Twenty-Two Foundations

This week in our Sefer Yetzirah meditation circle, we practiced a single line that feels like both cosmology and instruction:

“Twenty-two foundation letters: three Mothers, seven Doubles, and twelve Simples.” (SY 2:1)

Instead of treating the letters as ideas to study, we treated them as something you can rest on, as though the alphabet itself could become a floor beneath the soul.

So we began with foundation.

Posture. Seat. Spine. Breath.

We gave it more time than usual, not as warm-up, but as practice: laying down the basics carefully, as if setting stones in place. In a world that trains us to skim, this kind of beginning can feel like a quiet refusal: I will start with what is real.

Later, we touched the twelve “simple” letters through the simplest instruction of all: just sit.

Just be present with what is, nothing else.

And when the mind did what minds do - racing, planning, replaying - we practiced the most faithful move in meditation: return. Return to the place. Return to the breath. Return to now. Not as a failure, but as the practice itself.

May the foundations we lay in small moments - one breath, one return - hold us when everything else feels unsteady.