THE LORD'S PRAYER

IN ARAMAIC

 

The Lord's Prayer
(King James English Translation)

Our Father which art in heaven

Hallowed be Thy name.

Thy kingdom come.

Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread.

And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever.

Amen.

(Matthew 6:9-13, King James Version)

ARAMAIC
Abwoon d'bwashmaya

Abwoon d'bwashmaya

Nethqadash shmakh

Teytey malkuthakh

Nehwey tzevyanach
aykanna d'bwashmaya aph b'arha.

Hawvlan lachma d'sunqanan yaomana.

Washboqlan khaubayn (wakhtahayn)aykana daph khnan shbwoqan l'khayyabayn.

Wela tahlan l'nesyuna

Ela patzan min bisha.

Metol dilakhie malkutha wahayla wateshbukhta l'ahlam almin.

Ameyn.





The Lord's Prayer
translated from the Aramaic

O Birther! Father-Mother of the Cosmos, you create all that moves in light.

O Thou! The Breathing Life of all,
Creator of the Shimmering Sound that touches us.

Respiration of all worlds, we hear You breathing - in and out - in silence.

Source of Sound in the roar and the whisper, in the breeze and the whirlwind, we hear Your Name.

Radiant One: You shine within us, outside us - even darkness shines - when we remember.

Name of names, our small identity unravels in You. You give it back as a lesson.

Wordless Action, Silent Potency - where ears and eyes awaken, there heaven comes.

O Birther! Father-Mother of the Cosmos!

 

Recently, I had the opportunity to study a tape series by Neil Douglas-Klotz: PRAYERS OF THE COSMOS: Meditations on the Aramaic Words of Jesus. In his endeavor to recover the wisdom of Jesus as a Native Middle Eastern person, Klotz guides us through the prayer of the "Our Father" in its original Aramaic text format as was spoken by Jesus.

The prayer begins with an expression of the divine creation and the blessing that emanates from all parenting. The ancient Middle Eastern root ab refers to all fruit, all germination proceeding from the source of Unity. This root came to be used in the Aramaic word for personal father - abba - but still echoes its original ungendered root in sound-meaning. While abwoon is a derivative of this word for personal father, its original roots do not specify a gender and could be translated as "divine parent". These roots reveal many levels of meaning. Bwn shows the ray or emanation of that father/motherhood proceeding from potential to actual, here and now. In Aramaic, the character for b may also be pronounced w (for personal) or the b (for spiritual) is emphasized. No doubt, Jesus meant there to be an echo of both as Aramaic is rich in this sublime wordplay.

Further, according to the mystical science of sounds and letters, common to both Aramaic and Hebrew, the word abwoon points beyond our changing concepts of "male" and "female" to a cosmic birthing process. At this level of interpretation, abwoon may be said to have four parts to its sound-meaning:

A: the Absolute, the Only Being, the pure Oneness and Unity, source of all power and stability (echoing to the ancient sacred sound AL and the Aramaic word for God - Alaha - literally, "the Oneness").

bw: a birthing, a creation, a flow of blessing, as if from the "interior" of this Oneness to us.

oo: the breath or spirit that carries this flow, echoing the sound of breathing and including all forces we now call magnetism, wind, electricity, and more. This sound is linked to the Aramaic phrase rukha d'qoodsha, which was later translated as "Holy Spirit."

n: the vibration of this creative breath from Oneness as it touches and interpenetrates form. There must be a substance that this force touches, moves, and changes. This sound echoes the earth, and the body here vibrates as we intone the whole name slowly: Ah-bw-oo-n.

The rest of the phrase completes the motion of divine creation. In d'bwashmaya, the central root is found in the middle: shm. From this root comes the word shem, which may mean light, sound, vibration, name, or word. The root shm indicates that which "rises and shines in space," the entire sphere of a being. In this sense, one's name included one's sound, vibration, or atmosphere, and names were carefully given and received. Here the "sign" or "name" that renders Abwoon knowledgeable is the entire universe. The ending - aya - shows that this shining includes every center of activity, every place we see, as well as the potential abilities of all things. In effect, shmaya says that the vibration or word by which one can recognize the Oneness - God's name - is the universe. This was the Aramaic conception of "heaven." This word is central to many of the sayings of Jesus and usually misunderstood. In Greek and later in English, "heaven" became a metaphysical concept out of touch with the processes of creation. It is difficult for the Western mind to comprehend how one word can have such seemingly different meanings. Yet this was the worldview of the native Middle Eastern mystic.

 

Body Prayer

In the first line of Jesus' prayer, we remember our origins - not in guilt or imperfection, but in blessing and unity, in both vibration and stillness. For the divine breath (rukha) touches even the absence of what we can measure as "light" or "sound."

1. Intone the sound Ah-bw-oo-n slowly, finding a pitch that resonates the most in your body. Take some time to find this "note" - it is your own heritage from Abwoon:the tone at which you vibrate most is part of your "name," in the Aramaic meaning of the word. Feel the vibration of the sound. Where do you feel it in you body? As the sound enters the silence, let yourself follow it there. Begin to feel all the movements within the body - heartbeat, breathing, peristalsis - that go on without our attention. Feel these movements as internal prayers that point to the gift and responsibility of co-creation with God.

2. When in nature, walking or sitting, breathe in feeling the sound Abwoon inside yourself, and breathe out feeling the sound d'bwashmaya. Feel breath come into you as it does into the grass, trees, rocks, and water. Feel the One Source of this breathing. And feel the breathing returning to all creation. Our breath feeds the plants and theirs - us. The exchange unites us in God. All creation says the holy Name silently.

3. When at work, breathe in feeling the sound Ah; breathe out feeling the sound bwoon. As you inhale, feel all newness and nourishment coming into the heart-lungs area. As you exhale, feel everything old, everything that wants to be released, leaving with the breath. Where in the body can you feel the breath? What parts are not aware and could use waking up? As we become aware of the body, the darkness, the inside, we begin to be aware of soul (Aramaic, napsha) and on the track of the kingdom/queendom within.

You may obtain more information by accessing Klotz's website @ abwoon.com

If you wish a tape with the above meditation, please contact me:

astramate@aol.com