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.

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?