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%

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.

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…

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.