The radiance emitting from the ark is said to be the Shechinah, or G-d dwelling within the ark. I like to think of it as G-d’s energy.
Shechinah
(; lit. "the dwelling"):
Shechinah שכינה is derived from the word shochen שכן, “to dwell within.” The Shechinah is G‑d as G‑d is dwelling within. Sometimes we translate Shechinah as “The Divine Presence.”
The majestic presence or manifestation of God which has descended to "dwell" among men.
The word Shechinah is feminine, and so when we refer to G‑d as the Shechinah, we say “She.” Of course, we’re still referring to the same One G‑d, just in a different modality.
The term was used by the Rabbis in place of "God" where the anthropomorphic expressions of the Bible were no longer regarded as proper (see Anthropomorphism). The word itself is taken from such passages as speak of God dwelling either in the Tabernacle or among the people of Israel.
After all, you were probably wondering why we insist on calling G‑d “He.” We’re not talking about a being limited by any form—certainly not a body that could be identified as male or female.
Remember the 13 attributes of G-d.
G-d is Incorporeal
Although many places in scripture and Talmud speak of various parts of G-d's body (the Hand of G-d, G-d's wings, etc.) or speak of G-d in anthropomorphic terms (G-d walking in the garden of Eden, G-d laying tefillin, etc.), Judaism firmly maintains that G-d has no body. Any reference to G-d's body is simply a figure of speech, a means of making G-d's actions more comprehensible to beings living in a material world. Much of Rambam's Guide for the Perplexed is devoted to explaining each of these anthropomorphic references and proving that they should be understood figuratively.
We are forbidden to represent G-d in a physical form. That is considered idolatry. The sin of the Golden Calf incident was not that the people chose another deity, but that they tried to represent G-d in a physical form.
G-d is Neither Male nor Female
This follows directly from the fact that G-d has no physical form. As one rabbi explained it to me, G-d has no body, no genitalia, therefore the very idea that G-d is male or female is patently absurd. We refer to G-d using masculine terms simply for convenience's sake, because Hebrew has no neutral gender; G-d is no more male than a table is.
But consider this: As soon as we just begin to refer to G‑d, we have already compromised His oneness. Because we have already created a duality—there is us and there is G‑d. In that duality, we take the female role, so that He calls us She and we call Him He. Then we do whatever we can to mend the schism between us and return to one.
How the Shechinah Was Exiled
You may have heard of the primordial disaster, a creation narrative first told by Rabbi Yitzchak Luria, known as “the Ari.” The narrative is told in dazzling, spectacular metaphor, fit for a grand eye-candy sci-fi movie. But it is all metaphor. Metaphor of a reality no human being could ever imagine. And so it is told in these fabulous terms:
Prior to the creation of our chain of worlds, another order was first created, that of Tohu. Tohu was the first example of planned obsolescence: it was designed to fail. Tohu is the source of every type of passion and desire that has the potential to destroy everything in its wake, including itself. It was designed with absolute intensity, so that the energy it contained would be in complete conflict with the vessels its energy entered. And so, Tohu brought about its own destruction.
But for a purpose.
From that initial catastrophe, the highest sparks fell to the lowest places. Think of an explosion: Those elements upon which the greatest force is exerted will fly the furthest from the core of the explosion. Which tells us that to find the most powerful remnants of the essence-light of Tohu, we need to journey to the lowest of the worlds that explosion generated.
Could this be the big bang that many scientist talk about in reference to the creation of the universe?
Where is the lowest of worlds?
You’re in it. This is the world of total otherness, a world where there dwell creatures that have no sense of anything else other than this world. Some even sense that they themselves are the masters of this world, or even that nothing else exists other than themselves. It is a material world: Things couldn’t get more discretely tangible, more self-absorbed, more otherly, than they are down here.
Which is why the Shechinah descends within this world: to seek out those most precious sparks, to rescue them from their shells of darkness, to reconnect them to their source above so that they become once again meaningful and divine—all through us, Her agents, so that this world and this life of ours plays out as not just another zero-sum game, but as an investment with incomparable returns.
In that search, Her destiny becomes wrapped up in theirs, wrapped up in darkness and in confusion. So much so that She cannot redeem those sparks without redeeming Herself. And in that struggle, as we will see, She redeems not only the sparks, but the darkness itself.
This story of the Shechinah is often called “The Secret of the Exile of the Shechinah.” It is called a secret because it contains a puzzle, this time an oxymoron in its very title, one that cannot be entirely solved from within our frame of reference:
How is it possible that the Shechinah—G‑d Herself—could be in exile?
Can a prisoner be imprisoned by his own guards in a prison of his own making? Can the Creator of all things become trapped within that which S/He created? Can a singularity be trapped within itself?
The question is not of some distant, abstract being. The soul that breathes within us is a fractal of the Shechinah, and the journey of that soul mirrors the drama of the Shechinah, as one cell of a hologram contains the whole. Understanding the paradox of our own journey and exile will help us fathom the depth of this secret of the Shechinah. Perhaps it will even hint to some notion of its resolution.
Like the Shechinah, our soul is not here for her own sake—she (the soul is also called a she) is perfect before her descent below. She comes here, as does the Shechinah, to redeem the sparks of the body in which she is infused, of the personality she is given, and of the portion of this world to which she is assigned.
Click on the image to see the video
We call this process birur and tikkun.
Birur means to sort out the good from the bad, the desirable from the waste, much as a prospector sifts through the sand for flakes of gold, or a smith separates the pure metal from the dross. So too, we struggle to discard the bad, the ugly and the deceptions that surround us, seeking out all the divine sparks they contain. Seeking value wherever it can be found.
Birur can be performed only when wisdom is the master; as the Zohar says, “With wisdom they will be purified.” The wisdom to which the Zohar refers is a kind of higher vision, one that permits us to transcend our own personal desires and surrender to a higher truth. A wisdom that allows us to see beyond the mud—mostly our own mud—to recognize the gold that is there, embrace it, and distinguish it from its caked, dark shell. It is also a wisdom that ties us tightly to the heavens above, so as not to be dragged down by the lime pits below.
Tikkun is the second step, when the divine spark is connected to its proper place. At this point it sheds its outer, muddy crust, and begins to glow through the shell that shrouded it, so that the shell itself is transformed to become divine.
This is the profit gained through the deficit of Tohu’s catastrophic fall: not only are the sparks returned to their place, but the artifacts in which they entrapped themselves now too become divine.
Wherever your feet lead you, they are directed from above, to bring you into proximity to those divine sparks that belong to your soul alone. It may be a herb waiting to provide its healing powers, a stroke of wisdom that has yet to find an understanding heart, a human relationship that must be healed, a grand landscape that has been waiting to grant inspiration. If you learn to say a blessing over your food before eating, then a fruit somewhere in the world may await that blessing of yours. If you have learned to study Torah, there may be a place in the world sustained by divine sparks that have been waiting since the beginning of Creation to provide you an inspiring place to study, so that your words of Torah will redeem them.
Whenever some new harmony is made in G‑d’s world, whenever it is endowed in new divine meaning, another redemption has been made; the completion is yet nearer.
Recycled Souls
With you as her agent uncovering and redeeming those sparks, the Shechinah digs Herself yet deeper, lower, into yet greater darkness, to find sparks still unknown. Not without compensation. As with the sparks themselves, the greater Her descent, the higher She will later ascend.
The same is true with this soul of yours which has had to return many times to this world until her job would be complete. And on the path of her mission, almost inevitably she will fall at times into the mire. She falls when she is blinded by the deceptions of the darkness, tricked by the passions of the beast into which she has been infused, and bribed by the ego in which she has been encased. Now she must redeem herself as well, and in doing so she not only redeems the most hidden sparks—she transforms the most intransigent darkness to which those sparks have given life.
The Shechinah Herself also stumbles and falls into the mud. Her children, our own souls, bring her there. So that now She, too, can no longer redeem them without redeeming Herself. Her destiny becomes wrapped up in theirs.
By now, all our souls have been recycled many times. What your soul accomplished in previous descents, and what is left to be accomplished—all that is of necessity hidden from you. As Rabbi Moshe Cordovero wrote, “Those who know do not say, and those who say do not know.” For if we would know, we would accomplish without struggle. And it is the struggle itself that brings out the innermost powers, the powers of redemption.
As with the sparks, and as with the Shechinah, the further the soul descends, the greater will be her ultimate ascent. Indeed, there is only ascent. For the descent itself, in retrospect, is the active stage that powers the ascent.
Being Within
The mystery of the exile of the Shechinah applies to the soul as well: If the soul is G‑dly, the very breath of G‑d within us, how can she descend? More so, how can she be imprisoned and limited by the bonds of a physical body?
The answer lies in the very process we are describing. Birur, tikkun—these cannot happen from afar. This world cannot be healed and transformed except by those who dwell within it. Allow the Infinite Light to shine into our world unshielded, and there is no world—it would vanish as a shadow before a bright light. Tikkun means keeping the world standing while repairing from within—as one might renovate a home without disturbing its inhabitants. The ultimate tikkun is a harmony of a world that can contain Infinite Light and yet remain a world.
To do that requires something that is of the world and yet beyond it. It requires a captive. And so the Shechinah, and our souls that are sparks of the Shechinah, place themselves in voluntary captivity so they can do the job from inside.
As I have said earlier in this article, the Shechinah resided within the Temple, and many claim that it does. Rabbi Eliezer said: The Divine Presence never departed from the Temple, as it is written, 'For now I have chosen and sanctified this house so that My name shall be there forever and My eyes and My heart will be there all the days' (II Chronicles 7:16)... Even when [the Temple] is destroyed, it remains in its sanctity... Even when it is destroyed, God does not leave it.
Rebbe Acha said: The Shechina (Divine Presence) will never depart from the Western Wall, as it is written, "Behold ― He stands behind our wall" (Song of Songs 2:9).
When Vespasian had subdued the city, he assigned the destruction of the four ramparts to the four generals. The Western Wall was allotted to Pangar. Now it had been decreed by Heaven that this should never be destroyed because the Shechinah dwells in the west. The others demolished their sections but Pangar did not demolish his.
Since the destruction of the temple, people have said that if they pray in earnest at the Kotel, the Shechina will posses their body causing their soul to be like God’s candle. Swaying back and forth while praying represents a candle’s flame that flickers back and forth while burning. (Proverbs 20:27 )
I went to the Temple Mount in 1971, and to the Kotel twice. The first time when I went up to the Temple Mount, and the second time in September of 2011. But I just recently learned about the Shechina.
Some day, I want to go back to the Kotel, and pray and meditate in Wilson's Arch, I want open my heart and let the Shechina possess my soul.
Divrei Hayamim II - II Chronicles - Chapter 7
16 And now, I have chosen and consecrated this House that My name be there forever, and My eyes and heart will be there at all times.
Jews of which I am sit in a pew, stand, nod, bend at the knee, and stand on their toes. Nodding could come from Psalm 35:10 which reads, My whole being will exclaim, “Who is like you O Lord? and or Proverbs 20:27 that the soul of man is God’s candle. Swaying back and forth while praying represents a candle’s flame that flickers back and forth while burning.
In the video I'm posting to this article, I sent to my sisters, and I said.
"Thought I would add these thoughts to this video. I hope to feel the presence of G-d before I leave this world. I think I’ll have to go back and spend several hours in Wilson’s arch, meditate, pray, and open my heat and soul to G-d and let him fill me up with his presence.
In this short video I focus on a man and his child, see man in a yellow pull over shirt with black horizontal stripes, see how he communes with G-d. Notice how he takes his child to the wall and kisses his child and the wall. Look at how he beats his chest. Look at how he wipes his eye with his shirt. Is he crying? Is he crying for his child? Is his child sick.
See my other videos from the Kotel, see how the people sway and nod, It is said that the Shekhinah, (God’s presence) enters their body.
The video that I’m commenting on they say “We all feel this feeling at some point.” They are referring About the Shekhinah, God’s presence within the Torah. I want to feel that before I leave this Earth."
Here is a longer version of that video