Blessings of the Cosmos: Wisdom of the Heart from the Aramaic Words of Jesus
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Aramaic—the language of Jesus and his disciples—has captured the imagination of seekers from every faith and spiritual tradition. Since the publication of his bestseller Prayers of the Cosmos, Aramaic scholar Dr. Neil Douglas-Klotz has become a foremost expert at uncovering the rich layers of meaning found in Jesus's native wisdom sayings.
Now, in Blessings of the Cosmos, this renowned author presents a collection of all-new translations of Jesus's best-loved benedictions and invocations for peace, healing, divine connection, and more, including:
- "Come unto me, all ye that labor"—blessings to renew and rededicate your life's sacred vocation
- "Ask, and it shall be given you"—discovering your origin in the source of Love itself
- Jesus's parting words to the disciples, from the blessing of greater works to the many mansions teaching to the great commandment on love, and more
- Jesus' Beatitudes in Luke—blessings for our inner being
- Plus an 80-minute CD with 20 guided Aramaic body prayers, similar to the traditional Middle Eastern practices that Jesus himself used to generate spiritual energy and insight
Whether for personal inspiration or for communal worship and rites of passage, Blessings of the Cosmos offers you a heart-opening prayerbook that offers guidance and encouragement toward an ever-deepening daily experience of the Divine.
Neil Douglas-Klotz
Neil Douglas-Klotz, PhD, (Saadi Shakur Chishti) is a world-renowned scholar in religious studies, spirituality, and psychology. Living in Edinburgh, Scotland, he directs the Edinburgh Institute for Advanced Learning, and for many years was co-chair of the Mysticism Group of the American Academy of Religion. He is also co-founder of the international Network of the Dances of Universal Peace. A frequent speaker and workshop leader, he is the author of several books, including Prayers of the Cosmos, The Hidden Gospel, The Genesis Meditations, The Sufi Book of Life, Blessings of the Cosmos and The Tent of Abraham (with Rabbi Arthur Waskow and Sr. Joan Chittister). Known also for his citizen diplomacy work, in 2004, he co-founded the Edinburgh International Festival of Middle Eastern Spirituality and Peace. In 2005, he was awarded the Kessler-Keener Foundation Peacemaker of the Year award for his work in Middle Eastern peacemaking. For more information on communities worldwide in which his work is shared, visit The Abwoon Resource Center.
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Blessings of the Cosmos - Neil Douglas-Klotz
NEIL DOUGLAS-KLOTZ, PH.D.
B L E S S I N G S O F T H E
C O S M O S
BENEDICTIONS FROM THE ARAMAIC WORDS OF JESUS
For Nur Jehan, who reminds me how much
unexpected blessing and joy life can provide.
ENHANCED CONTENTS
Track One (5:17)
Invocation of the Light
Track Two (5:29)
The Way of Snake and Light
Track Three (4:37)
Making a Decision / Releasing Unripeness
Track Four (2:28)
Returning to Ripeness
Track Five (3:28)
Touching Emptiness
Track Six (2:48)
Discovering a Fluid Self
Track Seven (3:29)
A Particular Bad Day
Track Eight (4:10)
Food for the Journey
Track Nine (4:36)
A Breath of Loving Warning
Track Ten (3:57)
A Voice from the Heart
Track Eleven (2:24)
Shifting Priorities
Track Twelve (2:20)
The Gifts of Light and Darkness
Track Thirteen (4:34)
The Renewal of the Holy One
Track Fourteen (4:36)
Following Desire to Its Source
Track Fifteen (3:54)
Opening to the Next Step
Track Sixteen (1:54)
Creation and Service
Track Seventeen (2:17)
Original Peace
Track Eighteen (4:26)
The Love That Created the Universe
Track Nineteen (2:54)
Dedicating Work and Life
Track Twenty (2:47)
The Rebirth of Sacred Purpose
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Enhanced Contents
Introduction: Hearing Jesus with Aramaic Ears
How to Use This Book
1. Permission to Shine
AUDIO: Invocation of the Light
2. Snake and Dove: The Blessings of Holy Wisdom
AUDIO: The Way of Snake and Dove
3. A Blessing of Impermanence
AUDIO: Making a Decision / Releasing Unripeness
4. The Beatitudes in Luke: Blessings in Unexpected Places
AUDIO: Returning to Ripeness
AUDIO: Touching Emptiness
AUDIO: Discovering a Fluid Self
AUDIO: A Particular Bad Day
AUDIO: Food for the Journey
AUDIO: A Breath of Loving Warning
AUDIO: A Voice from the Heart
AUDIO: Shifting Priorities
AUDIO: The Gifts of Light and Darkness
5. Blessings of Work and Rest
AUDIO: The Renewal of the Holy Land
6. Permission to Desire
AUDIO: Following Desire to Its Source
7. Yeshua’s Last Blessings on His Disciples: How to Hitch Your Soul to a Living Comet
AUDIO: Opening to the Next Step
AUDIO: Creation and Service
AUDIO: Original Peace
AUDIO: The Love That Created the Universe
AUDIO: Dedicating Work and Life
8. The Blessing of Gabriel: What Mary Heard
AUDIO: The Rebirth of Sacred Purpose
Bibliography
About the Author
About Sounds True
Copyright
INTRODUCTION
Hearing Jesus with Aramaic Ears
Sixteen years ago, I published the book Prayers of the Cosmos, an attempt to reinterpret and translate the Lord’s Prayer and the Beatitudes in the Gospel of Matthew from the standpoint of the Middle Eastern spirituality as found in Jesus’ native language of Aramaic. The approach was simple: because Aramaic, unlike Greek or English, allowed for a much greater range of meaning than a simple word-for-word translation could offer, I rendered each line of the prayer or Beatitudes five to seven different ways in poetic form. Surprisingly, the book is still in print and has sold more than a hundred thousand copies worldwide, mostly through word of mouth.
Using the same format, this book aims to present Jesus’ best-loved benedictions and words of encouragement in new translations derived from the Syriac Aramaic version of the Gospels called Peshitta, the same source I used for the original collection. Blessings of the Cosmos includes sayings like the great commandment
on love (John 14), the Beatitudes reported in Luke, Jesus’ farewell talk with his disciples in John, and a number of other well-loved invocations of light, joy, peace, and faith. As readers have used my earlier book, they can also turn to this one for both personal inspiration and as a resource for communal worship and rites of passage.
In the sixteen years since Prayers was published, a great many developments in both the Christian theological and scholarly worlds have supported an Aramaic approach to the spirituality of Jesus.
On the side of Christian theology, many mainstream and liberal theologians have expressed the view that a majority of Christians are much more interested in spirituality, that is, religious experience, than they are in creeds or theological concepts. Those who find a friend in Jesus are much more interested in how he prayed and what he did—spirituality and social justice—than they are in a catalog of beliefs about the virgin birth, the crucifixion, and the resurrection. They are less interested in what theologians call high christological
concepts than they are in how each person can become a son or daughter of God, living in wisdom and compassion, as Jesus did. In this arena, my own work has also received much wider acceptance, and I have been invited to speak at many theological schools and churches on the spirituality of Jesus as viewed through his native Aramaic language and culture.
In the scholarly world, a number of developments have radically shifted the view of Jesus and his times. first, several other scholars have published research maintaining that no person can be labeled a Jew
or a Christian
either during the lifetime of Jesus or for up to 300 years thereafter. One Christian scholar stated simply, There are no Jews or Christians in the Bible
(Pilch 1998). The Jewish scholar Daniel Boyarin has proposed in his most recent work (2004) that what we presently call Judaism
and Christianity
both emerged from an enmeshed hybrid identity
that lasted for hundreds of years. Neither faith fully individuated from this twinned
state until the time of Constantine, three centuries after Jesus, when the first Christian creeds were written as a charter for the now-Christian Roman Empire.
The word usually translated Jew
in the Gospels is a mistranslation of both the Aramaic and Greek words that should read Judean,
a person living