Meditation on the Six Directions

The 6 Directions 
Sefer Yetzirah 1:12

Find your seat. Let the body arrive. Feel your points of contact—chair, floor, earth holding you. Let the gaze soften. Notice your inner weather: what’s moving in you today—clear, windy, heavy, bright, restless. No need to try to change any of that in your weather. No fixing is necessary here, just seeing, just noticing. 

The image that I want to invite us to invoke is that we're not on the edge of our lives right now for these minutes that we're together. Let's place ourselves at the center. 

For the past few weeks, we have been sitting together. We've been building a world together as we've sat with Sefer Yetzirah, beginning with the first four sefirot: divine breath, (ruach Elohim, breath as source); human breath, (breath from breath, ruach miruach, breath as an echo, a response, a reflected image); water from breath (fluidity, depth, the first container); and fire from water (heat, radiance, transformation, spark within flow). We've been tracing a movement - breath, breath from breath, water from breath, fire from water. 

Creation doesn't arrive as a finished object. It's arriving in Sefer Yetzirah as a sequence - subtly becoming more structured, more directional, more inhabitable. So this week our text shifts - beginning to sound like an incantation - almost like words meant to do something, to invoke something, not just a description.

Rabbi Jill Hammer teaches, “sealing is a magical practice of firming up a created reality or rendering a space free from negative influence.” So today we engage in the practice of sealing. In Sefer Yetzirah, God is sealing the directions from the center. In our practice, today, we're sitting right at the center and we'll seal the space of our own awareness, making it more real, more coherent, and more protected, invoking your senses as the gates of consciousness. We will seal the gates with attention, intention and the sacred letters. We're sealing from the center, not pushing the world away, rather just clarifying the boundary of the space that we're inhabiting. And we're going to move through the sixth directions above, below, east, west, south, north, each sealed with a permutation of the divine letters. 


We begin with sealing from above. You can turn the inner gaze upward. 

Five: God sealed from above
and faced upward
and sealed it with Yud Heh Vav.

Gently lift the inner gaze or simply imagine the space above you. What is your inner weather above? Is it spacious, pressured, open? Just notice and when you're ready, seal from above: Yud Heh Vav. Let the seal be like a soft firming: like sky becoming a trustworthy roof. 

We continue with sealing from below, downward. 

Six: God sealed from Below
and faced downward
and sealed it with Yud Vav Heh. 

Let awareness travel down into the pelvis, the legs, the feet, the floor, the cushion. What is your inner weather below? Is it steady, unsteady, alive, numb? Just notice. And when you're ready, seal from below: Yud Vav Heh. Let this seal feel like foundation - like the ground consenting to hold you.

Sealing from the east, facing front.

Seven: God sealed East
and faced front
and sealed it with Heh Vav Yud. 

Bring the gaze gently forward to the direction of beginning, of tomorrow, of emergence. What arises in you when you face front? Is it readiness, fear, curiosity? Just notice. And when you're ready, seal the east with Heh Vav Yud. Let it be a blessing on what comes toward you.

Sealing from the west, facing behind.

Eight: God sealed West
and faced behind
and sealed it with Heh Yud Vav. 

Without strain, sense what is behind you - past memory, what trails you. What is your inner weather from behind? Is it tenderness, regret, gratitude? Just pay attention. And when you're ready, seal the west with Heh Yud Vav, allowing the seal to be like a gentle boundary that keeps the past from flooding the present.

Sealing from the south, facing right.

Nine: God sealed South
and faced to the right
and sealed it with Vav Yud Heh.

Turn your inner gaze and your attention to the right toward warmth, generosity, expansion, and giving. What is the inner weather here? Is it flowing? Over-giving? Withheld? Just notice. And when you're ready, seal the south with Vuv Yud Heh, allowing the sense of giving to be a clean kind of giving and allowing warmth to become wise.

Sealing from the north, facing left.

Ten: God sealed North
and faced to the left
and sealed it with
Vav Heh Yud.

Turn your inner gaze to the left: coolness, restraint, discernment, boundaries. What is the inner weather here? Clarity? Tightness? Protection? Just notice. And when you're ready, seal the north from above with Vav Heh Yud, allowing boundaries to become kind and noticing the kindness in boundaries. Allowing restraint to become spacious.

Now we return to the center. Bring your awareness to your physical center, beginning with the seat as an idea of center - that foundational center. Moving now to your breath as a center - the center of your aliveness. And finally, almost as if dropping a pinpoint on a map to the center of your body, to your solar plexus, and being aware of the centering place of your body, bring in a sense of feeling sealed from above and below, before and behind, right and left. Not trapped, but just held. Not closed, but clarified. An entire world with edges, a self with a center. There's an invitation now to engage with six slow and intentional breaths, invoking each direction. It doesn't matter which direction you start in - just do six breaths each invoking a different direction, with a full inhalation and exhalation.

When you've completed that cycle, do it one more time, six breaths slowly invoking each direction and this time turn the inner gaze in the direction of the breath. So beginning by lifting the eyes, the gaze upward with a full breath cycle. Then allowing the gaze to drift downward with the full breath cycle. Moving the gaze to the right with a full breath cycle. And to the left to the full breath cycle. Leaving the gaze outward and in front. Then behind.

Continue in silence now for 10 minutes with the cycle of moving the breath in the six directions.