Three men were in a NASA conference room to decide how to spend $10 billion.
“I think we should put our men on Mars!” said the first man.
“Ooh, good idea,” said the other two.
“I think we should put our men on Venus!” said the second man.
“Ooh, good idea,” said the other two.
“I think we should put our men on the Sun!”
“How are you going to do that?”
“Easy. We go at night.”
I’m sure you’ve heard the expression “There’s nothing new under the sun,” but did you know that it’s actually a verse in the Torah? In Kohelet (Ecclesiastes) King Solomon writes “What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.” (Kohelet/Ecc 1:9)
Why did King Solomon specify that there’s nothing new under the sun? Why did he not write that there’s nothing new under the heavens or that there’s nothing new in the world? Why did he specify the sun?
What is the consciousness of the sun? The sun rises and sets consistently, it rose this morning and we expect it to rise the same way tomorrow. The sun doesn’t change. It represents in our lives the unchanging nature of our habits. There is nothing new under the sun.
Consider the moon on the other hand, it waxes and wanes. It begins as a small sliver and grows until it is complete, it then shrinks and the cycle starts again. The moon represents the unexpected changes, even miracles, in our life. Did you know that the Talmud compares the Jewish people to the moon? Just as the moon has periods of being full and being lacking, so do the Jewish people. Just as the moon receives its light from the sun, so the Jewish people receive their sustenance from G-d directly.
It is significant that the first mitzvah the Jewish people received upon being freed from Egyptian slavery was to establish the Jewish calendar, which is based on the lunar cycle.
This provides a profound insight; in order to be free, we have to let go of our “Sun Consciousness.” We have to concede and realize that although today may have been terrible, it doesn’t have to mean tomorrow will be the same. We can tap into our “Moon Consciousness,” the potential for, and being open to, positive change. (How apropos then that the Hebrew word for month, Chodesh, comes from the same root word as Chadash, new).
So although there is “nothing new under the sun,” we can still expect miracles in our life by properly channeling this powerful “moon potential.”