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.

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.