The Process of Counting the Omer 5768
with Rabbi Steven Fisdel

The Omer Process needs to be understood as

• Seven Cycles of Introspection moving our consciousness through seven layers of life experience. The movement uncovers where each of us is in relationship to these central experiential realms in our life.

• The 49 day spiritual practice of Self-discipline and Internal Self-preparation that culminates in the intense personal experience of Shavuot, that of receiving the light of God consciously at the highest level of cognition.

• An opportunity for taking an inventory of Self and using that information as the basis for internal processing and spiritual redirection.

• A process of opening all the inner gates of self, so as to create cumulative healing within, facilitating increasing connection to God through all levels of one’s being and remaining fully conscious of it.

• A series of daily offerings to God of dedication, kavannah and love that serves to attune our everyday consciousness to deeper levels of self and to the divine program embedded within our souls.



The Kavanah: The Spiritual Focus of the Seven Weeks

1. The Week of Chesed: The Expansiveness of Life

Examine the areas of your life that are opening up for you and broadening your experience of being. Allow yourself to become expansive and embrace the light that guides you on your path and the love that encompasses your experience.


2. The Week of Gevurah (Din): The Contracted Places

First, examine the circumstances in your life that you find are limiting or that require the establishment, maintenance or modification of boundaries. Then, repeat the process on an internal level, in places deep within yourself. With that information, focus on those areas of life experience, both inwardly and outwardly, where courage is required to handle these realities effectively and where strength and perseverence are necessary for fostering further spiritual development.


3. The Week of Tiferet: The Balance Points

Find where the harmony and balance in your life resides. Examine as well, where you may be out of sync. First, send out the intention to bring the deficient areas into alignment and balance. Get a sense of what needs to be done and why. Then, focusing on the places in your life, which are already harmonious, direct energy into creating integration and synergy between the balance points.


4. The Week of Netzakh: The Interconnectedness of Relationship

Explore your connection to self through relationship to others, to the world and to God, affirming oneness through diversity. This is the week to assess the nature, status and efficacy of one’s relationship to family, friends and colleagues.


5. The Week of Hod: The Complexity of Inner Work

Focus your attention inwardly on your values. Assess your strengths and weaknesses. Then from that vantage point, explore carefully the various dimensions of the issues you are working through at the present time.

6. The Week of Yesod: The Formulation of a Plan


Center yourself so that you can clarify the key assumptions you are operating with in your life. After having identified them, you can then reframe the pattern on which you are basing your life experience. May your inner work over this next month be one of great spiritual renewal. May you remember, who you are and why you are. May you have the courage and the strength to pursue successfully, the work of inner reconstruction. May God assist you in the process and bless your efforts.


7. The Week of Malkhut: Making the Path Meaningful and Real

Seek practical suggestions from others about how to implement the revised plan of your life and also work with ideas you yourself have regarding how to ground your actions and increase your conscious presence in the world.