sunday. Happy New Moon in Aries and until then, go hike with Gods and Goddesses, you never know, you might be no more…

gahl