Lesson from Kabbalah

This morning I received a message from Yehuda Berg, a Kabbalah teacher, that I thought was worth sharing. I realized my spiritual path began years ago when I read the Tao de Ching, and it has encompassed so many different teachers, so I think it's important to share whatever message comes along that resonates for me:

If we are on a spiritual path, we are going to struggle. It’s not easy. It’s hard to let go of our fears, it’s hard to stop being jealous, it’s hard to constantly work on ourselves.

And the hardest part is seeing—seeing the true reality. How often have we looked back on a broken friendship or love relationship and thought to ourselves, “What did I see in that person?”

The truth is we don’t see. As it says in the Zohar, the main text of Kabbalah, “the eyes cannot comprehend everything.”

This is because we are trapped in the moment, trapped within the illusion of the five senses.

So what’s the answer? How do we get out of this trap?

We peel away the layers of our ego.

My father and teacher, Kabbalist Rav Berg, says our soul is like a lamp that we cover with blankets. Our ego nature conceals the Light within us. Me, me, me, me, me. “I can’t believe he said that to me.” “What will they think of me?” “Look at me, I am great.” “Look at me, I’m pathetic.”

Being constantly obsessed with ourselves prevents us from seeing what is really going on.

Only when we remove our ego, piece by piece, are we able to see the truth in situations and people.

The secret is to see others first and ourselves second. Only then can we have the merit to rise above the limitations of our five senses and turn on our sixth sense.

What exactly is the sixth sense? It is the ability to see something we’ve never seen before, to suddenly get the answer to questions we’ve been constantly asking.

After all, what is Kabbalah? It is learning to receive. And we receive not through the intellect, but through connecting to the Light.

This week, the forces of the universe are pushing us to see our purpose; to perceive that which normally eludes us. We are given an opportunity to see that which we are normally blind to, by simply letting go of our ego.

The following tools can help us to connect to this positive influence:

• Transformative sharing

• Getting out of the comfort zone

• Removing the agendas

And as always, scanning the Zohar and the 72 Names of God are our allies in our battle to experience the joy our Creator intended for us.

Try it—you’ll like what you see.

All the best, Yehuda