3 Steps to Freedom Video

A while back I wrote an article called, "3 Steps to Freedom: With a Belt, Shoes and a Staff."  You can find it here.

In case you're a visual learner, I shared the ideas on the video below.

I hope you enjoy and wish you a redemptive Pesach!

Love,
Shimona

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Make the right decision that can impact your life, your soul, your true purpose for years to come. You deserve this.

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Let's Meet at the Mystic Meal

7 Foods for 7 Habits: A Step by Step Guide to the Mystic Meal and Life's Journey

This coming Thursday will be Tu B'Shevat (the 15 of the month of Shevat,) which is the Jewish New Year for Trees.

At least that's the explanation they give on Wikipedia.  It doesn't seem to mean much though.

Why do trees need a New Year?  So the Oaks can hold a party and make resolutions? So the Redwoods can commit to standing tall?  Or the Lemon Trees to filing their taxes?

Not quite.  Practically, this is the season in which trees wake from their winter hibernation and sprout their first blossoms.  And legally, the new year has to do with tithes that were separated from produce grown in the Holy Land.*

But the holiday is so replete with meaning that if I could, I'd re-brand Tu B'Shevat as "the Kabbalah Holiday."  This date may seem minor compared with other holidays on the calendar (and the amount of menu-planning involved for you).  But Tu B'Shevat  is MAJOR in terms of mystical significance.

If you want to turn this weekend from a regular one into something really special, infused with the spirit of Tu B'Shevat, I have a treat for you.

In conjunction with JLI, I made a video about the connection between the 7 Species of the Land of Israel and a 7-stage plan for spiritual growth.  In fact, this lesson of the 7 foods is one of the numerous mystical backdrops for my coaching system and Method for Self Mastery.  I've had many requests to see that video again so here it is.  I hope you enjoy.




I also designed a chart explaining the significance of the 7 Foods for you to print out and enjoy.  To view or print the chart, click here.

Happy Tree New Year!

Love

Shimona

PS. This Wednesday we're completing the first year of The Method for Self Mastery.  It has been a remarkable year.  Thank you to all the participants.  I am beyond honored to have shared the journey.  Take a peek at the testimonials from a recent Mastermind.

How to Heal Through Meditation

bh

I'm interested in what you think about the two perspectives on meditation presented below.  One is a (very) brief YouTube video and the other an excerpt from a (rather lengthy) letter written by a mystic to a young woman seeking answers in 1939.

Meditation training is part of The Method for Self Mastery which launches in just a couple of days.  It's with that in mind that I thought I'd share the two perspectives on the subject.

As mentioned, the first is a YouTube video called, "How to Meditate in a Moment."

When you scroll down, you'll see a translation of a remarkable letter written in 1939 by a spiritual master, the Rayatz, to a young girl in Riga.  In her late teens, she had written a letter to him explaining that "her actions were empty," devoid of vitality and inspiration.  The reply she received is a five page letter elaborating on how profound contemplation and mindfulness bring healing to those who practice it.

Do you meditate?  Is there such a thing as a "One-Moment Meditation" and if there is, is it in contradiction to the Kabbalistic practice of contemplation?  I'm interested in your thoughts on the topic.

If you'd like to participate in The Method for Self Mastery's Kabbalah based program call our office at 718-493-2859 to find out more.

The Method is rooted in ancient mystical teachings, but it’s amazing just how its strategies and methods can be so relevant to your life today.  You’ll experience inside-out solutions coupled with a fresh and practical approach to Self-Mastery and personal transformation.  It’s time to unleash your true self so you can finally live the joyful, prosperous, fulfilling life you were meant to.

Our upcoming enrollment is January 21 2013.  Call our office at 718-493-2859 to find out more.

20 Tevet 5699 (1939)

To the student Chaya Sima,

Blessings and Peace.

I am writing to you in response to your letter of the 14^th of this month, wherein you tell me your “deeds are empty” and ask what you should do to fill them.   It is difficult for me to know what you are alluding to.   A clear answer can only and exclusively be addressed to a clear question.   When you articulate your question clearly, with G-d’s help, the answer will come.

In general this concept of Divine service – in which a person strives to rectify their thinking and mental focus, as well as their emotional traits – requires that he have a solid foundation and a structured path.

I have already discussed in a previous teaching that just as one has to know ones lacks one must also know ones strengths.   Anyone who thinks that he has no strengths is just as mistaken as someone who thinks he has no lacks.  For every person by virtue of being a human being contains both within themself.  This is true both with regard to intellect and emotions.   The mission of a human being is to heal the lacks.   In other words, our mission is to enable (spiritual) form to prevail over the matter of the emotions and undesirable habits.   This is accomplished through the inner (mental) powers of the soul and through one’s abstract senses and will.  The beginning of this healing involves knowing and deeply recognizing what true good and true evil are.

Next examine yourself.   You need to look at the totality of who you are; observing all your spiritual faculties.   These include your soul’s intellectual capabilities; your senses and intuitive faculties; your emotional traits; and the garments of your soul which are thought, speech and action.   Do this assessment in the same way an artisan inspects the parts of a vessel that need to be fixed.   As you proceed, mark for yourself which aspects need to be fixed and what parts need to be changed.   (These are two different tasks.)  You can only achieve this rectification with orderly spiritual practice and only when you focus on one aspect at a time.   Do not attempt to address all of them together.   Furthermore, this must be done with spiritual effort and focus.   Once you rectify one point within yourself you move on and address the second, and so on with all the points within you that need fixing.

Accurate recognition of what is good and what is bad comes through diligent study and contemplation.[1]  Take for example a concept which might help you rectify your lacks.   It could be beneficial in one of two ways: either because it addresses the lowliness of the quality you are lacking, or it speaks about the advantage of a strength (which is the opposite of your lack.)  Study the concept well until you know it and it’s clear to you in all its details.   At this point, you should be able to speak about it at length.   Only once you have reached this level of familiarity with the idea can you begin to gaze at the concept in-depth.   This must be done with mental effort.   The mental effort and contemplation will generate a unity between your consciousness and the idea you are exploring.[2]

It is at this point of mindfulness that the rectification of our lacks is to be found. 

Many make the mistake of thinking that “good” study is quantitative.   They think it applies to learning a lot of pages or many concepts.   But in truth that isn’t the case.  The essence of diligent learning is to review one idea many times until it is clear to you in all the details of its details, until you are able to speak about it, describing it with clear articulation.

In addition, many make the mistake of thinking that complete contemplation has to do with being particular about (technical aspects such as) what’s missing, what’s extra and what’s connected, repetition and the like.  In truth this is not so.  All-encompassing contemplation is the unification of an individual with the soul of a concept.  In other words, your mind becomes bound with the essential identity[3] of the concept. 

Every original concept[4] and every idea that is processed by your mind so as to become relevant to you in a personal way[5] has both a “body” and “soul.”  Certainly the “body” of both the original and processed concepts is also spiritual.  But we have access to a higher consciousness.  Thank G-d for His great goodness that He has graced us with Wisdom, Understanding and Knowledge.[6]  Praise also to our holy Rebbeim who taught us how to use our intellectual faculties.  Thanks to all of this, we have the ability to recognize and distinguish (not only between physical and spiritual but the ability to make subtle distinctions) between spiritual and spiritual.  The meditative contemplation we are discussing happens at this level and involves connecting and uniting with the soul of a concept.

The way to attain this level of mental focus is through training your intellect to focus on one idea with great depth and concentration for a long hour.  This must be done by habituating yourself to concentrate in this way.  Over time this habit will become your nature and you will be able to sustain focus on one idea for a lengthy period of time.

When you can do this, you will experience the spiritual delight that results from the unification of your intellect with the (inner essence of the) concept itself. 

The main impact of this spiritual delight is that through constant practice you will have the ability to use this strength at any time you like.

How is a person to accustom themself to dig and reveal this wondrous sense so as to be able to use this ability at any moment at will?  How can one become capable of using this form of contemplation in the same way that one uses those spiritual powers they are habituated to?

A path is to be found in the commentary on the verse, “It is not in the Heavens and it is not across the ocean.”  The Torah is found neither in those who are arrogant (whose egos rise heavenward) nor within a person who spreads his (arrogant) heart like an ocean.

It is important to note that the arrogance and broadness of heart referred to here are not those in the base category of undesirable traits.  Regarding these a person, simply by virtue of being a human being, must uproot them.  Each individual must uproot these traits as one would a leprosy.

This verse is referring to the arrogance and broad heart of those who study and know the Torah.  It is about them we are told that they are not repositories of the true Torah.  (In other words, you can’t have even a private arrogance about how you do this process.  There can be no ego whatsoever in this process of mindfulness and deep contemplation.)

But do not be discouraged.  We are taught that, “The thing is very close to you.  It is accessible to you in speech, thought and deed.”

Thus through understanding the aspect of the three garments of the soul (action, speech and thought) the practice of contemplation can become very close to you. 

---

1] Iyun in Hebrew

[2] Masig and Musag in Hebrew.   These refer to the person who is processing the information and the concept being processed respectively.

[3] Etzem ha’Mahut in Hebrew

[4] Muskal, often associated with the attribute of Wisdom (Conceptualizing)

[5] Musag, associated with the attribute of Understanding (Analyzing)

[6] Chochmah, Binah and Da’at in Hebrew.  A useful way of framing these terms is as our ability to Conceptualize, Analyze and Internalize an idea respectively.

This marriage thing is my one big failure

How many people do you know who'd (albeit tacitly) agree that their lives are on track - except for their romantic relationship.  They may be happy with their career (or at least feel they're on the ladder to success;) work out; eat right; have even managed to kick a bad habit.

But...

The marriage thing eludes them.  Either they're still looking for love or are in the relationship they thought would deliver happiness only to find themselves alone or lonely in love.  And for those who do say, "I'm happy," the happiness is often simply a state of relief that they're not in despair?

I'd venture to say that, "This marriage thing is my one big failure" is a phrase many of us can relate to.

With that in mind, I've created Gender Blender, a 3-part teleseminar to help you debunk your relationship myths and access the happiness that is available to you.  

Interested?  You can visit my website to listen to a couple of interviews with me on dating, love, marriage and intimacy.

Ready to call in your Soul Mate?  To jumpstart your relationship?


Go ahead, sign up now.

I look forward to meeting you on the call.

Shimona

Tanks ‘n Tractors

 B”h

As the debate over gun control rages in response to Sandy Hook, here's an article I wrote some years back after the Jerusalem terrorist-tractor attack.  It addresses the mystical aspect of swords-into-ploughshares in light of the fast of the Tenth of Tevet.  (Two facts to ponder as you read: In America, there are more Gun Dealers than major supermarkets, and more gun sellers than Mac Donald's restaurants.)

The internet’s down!  And with it the phone.  Tannersville is quiet by night.  It’s a silence about the texture of a goose-down cushion.  Thick.  Soft.  Comfortable.  I want to sink in but find no rest.  Was it the movie “E-lollipop” that began with the protagonist asking a stranger on a park bench, “Does the noise in my head bother you?’?  I am thinking of things hard and loud.  And the noise in my head bothers me.

It could be yesterday that I saw the yellow Caterpillar tractor lurching across a Jerusalem street.  The footage was from a cell phone.  A silent movie.  I imagine the sounds.  The engine-belly, the fork on cars, the fork on flesh, the sound life makes leaving a body, and the wails of terror and grief.  Now, cross-legged on the couch in our summer rental, I gaze into the black beyond the window and review the scene.  My thoughts jump.  I think of the caterpillars we watched as children, seeing them lift-and-crunch from tail to fore as they jerk across a leaf.  And I wonder if, standing beside the white or yellow line painted along the tar of Rehov Yaffo, onlookers felt they’d missed a step as the tractor crunched and swung for death.

I can’t put them together.  The tractor and death.  From the wooden puzzles of my kindergarten years and on, I’ve been taught that tractors support life.  They churn soil and soften it to receive seeds.  They are the backdrop of bread steaming from an oven, of apples in a bowl.  My mind wrestles with a Caterpillar run amok in the Holy City.  I guess one must know how to use one…The people of Gush Katif did.  They tossed a desert into leafy greens.  They drove their tractors across austere sands and behold! – fields of cilantro and parsley fragranced the air…But the neat categories of childhood don’t hold up to the Big People world I live in.  Despite what those puzzles-painted-in-primary-colors would have me think, it was tractors that flung the Jews of Gush Katif, like rocks tossed aside, from the Land.  Bulldozers rendered their homes rubble in the name of life and peace.  And the very tanks manufactured to protect them were turned on those who best knew how to use their metal.

The internet’s down and the contradictions screech within me.  I think of a passage in Ezekiel that talks of iron and alludes to the tanks and tractors of both the world at large and of our inner landscapes.  Prior to the siege placed upon the First Temple, G-d told him, “Take an iron pan and place it upright as a wall of iron between you and the city…and it will be as a siege…a sign for the Jewish people.”[1]  Rashi tells us that the pan served as a metaphor.  It presented G-d’s message that “in this way Jerusalem will be besieged.”[2]  .  It called upon the people to repent.  “If not,” cried the pan, “the Holy City will be surrounded by a wall of iron slotted together of soldiers carrying swords and cloaked in shields.  Return.  For metal is upon you.  Prevent the wall of iron from breaking the walls of the City and of the Temple.”

Ezekiel and the people knew well the destructive power of iron.  They saw it grind the Temple into dust like the homes on the hills of the Gush.  G-d knows how that hurts.  Precisely because of its deathly edge, no iron tools were allowed to be used in the construction of the Temple.  As the Midrash comments on the gold, silver and copper we were asked to bring for the building of the sanctuary, “Iron was not mentioned here, neither in relation to the sanctuary nor the Temple, because it is analogous of the people of Edom, who destroyed the Temple.”[3]  G-d’s aversion was stressed most with regard to the altar, the primary vessel of the Temple,[4] for “the altar was created to lengthen the days of a person and iron was created to shorten the days of man.  One may not raise that which shortens over that which lengthens.  Even more so, the altar brings peace between the Jewish people and their Father in Heaven.  Therefore no cutting or damaging (could) be imposed upon it.”[5]

Each human alive can attest to the destructive power of its strength.  From the hills of Afghanistan to Columbian mercenaries, from pistols fired in gang warfare to Uzis to tanks to air force bombers, no patch of the planet where humans dwell has not heard the sounds of iron shortening life, or watched as its soil is reddened with blood cut loose.  And yet, the metal has a holy face.  The Land of Israel is one who’s “stones are made of iron.”[6]  The very stones that were crumbled to fragments are rich in iron ore.  And they too speak to us in parables.  They remind us that locked deep within our beings is an essential core so strong it can withstand exile.  It is the point of absolute beinghood within each of us that defies definition, which exists because it exists.  It holds us through war.  It supports us in the midst of our madness.  It is the fulcrum of confidence.  The springboard of our drives.  The elemental power of the soul.

We all have it.  The trick is to direct that iron core in the right direction.  One might well call it The Art of War – or for that matter the Art of Peace.  “She has an iron will.”  “He’s made of steel.”  Is it good or bad?  Is iron life or death?  Our sages say, “Any sage who is not tough as iron is not a sage.”[7]  G-d calls us a “stiff-necked nation.”  Bulls-eye!  We’re obstinate and tough.  But our “stiff-neckedness” is at core a chutzpa of holiness that has borne us through the hatred of nations from the ancient Hittites to the father of two from Tzur Baher in Eastern Jerusalem who drove a tractor for death.  Is steel good or bad?  Is iron life or death?  Depends.  The orientation is at my disposal.  The outcome really lies within my hands and heart.

The “art” of the matter is to catch the process at the outset.  The Holy City was besieged on the 10^th of Tevet.  The walls were breached a half a year later on the 17^th of Tamuz.  And the Temple was destroyed within a mere three weeks of that.  The remedy to prevent the demolition and devastation was to hear the message of the pan put forth before the siege.  If we’d listened and really gotten the prophecy of Ezekiel, we’d have converted the danger and death that hovered above us to light.  We could have activated the essential force of our souls, our steel will, and built a new world from the struggle.

I watched this battle within myself this past week.  I’ve been angry at a friend for a while now.  Despite my attempt to dialogue, the connection still felt rotten and full of the dark red stuff that clogs relationships in their down faze.  I could have reminded myself of Ezekiel’s pan.  I could have put a post-it-note “Tanks ‘n Tractors!” on my fridge door.  But no!  I festered in the mess.  Then I whipped out my sword.  And promptly cut an email to “Friend” that had zilch to do with what was really going on.  I was all bulldozer on Rehov Yaffo, tank on an enemy turf.  What I needed to do was go back to the beginning and catch the anger, activate my Essential Iron Core and be big enough to say, “I’m so sad you’re not in my life anymore.  I miss you.  Can we reconnect?”

The hurt was the desire to connect with someone else.  It almost always is.  That, or the real inner longing to bond with G-d.  If I can find that point then I can build the rubble into a Temple.  It’s not just patching together the old, not just “making do” with what’s left and building a shack of debris.  To heal you have to go back to the beginning.  To halt the destruction of the ninth of Av, you have to go back to the tenth of Tevet, back even to Ezekiel’s pan.  If you can get back there, you can change the direction of the future.  At ground zero, I can touch my metal, activate my inner essence and find the strength to say, “I’m hurting”, or “Can you help me with this?”, or “I don’t know.”  I catch the core of who I am before a hurt compels me to unsheathe my sword.  And from there I build the Third Temple.

There’s no building a world without steel.  King Solomon himself set aside vast amounts of iron, all in anticipation of building the Third Temple.  The call of the hour is to ensure that the steel be that of healing and building rather than a blade which shortens human life.  You start with an iron pan on a hilltop outside of Jerusalem.  If ignored, the metal dish forebears the sound of sword upon sword, battle calls, the roll of tanks and cries that cut into the heart and the heart of heaven.  Jerusalem is ravished.  Caterpillars roll across the road, blades hungry for blood.  Bulldozers rip homes and shuls from the ground, and military brass dump families into hotel rooms for the night, or month – or decade.  But if the people hear the song of the prophet and the sound of the pan resonating across the valleys, then the iron builds.  We grow bold and strong.  We are put in touch with why we are here.  And we realize that we have enough steel within ourselves to build a brave new world. 

This article was originally published on www.TheJewishWoman.org.

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[1] Ezekial 4, 3

[2] Rashi’s explanation of the verse.

[3] Terumah 25, 3

[4] See Rambam’s opening discussion on the laws of the Bait HaMikdash

[5] Yitro 20,22 and the commentary of Rashi, from the Mechilta.

[6] Ekev 8, 9

[7] Ta’anit 4, 1

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