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 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.