A message from Kabbalah

Every morning I receive emails from some spiritual source or another and today I read one from Yehuda Berg, who write about Kaballah. 

He wrote about negativity and it seemed so perfect for what I have been going through recently, I thought I would share it:

"One of the greatest things we can learn from Kabbalah is how to pass through the pain of life without suffering.

The Zohar explains that pain purifies and removes the shells of negativity (klipot) that surround our inner Light, and that suffering is resistance to this pain. The klipot are created by our negative deeds, and they cover and limit our spiritual development. They are barriers between us and the Light.

We often approach our daily lives with the mindset of avoiding pain at all costs. And the moment we do feel it, we immediately look for ways to anesthetize ourselves. The Zohar teaches that by resisting the pain, we are only creating bigger problems for ourselves in the future. Pain is transitory but suffering sticks around and keeps us stuck.

With klipot constantly clinging to us—these negative shells make it hard for us to grow and change. But if we want to go to our next level in spiritual awareness, love, friendships, career, we need to go through the painful process of separating ourselves from our klipot. And we separate ourselves from our klipot every time we put our all into a job and it fails, every time someone we love goes away, every time our trust is broken—in other words, every time we take a risk and get hurt.

Contrary to what it feels like in the moment, pain is actually a sign that something good is on the way. Think about painful moments in your past. Does what I am writing ring true for you?

This week, it’s important to remind ourselves that the pain is good—it’s our klipot cracking. And once this separation heals, we will be stronger, healthier and one step closer to our true fulfillment."

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