Category Archives: Psalms

Heart Walk: Et-halaych

01/06/2012 Alia Meira

Et-halaych b’tam l’vavi, b’kerev bayti
Heart Walk Hebrew text
I will walk within my house in the integrity of my heart. (Psalm 101:2)

To ﬁnd the integrity of my heart is to return to its innocence, simplicity, and wholeness, and then live my life from that place. When Life gets complicated, tangled up and overwhelming, it’s time to “go for a walk.”

Et-halaych is a reﬂexive verb (to take yourself for a walk) that describes a way of living that is self-aware. I must take this walk within my own house, ﬁrst, if I am to manifest that integrity in the world. My own house might mean the workings of my inner life or the life of my family and intimate relationships, or the sacred realm of “HOME.”

This practice is a walking meditation.

To hear the various parts of the chant, use the audio players. To download a part, right-click a note and save (or download) the linked MP3 file.

To download the PDF file for this chant, click Heart Walk PDF. For the musical notation, see The Magic of Hebrew Chant, page 288.

Chants, Psalms

Min HaMetzar

09/28/2011 Alia Meira

Min HaMetzar karati Yah,
Anani vamerchavYah

From the Narrow place I called out to God
who answered me with the Divine Expanse. (Psalm 118:5)

A High Holy Days Practice

With this chant, we can dedicate our own narrow places — the places of struggle, difficulty, suffering or challenge in our lives… . We can know and accept those narrow places as that which will make our “Call” beautiful and compelling. When we can allow the force of our call to move through our narrow places, through what makes us all-too-human, then our call will be answered by God’s Divine Expanse — a sense of spaciousness in which transformation can happen.

To hear the various parts of the chant, use the audio players. To download a part, right-click a note and save (or download) the linked MP3 file.

To download the PDF file for this chant, click Min Hametzar PDF. For the musical notation, see The Magic of Hebrew Chant, page 280.

Chants, Psalms

Blessing of My Soul: Borchi

09/28/2011 Alia Meira

Borchi nafshi et Adonay, HallaluYah
Borchi Hebrew text
Bless the place of Sovereignty, Oh my soul!
(Psalm 104:1)

A High Holy Days Practice

I call on the force of my soul to bless the God-spark within me, to call it forth, to let it shine though all the layers of Self so that that part of me can be re-enthroned.

To hear the various parts of the chant, use the audio players. To download a part, right-click a note and save (or download) the linked MP3 file.

To download the PDF file for this chant, click Borchi PDF file. For the musical notation, see The Magic of Hebrew Chant, page 249.

Chants, Psalms

Encountering the Living God: Tzam’ah Naf’shi

08/09/2011 Alia Meira

Tzam’ah Naf’shi L’Elohim L’Eyl Chai

My soul thirsts for God, for The Living God (Psalm 42:3)

Deep inside of us there is a soul-thirst to know God, the Underlying Unity, the Mystery within and between all the things of our world. The word Elohim is a God name that is in the plural, alluding to the many faces of the One… what Taoists might call “the 10,000 things.” We enter through this world of multiplicity so that we might encounter “The Living God”… Eyl Chai, who can only be experienced with the wholeness of presence in this very moment. The God of the past, my own or other peoples’ conceptions, beliefs, or expectations will not suffice. They will not open the doors to The Living God. My soul thirsts for direct encounter with God/Reality in each moment.

To hear the chant, use the audio player. To download the chant, right-click the note and save (or download) the linked MP3 file.

Encountering the Living God

< For the musical notation, see The Magic of Hebrew Chant, page 284.

Chants, Psalms

Soul Perspective: Elecha Yah

05/25/2011 Alia Meira

Elecha Yah nafshi esa.

To You God I lift up my soul. (Psalm 25:1)

Sometimes it feels like I am a human who is in search of the expanse of my soul… yet in my clearer moments I know that I am that expansive soul, enjoying and learning from the experience of being human. This practice of Soul Perspective, lifts me up into that clarity. In difficult circumstances that don’t make sense from my human perspective, I use my holy imagination to access the soul contract. For example, when I am involved in a serious conflict with someone… I imagine our two souls hanging out before birth, making a loving agreement. “Let’s meet when we’re in our 20’s, OK? And we’ll have this amazing attraction, and then we’ll gradually find out how different we are and begin learning from those differences. I’ll help you heal that old rigidity that you’ve been carrying so many lifetimes, and you can help me get rid of my fantasies about love so that I can eventually open to real Love.”

This chant helps me to remember that, when I open to the Soul Perspective, even the most difficult encounters can be transformed into opportunities for Soul growth. After chanting this, you might try writing an imaginary dialogue between from the soul perspective between yourself and someone who triggers you. Let it begin from a premise that as souls, we come to love and serve each other, but that love and service often take forms that are difficult and troubling as forces of awakening.

To hear the chant, use the audio player. To download the chant, right-click the note and save (or download) the linked MP3 file.

Soul Perspective

To download the PDF file for this chant, click Soul Perspective PDF. For the musical notation, see The Magic of Hebrew Chant, page 283.