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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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!

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.