Introduction
This reflection unfolds in two distinct movements.
The first is an inquiry: grounded, analytical, and historically attentive. It examines language, context, and intention—how certain spiritual ideas emerged, how they were translated, and how they functioned within the psychological and cultural conditions of their time. Its purpose is not to persuade, but to clarify.
The second movement arrives later, not as a continuation of the analysis, but as a change in register. It does not introduce new ideas so much as re-enter the same terrain differently, allowing what has already been examined to speak in a more unified voice.
These two sections are not meant to mirror each other. They serve different functions, and are best read as such. One works through distinction and understanding; the other through synthesis and tone.
Together, they form a single reflection—approached from two directions.
Q: The word Commandments. It is used as the first words of God to man through the voice of Moses, The Ten Commandments or the Commandments of the Lord. Yet an all loving Lord or God would not command his creation if this God was all about Love. So my query is, the translation of the word Commandments. Is it possible there is a different meaning to the translation? And what language was this translation derived from?
A: The original language
The phrase “The Ten Commandments” comes to us through layers of translation.
• The Hebrew Bible does not call them “commandments” in the modern English sense.
• In Hebrew, they are called עֲשֶׂרֶת הַדִּבְּרוֹת — Aseret ha-Dibrot
• This literally means “The Ten Sayings” or “The Ten Utterances”
Already, something important shifts.
They are not framed as orders barked from above, but as spoken principles or articulations—words brought forth into relationship.
The Hebrew word often rendered “commandment”
When individual laws are discussed, the Hebrew word is מִצְוָה — mitzvah.
A mitzvah is commonly translated as “commandment,” but its deeper meaning is richer:
• It comes from a root meaning “connection” or “binding together”
• A mitzvah is something that joins the human and the divine
• Less “Do this or else”
• More “This is how alignment is maintained”
In Jewish mystical thought (especially Kabbalah), a mitzvah is understood as a pathway through which divine energy flows into the world.
How “commandment” entered the picture
The sense of divine command becomes stronger as the text moves:
Hebrew → Greek (Septuagint) → Latin → English
• Greek used entolē (an authoritative instruction)
• Latin used mandatum (from which we get command)
• English inherited the juridical, hierarchical tone
By the time it reaches English, the word carries Roman legal weight, not Hebrew relational nuance.
A love-based reading
From within the Hebrew worldview, the Ten “Commandments” can be understood as:
• Descriptions of how life functions when aligned with divine reality
• Guardrails for consciousness, not threats
• Revelations of consequence, not coercion
Much like gravity:
Not a punishment system,
but a truth system.
“You shall not…” can be read as:
“This way leads to fracture.”
“This way preserves life.”
Moses as a bridge, not a dictator
Moses is not portrayed as a tyrant delivering orders, but as a mediator of revelation—translating something vast into human language. What sounds like command may actually be accommodation: eternal principles condensed into words people could live by in a harsh, ancient world.
In essence
Yes—it is very possible, even likely, that “Commandments” is a misleading translation if we read it with modern assumptions.
A more faithful rendering might be:
• The Ten Teachings
• The Ten Utterances
• The Ten Revealed Principles
• The Ten Alignments
Seen this way, they are not the voice of domination, but the voice of care, spoken into a fragile humanity learning how not to destroy itself.
Your intuition—that love does not command in the way power does—is deeply aligned with the older meaning embedded in the language itself.
Q: Then the words in The Ten Commandments, “ Thou Shalt” and “Thou Shall Not” has been misinterpreted?
A: Short answer: yes—very much so, at least in terms of tone, intent, and philosophical meaning.
Where “Thou shalt” comes from
The phrase “Thou shalt” / “Thou shalt not” comes from early English Bible translations (notably the King James Version, 1611). The translators were trying to mirror what sounded authoritative in their time.
But that tone does not originate in the Hebrew.
The Hebrew grammar matters
In Hebrew, the Ten Utterances use a grammatical form that is not a legal command tense in the modern sense.
For example:
לֹא תִּרְצָח
Lo tirtsach
This literally means:
• “You will not murder”
• or “You do not murder”
It can function as:
• a description of behavior in an aligned life
• a warning of consequence
• or a statement of what is incompatible with the covenantal relationship
Biblical Hebrew often expresses moral reality using future or imperfect verb forms—not authoritarian orders.
A more accurate feel (not a word-for-word rewrite)
Instead of:
Thou shalt not murder
The Hebrew carries something closer to:
Murder is not part of who you are when you live in alignment
or
This is not the path of life
That doesn’t mean the text is optional or casual—it means it is relational, not juridical.
Covenant language, not courtroom language
The Ten Utterances are given within a covenant, not a criminal code.
A covenant says:
“This is how we live together.”
A law says:
“Do this or be punished.”
The English phrasing flattened that distinction.
Why it ended up sounding authoritarian
Three forces shaped the misinterpretation:
- Latin legalism
Latin mandatum framed divine speech as imperial decree. - Monarchical culture
Kings ruled by command; God was linguistically modeled the same way. - Post-Reformation moral anxiety
Control replaced trust as the organizing principle of religion.
None of those are Hebrew.
Important nuance
The text does carry moral weight.
It is not merely poetic suggestion.
But the authority is ontological, not coercive:
“These are truths about life.”
Not:
“Obey or else.”
In essence
“Yes” — “Thou shalt” is a translation choice, not a theological necessity.
It imposed:
• hierarchy over relationship
• obedience over alignment
• fear over wisdom
The original language speaks more like a map of reality than a list of divine orders.
What later sounded like domination began as guidance born of care, shaped by a culture trying to survive—and eventually distorted by languages that favored control over communion.
Q: Now let’s turn to “ The Sermon on the Mount.” How does Yeshua’s words equate, or not, with The Ten Commandments?
A: Yeshua’s Sermon on the Mount does not replace the Ten “Commandments,” nor does it contradict them. It completes, interiorizes, and radicalizes them—while returning them closer to their original spirit.
Continuity, not cancellation
Yeshua explicitly says:
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets… but to fulfill them.”
“Fulfill” here does not mean “obey harder.”
It means to bring to fullness, to reveal what was already latent.
The Ten Utterances describe outer alignments necessary for communal survival.
The Sermon on the Mount addresses inner consciousness necessary for spiritual transformation.
Same root. Different depth.
External law → Internal reality
The Ten Utterances say:
Do not murder
Do not commit adultery
Do not bear false witness
Yeshua says:
If you carry hatred, the seed of murder is already present
If you objectify with lust, the fracture has already begun
If you distort truth inwardly, speech will follow
He is not tightening the law—
He is moving it from behavior to being.
Hebrew law vs. Roman morality
The Ten Utterances function as covenantal guardrails:
“How a people remains whole.”
By Yeshua’s time, they had become externalized and policed, often detached from love. The Sermon on the Mount restores the Hebraic relational axis, but speaks it through heart-language, not statute.
In that sense, Yeshua does not oppose Moses—
He rescues Moses from legalism.
“You have heard it said… but I say to you”
This phrase is critical.
He is not correcting Moses.
He is correcting how Moses had been interpreted.
“You have heard it said” refers to:
• accumulated interpretations
• religious performance
• rule-keeping without transformation
“But I say to you” returns the teaching to direct encounter.
Love as ontological truth
The Ten Utterances say:
This is how life does not break.
The Sermon on the Mount says:
This is how love actually lives.
Turn the other cheek.
Love your enemy.
Bless those who curse you.
These are not moral commands in the ordinary sense—they are descriptions of awakened consciousness. They are impossible under ego, but natural under love.
The deeper unity
If the Ten Utterances describe:
• structure
The Sermon on the Mount reveals:
• source
If Moses speaks to:
• behavior in the world
Yeshua speaks to:
• the heart that generates the world
In essence
The Ten Utterances answer:
“How do we not destroy each other?”
The Sermon on the Mount answers:
“How do we become whole?”
Same divine current.
Different octave.
What Moses articulated as alignment,
Yeshua embodied as incarnation.
Not law versus love—
but law ripened into love.
Q: So Moses saw discontent and lawlessness, and felt words from a greater power than man would be needed to stop the people from their own destruction or put the people back in alignment. Whereas Yeshua’s words were to bring the people out of confusion because the Commandments had been corrupted by the Temple elders.
A: Yes — that framing is essentially sound, with a few important refinements that keep it grounded historically and spiritually.
Moses: containment before transformation
Moses encounters a people newly freed but not yet inwardly free.
• They are traumatized former slaves
• Accustomed to external authority
• Prone to chaos, fear, and regression
In that context, structure is mercy.
The Ten Utterances function as containment:
Not to elevate people spiritually,
but to prevent collapse.
From a psychological and communal standpoint, Moses is responding to:
• discontent
• volatility
• violence
• fragmentation
Invoking a voice “greater than man” gives the teachings weight strong enough to hold a fragile society together. Without that gravity, the people would likely tear themselves apart.
This is not moral failure — it is developmental reality.
Yeshua: liberation from distortion
By Yeshua’s time, the problem is no longer chaos — it is ossification.
• The Law has hardened into identity
• Authority has shifted from wisdom to control
• Temple elites mediate God instead of pointing toward God
The commandments themselves are not the problem.
Their use as instruments of power is.
Yeshua steps into that moment not as a lawgiver, but as a clarifier.
He addresses:
• confusion born of over-interpretation
• fear born of exclusion
• righteousness measured by compliance rather than compassion
His words do not discard the Law — they re-humanize it.
Different moments, different medicine
You’re pointing to something crucial:
The same divine source speaks differently depending on human maturity.
• Moses speaks to a people who need external alignment
• Yeshua speaks to a people who need internal awakening
One restrains destruction.
The other dissolves distortion.
Not rebellion against the Temple — exposure
Yeshua is not primarily anti-Temple; he is anti-replacement.
When rules replace relationship,
when obedience replaces love,
when certainty replaces humility —
the Law loses its soul.
That is what he confronts.
A developmental arc
Seen together:
• Moses → survival ethics
• Prophets → conscience formation
• Yeshua → heart realization
Same current, evolving expression.
In essence
Moses says:
“Here is the ground. Do not fall apart.”
Yeshua says:
“The ground is already within you. Stop looking elsewhere.”
Your insight captures the arc well:
containment first, then awakening.
Not contradiction — maturation.
Q: And how does all this Western philosophy balance with that of the East, such as Hinduism, Taoism and Buddhism?
A: What you’re touching now is the meeting point rather than the contrast. When the Western arc you’ve outlined is stripped of its legalism and returned to its contemplative core, it sits far closer to Eastern wisdom than most people realize.
The difference is less about truth and more about language, culture, and developmental emphasis.
One human problem, different entry points
Across traditions, the central issue is the same:
Human suffering arises from misalignment with reality.
What differs is where each tradition begins its correction.
Western path (Hebraic → Yeshua)
Problem addressed:
Disorder, injustice, fragmentation in communal life.
Method:
• Ethical alignment
• Covenantal relationship
• Love embodied in action
Trajectory:
External order → Internal transformation → Love as being
Yeshua’s teaching ultimately points toward inner realization, but it comes through ethics and relationship.
Hinduism
Problem addressed:
Ignorance (avidyā) of one’s true nature.
Method:
• Direct metaphysical insight
• Realization of Ātman = Brahman
• Liberation (moksha) through knowledge, devotion, or disciplined action
Here, alignment comes from remembering what you already are.
This parallels Yeshua’s:
“The Kingdom of God is within you.”
Different metaphysics, same realization.
Buddhism
Problem addressed:
Suffering caused by attachment and mistaken identity.
Method:
• Insight into impermanence (anicca)
• Non-self (anattā)
• Compassion arising naturally from wisdom
No commandments. No divine lawgiver.
Yet the outcome is strikingly similar:
• Non-harming
• Right speech
• Compassion as a spontaneous expression of clarity
The Eightfold Path functions like the Ten Utterances — not as commands, but as descriptions of an awakened life.
Taoism
Problem addressed:
Resistance to the natural flow (Dao).
Method:
• Wu wei (non-forcing)
• Returning to simplicity
• Living in accord with what already is
This is perhaps the closest resonance to Yeshua’s “consider the lilies” consciousness.
No law. No effortful morality.
Just alignment with the Way.
Where they converge
At depth, all four traditions agree on these points:
• Ethics arise from alignment, not enforcement
• Love/compassion is a byproduct of clarity
• External rules are provisional tools for immature consciousness
• Awakening renders coercion unnecessary
The East tends to begin inside and move outward.
The West historically began outside and moved inward.
Different starting points. Same mountain.
Why they feel different
Three major distinctions:
- Mythic framing
• West: relational God, narrative history
• East: impersonal absolute or emptiness - Social function
• West: stabilizing societies
• East: liberating individuals from illusion - Psychological posture
• West: moral responsibility
• East: perceptual clarity
But none of these negate the others.
A unifying lens
Seen through your earlier arc:
• Moses ≈ Dharma as order
• Yeshua ≈ Bodhisattva consciousness
• Buddha ≈ inner liberation
• Laozi ≈ natural harmony
Different dialects of the same awakening.
In essence
The East says:
“Awaken, and right action will follow.”
The West says:
“Live rightly, and awakening will come.”
At their deepest point, both discover:
There is no separation between love, truth, and being.
What changes is only the doorway.
Q: And why did all these different cultures not see the same entry point for transcendence? The West sees contraction where the East sees expansion. Perhaps I’m being too harsh with the word contraction but the word signifies holding together rather than falling apart.
A: You’re not being too harsh at all. “Contraction” is actually a very precise word, especially if we hear it as holding together rather than shrinking. What you’re noticing is not a failure of insight across cultures, but a difference in human necessity.
Different civilizations awakened under different pressures.
Transcendence emerges where pain is greatest
Cultures don’t choose their spiritual entry point philosophically.
They are shaped by what threatens them most.
The West: survival through cohesion
The ancient Near East was marked by:
• tribal conflict
• scarcity
• slavery and empire
• fragile social bonds
The greatest danger was disintegration.
So transcendence entered as:
• law
• covenant
• moral structure
• a God who binds people together
This is contraction in your sense:
containment to prevent collapse.
Without that contraction, there is no vessel for expansion.
The East: liberation from illusion
Large parts of India and China experienced:
• long civilizational continuity
• philosophical leisure
• stable cosmologies
• less emphasis on tribal survival
The danger there was not chaos, but entrapment in cyclic existence.
So transcendence entered as:
• expansion of consciousness
• dissolution of false identity
• liberation from attachment
Here, structure already existed. What was needed was release.
Expansion without contraction is fragmentation
Contraction without expansion is suffocation
Each tradition corrected a different imbalance.
You can think of it as breath:
• The West mastered exhalation restraint
• The East mastered inhalation release
Only together do they form a full respiratory cycle.
Psychology before philosophy
At a psychological level:
• Traumatized populations need boundaries
• Stable populations can pursue transcendence
A traumatized nervous system cannot awaken into vastness — it must first feel safe.
Moses is trauma-informed spirituality.
Yeshua is relational healing.
The Buddha is post-stability insight.
Laozi is post-effort wisdom.
Why no single universal entry point?
Because human consciousness matures in stages, not leaps.
What works for one stage can harm another.
A lawless people cannot begin with emptiness.
A rigid people cannot begin with obedience.
So wisdom appears where it can be metabolized.
Where they ultimately meet
At the deepest level, contraction and expansion are not opposites.
• Contraction creates the vessel
• Expansion fills it
Kabbalah later names this explicitly:
Tzimtzum — divine contraction as the condition for creation.
The East starts with fullness dissolving form.
The West starts with form preserving fullness.
Both describe the same paradox from opposite sides.
In essence
Cultures did not miss the same door.
They entered through the door that kept them alive.
What you’re intuiting is not contradiction, but complementarity across developmental time.
The West teaches:
“Hold together so you can live.”
The East teaches:
“Let go so you can be free.”
And maturity is knowing when each is true.
A Turning of the Lens
What you have just read has been an inquiry of mind and history—language traced back to its roots, intentions examined through context, and spiritual movements understood through the pressures that shaped them. This first movement was meant to clarify: to remove distortion, to restore nuance, and to let the traditions speak closer to how they were first lived.
What follows does something different.
Rather than continuing the analysis, it distills it. The second movement is not an argument, but a resonance—an attempt to hold the whole arc in a single breath. Where the first part separates, names, and explains, the second gathers, weaves, and listens. It is less concerned with precision of edges and more with the shape that emerges when everything is seen at once.
If the first section asks “How did we get here?”
The second asks “What does it feel like, now that we see?”
Together, they are not repetition, but completion:
one offering understanding,
the other offering integration.
Introduction
What if the great spiritual traditions of the world were never arguing with one another—only responding to different kinds of human fragility?
What if the so-called divide between Western “law” and Eastern “liberation” was not philosophical opposition, but developmental necessity?
When we slow the story down and listen beneath doctrine, a deeper pattern emerges:
transcendence always arrives through the doorway that prevents collapse first.
This is not a story of superiority or error.
It is a story of timing, containment, maturity, and love learning how to speak in different climates.
Moses and the Necessity of Holding
Moses steps into a people recently freed, but not yet whole. Liberation has removed the external chains, yet left the inner architecture unstable. Fear, volatility, memory of oppression, and the constant pull toward chaos hover beneath the surface.
In this moment, freedom without form would be annihilation.
So what arrives is not domination, but containment.
The Ten “Commandments”—more faithfully, the Ten Utterances—are not threats, but spoken boundaries. They do not introduce morality; they stabilize reality. They say, in effect:
“Here is the shape life must hold if it is not to tear itself apart.”
This is not spiritual infancy—it is spiritual triage.
To hold a traumatized people together requires gravity. To give words weight enough to restrain destruction, those words must sound as though they come from beyond human whim. The invocation of divine authority is not control—it is protection.
Contraction here is mercy.
When Holding Becomes Hardening
Time passes. Structures succeed. Societies stabilize.
And then something subtle occurs:
what once held life together begins to replace life itself.
By the time of Yeshua, the utterances meant to preserve alignment have hardened into instruments of measurement. Law is no longer a vessel—it has become an identity. Obedience has eclipsed intimacy. Interpretation has overtaken wisdom.
The problem is no longer chaos.
The problem is confusion born of rigidity.
Yeshua does not confront Moses.
He confronts what Moses has been turned into.
“You have heard it said…” is not an indictment of the Law, but of its misuse. Yeshua draws the teachings inward—away from compliance and toward consciousness. He moves the axis from behavior to being.
Anger is already violence.
Objectification is already rupture.
Truth distorted inwardly will always fracture outwardly.
This is not stricter morality.
It is awakening ethics.
The Law is not abolished—it is fulfilled, ripened into love.
East and West: Different Pressures, Different Doorways
Here is where the larger pattern clarifies.
The West emerged under constant threat of fragmentation—tribal conflict, exile, empire, scarcity. Its greatest danger was collapse. So transcendence entered as structure, covenant, and moral gravity.
The East, particularly India and China, developed under long civilizational continuity. The threat there was not disintegration, but entrapment—being lost in cycles of identity, attachment, and illusion. So transcendence entered as expansion, release, and insight.
The East asked:
How do we wake up from the dream?
The West asked:
How do we not destroy ourselves first?
Neither question is wrong.
Each answers a different human wound.
Expansion and Contraction Are Not Opposites
What you named earlier is precise: contraction is not shrinkage—it is holding.
Without holding, expansion becomes fragmentation.
Without expansion, holding becomes suffocation.
This is why the traditions appear to diverge:
- Hinduism points to remembering what you already are
- Buddhism dissolves false identity to end suffering
- Taoism relaxes effort into natural harmony
- The Hebraic path builds ethical vessels strong enough to carry life
- Yeshua reveals that love itself is the vessel
Different stages. Same intelligence.
Even Jewish mysticism eventually names this paradox directly: Tzimtzum—divine contraction as the condition for creation. The Infinite makes space so something finite can live.
The East begins with fullness dissolving form.
The West begins with form preserving fullness.
Both describe the same mystery from opposite sides.
A Single Arc, Seen from Many Angles
At depth, all traditions agree on the destination:
- Ethics arise from alignment, not enforcement
- Compassion flows naturally from clarity
- Law is provisional; love is foundational
- Coercion disappears when consciousness matures
What differs is the entry point.
A traumatized people cannot begin with emptiness.
A rigid people cannot begin with obedience.
Wisdom arrives where it can be metabolized.
Conclusion
There was never one door meant for everyone at once.
There were many doors, each opening where humanity stood at the time.
Moses held the people together.
Yeshua brought them back to the heart.
The East reminded humanity it was never separate to begin with.
Not contradiction—completion across time.
Addendum
Perhaps the deepest spiritual error is not choosing the wrong path, but mistaking one stage for the whole journey.
Containment is holy.
Expansion is holy.
The tragedy comes when we cling to either beyond its season.
Wisdom knows when to build walls—and when to walk through them.
Epilogue
If you feel drawn to structure, it may be because something in you needs holding.
If you feel drawn to vastness, it may be because something in you is ready to be released.
Neither longing is wrong.
Both are movements of the same breath.
The soul contracts to survive.
The soul expands to remember.
And love is what teaches us when to do each.
Numinous Waves 