Tea Time Meditation
Connect to this cozy moment through a warm cup of tea & mindful moments with Jenna Zadaka of breathandsoul.net
Tea mug & Candle Holders by Kiyor Studio: https://www.kiyorstudio.com/
Rav Ginsburgh points out that the word for smell in hebrew, Re’ach, has the same letters as the word for spirit, ‘Ru’ah’. The Garden of Eden had the most beautiful fragrance in the whole world.
In the creation story after the original sin, all of our senses fell to a lower spiritual level EXCEPT smell. Chava (Eve) “listened” to the snake, “saw” the good fruit, “touched” and “tasted” it, yet smell wasn’t involved. Our sense of smell never became corrupted or fell to a lower level of consciousness. Our smell remains as pure as it was in Gan Eden. Our olfactory ability relates back to the radiant state of Adam and Chavah when their body and soul were perfectly unified. The Arizal teaches that the Adam and Chava had bodies of Ohr (light) and they smelled like Gan Eden.
Avraham Sand, in his book Mystical Aromatherapy: The Divine Gift of Fragrance, explains many kabbalastic, midrashic, and Talmudic texts around fragrance. He speaks about the “Scent of Paradise” emanating from the Garden of Eden. The garments that G-d gave to Adam and Chavah in the Garden of Eden were saturated with the heavenly fragrance of Eden, known as the ‘Meil Hatzedaka’, the “Garment of the Balancing Force”. Kabbalah explains that the garment was engraved with designs of animals, mystical symbols, and imbued with the beautiful Gan Eden fragrance. This garment was passed down through the generations. Adam and Chavah gave it to their son, Seth, who passed it down to Noah (which was brought into the ark), to Abraham, to Isaac, to Jacob (known as the, ‘coat of many colors’), and then to Moses. The Talmud explains that when Moses ascended to Mt. Sinai to receive the Torah, the “world was filled with fragrance”, referring to the fragrance of paradise (Gemara Shabbat, 88b). In the future, Moshiach will judge by his sense of smell (Isaiah 11:3; Sanhedrin 93b). Through his sense of smell, Moshiah will be able to connect each Jewish soul back to it's soul root and identify which tribe each soul descends from.
The Talmud relates that smell is the primary vehicle that connects to our super-consciousness, known as the ‘Ruach HaKodesh”, or “holy spirit” (Brachot: 43b). Biologically, all of our senses path through complex networks that are encoded in the rational brain/cortical memory center, known as the hippocampus. Smell, on the other hand, has a direct pathway to the limbic brain, the cerebral area associated with intuition and dreams. The limbic system is associated with spiritual and mystical experiences. Smell has the ability to bring us healing, as it is a reliable chamber to the aromatic medicines we need. It also transports us back in time by triggering vivid memories. Patrician Davis, a master aromatherapist, tells us that, “the (limbic) area of the brain that registers smell is very closely connected to the area which is involved with memory, and both are situated in the “oldest” part of our brain...the part that was already developed in our most primitive ancestors.” Smell carries us back to our past, across vast spans of times, all the way to Gan Eden.
