This article will ruffle feathers… if you are politically correct, please stop here and don’t read it. This is a warning. You’ll hate me.

OK, here is the story: my cat, Kiki had been incontinent, on and off for the past 2 years. Antibiotics did not help, and Kiki seemed distraught from her lack of control.

Many of those happened on my bed.

Then she started to poop around the house, in obvious distress.

Then hide in the closet for 20 hours at a time. She would leave a pool of pee, and smell pipi herself… intensely.

It was time to reclaim Kiki’s dignity: after all, losing control of your body exposes you to shame.

This past Thursday I drove Kiki out to a nearby dense wooded area.

I was sure that as soon as she saw the woods she would run back to the car, but to my surprise, the opposite happened.

As soon as she was out of the “bag” she, gingerly, body alert and curious, started to walk into the thick of the woods… away from me.

I stood there for about half an hour, even though lost sight of her after about 3 minutes.

I drove home. My muscle testing proved to me that by next morning she was dead.

I miss the brave little girl… And had some interesting soul purpose thoughts channeled to me:

In the natural world sick animals take themselves out… go to the woods and die.

In the world of current western culture: we want to keep our pets alive (and miserable) as long as we can.

I was overriding the natural law of life with my made in the 21st century moralism.

My soul’s purpose is to subdue my human knowledge to devine knowledge.

Many ways to say that, one is “Forget Thyself”, another: “Bring the devine to everything.”

Allowing Kiki to go home, I was able to fulfill, for a moment, on my soul’s purpose.

Your Soul’s Purpose is done… Now What?

Kabbalah says that once you fulfill on the soul’s purpose (your correction for this lifetime), you have a choice. You can die, or you can ask to stay longer and tackle something else… maybe tackle a desire that has proved itself elusive.

Many of my clients have always dreamed of becoming a millionaire, but they never did. It is not aligned with their soul correction.

If they could, (or would) start concentrating on their soul correction, they could put themselves in the position of asking for the million… as a play for the “extension.” It wasn’t part of their original life script, but now, it can be, given that they completed the original script.

And that is the moral of the story: once you know your soul correction, and you get busy correcting it, you can choose another game for the rest of your life.

How do you find out your soul’s correction? There are a few ways, one of them is a one-on-one consult with me.

Contact me for details on how you can find out your soul’s purpose.

When a person wants to change and transform themselves, they will never do it unless they gets something out of it.

The energy needed for the sharing and caring must come from their ego.

There is a  paradox, no doubt. On one hand giving and sharing and caring sounds like it’s not selfish. On the other hand, without a selfish motive, no one will every share. Mother Theresa, or anyone! But if the giving is selfish, the rewards are all ego-rewards, short term high, long term low…

But here is a move that will surprise you: when you acknowledge your initial selfish motives, the rewards of your giving are longer lasting. But when you think you are doing it out of the goodness of your hearts, there will be a short-circuit at some point in the process.

So, how do you do it? Be ruthlessly straight with yourself and find and acknowledge the ego root, the seed of agenda, in your “generous” behavior.

That acknowledgment transforms that same very seed into a seed of selflessness. How is that for an unexpected move… and paradox?

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Before you judge yourself for judging another, consider this: It’s a good thing this is happening because it’s activating something inside, some part of yourself that is crying out for correction. Remember what I wrote in the Power of Kabbalah, The Light surrounds us with mirrors reflecting back what our soul needs to correct.

Today, don’t hate the mirror! Refocus on what’s coming up for you. You’ll see that as you begin to work on your reaction – and finding its hidden source – the judgment will fall away and understanding will take its place.

According to Wallace D. Wattles (of The Science of Getting Rich fame) is that life wants more life, and your job (YOU! Human Being) is to align yourself with that. More life means being able to have all the tools that you are capable of using, being on the cutting edge of thinking, etc. This has been really very inspiring to me.

I have worded this MY WAY: our job is to be God’s self-expression. God doesn’t have a thumb, but we do. And we are causing full self-expression to God when we use what we were blessed with, our bodies, our minds, our emotions.

Kabbalah is similar, in a way, saying that human beings are a part of the vessel the Light created (eons ago) to receive all its blessings, but (unfortunately and unintentionally) the Light’s desire to give got transmitted with the light that was giving fulfillment to the vessel, and at some point the vessel said: I don’t want to eat bread of shame any more, I want to be able to earn the light I receive, and be a giver, not just a receiver.

That is what caused the physical universe to spring into place, so that the vessel, (that broke into chards into the billions of souls) can earn its light in an environment of seeming scarcity, by becoming like god: giving of themselves.

Of course, physicality and scarcity are powerful forces, so it is not easy for the souls to “tame” their physical hosts… and only very few people in every generation elevate themselves much on the scale of 0-1000 (100% scarcity/ego to close to godliness).

So, in my life, this moment to moment to moment transformation of the selfishness and the full expression of what’s god (without being religious) is the purpose of living, i.e. the meaning I give to life.

And by selfishness I don’t necessarily mean material selfishness: generosity of heart is the opposite: I want for everyone what I want for myself. But I won’t give it to them and I won’t do it FOR them. I inspire them… by MY ACTIONS.

Now, this is a full blog-post… where is my blog… darn… when I need it? lol

Sophie Benshitta Maven

Why would all those students die, and why the five. The legend says that Rabbi Akiva went through rigorous self-examination after this plague, and came to the conclusion that it was his fault: he did not squarely base all his teaching on the most fundamental (and hardest) principle: “love your neighbor as yourself”.

It is hard to define exactly what this “love your neighbor as yourself” is, because it is so missing from today’s culture.

What is it? respect? willingness to support another?

I am no sage, so I am going to give you a few recent examples I have experienced.

Why this is important? Because when you are violating this principle, you are disconnected from the 99%. When you are disconnected: your life goes darker. When you are disconnected: the things you desire move away from you. Is that good enough reason?

OK, here is something that happened last week:

Two revered friends of mine, business partners, teach stuff on the internet through webinars. So far so good, right?

They are both extraordinarily talented people. One has a more pleasant voice and a more pleasing way of stringing words together though.

You may expect, but in order to make a living with webinars, you need to sell them…

Half the people like the sharpness of one of these guys, the other half gets enchanted by the oratory capabilites of the other.

The other night I was at one of these “pitch” webinars and noticed the orator’s attitude of extreme beligerance. I picture him in my mind reclining in his chair, and lazily pumping out oh, yeah, hell yeah… constantly interrupting sharpie…

I sent a private message asking”are you drunk?”

“I wish” was the answer

“you do sound drunk…” I replied.

“so much for being encouraging” he retorted.

“well, you sound drunk, snap out of it” I commanded…

It took him a minute or two, but he eventually came around and became part of the presentation, instead of hindering it.

OK, I hope is visible and plain that the attitude of orator was: I do this better, i speak much better than you, I should be doing this, not you…

This, clearly, is disrespectful and diminishing for his partner… so it is violating the principle “love your neighbor as yourself”

Would you have noticed? Would you have known what is happening? Or would you have just gotten, below your conscious level of thought, that there is something off… and that you should not listen to sharpie… that he is no good? I think so.

What am I trying to say? That it is so ingrained in most of us that it is an “either you or me” world, that it would have not occurred as a disconnect from the divine…

The first level of any transformation is awareness.

I used to gossip. I still do, occasionally. I now catch myself fast, but only after the word is out of my mouth.

Gossip is designed to climb on another’s ruined reputation higher… but it is a mirage… everyone who listens feels that you are compensating for something lacking in you.

Since I have stopped to be constantly condescending, proud, gossipy, and comparing myself to others, my luck has increased, my fortune is coming, my health is better, because I disconnect less and less from where it all comes from, the 99%

As is my practice, I took my outer clothing, including my shoes in the waiting room and then ready to go to the room with the tables. I hadn’t seen the receptionist in a while so started to walk around in my socks while talking to her, only to step into a cold wet puddle on the carpet.

“Oogh, I just stepped into my wet spot!” I exclaimed. “Oh, I hate that?” She said…

…and this is what this blogpost is about.

You don’t care what comes out of your mouth.

But what comes out of your mouth is even more important that what goes into your mouth. There is a whole billion dollar health food industry capitalizing on your concern of what goes into your mouth.

It’s time to start thinking like you are not a machine that cares about its fuel and fuel pump and exhaust.

You are a vibrational being and what comes out of your mouth makes you who you are… in this example a cringing, resisting, little clot of ailment complaining that the world isn’t going his way.

You can work to fix just one “hate” with months or years worth of healthfood, vitamins, superfood, working out, meditations, what have you… it is so powerful.

So stop it.

First use different words that feel better, like “it is not quite pleasant…”, or “it doesn’t quite agree with me…”
and then you’ll be able to just laugh… like I do.

It’s taken me a year or two to get here, but I tell you, it feels great.

In addition, I have been well. Wow.

So, the past month or so, about 80% of the visitors came after they looked for weightloss… wow. Weird. but then again, there are no accidents in the Universe, really, no accidents.

When you can see behind the curtain, like in the Wizard of Oz, you can see the connections, plain and clear.

Let me reveal a little magic for you: at about the same time this rush of weightloss traffic started to come to this site, at the exact time, I had a revelation: that what’s been keeping me fat is what I didn’t know. Ha-ha… not very funny, is it?

About a month ago I heard that sugar, in quantities high enough (how about 6 grams… that’s one and a half teaspoon of granulated sugar… a bottle of coke has 42 grams of sugar in it) trigger a release of insulin, and insulin’s secondary job is to turn sugar into stored fat. Mainly around your waistline.

Now, that, I kind of knew… didn’t live like I knew, but as book knowledge goes, I knew it. But I found out something dramatic for me: a glass of milk contains 9 grams of sugar. My milk consumption was, at the time, a little over a liter a day. That is, my friend, 56 grams of sugar. Neatly concealed in whiteness…

Now, that was a wakeup call. It was loud and clear, that it wasn’t my genes, my age, it was the sugar that I unwittingly consumed that had kept me fat.

I went cold turkey, and cut out the milk. I have been putting a little bit of heavy cream into my tea, since then, and… drumroll please, I have dropped ten pounds, just by cutting out the milk.

I am not eating sweets or fruit either. I am not craving either. I have more energy, and I am getting visibly slimmer.

So, my firend, if you want to lose weight, maybe stop counting the calories, stop counting the fat, stop counting anything other than the sugar… rule: less than 5 grams of sugar in a meal, less than 15 grams of sugar total for the day.

Doesn’t sound very exciting? Hey, you can have an exciting diet and stay fat. I don’t care, I want to be slim more than have my excitement limited to sweetness… how about dating, how about dancing, how about hiking… no one really wanted a fattie for those exciting activities…

I have made my choice.

Now, back to the no coincidence… can you see? I have shifted and my blog has been attracting people like myself. Wow.

Now, this type of movie is not my favorite type of movie, what made me watch it is Dr David Hawkins’ recommendation.

In his book, Power vs. Force he says that the movie calibrates at 700 on a logarithmic scale of 1 to 1000.

Einstein only calibrates at 499…

So I went out, and searched for it. Lots of opportunities to download pirated versions, I chose to buy the movie used… hey, if I am going to use it to move my own consciousness up the scale, might as well be high minded, right?

I watched the movie, and I didn’t understand it. In the end, the hero chooses to go back into the depth of the sea instead of staying with his pregnant girl-friend.

I wanted to look it up on google, maybe I misunderstood… but instead, in my sleep, it came to me: above a certain level in consciousness, where people rarely get, life is like deep down in the see. Rare thoughts, if any, dreamlike, you feel drunk with bliss. At least according to Dr. David Hawkins. He lives there, he says.

That is the world of the endless, the world of the soul. No wonder the ego, the always hurrying, always concerned, always opinionating ego drowns the few words the soul would say… no wonder our lives is so far removed from that dreamy, blissful state.

Then another part of the movie popped into my memory: the doctor says that at the depth these divers descended to, at 500 feet, the oxygen is so compressed, it doesn’t have the energy to lift these people up.

Lift them up…when they are the deepest in the water, where their souls are the freest, their body is the least able to uplift… the diver says, “at that level you need a really good reason to want to come back.”

I don’t like choosing. If you know me, you know that one of my favorite sayings is “have your cake and eat it too.” Choosing, for me, is like cutting off your arm, your legs, your head?

So how can you uplift your soul and not damage your body? How can you, on demand, elevate your soul? Be, at least a little bit, in that blissful domain of no worries and no concerns, in that domain of all knowing, in that domain of all-loving?

In the day-to-day, dog-eat-dog world, it can be near impossible. In that world, joy has to have a reason, and lasts for mere seconds. In that world loving is a deal: I love you and you love me. You break your word: too bad, the deal is off.

Then I thought that appreciation and gratitude are the instant shoe-lifts for your soul.

Don’t believe me? Try it. Attempt to be grateful, for anything, for a moment. You’ll experience a sudden elevation in your state. If you can.

If your vibration level is too low, it may take many attempts. At first you’ll want to appreciate something that you can see that you have a reason to. After enough practice, you’ll be able to appreciate and be grateful for its own sake.

Another book I read recently says: one can start to elevate themselves from slavery and poverty the moment they start noticing and appreciating beauty.

As I am sitting here, in front of my panorama window overlooking a valley in Syracuse, NY, with the streaked sky that looks like my hair when I get up: no two hairs go in the same direction… with the few yellow leaves still clinging to the bare branches of the trees, with the silence of the fall crisp air, my heart fills with gratitude. My eyes well up and I experience instant take-off.

A lift from the mundane to the dominion of the sacred.

If this were taught in schools, the world’s population’s vibration would rise from the current 207 into the late 200′s or maybe into the 300′s. And guess what can’t live in that rarefied world? Thoughts of greed, murder, abuse. Just like most people would die at even 100 feet deep in the ocean…

It takes practice. And it takes a liberation of the soul.

Is it worth it? Yes, take it from me. I have managed to go from wretched to a mostly happy, mostly pleasant individual. Now, that’s something. How did I do that? Exactly how I am telling you… with gratitude and appreciation. And with pulling responsibility towards me… but that will be the topic of another article… You can wait, right? You have work to do. You need to appreciate the world around you, the people, the sky, your cat, your food, your beauty.

Now go, start. Start today!

It started a few months ago.

How did it feel? I felt my whole rib cage bursting open, and there it was, open wide, like the arms of a mother a child feels pulled to run into.

It felt wonderful. I never wanted it to end. It was dreamy. It was energizing. Then the object of my love did some things that bothered me. He spoke badly of others, sounded belligerent, and other ways of beings that were not easy to swallow.

I cried. I pained. I questioned the wisdom of opening myself up for hurt.

He was short with me, and then he was sweet. I went from heaven to hell, over and over and over.

Upon meeting personally, I added lust to my burning love. “Unrequited love” I whispered to myself.

Vulnerable… that is the state love has put me. A constant buzz in my head… the kind of buzz you hear under water: it is the sound of quiet.

I began to appreciate, savor, love, my open chest, my abundantly flowing affection.

Then it occurred to me that love could be demanding, selfish, but not MY love. That I can turn that demanding nature of love and demand towards me, of myself, to be the best, do the best, be the most I can be.

Allow myself to live in that permanent state of love, while diligently bettering myself. For who? For him? Maybe a little bit. But really, really, really, for me.

Thank you Love. I really appreciate the energy you have given me.

Steve and I had an hour long conversation, and set up the session for today… and I am writing this just a few minutes after having come out of the mental state of deep relaxation and focus… what a trip.

At the beginning I had difficulty breathing I was so scared of having to choose. I am not comfortable choosing. Choosing has never worked out for me. It feels forced, and I almost never make a good choice.

Finally, I was captivated by the image Steve asked me to put myself into, my favorite beach.

My favorite beach is a place where I was last 43 years ago. It was a time in my life where I was the happiest, the most confident: confidence of youth. I just had graduated from high school, and was accepted to architecture school where the overapplication ratio was 21 to 1. There were 96 spots, and over 2,000 applicants.

I aced all the exams, and I felt smart, powerful, beautiful (and I have pictures to prove that it was more than just a feeling).

So there I am, on this beach in Yugoslavia, sitting on a beach chair, half reclined, the water is green-blue, the sun is dancing on the gentle waves, the sounds of the water streaming down on the rocks is like crystal giggles, an occasional bird crying out. My mom is sitting to my right with a fishing rod, and across from the beach a small island with rich vegetation is beckoning. I see a storm hut there, and the beach there is sandy… The sun feels liquid, gently finding a way into every nook and cranny, a golden warm caress.

I am contemplating swimming over to the little island and back, just to feel the silky water on my body dissolving in the sun.

But, oh no, Steve is asking me to concentrate on the horizon. Where is the horizon? I see a little horizon to the right of the island, so I start to concentrate on that, it is far, it is vague, and it is not where I want to go. But that is what he asks me to go to, and he says a path arises from the water leading me there.

Hm. How about going to the island first, and maybe from there I will be able to see small islands, rocks, maybe pebbles that will call out to me to go to, and I can break up the “trip” to delicious and attractive bits… allow the path to choose me, instead of the dreaded heady choosing.

And in my imagination that is exactly what I do. As soon as I fully “own” and “love” my little island another one starts to beckon and love me away, choose me, and I am passed, loving hand to loving hand, all the way to heaven.

As far as I can see, this model that emerged from this hypnosis session is in harmony with my “human design,” with being a quick-start (conation), and with all the successful choices I have ever made in my life… choose to accept an invitation.

Thank you Steve. you are a master hypnotist, and I am very happy with my result. Thank you, thank you.

The book, The Hot Zone by Richard Preston is a documentary thriller about viruses that come out of the African rain forests and kill people, like aids, like ebola and its different strains.

The book says that the viruses that are on the border of alive/not alive are millions or billions of years old parasites and that their behavior is entirely selfish and they come up as a reaction to the elimination of the rain forests and the overpopulation of the planet by human parasites.

I nodded as I read it. Human beings, like viruses, like parasites, only care about their host a little bit, but for the most part they only care about themselves. They use their environment to make more of themselves, whether that destroys the host or not.

I don’t have a TV, but from time to time, when I am forced to check my yahoo mail online, I am exposed to the “news.” I always regret that I watched any of it, it is all very depressing.

Yesterday I saw the story of this mother of a 13-year old with Hodgkins sarcoma,  who didn’t want “traditional” (aka money hungry, it is good for my doctors’ pocket book) medicine, and now the police force is after him. And hearing the tone of voice of the anchorwoman who completely agreed with the judge that she didn’t have the right to decide, blah, blah, blah.

Jim Humble discovered a new use for an old substance, sodium chlorite, the cheap desinfector that has been used for ages to clean floors, walls, water, but after his unusual inspiration can be used to kill parasites, bad bacteria, fungus like candida albicans and viruses inside your body and even inside your cells. He calls his activated sodium chlorite the “miracle mineral supplement” because if he called it anything else, he would get killed. Literally. He is also forced to live out of the country.

So what the heck am I trying to say, and why is the title of this post “Freedom?”

Good question. Let’s get to it.

Freedom. Here is what the dictionary has to say

1: the quality or state of being free: as

a: the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action

b: liberation from slavery or restraint or from the power of another : independence

c: the quality or state of being exempt or released usually from something onerous <freedom from care>

d: ease, facility <spoke the language with freedom>

e: the quality of being frank, open, or outspoken <answered with freedom>

f: improper familiarity g: boldness of conception or execution h: unrestricted use <gave him the freedom of their home> 2 a: a political right b: franchise, privilege

synonyms freedom, liberty, license mean the power or condition of acting without compulsion. freedom has a broad range of application from total absence of restraint to merely a sense of not being unduly hampered or frustrated <freedom of the press>. liberty suggests release from former restraint or compulsion <the released prisoner had difficulty adjusting to his new liberty>. license implies freedom specially granted or conceded and may connote an abuse of freedom <freedom without responsibility may degenerate into license>.

In my mind freedom is a lot less complicated. You can have or lack freedom from something, and you can have or lack freedom for something that you want.

One of human beings’ slavery is wanting and desiring for the self alone. In that regard we are a lot like the virus that has 7 protein molecules, no brain, no signs of aliveness without a host. I we talked and I told you that you behave like a virus: your whole life is about getting what you want and you don’t care about anyone else, you would be very offended. Right? But chances are that I would be right, very high percentage of the time, to a very high degree.

You see, I think that human beings evolved to have the three levels of brain, and free will, to be a lot more intelligent than we are at this point of human development. I have read that Kabbalah says that there is a need for only 10 human beings reach the level of consciousness concurrently (I mean living at the same time, arriving there and being there at the same time) for a critical mass where all of humanity suddenly evolves, in spite of themselves, to the higher consciousness where live isn’t about “what’s in it for me” but about “what’s in it for you”.

And in spite of the fact that hundreds of spiritual teachers, gurus, disciplines are around, there hasn’t been any time in human history that there were ten individuals at the same time who arrived to this level. Because this level is really like being pregnant: you can’t be a little bit pregnant, almost pregnant, somewhat pregnant. You are either pregnant or you aren’t.

But as long as human beings aren’t even interested in the “symptoms” of being a slave to selfishness, there is hardly any chance for us to get to that level.

According to Kabbalah we have some 240 years to straighten out our acts by out own volition, or method number two, the learning through suffering enters the picture, where you either learn or you perish.

Some 2,000 years ago there was a famous Kabbalist, Rabbi Akiva who had 25 thousand students. Many of those studies day and night, and were thought to be on a high level of connection, a high level of consciousness.

But when a deadly plague came, like the Black Plague, or the Aids epidemic, only five of them survived. Rabbi Akiva had a rude awakening: he realized that all the knowledge in the world doesn’t elevate you, unless you base your whole life on the basis of “love your neighbor as yourself.” Which is what’s missing… and with it freedom is missing, and slavery reigns “supreme.”

I had been hesitant: it must be just another scam to get my money. But finally I gave in, and bought it. It’s $42 a month.

There are daily lectures and the experience is phenomenal. I have experienced an immersion like never before.

I have learned stuff I didn’t even know I should ask, even though it was about something I experienced.

For example I have been, from time to time, experiencing extreme anxiety, pressure, restlessness, almost a physical pain. It has nothing to do with what ‘s going on in my life, it has nothing to do with my health, obviously it is something non-physical. I decided that it was a good thing, but had no good explanation, why it would be a good thing.

I found out that the Light always wants to give you more than you want to receive. That creates a lack of vessel to receive the light. The pressure is an indication of that.

So what do I normally do when this happens? I play computer games, talk incessantly on the phone, all “satan” stuff, not in the right direction. OK? So what should I do to grow a vessel big enough to receive all the light that is coming to me?

I don’t quite have an answer, but one thing is sure: deflecting the light isn’t going to grow my vessel…

If you look at health advertisements, the main line is: take stuff to pile on the good.

What does this say to you? For most people that means, that is what they should do. Look at the proliferation of superfoods, acai, etc. and tell me if this isn’t so.

But “who” is directing the main line? Who’s voice is trumpeted through all media? The Light or the Opponent? Of course it is the Opponent, the darkness, the ego part. But why would the ego part be so interested in you thinking that all you need to do is add some more goodies to your life, and everything will be all right?

I am going to use a little story here to drive the answer home. Imagine a that 100 righteous men are locked up by 100 bandits. The bandits beat up the righteous men every night. The light of the righteous men is dimmer by the day. The world is getting darker by the minute. This is your life: your health, your wealth, your relationships… I am not talking about an imaginary scenario: this is your life!

You have a choice: will you send in troops to strengthen the righteous men or will you send in troops with weapons to get rid of the bandits? Will you try to offset all the bad stuff you do and think with some good acts, or will you kill off the bad stuff?

Eating superfoods is like trying to fatten the righteous men, they will die from the daily beatings anyway. But the sellers make an incredible profit in the meantime.

The smart answer is: decimate or kill off the bandits.  i.e. stop doing what is killing you and what supports the darkness.

And this is what Kabbalah teaches, exactly. Its whole foundation is to make choices, moment to moment, to stop feeding the ego and listen to the soul. You can’t do both. At any moment, you are either in light or in darkness.

When you are hurting others, indulge, or feel jealousy, greed, anger, however justified, your world is all dark. Every moment you share, your world is all light.

Just like stealing money and giving 10% of it to charity wouldn’t make your world light, overindulging in bad stuff and then taking a multi-vitamin is all dark. Superfood are great when you have already stopped what’s killing you.

You need to cut out the bad, like the bandits in our story.

I wish I had known this before. I am paying the price now.

But you see, it’s never too late. Killing the bandits takes a moment. Even if it is your last.

I spent 1-3 hours with a very negative person for seven months in the very near past. I hated about 60-70 percent of every conversation. My attitude was that there is an opportunity lurking there, and I’d find it. That attitude was encouraged by my teachers.

At the end of the seven months I noticed that my financial situation had started to go south when I started that relationship. I was now at a point when I was not going to be able to pay my rent…

A normally hidden thought at that point surfaced in this person’s speaking, and I realized that they were my enemy, and a downer all along. They were in it for what was in it for them, and made sure there was nothing in it for me. They didn’t like me, didn’t care for me, compared me with themselves and they always came out on top, thought it unfare that I would make more money than them.

In that moment of clarity I saw that in those seven months I had handed over the control over my thoughts and life to this person, and it was time to take it back.

I also noticed that it had been a pattern in my life. I could see that there was my desire to “lift up” other people, even if they weren’t particularly interested. I call that caretaking in another post of mine… (Studies show that when a higher vibration person tries to lift up the vibration of another person, instead of the desired outcome, the lowest common denominator wins. Other studies show that in sado-masochistic relationship the real control is in the hand of the masochist, not the sadist, like it seems on the surface.)

You notice that you are not energized by the relationship. You notice that your health, your energy level, your self-love, your connection with your purpose is getting weaker and harder to maintain.

In hindsight the same thing happened with my male cat. He wanted food, he wanted shelter (when he wanted it), but he didn’t want me. He didn’t choose me.

When I look at my relationships (male/female) I see the pattern: it begins with me relentlessly pursuing a stable and steady connection where I am the contributor/giver, thus I have the upper hand. They begrudgingly protecting their right to maintain independence. I increase the pressure. At some point we are best friends. I continue the domination with giving and giving and giving. At some point I catch myself, and break off the relationship.

That’s been the movie of my life. Quite disgusting, if you ask me. And makes for a lonely, unfulfilled life.

Luckily to me, this time I had my eyes open and my fingers pointing at myself. This time I have taken 100% responsibility for my part in this mess.

This fact, having taken responsibility for my role as a director/writer of this movie, I have given myself a chance to write and direct movies that are more fulfilling and satisfying than this repeated nightmarish ego-driven script.

Since the awakening and breakoff, my financial situation is looking up, I am more in touch with my soul’s desire and things unpredictable and delicious are starting to show up in my space.

Now that is a good news/bad news situation, if there has ever been one.

Because you create your reality, and you create it with your words (what you focus on) you can seriously mis-create.

Let’s take weight, for example.

I used to be skinny. I mean skinny!

I ate what I ate, and had no thoughts about my weight or the lack of it.

Then I heard about healthy eating, and started to concentrate on “healthy” food. Guess what happened? I started to pack the weight on, and went from 96 lbs to 165 lbs in a few weeks, no kidding.

Even today, when I forget about my weight, or eating healthy, or what’s good for me, etc. I slim down. The moment I start to concentrate on some new health and energy diet, I pack it on. It takes only taking my attention and focus off the topic and I become normal.

It is like a fine tuned, well oiled machine. You can play with it. The Universe is exceptionally responsive. It’s easier to see on issues that are not pressing. Why?

Because all thoughts matter, not just your conscious thoughts. And you are only aware of 1%¹ of your thoughts, the others happen while you are busy with other things. Bummer, right? Serious bummer.

So when you experiment, do it with areas of not much consequence. Areas that you don’t fret about. I mostly think of people, and then they call. Or think of changing my attitude on the phone to be cheerful (I don’t unconsciusly think about that) and then the phone rings and I can practice my new cheerful attitude then and there.

The gratitude/appreciation exercise is designed to direct your focus.

If you focus on what you appreciate, you’ll get more of it.

Here’s how to take it further

create a growing list of 1000 things you’re grateful for. I have. It’s amazing how easy it becomes after a while. Once you train your focus, all it can see is things to be grateful for. Just like anything else… remember the reticular activator article a while back? Most of the things on that list: I’d completely ignored and taken them for granted before the exercise. But don’t stop… this is an exercise for life. The pull for negativity is tremendous! Don’t kid yourself.

Change Limiting Metaphors

Listen to the metaphors people use. It’s usually a window into the images in their mind. If someone says “I’m at the end of my rope,” they are creating an image in their mind and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Even if the image is there just for a split second, it’s there.

Avoid limiting images in your mind. Wake up and have a part of you, the witness part of you monitor everything that comes out of your mouth.

I used to have a teacher who lived that way (at least some of the time

Every time she thoughtlessly uttered something that created an image in her mind, she stopped and she canceled it. She said: “all speaking is committing” and what you do with commitments that you didn’t mean? You cancel them.

“I’m never at the end of my rope. I have a long rope. I never “burn the candle from both ends”. Instead, I “try to touch the sky’s ceiling…”. I’m not “drop dead exhausted”. I just need to “recharge my batteries”.”

Casual and thoughtless use of metaphors is dangerous to your future. Identify and catch the ones you use.  think of the state of mind and  future they bring about. If those futures and feelings aren’t useful, stop using them.

Find the Opportunity where it is least evident

There is a saying that you should do what you love to do. But that doesn’t mean that you should love what you do every moment of every day.  The truth is that some things you always hate to do, and some things you only hat to do some of the time, even if what you do (for a living, for example) is something you love.

So what should be your attitude with the stuff that you don’t like to do? Well, the exercise in finding the silver lining comes handy here: everything you do, every person you meet, ever obstacle you meet is the starting point for a new opportunity… if you are willing for them to show up like that.

Book-keeping is something a lot of people hate. But if you look at it as a way to know what’s going on with your money, you can see that it is an opportunity to greater clarity, growth, noticing your spending habits and changing them, and ultimately it can open up the opportunity to building wealth.

Lots of people hate learning new things. They think they shouldn’t have to. What they can’t see that knowing new things will be able to take them to places they would have never been able to get to with less knowledge…

Love challenges. Challenges give you the opportunity to grow, and to become more.

What is the practice I recommend? Before you start any task, even the ones that you love for their own sake, look and find (or invent) a juicy opportunity that will open up just because you are looking for it.

Create Congruency between your self image and your actions

A lot of people want to get rich. And almost that many have conflicting views about wealth. This is like driving a car with one foot on the gas and the other on the brake.

Some issues need to be settled when it comes to wealth. Will you be wealthy or will you be greedy? Will you love people and use money, or the opposite? What is the human cost you are willing to pay to become wealthy?

You will need to create a consistent world view before you can get wealthy. And make sure that you love the person with that world view, feel good about them, or you will lose it as fast as you got it…

When there is an internal conflict, you don’t feel well, so you won’t do well.

Is your mental image of yourself congruent with the actions you take?

Sit down and write down the actions that are congruent with the person you want to become, and make those actions your own.

If not, you’re going to be conflicted and you won’t do well. We wouldn’t want that now, would we?

Footnotes:

1. Muscle testing has shown that only 1% of your thoughts are conscious and the 99% is totally unconscious. That is the area of what you don’t know you don’t know. Being able to influence your unconscious thoughts is the purpose of many self-improvement programs, meditation, hypnosis, different audio programs with hidden messages

I know, I know, talk is cheap. But is it?

I am not talking about boasting, false promising, buttering up, etc. I am talking about all the times when you “just” talk. When you think you are describing how it is. When you think you are telling the truth. When you do your darndest best to describe reality… I am talking about that talking.

The words you use, the pictures you paint do not describe anything. They, instead, create. For you and for others.

When the media screams: there  is recession, they are painting pictures. When you tell someone stories to make them feel better but talk about somber stories with unhappy endings, you are painting pictures of gloom and doom in their world that, unless they are really careful, they will manifest, no kidding.

When you say “I want to lose weight” the picture of you running fast enough that the “weight” stays behind, but the moment you slow down so you can live, the weight catches up with you… have you noticed? If not in your life, in others?

When you say “I have to go to work” you are painting the picture of a prison with no joy, no freedom, no self-expression, no creativity… is this what you want half of your awake time to become? Oh, it already has? No wonder…

If you want to do well, you need to feel well. If you want to feel well, you need to use words that manifest that reality… remember parallel realities? Every word creates — or not — a parallel reality.

Most of us are stuck in a gloom and doom reality. There is a book title, Why you are sick, broke and dumb… or something like that. Can you see that a simple shift in the use of your words could take you to well, prosperous and gloriously bright?

You decide, and you are even motivated for a day, maybe even a week, then it goes away.

What’s the trick for staying motivated? In this and some coming blog posts I’ll give you a few practices you can use.

Practice #1: Schedule In Gratitude and Appreciation

Gratitude  for what? you say, and you shouldn’t be surprised, most of us have a real hard time finding anything to be grateful for. The weather is good, so what. The weather is bad, that’s bad. Consider that your creativity is half dead, and you are a walking dead yourself, like a zombie.

Start small. First start with something that you now take for granted, but you COULD be grateful for. Like someone smiling, even if it is not at you. The traffic light turning to green, even if it is supposed to. That the alarm functioned… even if it seems like that is the order of things. For the toilet flushing when you pull that lever… when you flip the switch and the light comes on. It is not that difficult, you’ll see that your world is full of things to be grateful for, full or miracles.

Your second stage will require more creativity,  but by that time you will have so much feel good energy in you, that it won’t be a big challenge.

The second stage is finding the silver lining in everything. It’s raining? It is great for the plants. It will clean the air. It will force you to wash your car. It allows you to get to that book that you have been putting off reading. Or even: goodie. I can look for the silver lining… yaay.

In addition of going through my day, I spend a few minutes in bed going through my day looking for accomplishments. I am always grateful and appreciative of myself and the opportunities. I sleep better, and I wake up with a lot more energy to keep on being grateful and appreciative.

The third stage is to put your gratitude on loudspeaker. We mostly talk about what’s wrong. That’s what sells newspapers, right? Well, it has also caused where you are today, or on a larger scale, where the world is today.

Break the habit, and talk only about what you are grateful for, what you appreciate, what you like, and the like.

It will be odd at first. People will look at you funny… but don’t let that discourage you.

Some 14 years ago I had an assignment to ask people in my life “What do you love about your life?”

Trust me, at that time, when I looked at people, I could not fathom that they had anything to love about their lives.

There was a sourpuss clerk at the mailbox that I tried to avoid every day lest his attitude would rub off on me. But homework needs to get done, so I asked him “What do you love about your life?”

He started to talk, and talk, and smile, and smile, and there was no end to what he had to say. He still smiles when he sees me. I remind him of what he loves about his life. Go figure…

I have run out of article… Go to the next practice

If you could never get “in touch” with the 99%, then you would still be left to your own devices.

The Law of Cause and Effect could be a great way to be guided, but, unfortunately, to preserve your free will, the cause (what you do) and the effect (what you get) are separated by time. Then they are scrambled.

You help someone, without ego. Brownie point for you. Next thing you know, you are hit with a negative effect. What gives?

You do something purely from ego… next thing you know, you get a raise… or some other positive effect.
You are confused. But time and the scrambling IS confusing.

Is there a way one could ask the 99% for advice?

Yes. There ARE ways. One of them is Kinesiology, which means you ask the 99% a yes or no question, and your muscles answer for the Devine. Or you could say, the Devine uses your muscle strength or the lack of it to answer the question.

There is the traditional way to ask in which there are two people, and that is troublesome sometimes.
I will show you a one-handed way to test.

Put your dominant hand lightly on the desk in front of you, palm down. Now, quickly, without hesitation, turn it over, without lifting it more than you need to clear the table-top.

You’ll see, that depending on your flexibility, you can probably easily turn it so that now the back of your hand is facing the table, and you are not experiencing any pain. Don’t force it, it will override the answer from the 99%.

This is how your “yes” answer looks.

Anything with lesser turn is a “no” anwer.

Now, formulate your question. For example: shall I be friends with X? Should I pursue buying that house? Shall I eat peas? etc.
It must be a question with a yes or no answer.

Now put your hand on the desk, ask your question and quickly turn your hand upside down. If the answer is yes, you know how far you could turn before… If it is no, your hand will turn MUCH LESS.

If you want to make sure, ask the opposite of the same question. If you get the opposite, you are good to go. If you get the same: it is either neutral, or you can’t trust yourself: your dark side is dominating at the moment.

Here is a video by Craig Brockie… He has interesting stuff, worth watching.

A few years ago, around 2003 I read the book “The Science of Getting Rich”

I loved it. The part I loved most is that The Light is seeking fuller and fuller expression of itself, and you and your actions are part of that expression. Your curiosity, your exploration, your learning new things, you playing with new toys and tools are all adding to the richness of The Light’s self expression and fullness.

Why do I love it so much? Because it adds an important layer of incentive to strive for more. My capacity for self love is not very strong, and therefore my desire for things for myself is not very strong.

But if what I desire enriches The Light, I can expect to get all the support I need, because WE get the result, The Light and me.

I think I have mentioned in another blog post that I love to play the solitaire computer game, called Freecell.
I think that you can have a personal conversation with the light (maybe it is the Shechina… i.e. surrounding light) and get a lot of guidance that way.

Take, for example, playing Freecell. It is a total waste of time, unless. Unless you do it consciously allowing The Light to play through you.

Unless you derive your pleasure and satisfaction from providing The Light with an outlet, becoming a hand with an opposing thumb to The Light.

I have been experimenting with that for two days now. The Light hasn’t lost a game yet.

…and an additional juicy bit: nurturing my relationship with The Light this way has netted me money, friendship, health, peace of mind. I mean it. When you learn to become like a chess figure in The Light’s hand, you are taken to decisions and places you would not think of going yourself. And guess what? That is where what you wanted all along is… in those unexpected, unvisited places.

What a surprise.

Regrets, I’ve had a few … .How many of us are stuck in ruts because we cling to past slights, traumas, missed opportunities, and betrayals? The best way to let go and move forward is to acknowledge and accept those negative things you did (or had done to you) as steps on the path that brought you to where you need to be today.

Today, recall the pain of your past. Allow yourself to get to the point where you can accept that they were blessings; the perfect things that helped you build a new you. If you can release your grip on the anger, sadness, and regret, then it will be easier to spot the Light in the darkness. (quoted from daily kabbalah tuneup)

Interesting that this would come up just now.

I am working with a client/friend, let’s call her DD. She has been doing great. She has gotten in touch with the light in herself and her power to choose.

She is severely overweight and it’s effecting her overall health, but more than anything, her self image.

This past week she has gotten hungry twice while she was doing errands, and she didn’t give in to the temptation to get a quick supersized meal at the many fast food places on her way… instead she drove home and ate what she had planned to eat that day. Major victory.

The effect on her self esteem, self image was dramatic. She suddenly could see the light at the end of the tunnel, both in regards to regaining her health, and in regards to making a living, being a good parent, loving herself.

Her capacity to face what she didn’t like about herself increased to a point where accepting those as facts, and taking responsibility for them became a real possibility. … and you know that until you can accept something about yourself or about life, or about another, there is no chance to change it. It just won’t change, unless it has permission to be exactly how it is. (or how it isn’t…)

Until yesterday she was moving on the path. Yesterday her daughter yelled at her and told her that she’d rather live anywhere than with her, even foster parents would be better than her. That she learned to be bad from DD.

I asked DD how she took that, and she, in a very quiet little voice said that she could see her point and that she was a bad parent. But you could hear, this crushed her. It put her back to where she had no future. Where she was incorrigible, bad, worthless, and undeserving of love or care from anyone, especially not from herself.

Which takes me to my point. When you get better, when you put yourself on the path to become who you were meant to be (not that puny little thing that can only complain, and regret, and resent) Satan will “hire” your best friend, your spouse, your children, the radio (!) to take you off the path. And Satan’s method is to make you react.

Without my assistance, DD would have slipped back to where she was 10 days ago and hang out there maybe forever. In a complete sense of worthlessness. Not worthy enough to be taken care of, be fed good food in normal quantities.

From her tone of voice I actually deduce that she had already violated her new “order” and had indulged. I’ll ask her next time we talk.

When you react you can’t look. When you look you won’t react.

Reaction, physiologically, expresses itself in a tightening, in a closing down, in a blockage. The light can’t get in.

When you can force yourself to look, you open yourself up, and the Light can come in and support you to look and accept and forgive and change, if necessary.

Two steps forward, one step back… that is how everyone grows. Don’t worry, I’ll help DD back on the path in no time. As soon as she can accept that this little backslide is normal… Got it?

Find out what you have been doing, so you can start doing what you have always wanted to do.

click here for the movie

Yahuda Berg wrote a great book about it, and the flash video explains it and shows how to do it correctly to accomplish what you aim for. click here for the video

click here to see the video on how to do it. It is not just what you do, but what you see while you are doing it… the Hebrew letters. Very important.

Dream 1: I am playing with and fascinated by some colored dots that make a pattern, though moving, still a pattern, building something. At some point the dots suddenly lose color and die, and the fascinating pattern deteriorates to a one color dying, diminishing mess. I wake up. I know it is the message I asked for. My interpretation: don’t be fascinated with the ever changing outside world… turn your attention inward where you call all the shots.

Dream 2: I am invited to a conference in France. I haven’t been there for over 30 years. I want to go. I go. I just throw some clothes in an overnight bag and go. I am there, and I am having fun. I am ready to come back… I can’t. The doors of the US are closed. I am not having fun any more. I have no money, no place to stay. None of my things, including my business, are with me, it was all left in the US. I panic. I wake up. I sob. “I left without as much as a blanket and a pillow…” I cry. I know it is a message. I don’t think I have asked for this. But it came, so it is relevant. My interpretation: 1. think before you leap and don’t do something if it risks too much. 2. Leap. Build from nothing. that is where the blessing is. How can you do those two things at the same time?

The above two dreams came two nights in a row. It started out the same way: before I was swept into sleep, I asked the Light to send me guidance through my dream.

The language of the beyond is not a left-brain language. If you can’t feel it, it missed its purpose, no communication happened.

Sometimes you “kill” its original meaning by forcing left brain interpretations on the message. If it is not obviously clear, you are better off allowing it to be.

Writing down your dream is useful. Dreams have a tendency to want to disappear.

Sometimes the guidance comes later in the morning. Today I definitely had a second dose of guidance… deeper into the spiritual health care topic I have been toying with.

A friend sent me a book, One minute cure… a book on oxygen therapies. I read the long “message” and suddenly I got depressed. Often a sudden depression is a good sign that you are attempting to do something that is on your path but is hard for your ego to allow you to do. Ego=Satan.

Getting guidance is important.

Or you take a little pill, and you wake up beautiful, slim, sexy, and rich.
Or you pray that God gives you a miracle
Or you meditate
Or you buy that get-rich-quick scheme that promises overnight money with no work at all
Or you play it over and over in the theater of your mind… You feel it… you appreciate everything… still…

But all these don’t cause a miracle.

No matter how skillfully you wave the wand, or how fancy (and expensive) the little pill is, how passionately you pray… etc. etc. etc.

No. none of them work. Sometimes, just so you get more confused, it seems to be working.
Or it seems to be working for others. Typically people you see on TV, or who write books you buy, or you pay to listen to. One in a million, or two, three, four million?

So what is wrong with this picture? Why are we filling our minds with such nonsense, stuff that doesn’t work?

I have an answer for you that you won’t like: because believing in someone else making miracles for you allows you to stay the same.

Because for the ego, changing is the hardest.

And because what causes miracles is going to involve changing. Giving up what the ego is interested.

And at tha price the ego would rather that you don’t have miracles.

I just finished reading the book “God doesn’t make miracles, you do.” by Yehuda Berg.

Obviously I like Yehuda Berg. He seems to be living and breathing what he writes and speaks about. and obviously he is doing the work.

So I had this dilemma. Shall I just copy my favorite paragraphs from the book, and be done with this article?

If I did that, I would be like the thousands and tens of thousands of people who pout other people’s words, because they don’t have anything their own to say. Nor the experience.

That is not my way.

Back in 1991 November, I formulated the purpose of my life, probably channeled it, with the following words: “Living on the edge, generating distinctions of transformation for humankind.”

I am just starting to get what the heck I meant. Really, I just got something important about that today.

You see, I used to think (and I had 17 years to think about it) that living on the edge was an outside thing… like a circumstance. Like getting poor, or in trouble, or sick, or being evicted… and I manifested all those circumstances in my life.

What I got today that going to those edges is quite useless for humankind, but was very useful for my ego. It was all about me, my life, my troubles, me distinguishing, my gift to humankind.

It never “bought me” anything. Not even a tiny miracle. Bummer.

The past few months on the other hand, (there were quite a few turning points, or cross roads, significant defining moments) mostly quite insignificant in this very moment.

What is significant is that I finally married Landmark and Kabbalah, and have been consciously, greedily generating miracles. Not big ones. It seems that kaizen is my signature style… small steps, small changes.

Back in 2000, one night I was particularly bothered by something, and asked for coaching from a Landmark Center Manager.

She said something quite whimsical: “You think that it’s a bowl of wax, but in fact it is a ball of yarn.”

That arrested me in my tirade of martyrdom.

“What on earth does that mean?” I demanded to know. “You’ll figure it out…” the center manager said, and left the room.

I have figured it out.

If a bowl of wax blocked your way to happiness, you would have to melt the whole darn bowlful to get rid of the wax (your roadblock). But if it is a ball of yarn that’s blocking your way, you can snip away little threads of the yarn, and soon enough the whole ball becomes cushy, and give way.

And so is the way of transformation.

Most of us are waiting for the magic bullet, while continuing doing what we have always done… but some of us are snipping away diligently at the ball of yarn… and transform our life, our business, our health.

That is the way of the kabbalah.

I normally hide from her, because she is traditionally very negative. But last instant messaging we had she sounded upbeat, so I thought, I’d give it a try. I know how to break off a conversation when it goes south.

As fate has it, she broke her hand a few months ago, it didn’t heal well, and she has had a lot of pain. Interestingly it has changed her. Permanently or temporarily, I don’t know. My hunch is that it is temporary…

Anyway, I shared with her my experience with the nose bleed. She didn’t quite grasp it at first. She has had nose bleeds but her first thought wasn’t: this is the beginning of the end, so for her the chance of a breakthrough with that would have been small.

On the other hand, given that she is an architect, her right hand is her bread and butter, so creating a new way to look at it was a definite breakthrough for her.

I was mulling over this today as I was washing my hands in the bathroom.

“You need to trust the whisper inside your head that says that what’s happening is a good thing.” I thought, but then I cringed. Some 58 years ago I thought just that and where did it lead me?!

I saw what happened as a movie, just like “M” the German movie about a child murderer. Mass murderer, to be exact. I could hear my own giggle, like it is in a movie theater, then my own screaming.

Then I heard the gasping of the strangers who looked down at me in a tight circle in the barn, then the train, chi-hoo-hoo-hoo, and then my mother’s cold words, “You are a whore.”

Very film noir, artsy movie style, black and white, sparse, sounds, light and dark. Choppy.

Against that backdrop, my mother’s reaction suddenly didn’t make sense.

Next scene: my mother asking me in the car: “Was I a horrible mother?” I glimpse at her. The background is the magnificent lights of Manhattan Island from New Jersey. Her face is small and pleading. I don’t have the heart to tell her to what degree I’d thought she was horrible.

I decided to create a new movie, right then, right there.

“No, mother. You must have been the perfect mother for me, because I turned out. I like myself.” I lied.

The Landmark Forum leader who’d helped me re-interpret my mother’s statement “You are a whore” a few years earlier was famous for his saying: Integrity is when both tongues go in the same direction. The tongue in the mouth and the tongue in the shoes.

I have set a new direction with my mouth, my job was to adjust my actions, the tongue in the shoes, to go in the same direction.

The car conversation happened in 1992. Today, in the bathroom, recalling the whole movie… I watched my face in the mirror as it contorted with unmentionable pain and horror.

I needed to change clothes, the ones I was wearing were soaked in tears.

I checked my pulse and it was bang, bang, bang, unusually strong. “I must have high blood pressure” I thought. Both my parents died of broken blood vessels… and both my brothers have high blood pressure.

The blood eruption repeated itself at 11:02 pm, three times on Sunday, and twice on Monday.

Monday night, as I was staring at the blank wall contemplating the chances of dying, I suddenly saw my Kabbalah teacher in my mind’s eye. She recently recovered from a nasty disease, and it had done her a world of good. She literally transformed herself during the months of her illness.

Suddenly, I knew that the same is happening to me. I knew that this scare is a gift, and it is a blessing. Seemingly in disguise.

The next thing I know, the bleeding stopped, and it hasn’t come back, knock on wood, for two whole days.

Naomi has been my Kabbalah teacher for three or four years. We butt heads all the time.

When she first called she dislodged me from a place of complacency. I both appreciated and resented her. It cost me money, it cost me comfort.

We have been through together a lot, sometimes having shouting matches. I decided many times that I would never talk to that uncaring b.. again.

I have grown more from her not agreeing with me than from all the adoration I had gotten from other teachers and coaches.

I think that our relationship is a soul mate relationship. She rubs me the wrong way, there is friction, there is chafing, and there is growth.

All of life is about growing, and soul mates are the secret allies to that. A half heavenly half hellish alliance.

A real soul mate won’t let you off the hook. The American ideal of always agreeing and always having a good time isn’t designed for growth, more for staying the same.

Soul mate relationship is about growth. Remember, the irritation caused by the sand in a sea shell makes it grow a beautiful jewel, a pearl. So is it with human beings… you can grow yourself to be something special through a soul mate’s friction.

Thank you Naomi.

Soul Mate stuff on other blogs in the blogosphere:

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What I didn’t say in THAT blogpost on my recession blog, because it is ALL spiritual, is what happened in the last two weeks. It’s amazing, and it is probably the most important lesson one can learn about causing one’s life. (You may also want to refer back to my Live abundantly article

OK, here you go, here it goes.

Two years ago I bought a new laptop computer and gave my old one to my Kabbalah teacher, Naomi. It was a good computer, given from the heart.

A year ago I bought another laptop, but this time I held onto my now old one. But about six weeks ago Naomi told me that the old laptop was losing its monitor… it was slowly going blind. “OK,” I said, “I’ll give you my other laptop.”

I regretted saying that, the moment I said it. I need it, I want it… but then I watched myself not even touching it… it just sits there. “OK, I’ll clean it.”

Two weeks ago Naomi mentioned the computer again. “Don’t worry” I said “I just need to find time to clean it up for you. You know removing my stuff, restoring it to a new condition. OK?”

But cleaning a computer up takes two days, and I have been working 14-16 hours every day. I didn’t want to spend two days with that. So on the 20th of last month I had the thought that if I could get the money, I would rather not spend two days cleaning up that computer, I would just buy Naomi a new one. So I said, out loud . “Light, could I please have the money instead of having to clean that computer up? Please?”

Ten minutes later the phone rang and an unexpected order for 380 dollars was placed. 100% profit. OK, I said, half the price of a new computer… Light, can I please have the other half?

On the 24th I shared what had happened with Naomi. She said, “maybe what you have is enough for a new computer.” I looked up on Tigerdirect, and she was right. I found a good and cute laptop for less than $400.

Naomi and I finished our session and I went back to Tigerdirect. Now I was really confronted. I have always wanted a cute little computer like that, with Windows XP (that I like). “I want one for me.” nagged at me. “Maybe I give her my new computer…” I was sitting in front of the computer for what seemed an eternity, then I picked up the phone, and placed the order. With shipping it came to 396 dollars.

So, this is what I did.

That night I didn’t get tired, so I went to sleep rather late. Next morning I woke up, and I wasn’t tired. (I had been tired every morning, for many years…)

I had a great day… even though I got a nasty email from a customer. But I managed to restrict my urge to be nasty back, and she wrote back a nice note of appreciation. Wow.

I watched my face in the mirror, and I was getting prettier every day.
My thoughts about myself were something like “Hey, I am something. I am an amazing human being.”
In the last two days I’ve written 12 articles. I felt and behaved unstoppable. It’s early to say, but I say it will continue.

And when your behavior and your mindset is inspired, the other goodies, like money, fame and fortune will follow. You don’t have to worry about them.

OK, so this is what actually happened. Big deal, you could say, but you would be wrong. It is a big deal.

Why? Because I have distinguished an important spiritual law.

This is how it works: You create an action that requires you to restrict your egoistic inclination. You do it from the correct mindset: you do it to create light for yourself.

You don’t turn it into an ego trip, you don’t brag about it. This is important. It would stop the process cold right here.

You listen to the stirrings of the soul, the whisperings. If you can hear it, it says something nice about you. You express and feel gratitude for that. You listen for suggestions for an inspired action. When you hear one, you act on it, and express and feel gratitude.

All the while you are staying conscious that you do none of the actions for do-gooding purposes (very important), you are doing it to earn light. Spiritual Greed, or Enlightened Greed, as the Rav calls it. Do-gooding comes from Satan, comes from Ego.

You continue this way: listen for suggestions for inspired action, act, and express gratitude.

Don’t worry, the Light will help you along the way. Now you are working together.

There is no mountain that you can’t scale that way. There is no rock that you can’t push to the top of the mountain this way without it every rolling back to the bottom again.* In spite of all the temptation, every step of the way.

So this was the teaching. But the benefits did not stop there.

Another major fall out being able to answer my forever unanswerable question that I’d asked since 1966 when I first went to Architecture School. You see, I only want to do something that I can be really good at, who would want to be mediocre. Not me, thank you. So the question I asked: “Am I talented?”

Unfortunately, until today, I could not answer that question for myself. What everybody else said didn’t matter.

But after this revelation about how it works with the Light, I now have an answer to that question.

You see, architects are taught (in Hungary) in a one-on-one tutoring environment.

You see your teacher three times a week, for five months. That is the length of a normal project.

You put something on paper at home, and bring it in. The teacher puts transparent sketching paper on top of it, and starts working with what you had done. And talks, talks, talks.

You take his sketch home, and put it on paper adding your thoughts and ideas to it. You bring it back two days later. And it goes like that until the plan is done. Then you get a grade. And if your grade is good, and mine were all A’s, then you wonder if you did it or he did it, and if you are talented or your teacher is.

But just like in the above story with the computer: the Light (teacher) did not take the first step, I did. And the first step takes the most courage, because you can be all wrong. Then the Light (teacher) adds to it what he adds to it, and you take it home, and you have a choice to be courageous again or not. To act on the Light’s suggestion or not. To be slavish or to add your own brilliance and risk being wrong.

So I got that I was very talented, and it was a pleasure for the Light to work with me.

And I can keep it this way. And if/when, for whatever reason I drop the ball, now I know how to start the process again. The ball never rolls back again to the bottom of the hill. Because now I am not clueless like most of humanity.

And if you’ve read this far, you are not either… If anything is not clear, please don’t hesitate using the comment form to ask for clarification. Please.

* I am referring to the myth of Sisyphus in Greek Mythology.

I have found that tithing is a great activator of the Law of Attraction. Especially if you give often, and with the right mindset. According to Kabbalah the right mindset is a kind of spiritual or enlightened greed, give hungry for your own growth and your own enlightenment, and not from do-gooding. do-gooding is from ego (Satan)

My specialty is the mindset (or the seed level) of spiritual growth.

Your blessings are trapped … in other people.

Take back the Light! Go to one person today, with whom you’re having trouble seeing eye to eye, and tell them (in a proactive manner) something they are right about.

The more difficult it is to confront the person, the more Light you will reveal. Now, go get back your Light that you are giving to other people!

This is a Kabbalistic way to say: you’ve been giving away your power to everyone you are “incomplete” with.

Incomplete means that there is some charge on something that happened, they did, they said, or didn’t do, didn’t say. The bigger the charge, the more of YOUR light is trapped there.

And only YOU can release it. Bummer.

OK, but how do you do that?

There are several ways to release the light, and one of them is what Yehuda Berg is saying in the above quote. I tried that yesterday, and the moment I could think of something they did right, the process began. I sent off the email, and the answer came almost instantly with a lot of light.

Here is how it went, I am sharing it because it was profound.

She: (paraphrasing for brevity) Your site is a mess, hard to find anything, too much junk, spam, I can’t even find my ad… blah blah blah.
Me: (first firing off… ) I have the spam there so I can pay my bills, because you sure don’t pay them for me.
(then here comes the definining moment: I realize that I am hooked… not good. so I add two sentences in the beginning:) I love you, but you are a little too cranky for me today.
She: Thanks.
I love you too, that was nice.
Sorry.
Yeah, cranky can’t believe you saw through the email.

Result: Light fully released, love reestablished, both directions.

So, the method works, all I needed to do is stop for a moment and imagine how my email would feel when it lands.

The next method is a little trickier, but works very reliably on long-standing hurts.

This is how you resolve it:

1. You observe that there is some energy trapped with a person (or event)
2. You have a story about what happened, and what they did/didn’t do, etc. but we’ll say that the story is an illusion, and something simpler happened that is all in your hands. Excellent, this way you won’t even have to talk to them. How sweet life can be!
3. You find something that you can be responsible for in the whole story. Example of what you COULD take responsibility for:

• You may have a standard and/or an ideal that they “fail” to conform to
• You may find that you have an unfulfilled expectation with them
• You may find that there is something you haven’t said
• You may find that you have a “thwarted intention” which simply means that you had an agenda that never got fulfilled.
• You say that there was an agreement that they broke (an agreement that was never spelled out and was assumed by you.)

The moment you find a way to be responsible for the trapped light, you can fully take responsibility for your standards, your expectations (often called a setup for disappointment), say or what you haven’t said (not necessarily to them) or acknowledge that having an agenda is a lot like an expectation, you pay for it through  and through. So what there is to do is acknowledge it and give it up.

You will never believe that there is nothing, I mean no situation, past or present, that cannot be resolved the above way.

For example, many people find relief from a lifetime resentment with a parent that did or didn’t do something.

The culprit in this situation is (almost always) an agreement that is assumed. Like parents are supposed to love their children. Or parents are not supposed to do this or that. If you look deeper into it, no parent has ever said that they agreed to such condition. (Some did, but they are the minority and the exception.)

Once you can acknowledge that you have been resenting your parents for not conforming to an agreement that they never made, you reclaim your light… i.e your blessings.

He was amazed that such a poor man would be in such good spirits. He knocked on the door and asked if he would be welcome to join the man as a guest. They ate and drank together. After the meal the Shah asked the man how he earned his living.

“I am a poor Jew, I fix shoes in the street, and with what I earn I sustain myself for that day.” answered the man.

“But what will be your fate if something happens to you or you get too old to work?”" asked the Shah.

“Oh I do not worry about that,” the man said happily. “I know God will provide.”

The Shah decided to test the faith of the poor man. The next day he issued a decree that forbidded anyone to fix shoes in the street. The Jew was stunned when he found out this new law, but he contemplated looking inward and said, “God, I am certain that you will provide.”

He looked around himself and saw a man with water jugs on his shoulders, and he saw that he can become a water carrier. So he hauled water from the town well, and sold enough to buy food for a day.

That evening, curious how the poor man made out, the Shah returned to the man’s house.

“How are you?” he asked upon entering. I came to see how you survived the new law.”

“God provided for me today,” the Jew answered happily. “One door closed, but God opened another. I am now a water carrier.”

The following day the Shah issued a new decree that carrying water for pay was not allowed. So the Jew spoke to God, and when he looked about him, he saw men going into the woods to cut trees for firewood. This he went with them and made enough for food for the day.

That night the Shah came again to check on the poor Jew. To test his faith more, the following day he ordered all wood cutters to the palace. When they arrived, with our poor Jew among them, he issued guard garb for them and a sword. They would be paid, but not until the end of the month. Our man was now really puzzled, for he had no food for one day, and definitely no way to buy food for the whole month. But though he didn’t know what to do, he assured God that he was certain that he will provide.

On his way home from the palace he looked at his sword and had this idea. He fabricated a sword out of wood and sold the sword. The price he got was enough to buy food for the month. The Shah, visiting again that night, was very surprised when he saw the Jew singing and eating.

When he found out what happened, he gasped. “What will you do if you get found out?”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we get there… I don’t worry.” the Jew replied, “God will not abandon me.”

The following day, in the town square, there was to be an execution scheduled, execution of a man for stealing fruit from the Shah’s orchards. The Shah ordered all his guards, including our poor Jew, to go to the execution. There was a huge crowd to see the execution.

At the square, the Shah picked the Jew to have the honor to cut off the man’s head.

“Please, Don’t ask me to kill,” the Jew pleaded. “I have never even killed a fly.”

“Obey or join the condemned!” cried the Shah.

The Jew closed his eyes in prayer for a few minutes and then called out loud:

“My God, you know that I have never killed in my life. Please, God, let my sword be so very sharp as to kill him in a single blow, if this man is guilty. But let my sword turn to wood, as a sign of his innocence, if he is not guilty.”

With thousands of eyes watching his every move, he pulled out his sword of its sheath, and held it up high. The crowd gasped, then applauded and celebrated when they say the wooden sword. They saw that a miracle had taken place.

The Shah was filled with delight. He confessed the Jew that he was the visitor of those previous nights, and invited the poor Jew to come and live in the palace as his trusted advisor.

“I see that you are a man of wisdom and unwavering faith,” he said. “I have much to learn form you.”

The Jew went to live in the palace with the Shah.

So, why did I tell you this story? Because in this story the Jew lived like no other. He was not consumed by the worries of where the next “buck” will come from, what will happen next day, next month, if recession comes, if he gets ill, etc. He replaced all that with trust in the Creator (and himself) and thus was available for the small simple joys that pass others unnoticed, as their minds focus on their future security and happiness.

Our Jew lived in unwavering faith and gratitude, thinking only of meeting his needs day by day. He lived in a state of love rather than fear; love of existence, love of the moment, love of life. He fulfilled on life’s purpose: Live more abundantly.

He consciously set aside the habit of worry and planning. Instead he was present, both to listen to the counsel of God, or his inner wisdom, and this allowed him to make wise choices, in the moment, and be ready to make another wise choice the moment this decision proves wrong, or a door closes on him. And he did this with deep gratitude acceptance and joy?

If you notice, it wasn’t that he was waiting for something, like money, or food materialize from thin air. No, he was getting the counsel, the guidance, and then he willingly acted on it. The Jew in our story was actively involved.

God pointed him towards new openings and options, and he was willing to hear it. Then he was willing to do a hard day’s work, and then he was willing to joyfully express gratitude for his results.

It’s been a longstanding question how God communicates to us, how God provides.

In the book “Bible Code” which is fiction, but wise fiction, every major event in life is encoded in the Bible. And every major event has several outcomes. And every major event has the words stamped as one possibility: averted.

The book points to choice. Choice. Which means, every moment, you have choice, and you choose. Our man could have chosen to throw up his arm, and plead victim, give up, be a martyr. I know more people like that than I care to count.

But he chose listening to the whisper of possibility, and all the tragedies were averted, just like in the Bible Code.

Yesterday, while shopping for oatmeal in my local coop, one of the clerks looked cloudier than usual. “How are you?” I asked. “Good.” she said, but with faked cheerfulness, that belied that she wasn’t that well. “What’s happening?” I asked. “Oh, it’s the holidays…” she said. It turned out that she had no money, no food in the house, and the next paycheck wasn’t going to be till three days later. “Why don’t you ask for an advance… I am sure twenty bucks would tie you through?” I said. “Yes, but they would never do that!” she exclaimed. “OK, I’ll give you 10, and you ask for the other ten…” I said and reached for my billfold. It looked that I had five singles, so she said “Oh, you don’t have it…” but behind the singles there was a twenty dollar bill. Rather than giving up on her, I handed that over to her. Later I saw her with a bag of food in her arms, heading home to feed her children.

Nice, you could say. But I want you to pay attention to something else: was she like our poor Jew? No. She wasn’t. Will I, or someone else be there to bail her out next time? Not a chance.
But something did happen. It was my listening to the whisperings of God. And therefore all the joy, all the light, all the abundance is coming to me… she just survived for a few days.

Colin Wilson is one of my favorite writers. I started my course of study with him with The Mind Parasites, a science fiction novel, back in 1987.

In the books I have read, Colin Wilson is only interested (really) in a few questions: What does it mean to be a Human Being, and how to accomplish that? What is the purpose of life, and how to fulfill on that purpose?

These are exactly the questions I have been pondering for about 23 years.

If we consider the question a jigsaw puzzle, he provides the final picture, and some methodology, I provide mostly methodology.

I need Colin Wilson. My faculties to think “What is the purpose of life” are somewhat impaired. It is not my strength. My strength is to provide Kaizen type (transformative) exercises to

1. prepare yourself
2. accomplish the task.

Like any worthy goal, the preparation, the becoming the kind of person who can reach the goal, is 99% of the job. 1% is crossing the finish line.

One of the major hurdles along the way is staying awake, or for most of us, waking ourselves up.

We are sleepwalking. We look alive, we look awake, but we are not. We are swept away by “life,” by outside stimuli, societal, or personal, and we are rushing through life without living it fully. Colin Wilson says:

the purpose of life is to live abundantly

.
But you can’t live abundantly if you are not present to life, moment by moment. If you are speeding towards some destination, totally unaware and uninterested in the journey, you are not living abundantly.

But isn’t this how we live? Completely missing the journey, completely missing life? As if we were asleep on a plane till we arrive?

One way you have experienced this probably, when you are heading home, and between entering your car, and parking in front of your home, somehow you have no recollection of driving.

Another example: you are making a u-turn on a busy divided road, failing to look at signs… not even considering that the world may have changed since you last did this same u-turn… and you wreck your car and yourself… or almost… just ask Diana.

One of the exercises Gurdjieff invented to keep yourself awake is called “Remember Yourself.”

It goes like that: you go through your regular day. So far so good, right? Added difficulty: while you are interacting with the world, include yourself in your cone of vision, while you are observing yourself and what you are interacting with.

One way I used to train this principle (before I even heard about Gurdjieff) is, I would ask the trainee to include his/her arm in his field of vision while talking to someone, so they can remember themselves as distinct from who they are talking to.

Never succeeded, I must admit. It must be hard. According to some figures, only one in a thousand is awake, at least some of the time.

The other day, while I was driving to my mail box, a 4-mile drive that I do 2-3 times a week, I noticed a blue house on a hillside, a very strong blue, I might add.

I had never seen it, and doubted that there are more than two blue houses in Syracuse… I know where “the other” house is. I really like both. Blue stands out in the lush green… I don’t know. I just like them.

Anyway, that unusual house color gave me an idea: to notice everything that is blue, within my cone of vision, on my total 8 mile drive. So I proceeded to just that. And something unusual happened. Everything that was blue was calling to me, everything that had a hint of blue, showed up as blue. Even green was a shade of blue. Cars almost covered by a tarp, bus stop signs, a faded blue house, a bluish jacket on a bicycle rider.

It was sheer delight. I rejoiced over every discovery like a child. I loved every shade of blue.

OK, but why am I sharing this in this article? Because it is possible to remember yourself, i.e. consciously be present to you seeing, to you enjoying, to you being there… as a major spiritual exercise.

It won’t work after a while… it will become routine. But the first few times it will be a blast, and your experience is going to be one of aliveness and joy. That is way awakeness (is that a word?) feels.

I know the word sharing gets thrown around in these emails quite a bit. Sometimes we become numb to the word. To get back to basics, sharing means giving something of ourselves.

It can be sharing with someone we’re not used to sharing with. It can be opening up with someone we’re not used to opening up to. It can be calling someone with whom we’re holding a grudge and wishing them well and saying something nice, some words of wisdom. It can be anything. It just has to be an unconditional stretch.

As a certified est-hole and Landmark junkie, I have heard the urging “Share, share share.”

In Landmark they mean “Bring more chumps like you so that Landmark can become a World Class Organization, here to stay.” They mean: do our selling for us. Maybe they don’t, but that is how it lands for people.

In multilevel marketing companies (network marketing, MLM) they say the same thing, but mean, definitely, selling.

Now, I didn’t stay in Landmark for 20 years because it didn’t work for me. It did. And when I look back, the part that worked best was sharing.

After I did the first Landmark course, back in 1985, (it was called Werner Erhard and Associates then, WE&A for short) I was stunned at the new way people related to me. I used to be very unpopular, and that changed then, temporarily. I was loving it. I enjoyed people’s attention, interest, I enjoyed that they wanted to know what happened to me, or what I was thinking.

Previously I would push it to them. My thoughts, my opinions, you know the usual know-it-all stuff.

So I was more than happy to tell people about my experiences, and they would flock to Landmark. (WE&A)

By 1987 it wasn’t that comfortable for me to talk about myself, I was starting to see some pretty bad stuff about myself, and talking about myself meant being willing to get “naked” and being willing to change. That was both frightening and exhilarating.

I talked and changed, and talked and changed. I have (mostly) changed my condescending ways, I have (mostly) changed expecting people to take me beating up on them in good humor. I have changed a lot, and the technology I used is very similar to Kabbalah: I was sharing MYSELF, the good, the bad, and the ugly, with a commitment to become the best I can be.

I cried a lot. I turned people off a lot. I gave a lot and received, from the same people, or people in general, very little. But I got a lot of light. From the 99%, for my efforts.

In the 20 years I worked off almost half of my negativity. That is a lot, if you are wondering.

Every time you share yourself in a way that forces you to look at your dark side, your world becomes a little brighter. Your heart becomes a little lighter.

Then there were the relapses. Like a week or so ago.

I was in a seminar, online, and I publicly humiliated two other participants, by publicly telling my observations about them. My observations weren’t flattering. They were harsh, and condescending. I, according to Kabbalah, was shedding blood, like a murderer.

I needed to take a deep look into myself, with the help of Diana, my friend, and found that the behavior comes from an entitlement.

As a child I was abused. I decided that therefore I am entitled to abuse others, the way I was abused. The decision of a 4-year old. Self centered, uncaring, and plain wrong. (see another of my posts about this)

That relapse is now giving me a chance to transform that behavior and that thinking. The amount of light that has already come out of that incident is amazing. Finally, after 7 failed businesses in the past six months, it seems that he 8th is going in the right direction, I have made some sales… amazing.

The only thing I need to do to continue is find some other dark spots in my universe that need the light of day… (sharing) so that I can draw more light.

I have found, by the way, the next one. As tough and as painful as the previous one.

It’s about “fake” generosity… I’ll talk about it in another post… this one is getting too long.

That was on the front of my T-shirt in 1991 at the Communication Commando Course… a week long Landmark Education program.

What was that about?

Here is the story.

In the course, on the 2nd day, if I remember correctly, we were talking about your “default” albeit hidden way of communicating. We formed small groups of five, and we looked at each other and made up a little statement of what we thought the person was communicating under their usual facade.

One guy in our group had the statement: “It doesn’t compute, it doesn’t compute, it doesn’t compute…”

Another’s was: “Beware, vicious dog… will bite if you are not careful”

No one could guess mine. The course leader, an older woman from Mexico, came over, took a look at me and said “Recovering victim”

As she was leaving, sensing my vibes (I guess), she turned back and added “Get the f… out of my way!”

When your statement was done, you needed to go to the back of the room, where a group of busy assistants painted the statement on a white t-shirt.

At the end of this exercise, we went, one after the other to the stage, and told the group what our statement was… while we were wearing the t-shirt.

When it was my turn, I said mine, with a huge amount of resentment, and then, as I was leaving the stage, I felt my legs move into a military march, like Hitler’s army, with the same amount of hatred and determination. It was awful. It had been hidden. From me. It had been probably there since the time I was raped at 3 and a half. It was anger, it was hatred, it was “you are all going to pay for this.”

It was horrible. I felt ashamed, disconnected, an outsider, a leper.

We went to have dinner soon after.

The dining room had big round tables for 18 each. I was there early, and filled my plate and set by an empty table.

As the room was filling (there were over 100 people in the course) people were looking for a table to sit by. Many came to the table where I was, put down their plate, ready to sit down. Then they took a look at me and my t-shirt, picked up their plate and left looking for another table.

I ate by myself that night, and then the next day, and the day after. We were wearing our t-shirt, till we transformed it.

My “transforming” statement was “Being available to play with all.”

It didn’t quite do the trick.

When the six-day long course was over, I called the airline and moved my flight to the next day. It was mid-November, it was chilly. My hotel was by the airport. I felt even more isolated and an alien than in the course. I bought some food and ate it walking on the roads…

At night I called a friend in NJ and told him that I was ready to end it all. The leper wanted to check out.

I don’t know what gave him the words, but he turned me around. He said: “It is not over yet. People need you Sophie.”

OK, I’ll hang in there then, I said and hung up.

And here I am, 17 years later, weeping at my computer. Not much has changed. Instead of being the “Nazi” 100% of the time, I am rarely it. But it did not leave. It did not transform. It is like antisemitism… deep roots. Deep roots in evil.

The Zohar teaches us desire is a vessel that holds the Light. The idea is attaining blessings and good fortune is not enough to keep them. We must also maintain our desire for what we already have.
Not always an easy thing to do seeing as how our habit is to focus on what we don’t have.
Today, get in touch with the desire you first felt when you started studying Kabbalah, or dating your husband, or working at your dream job. Crave your life!

I had something happen today that was an interesting aspect of this same thing.

Diana and I are partners in our quest to create a business that would benefit both of us.

We have created seven projects, and all seven flopped.

Two days ago I came up with the eighth idea, and it was the simplest, and we have gotten further in this project in two days that with the other seven in a month or so each.

I suggested last night that we stop and celebrate. Diana said yeah, yeah, and started to ask about all the things we should add and do more, and are unfinished.

I stopped and noticed.

She had an impossible time to acknowledge accomplishment, to celebrate. And if I hadn’t noticed it, her life has been consistent with that. Downward spiral. Accomplishments have been mostly limited to averting catastrophy.

The divine purpose of our relationship, Diana and me, is to compensate for my blindness. Everything I notice in Diana is something I am guilty of, just couldn’t see it in a regular mirror.

Diana has been a total distortion free mirror for me, and I have grown in this relationship more than in the previous 60 years altogether.

It also helps that we live far apart, she is a Southern gal, I am a New Yorker… we have never met. But we have accomplished feats of true soulmates.

Hallelujah. And thanks for the Kabbalah. Without that I would run from the kind of people like Diana. I would stay in “blissful” ignorance and never grow.

I learned that maybe, just maybe I haven’t stop often enough, celebrated joyfully enough, appreciated what got done, the successes, the effort, the right direction, the whatever, enough.

A Kaizen second… I am so lucky.

I spent 20 years in Landmark.

The most important thing I learned there was that all the power for you lies in the part of reality that you don’t know that you don’t know.

They demonstrate the proportions with a pie chart: the whole pie is all that could be known. A thin slice is what you know. Another thin slice is what you don’t know and you know that you don’t know. For example I know I don’t know how to fly. These things you can learn if you have the time, money, etc. But what about the rest of the pie? That is the 99% of reality. The part that you don’t know that you don’t know. The part I considered non-existent until Landmark. The part is that is like water for the fish.

Imagine a fish swimming around happily in an aquarium. Do you think the fish knows it swims in water? Don’t guess, it doesn’t. That is the only environment it knows, and it is invisible for him.

Now, imagine the fish jumping out of the water, flying in the air looking down at the water, gasping: “Oh my Gosh, water!” Just before it plops back into the water.

In that split “Kaizen second” he suddenly gained access to the DKDK (don’t know that don’t know) paradigm.

Very easy to notice and promptly forget. Or explain away. Like my last boyfriend’s alcohol breath at 11 am at our first date.

But when it jolts you out of your normal sleeping mode, it is invaluable. That is why I stayed in Landmark for 20 years.

One of these moments were when, at age 40, after complaining all my life that my mother didn’t love me, I managed, for a split “Kaizen second” see, what it must have been like for her to have a child whose attitude was “My mother never loved me.” For a split Kaizen second I saw it, and I could never complain about her again. I couldn’t. Because I suddenly had no idea what she would have been like, had I complained about her loving me too much. Or, G-d forbid, hadn’t complained about anything.

That Kaizen second was my first foray into the 99%.

For many it is the “Necker Cube Demonstration.” (see illustration)

The power of those seconds to alter past, present, and future is the “Real Power”.

The power to become well, wealthy, fulfilled, connected, significant, exuberant, and to making a difference. Even to becoming thin, or having a clean house, or having a wrinkle free face at age 61.

Once you “really” know about that whole big paradigm, the 99%, you arrive to the state of certainty. And you will appreciate the Kaizen seconds, you will even become diligent at generating them, instead of waiting for them to pop up.

As difficult as dirty dishes can be, they’re even worse when you let them sit for a while. And the longer they sit, the harder they are to clean.
This is life. Something that is potentially easy to clean up right after it happens – an unkind word to your father, a lie to your best friend, an insensitivity to your girlfriend – can become a difficult mess if you don’t deal with it now.
Do the dishes today.

I have been thinking about Kaizen a lot. Kaizen can be the saving grace for a lot of people, because Kaizen is a way of life, a non-threatening way, but it is an awake way, and most of us are not awake, but get jolted out of our sleepwalking by big things only. I am awake, and Kaizen is for me.

So I decided to use Kaizen to ease back into exercising. Since I stopped exercising, my face aged 10-20 years. That is a lot. I used to have no wrinkles, now I have folds, and wrinkles inside them… not pretty.

I have no special occasion to be pretty at, I just think that looking into the mirror, which is daily, at least, should be a joyous occasion, not an occasion to berate myself.

So I am now doing 15 seconds of the exercise I used to do. I am happy. It shows on my face. Hm.

Another Kaizen thing: in airplane bathrooms there is a sign that says something like this: would you be so kind as to use your paper towel to clean the sink before you throw it away?

Very Kaizen. Imagine going to the bathroom and someone’s soapy dirty washwater is still in the sink. (Airplane sink stopper need to be manually lifted, otherwise it stops the water from emptying…) I would never wash my hand again on an airplane. But with that little Kaizen note, most 99% of the passengers follow the instructions, and everyone washes their hand. (I think that sign also reminds people to wash their hands, which many people don’t see a reason for… otherwise).

And the third Kaizen example I read about in a Kaizen book, and it is about Toyota. The factory. They learned Kaizen from Americans… who would have thought that!

At Toyota, manufacturing the cars happened on the assembly line. Nothing new there. In a normal assembly line operation everyone is only concerned about their part of the assembly, and the occasional errors were noticed and corrected, or not noticed and not corrected at the quality control station.

Toyota’s then CEO installed a rope above every workstation along the assembly line, where workers were asked to pull the rope every time they noticed an error in the work on the half-assembled car in front of them. The pull stopped the assembly line, they corrected the error, and pulled again…

It was a heretic idea, going counter with mass production. American auto manufacturers, that relied on quality control, had thousands of cars recalled, paid billions in restitution for tiny errors that weren’t corrected right after they happened.

Toyota went on to become the most reliable car. 250K cars still sold and run the highways is commonplace, while even an “error-free” American car would be proud to run till 200K.

Which leads me to the “boundaries” part.

It is still my cat that is on my mind. Or my previous failed relationship. Or my previous failed New Year resolution. Where, in all circumstances, I ignored, put up with, tolerated, shut a blind eye to a small aberration, a small violation of my boundaries, a little mistake, a little skipping… and they all became the core of a snow ball and destroyed an otherwise hopeful relationship.

Do the dishes as they get dirty. And stay awake. I have learned my lesson.

Many of us don’t bother to ask for more, or to challenge our status quo, or to dream bigger because we don’t feel like we deserve it. We feel, at the core, that we are “wrong.”

When we feel “wrong” in speaking up or fulfilling a deep need, it’s because we are getting in touch with something that wasn’t accepted in us when we were younger, or in a past life. For example, when people who weren’t allowed to feel joy start feeling joy, it confuses them, and even makes them uncomfortable. That’s why we sabotage ourselves.

Today, get in touch with what feels wrong to you. Give yourself permission to feel right.

Another aspect of this “being wrong” or “being the wrong one” is that we put everyone’s need before ours.

I developed that characteristic over time.

Just a week ago I had two cats that I spent more money on their food than my own, spent more time worrying about their well-being than mine.

One cat, an abandoned male cat was especially at the receiving end of my “selfless giving kindness.”

He showed his gratitude by using my apartment as a big litter box. I now have 5 litter boxes, but he still preferred the area behind my computers. I guess he wanted me to think of him when I work.

This past Sunday I had this thought that maybe I, and my well being is more important than keeping this cat in.

I threw him out. I cried all day. I was sure everyone will say that I was a heartless person. But all my friends celebrated my courage to disrupt this “martyr-like” behavior.

It’s been four days. I am at peace. I am enjoying my house. I enjoy time with my other cat. I eat undisturbed, I can keep the door closed, and I can sleep till 7 am without a cat waking me to take him out to pee.

Am I heartless? Maybe. But I definitely crossed some barrier with regards to my self-worth. Let’s see where it takes me.

Please add your two cents worth… (or a dollar?)

Just watch the movie: Back to the Future, and you see the character played by Michael J. Fox physically did stuff and that changed the future that he traveled back to. It changed the people, their income level, their behavior, their social status.

But what if our limited thinking is not the only way to look at this phenomenon?

Let me tell you something that I had first hand experience with.

Some 20 years ago, in a Landmark Seminar, the Leadership Seminar, (for those of you that care,) we needed to do a group project to practice leadership.

My group decided to create a self help group, somewhat based on the 12-step principles of non-coaching.

The name of the group was “Playground: It is never too late to have a happy childhood.”

We had 12 topics, ranging from money to sex, and we cycled through them, one topic per week.

All we did is retold our life from the particular perspective of the week, but made sure we separated fact from fiction: i.e. what happened and what we said it meant.

The group ran for two years in living rooms of the participants, and we all experienced major results that were totally unpredictable. Weight loss of a hundred pounds, regaining one’s potency as a man, creating loving, mutually supportive relationships, a loser of a realtor suddenly making a lot of cash, and for me, creating a business that was both profitable and enjoyable.

What happened in those Monday night sessions is time travel. We managed to go back and change the past. NOT what actually happened, but its significance, its meaning, its “bearing” on the future.

I must have given up being a martyr on the cross, because finally I was able to have it all without any suffering.

I wish I could form a group like this today to help me reevaluate some of my past, so that I can increase my sense of my own value and increase my ability to accept abundance in my life.

Anyone interested in teaming up with me? We could do it on the phone!

Please write in the comment section of this article if you are. I can’t wait!

One of the most puzzling things about Kabbalah has to do with the proportions of worldly to spiritual. It says it is 1%, as opposed to the 99% spiritual. Therefore if you do your job in the 1% reality, then the 99% reality will to its job. It is like putting in $1 to a self improvement fund, and your company would match it with 99. Good deal, isn’t it.

It may be a good deal, but very few do it.

Why? Because your mindset has to be certainty, instead of waiting for it to come, or hoping, or wishing, or at the other extreme, thinking that you can only count on yourself.

None of those mindsets activate the 99%. Bummer.

I am learning a “new” method of getting around fear method, called Kaizen.

Kaizen is the tiny steps method. A step can be asking a question, can be saying something, or doing something unthreatening.

Though no one says, the foundation of the Kaizen technique could be found in the 1%-99% Kabbalistic teaching.

While Kaizen is designed to fool the fear (Satan?) by not waking it up to the thousand mile journey you are planning, it only knows about a tiny step, and it deems it insignificant. And the tiny steps come, one after the other, in a leisurely way, and Satan doesn’t wake up until you are thousands of miles into your journey.

Each tiny step activates the divine, and makes it easier to get the 99% support.

It goes so counter with the bombastic declaration, or big hairy goals that self improvement gurus preach. And it goes counter with Kabbalah.

One place where you can learn about Kaizen is here.

In my “Your Soul’s Purpose” process it was worded this way “Bring The Divine to Everything.”

Two different wordings, neither of them made a difference, until today.

As I was reflecting on the last article I wrote, it occurred to me that one of my “unanswerable questions” is: “Am I smart enough?”

If a question is unanswerable, you want to know the answer all the more. So I have been asking this question since time immemorial, and I have been getting yeses and nos… never any clarity.

I have been asking the wrong question, and when you ask the wrong question, your attention is on the wrong thing. (I could ask the same question more generally, so that you can find yourself in it, if your question is not about your mental capabilities, like me. I could ask: Is what I am doing now make me look good? Is what I am doing now say that I am good/ worthy/ smart/ capable/ handsome/ creative/ informed/ educated/loser… etc. etc. )

Those questions are asked by the ego, that is only interested in its own survival. It is classic “desire for the self alone.” No effort necessary to worry about yourself. We are wired like that. We are also wired to have a hidden layer, underneath this seemingly innocent concern: and that is: do I look better than x, am I smarter than x, am I able to win in this competition that exists in my mind with x?

When you reveal that layer, you really see that in the moment you are in THAT inquiry, you just disconnected from the Light. Any concern for yourself disconnects you from the Light.

So when I perform a miracle, have a breakthrough, etc. (obviously with the help of the Light) and then I brag about what I did (i.e. how great I am) I am disconnecting from the Light and all the accomplishment comes crumbling down, because it wasn’t mine to begin with.

Bad news, don’t you think?

But as I was thinking that, I also had another thought, obviously from the Light, is that all you have to do is make the effort and then the Light will do the rest.

That though brought tears into my eyes. Tears of relief, and tears of gratitude.

I haven’t had a lot of experience getting help from anyone ever before. I wanted it, I craved it, I hoped for it, but never really experienced it. And the operative word is “experience” here, because obviously the help was always there, but in my 1% blindness could not see it, could not acknowledge it, could not revel in it, could not use it to the max…

My life has felt like the life of Sisyphus.

Quoting from Wikipedia:

In Greek mythology, Sisyphus (Greek: ??????? [sí.sy.phos] ['si.si.fos] (help·info), Latinized: Sisyphus,  was a king punished in Tartarus by being cursed to roll a huge boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll down again, and to repeat this throughout eternity.

Today, Sisyphean can be used as an adjective meaning that an activity is unending and/or repetitive. It could also be used to refer to tasks that are pointless and unrewarding.

or in another paragraph, same page:

“Sisyphean task” or “Sisyphean challenge”

As a punishment from the gods for his trickery, Sisyphus was compelled to roll a huge rock up a steep hill, but before he could reach the top of the hill, the rock would always roll back down again, forcing him to begin again.

The maddening nature of the punishment was reserved for Sisyphus due to his hubristic (overweening pride, self-confidence, superciliousness, or arrogance) belief that his cleverness surpassed that of Zeus.

Sisyphus took the bold step of reporting one of Zeus’s sexual conquests, …but regardless of the impropriety of Zeus’s frequent conquests, Sisyphus overstepped his bounds by considering himself a peer of the gods who could rightfully report their indiscretions. As a result, Zeus displayed his own cleverness by binding Sisyphus to an eternity of frustration. Accordingly, pointless or interminable activities are often described as Sisyphean.

The story (myth) of Sisyphus describes my life. Thinking myself clever, I have considered myself equal to the gods (the Light) and was arrogant, and my life and my results did look like before the boulder reaches the top of the hill it rolls back again. Wow.

And this has been my tikkun (correction). And until today I had no idea what to do and how to do it, because I could not see what I was doing.

I think this is important: you can’t see your own shortcomings, or not really, and therefore the first job is to see it. Others can help, but ultimately you need to do the work.

Once you see your tikkun, you can ask for help from the Light to DO your tikkun.

And if your tikkun is “Forget Thyself”, just asking is already beginning the tikkun. Wow.

” … pessimists are usually right, optimists are usually wrong, but most great changes were made by optimists.” — Thomas Friedman, New York Times, May 11, 2008

Ever felt like the mission of Kabbalah is too big? Like what we do may not make a difference. The environment is too far gone, people’s natures are too difficult to change, who are we kidding?

…Being an optimist is like telling the Creator “I believe in you. I don’t know how you are going to make it work, or when, but I know you can and will!”

I have several mastermind partners. One of them, Mike, is a book distributor. He has lofty ideals, but his “job” is not that lofty. His 72-name is “Global Transformation.”

Wow, what a job… you may say. And it probably is. How is he going to do it? After work? When he retires? You ask… and here is the “kicker.” He is going to do it 24/7. Global transformation begins with your own. And from your point of view, it ends there. That is the only place you have any real power. That is the only place that is up to you to change.

Well, you say, then what is special about Mike? He is doing what I am supposed to do, right? Yes, and no. And I tell you what is the difference: Mike will do it against the backdrop of “Global Transformation.” And will curtail his tendencies to try to change the world while he is unchanged. Familiar? No? It should be. It describes all of us. The difference is that it is Mike’s tikkun… while you, probably, are still working on some puny or less puny correction, like selfishness, impatience, etc.

My 72-name is “Forget Thyself.” For about 5 years it didn’t make sense to me. I am not an ego-maniac! In the 6th year I noticed an interesting phenomenon: whenever I would talk about an accomplishment, or a result, it wold go away. Instantly. Example: I would talk about (brag?) that my business just grew x dollars, and the next moment I would say all those dollars disappear, and become negative dollars.

I queried my friends if it ever happens to them, and it does, sometimes. Other people can get away with sharing about their good fortune, but not me. What’s that about.

Just very recently I had a suspicion: am I sharing those good things as MY accomplishments? I mean, do I acknowledge the Light for them? Am I grateful?

I noticed that in fact that suspicion was right on. I acknowledge me, i.e. ego spoke to aggrandize ego… and that is why I always lost what seemed to be already mine.

Next step is to figure out how to be humble… not an easy thing for me… Good. The harder it is the more light it will bring. Once I figure it out. Light, can you help? Please?

I have been observing myself as a spiritual practice. Trying to “remember myself” as Gurdjieff would say it, call upon the “witness” or “observer”. Be awake. Either way, I have noticed something remarkable about myself: see if you can relate.

When I am in front of my computer* (where I spend most of my day) and I encounter something that requires the slightest push on my end, I see myself automatically going to the computer game of my choice, freecell.

I began observing this phenomenon about 6 months ago (it was there, unobserved, for many years). But 4 days ago I decided to employ “restriction,” which is one of Kabbalah’s main tenets, and see what will happen.

For about 36 hours I closed the freecell program as soon as I opened it. Then every time I was “awake” which means I was by myself and I was still observing myself. On the other hand, every time I was on the phone, or watching a video on my computer, or listening to an audio file, my attention wasn’t on myself, and I played… until I “woke up.”

Still curious, more interested in the experiment than conquering the force that moves my hand, I saw something today that is worth sharing.

Since I have started this blog, I have been watching how I somehow leak the energy that is necessary for creative thinking and expression… by talking on the phone, by playing freecell.

Every occasion when I need the little push and I opt to play instead, two things happen: 1. I have diminished the internal discomfort 2. I have successfully diverted my attention from what is important to me.

The first one is good, right? Who would want to be uncomfortable, after all. The second one reveals who or what is underneath this behavior: who would win if I didn’t do what is important to me, if I lived a life of quiet desperation, if I just vegetated, comfortably, but without any accomplishment of my own? Well, Satan, of course. Satan’s other name is Opponent or Adversary. Some cultures call it Ego. I even did once a week-long program where we called it “IT.”

IT has only one thing in mind, and IT is awake 24/7. IT wants you to play small, be comfortable, be selfish, worry about yourself, what you get, what you feel, what you…. it’s all about you. Even when it pretends that it’s about others… after all it is still about “what’s in it for you” in giving.

I have heard that before, others are teaching it… but these aspect of reducing the tension in the moment and thus reducing the capacity for push and diverting your attention long enough that you forget what you wanted to do… except for a gnawing feeling in your gut, that you just missed something important.

* When I am not in front of my computer, I find myself opening the refrigerator in a similar circumstance.

There are people in our lives who don’t want to receive what we have to give them. …

… we invest efforts into keeping some relationhships burning in our lives that we’d be better off letting burn out.

… life is all about circuitry. When we share our Light with people who don’t want to receive it, it’s like trying to fill a bottle when the cap is still on. Try as you might, with all of the love, intention, and desire to share, your energy simply cannot penetrate. And as with our favorite spiritual illustration, the lightbulb, if the negative pole is blocked, the circuit cannot be completed, and the energy cannot flow.

It’s not about judging people as worthy or unworthy. It’s about discerning who is ‘open’ to receive, and willing to use what we have to offer – wisdom, love, time, concern – no matter what flavor!

No doubt, if you go through your relationships, in your mind, one by one, you are going find several that fit the above description: Your desire to contribute to them is not received with an equal amount of desire to receive from you.

Some people, including my older self, make it our life’s purpose to give where it is not appreciated, or even not wanted. But everyone, at one time or another, decides where to give, by their own concepts, instead of looking where there is the most reception.

At the same time, one may fall into the opposite trap, the bottomless pit, or the bottle with the cap off, but cracked.

I used to have a client (or two, or three,… grrr) where we would have great conversations, I would be able to express all the light the Light wanted me to channel, but nothing would stick with the recipient.

This particular client, let’s call him Matt, was hungry for solutions, hungry for light, hungry… insatiable. What he wasn’t hungry for is making changes in his thinking or in his actions.

My style of coaching is to leave the client with a set of practices or action that they must complete in order for the session to make any real difference. Matt never did any of the actions, any of the practices. Instead, he came to every call as if the previous one had never happened.

He remembered them all right, but remembering is the booby prize… not much value there. His life didn’t notice he had that session.

I “fired him” from my practice.

I noticed that there was a certain co-dependency developing: it gave me a sense of accomplishment and an experience of being very bright to channel the Light. And he came to me like an alcoholic goes to the pub.

I needed to restrict my addictive tendencies and ask him to get his daily fix someplace else.

Result? I started to channel the Light into my writing, into my business, into my garden, and into my own well-being. All areas were parched… and all those areas are now starting to blossom.

The point? There is an abundance of Light available for you to channel. But channel it to someplace where it can make a difference, someplace where it will cause abundance. OK?

I bought this book, The Spiritual Laws of Engagement The Spiritual Rules of Engagement: How Kabbalah Can Help Your Soul Mate Find You together with the Nano: Technology of Mind over Matter.

Characteristically, to me, as soon as I got it, I did not want to read the “Engagement” book. I didn’t want to be engaged, i didn’t believe I can attract my soul mate, so why bother. So I lent it to Sandy, my neighbor, she is 38 or so, single, and desperate. Not me, no sir.

I “inhaled” the Nano book… wow, what an amazingly transformational book. Lots of questions that I was sure I will never get answered, got answered in that book. Now, I was ready for the Engagement book, whatever that may be… grrrr. But Sandy had it. So for a day or two I was trying to ambush her to ask her to return the book… she was obviously avoiding me. Right?

Long story omitted for YOUR sake… I got the book back.

Finally, I understood why I am still single at 60. I understood why I never even had a really long relationship. Why no one I liked ever thought of marrying me. Why I hardly have any friends. Shall I continue?

I don’t know if I should try to explain it here… or just let you read the book… what do you think?

OK, you want me to try to explain what I thought was soooo significant. OK. I’ll try my best.

* The Spiritual Rules of Engagement: How Kabbalah Can Help Your Soul Mate Find You

Today, tell your boyfriend or boss or brother exactly what you want, what you feel, what you think. You are going to worry about what they will say or think. And honestly, that’s the work. Just expose yourself and be vulnerable. Ask the Light to give you the strength to stay open in the pain.

Your soul will love you for having the courage to speak up.

You see, pain is inevitable in life. No matter where or when you were born, your financial situation, your family situation, whether you are fat or thin, sick or healthy, loved or despised… pain is inevitable.

Mind you, suffering is optional… and while it is true, this is not what this blogpost is about.

You see, I just hung up on skype with a friend of mine, Panni. We went to architecture shool together is Budapest, and we got reunited about 3-4 years ago. We now speak once or twice a week on skype, with camera. It is the most intimate media every, it is like we are sitting at her kitchen table and drink tea or coffee and talk.

Yet, it has taken this long to allow each other a glimpse into our pain.

Panni’s older son is a very talented guy… except that he never graduated from college… he went and started his own business. He bought a condo, planned to rebuild it… never finished it. Except that he married a compulsive liar and now he has two children. After hiding for a few years, he met another woman… she is like a kid sister to his wife.

Panni hopes that this new woman will be different and will help her son to become a whole and complete person who can and will finish what he starts.

Panni does not understand that we MUST repeat the same situation until we learn our lesson, until we make the correction that situation came our way the first place.

Panni, and billions of others don’t understand that life is not that empty and meaningless as it looks. That the game, we call Life, has rules, and there is no cheating.

Panni’s son needs to learn to stay open in the pain, face it like an adult, express his feelings, and be done with it. Instead he harbors it, supresses it, and then he needs to repeat the cause of the pain. That is how it works.

You have the power.

One holiday, a few years back, a bunch of students were up late (about 2 o’clock in the morning) celebrating. Some were getting tired and started to sit down. My father and teacher, Rav Berg, spoke to us for a second,

“Think about people who drive or fly many hours to go to Las Vegas. They arrive in Las Vegas very tired, but when they’re in front of the table they don’t think for a second about being tired until it’s morning. If they can be so energetic until the next morning, and have so much power when it’s total stimulation for the self-alone, can’t we bring ourselves to that state with such enormous connection with the Light?”

Yesterday I spoke about laziness and the Rav’s point is our laziness is conditional. When it comes to doing things for the self-alone, we’re super-motivated. But when it comes to things that require stretching outside of ourselves, there’s going to be resistance.

Today, act with passion, energy, and enthusiasm. This is how you break the laziness! All the different reasons we have for not taking risks are just intellectual tricks our dark side plays on us. Don’t accept those thoughts — push back!

This is exactly the situation with regards to life on Earth, with regards to human beings.

Billions of people wonder, daily, why they are here, and what they are supposed to do. Are you one of them? I sure am and have been.

Billions of people wonder why life isn’t working the way it is supposed to work… because somehow we KNOW that life is supposed to be satisfying, joyeous, and full of light and love and pleasure.

What if there were a User’s Manual, and it were being “translated” little by little, so every human being that is interested in “riding the horse in the direction it’s going” could figure out which direction the horse is going. Because with life it is not that easy: even though the smell (life stinks) gives us clues… but life is ultimately more complicated that riding a horse.

Humanity has received at least one user manual (my hunch is that there have been several isolated attempts at giving us clues… that’s why there is so much similarity among the major spiritual movements on earth… among the teachings of “enlightened beings” like the Buddha, Like The Christ… ).

The “manual” this blog concerns itself most is The Zohar (a book), and The Kabbalah (an oral tradition).

If you wanted to ask the question why we would receive a manual that needs to be decyphered… good question. A good question deserves a good answer:

Have you noticed that what comes easy, what comes cheap or free doesn’t see to have a lot of value for people?

It is because no one really wants handouts, we all want to earn our light. When we get more than we “deserve” or have earned, the uncomfortable feeling of “bread of shame” sets in and somehow we aren’t inspired to use what we got, enjoy it, take real advantage of it. We somehow close ourselves to it.

This is also the case with spiritual knowledge. So the “powers that be” make it difficult to acquire the knowledge so that you can earn it, so that you can use it.

I have 23 years of “heavy duty” transformational training under my belt, and yet Kabbalistic knowledge, even the bite size easy pieces published by the Kabbalah Centre puzzle me, engage me, and it takes me a long time to “get it” and even longer to integrate it into my habits and way of thinking.

But as a result, my relationship to the knowledge is that of ownership. I am working for it long and hard, and I am benefiting from it, tremendously.

The question is: how many people are willing to trade hard work for fulfillment, joy, light, love, etc. That is the real question. If nothing changes, in my opinion, not many.

I hope I am mistaken.

Please talk back to me…

So I went on Google and search for “Kabbalah String.” What a mistake. First off, there were 420 thousand pages listed. Intimidating. Second: most of those sites are hellbent at throwing dirt, venom, spit, at Kabbalah, and everything that has anything to do with Kabbalah. They call it a religion: it is not. They call it a cult: it is not.

I resisted being sucked into reading that trash: I don’t need to get dirty just so that I can find a good picture. Because this is what happens: when someone vomits at someone, everyonoe who reads that… gets some of that vomit get into their soul, into their energy.

Just do an experiement, please. Have someone test your arm’s strength. You hold up your right arm, horizontal and straight, sideways or straight ahead… doesn’t matter. Someone else should gently push your arm down… note the strength it took to move your arm down. It is important that the force used is just slightly bigger than what you can resist. Stage two of the experiment: read some scathing, or cynical, or some other filth distributing stuff… about half a page. Repeat the test.

If you and your helping partner are honest, you’ll find that it takes much less force to move your arm after the “attack from negativity” in the article.

This experiment (simple muscle testing, or kinesiology) shows that your environment, and what you put into your body and mind strengthens you or weakens you.

Everything, I mean everything has a vibration. Everything is energy. This vibration is either harmonious or disharmonious (i.e. chaotic). The harmonious strengthens you, the other sucks your energy.

Do you have so much energy that you want to leak some? Like watching the evening news? Like listening to gossip? Like dishing out gossip? Like forwarding a chain letter that is based on lies intentionally misinforming millions of lazy citizens to slant the elections to this or that direction?

In Kabbalah everything is black and white. Like in pregnancy. You are either pregnant or you are not. At any moment you either increasing light in the world or you are increasing darkness. You always have choice. You can even change your mind in the middle of the activity… It is up to you. Black or white? Can you tell the difference?

OK, simple question, simple answer.

First I tell you what I am not:

• I am not a Kabbalist. Kabbalists study, practice, and teach Kabbalah full time, for many many years. It could be even said that being a Kabbalist is like an insider… you need to be appointed.
• I am not a teacher of Kabbalah
• I am not a guru
• I am not someone who knows a lot about Kabbalah but doesn’t live it.

OK, then what am I?

Well, I was first introduced to Kabbalah by a friend of mine (who is accidentally out of my life… but more about it later.) My introduction happened by way of the book “72 names of God”.

She called me that must come, right away, to Borders… (for those of you that don’t know, Borders is a big book chain with excellent coffee and lots of room to read while there.) At the time I was new to Syracuse, so it took me a long long long time to get to the store… 7 or so miles in an hour… how is that for speeed.

I liked the book, I liked the idea that everyone has a “god-name” according to their birthdate, mine is 34. The letters, lamed-hey-chet losely mean “Forget Thyself”.

I didn’t think it applied to me, but you’ll notice, no one does. It has something to do with your soul’s tikkun (more about that later.)

Anyway, I bought the book, went home and did a search on the internet, found the Kabbalah Centre’s website, ordered their free (shipping only) book The Secret (not the “famous” movie). Then in a few days I got a call from the Kabbalah Centre and they sold me a set of 23 books, called the Zohar. I opted to pay in payments. It came in a huge box. I picked it up at my mailbox and in the next 10 minutes it saved my life.

What sold me to buy the book is that it is said to have an energy connection to “The Light” and it protects the space it is located. The story said that a shipment of a pallet of Zohars in Iran survived a warehouse fire. The only thing that survived, unscathed, was that one pallet. After how my life is going, I believe that this is true.

I bought the Zohar 5 years ago and since then I haven’t had a scratch on my body… which is a miracle, especially if you take into consideration that I drive like a maniac, and my history was lots of accidents… not since March of 2003.

The other amazing thing that happened right after I bought The Zohar is that I suddenly found the courage and energy to leave an abusive, going-nowhere, dead-end, soul-deadening relationship… which I’d wanted to do for about 3 years at the time. By the end of July I was out of there, found an excellent apartment, and had more energy to live than in the past 10 years. Yaay.

Two years later I got my own “student support” person/teacher, Sivan Bramli. We have been studying Kabbalah together ever since, I have gone to several big holiday events, watched screencasts of others, and read lots of books.

Aside from Kabbalah, I was active in Landmark Education for 20 years, am a trained axiologist/ Value Profile consultant, studied with different transformational teachers (will compare the teachings in other articles… ok?), am an avid reader (read about an hour a day in spite of my dyslexia and add).

But more important qualifier than anything: I am a thinker. I am a right-brain thinker. I am in touch with that hidden dimension where all is known.

So, here you are, this is what gives me the right to write about Kabbalah.

If you want people closer to the horse’s mouth, go the the Kabbalah Centre’s website, or find the many orthodox kabbalah sites, or the sites that teach the mystical aspects of the Kabbalah. I, personally, subscribe to the Kabbalah Centre’s interpretation of what the Kabbalah and The Zohar say, and I see it work in my life, and in the lives of people that I coach… oh, I forgot to say that I have been a transformatinal coach for 22 years.

When I say, hello world, I mean the 1%. Where you and I locate ourselves, what you and I consider the whole world. the visible, the tangible, the perceivable, the measurable, the world of scarcity.

Kabbalah says that this world, the world of matter, the world of thoughts and words, is only 1% of all reality. The rest, the 99% reality is the world of unlimited possibilities, the world of unending fulfillment, light, and pleasure. Much like the Christian bible describes heaven.

In the 1%, the world of scarcity, human beings live in scarcity thinking. Some people seem to be different: they treat the world as their oyster, and lo and behold, the world complies.

In this blog we are (you and I) will explore what it takes to receive more of what is coming to us, more light, more fulfillment, more pleasure, lasting and deeply satisfying… not like the pleasure of a candy bar or a glee of winning an argument.

I would like to cause a conversation, a dialog, where you, the reader is a participant.