BARBARA'S TCHATZKAHS

The Tree of Life By Boruch Cohen With a name like "The Life of Sarah," this week's Torah portion sounds like a promising biography. Too bad she dies in the second verse. One of the fundamentals of our faith is that the Jewish way of life is everlasting. This is why the doing of good deeds is compared to planting a seed. When a seed is planted, it disintegrates in the ground, losing its puny identity to the nourishing soil and creative potential of mother earth. A seedling sprouts, which will one day grow into a tall tree. In time, the tree will bear fruit, and seeds, which themselves might become an orchard, and ultimately, a vast forest. Likewise, a good deed takes root and sprouts in a nourishing eternity of good deeds and Jewish values. These deeds and values give life to ourselves and our offspring, that we too might one day grow into tall fruitful trees; that our fruits might one day become orchards. That's why the Torah is called the "Tree of Life." Th...

Open Heart Spiritual teachers have always pointed to the heart as the seat of consciousness, and recently Western science has found evidence to support this realization. It turns out that the heart has its own central nervous system and is not simply under the rule of the brain as formerly believed. Anyone who has taken the time to explore the heart knows this and, more important, has realized that the heart is the source of our connection to a consciousness greater than the ego. Approaching life with an open heart means that we have opened the door to this greater consciousness, taking up residence alongside it in the seat of our soul. Fortunately, at this time there is a lot of support for this shift energetically as well as practically. To some degree, approaching life with an open heart is as simple as shifting your attention onto your heart. Eventually you will be able do this any time, any place, but at first it may help to try it in a quiet place where you won't be disturb...