Florida Spa for those of you on the East Coast

It's not just for the California crowd.  Join Rochel and me for a Spa for the Soul at the luxurious Bonaventure Resort and Spa.  You get the works: lectures, workshops, yoga, gourmet cuisine, enriching company.  Inspiration and Transformation.

Hurry!   Space is limited.

June 7th-9th 2013.  $300 the whole shabbang
To RSVP call Rochel at 954.224.1762 

Bonaventure Resort & Spa
250 Racquet Club Rd, Weston, FL

(954) 389-3300 ‎ · bonaventureresortandspa.com

Discover The Method: A Therapeutic Application of Kabbalah

It’s time to unleash your true self so you can finally live the joyful, prosperous, fulfilling life you were meant to live

Click on to discover the breakthrough secrets of the Method for Self Mastery

I know this can work for you, but you have to take the next step. You can either stay in your comfort zone and keep hoping things will get better, or you can take action right now and assure yourself of a different, more positive and fulfilling future.

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

Call our office at 718-493-2859 to find out more.

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.

I Found the Panorama Button!

This is a wide-angle view of our living room.

Want a wide angle view of life?

Sign up for The Method for Self Mastery today. Visit The Center for Self Mastery and begin your journey from unmanageable to unimaginable.

WIN 1-Year FREE: The Method for Self Mastery

Experience The Method for Self Mastery for yourself. Inside-out solutions coupled with a fresh and practical approach to Self-Mastery and personal transformation. Read more about the method and what the curriculum encompasses here.

The Butcher and the Bone (Or When NOT to Say, "I'm Sorry"

 b”h

There are more people who won’t talk to me – nay look at me – than I care to think.  Truth be told, even one is too many.  No?  Well I have a handful.  But not for lack of trying to repair the breeches.  I’ve apologized.  In one case, make that fourteen conciliation attempts.  Now it wouldn’t be nice if I just blurted out and told you everything.  So I’m going to knead these women up into one person.  I’ll call her…I’m tempted to say “Pinkellafant”, akin to the proverbial white elephant we allow to sit on the living room rug while we peek round its chunky hips and make pleasant conversation.  But that doesn’t feel comfortable.  You see, I really like her.  For all the cold shoulders, I do.  So I’ll call her Penelope instead.

We were friends for over a decade.

On the evening of our fall out, I needed to get out of the house for a bit.  The apartment felt sticky to my soul.  “Penelope!” I thought, and off I went.  Outside it was even stickier but at least there was space.  On my way across the street, a cop car idled by and pulled into action just behind my shoulder.  The siren hit me with a slap.  Maybe I should have paid attention and gone indoors.  But I just kept right on walking.  I knocked on Penny’s door.  No answer.  I knocked again.  No-one.  So I called her on the cell.  Often she’d be playing music in the back of the house and not hear the bell.

“WHAT!” she barked.

That’s the way she’d been picking up of late.  Stressed, feeling down.  I mostly let it ride.  Just walked straight past the “what!” right into the relationship, like a guest missing her queue at the door.  But that night was different.  I was feeling too vulnerable to push past.

“Uh.  It’s okay.  Nothing.”

Silence.

“WHAT!?”

“It’s okay Penny.  Nothing.”

“Why d’you ring?”

“Listen, I can’t talk.  I just have to go.”

“Don’t hang up!”

“I’m not.  I just have to go.”

“Shimona!!”

“Listen, I can’t talk.  Everythings OK.  I have to put the phone down…”

At the bottom of the brownstone steps lay leftovers from someone’s Wendy’s dinner.  The cops and a crowd were gathered at the corner.  It was too many lights and sounds for 9:30pm.  I sat down against the low wall outside our building where grass from the garden offered fragrant relief.

On the corner, I saw Penny.  She was advancing towards me with the same force she puts out on her evening route round the park.

“What’s going on!?” she demanded.  Her concern was spiked with anger.

“I told you.  I’m okay.”

“I came all the way over.”

“Penny, now’s not the time.”

Her mix of anger and concern was shifting with each push to talk and each “not now” I countered with.

“I left what I was doing…”

“It’s okay, you can go back to it.  We’ll talk another time.”

Penny spun round and walked away.  “I’ll call her from the cab on my way to the airport,” I thought as I watched her go.  But she called first.  She called minutes after I discovered that both my driver’s license and passport were misplaced along with $500 to boot!

“Penny, I was just about to call you.  Can’t find my license.  My ride’s waiting downstairs.  I’ll be in the cab in a few minutes.  Will call you then…”

My check, license and passport were still nowhere to be found and I was relying on some miracle to get past security at the airport.  Mine was not what one would call an elegant state of mind.  As soon as we pulled away from the curb, I called Penelope.  But by the time I dialed, it was too late.  I left numerous messages that Sunday.  And I apologized when I met her on the street Monday morning.

“I want to apologize for having hurt you,” I said.

The road to reconciliation was closed and despite calls, a letter, more calls, an invitation that she join me for lunch, going over there…well, other than a hello, or a sentence about nothing squeezed out of air; that was the last we spoke to each other.

As the expression goes, “It blows my mind!”

Each time something like this happens, I find myself confused and in pain.  I’ve been told I’ve apologized too soon, that I needed to “let the bird sit on the egg.”  I’ve apologized too late, in the wrong way, I should try again, or let it go, or I didn’t apologize at all because my words were “I want to apologize”.  There seems to be an art to this and it sure is one I don’t have the knack for!  I’m left muddling over whether it’s only me, and how much of this is about her.  Here’s a journal entry from my diary of a few weeks back:

Penny’s husband advised that I send yet another email.  This is where I’m at though.  I’ve spent many years apologizing to people for things that were not bad or mean acts.  They were mistakes or decisions that others disagreed with…

Maybe I’m sick?  All this running to fix things up.  Does it stem from low self-esteem and feeling that the other is correct in refusing to forgive me?  The relationship has always been more important to me than who’s right or wrong.  At least that’s what I think. If I’ve shared what hurt me and inadvertently caused pain, or allowed myself to not be “on” in a dynamic, I made a mistake yes, but is that something for which I should not be spoken to for months, years, a decade!  Where does one go when the response to an apology is, “Forget about it!  It’s passed” – when in reality it’s the relationship, not the tension, that has come to an abrupt halt?  If our relationship was so fragile that I couldn't share my experience of what-is, was there really one to talk of?  The question I ask myself is, “Has it been holy or unhealthy behavior that has driven me for years to ask Penelope for forgiveness?”

I’m fully aware that one need only ask for forgiveness three times.  It’s Jewish to forgive.  That’s one of our distinguishing traits.  The sages tell us that G-d expects us to say, “It’s okay.  Let’s move on.”  And to then really do that!  I’m also aware that it’s noble to keep on trying and to go beyond the letter of the law when someone can’t forgive.  But is persevering with an apology ever undesirable.

I need to figure out the meaning of a story in the Talmud.  Here it is:

Rav had a complaint against a certain butcher.  When the butcher did not come to him on the eve of Yom Kippur to ask his forgiveness, he said, “I’ll go to him and calm him down.”

Rav Huna met him on his way there and asked, “Where are you going?”

He replied, “To soothe the butcher.”

“You will cause his death.  He should be mollifying you.  He will be punished on account of your degrading yourself.”

But Rav went anyway.  When he arrived, the butcher was sitting and chopping the head of an animal.  Rav stood next to him.  The butcher raised his eyes and saw him.

“You are Abba,” he said with contempt, addressing the sage by his first name.  “Go away!  I will have nothing to do with you!”

While he was chopping the head, a bone jumped off, stuck in his throat, and killed him.

Some story.

Who’s culpable?  Rav or the Butcher.  Rav Huna warns the former, “Don’t go.  It’s not the time.  Your attempt is going to backfire, and with disastrous consequences.”  But he goes anyway.  Sooooo, if Penelope was not ready, I should have “sat on the eggs” – just as her husband suggested!  When I rush head-on into an attempt at resolution and make things worse by forcing the situation, then who’s to blame?  I ponder, and rest much of it on my shoulders.

But the butcher had his issues too, to say the least.  It was the eve of Yom Kippur and he was sitting chopping the head of an animal.  Can you see it?  Everyone else is dressing in white, going to the mikva, thinking of mending things, and there he sits with his butcher’s knife chopping at the head of a beast.  I’m not pointing fingers.  I do that too.  Obsess over what’s gone wrong and indulge in grievance that is.  But a couple of hours before the Day of Atonement?!  When Rav walks in, you stand up.  You wipe your hands and say, “I’m sorry.”

Both felt wronged.  Ditto with Penelope and me.  Her sister later told me I’d, “Slammed the phone down on her and essentially told her to ‘get lost.’”  That was her reality.  For my part, I felt let down by a friend and pushed to the limits of comfort when she wasn’t there at the time I needed her; and then demanded that I open up when she was ready but I wasn’t.

I’m not playing Rav and putting her in the role of the butcher.  Not at all.  I myself am “Rav” and the “butcher.”  I pushed too hard for reconciliation.  And I’m choking on my own bone.  Stuck in my throat, plugging my life force is the desire that there be peace.  It sounds like a noble ideal but m-a-y-b-e it’s just my ego.  As I asked, has my pursuit of peace been coming from a holy or selfish place?  That’s my question this eve of Yom Kippur.  If I send Penelope just one more birthday gift, just one more bunch of flowers, or email, if I call again, then I run the risk of standing at the door of her discontent and being party to her gagging on her own negative feelings.

So I say to myself, I think this Yom Kippur, I’m going to sit tight.  I’m going to listen to Rav Huna and a different voice within.  I’m going to draw the arrow backwards with the intention of shooting it forwards.  My sense is that my yearning for harmony is largely about wanting to appear to others and myself as a “good person.”  Well it’s time to let that go.  The Work in this moment is to just do my next best effort and let-others-live. 

So Penelope, if you’d prefer to hack at a grievance, then go ahead.  And if you want to tell me the conflict’s all over, that there are no pink elephants in the room or gripes on the table, then so be it.  My sense that I can change your way of being in the world is a delusion.  I want to wear white (at least I’m going to give it a shot) and leave you be.  Let’s do things on your timetable for a change.  This Yom Kippur I’m going to try spending the day confessing my own sins and not worrying if you have any.  And maybe I’ll look up from my prayer book after a moment of intense concentration to find you beside me, and you’ll say, “Shana Tova.”  To you too my friend.

But instead, I ignore the voice of Rav Huna. Call it co-dependency, call it lack of self-esteem, or call it anything else. I have to ignore the labels. Because just maybe my impulse to call is a real desire for peace and it’s hidden inside those cloaks. So I pick up the phone to call “Penelope.” I find it a more compelling notion than the thought that there’s ever a time not to say, “I’m sorry.”

p.s. This piece was written a while ago.  I'm going to give you the post script on this evening's Kabbalah Class Teleseminar.  You can sign up here if you want.  In the meantime, climb in to the fray.  I'd love to know your thoughts.

This article was originally published on www.TheJewishWoman.org.  Thank you Sarah Esther, my dear friend and editor for getting me to put some of what's in my head into print.

What is Kabbalah?

B”h

On my Facebook page, I invited friends to submit their questions to (yours truly) the Kabbalah Coach.  A bunch came in.  After hanging out exclusively in Mamaland and getting the twins back to school, my daughter to Milan (MISS you Chan!) and son Levik…well, he only needed me to write and sign a letter…Where was I?  Yes, after hanging out in Mamaland, I finally got to the list of questions and began writing a response to the one that to my mind came conceptually first.  As I wrote, I realized it merited a blog post.  So here you have it, my first post to one of the questions asked:  What is Kabbalah Coaching?

The reason I couldn’t bite into the question itself right away is because that question begs a different one namely, “What is Kabbalah?”

The “Eternity in a grain of sand” answer is that Kabbalah is a blueprint of reality.  It addresses the Identity of The First Cause.  Kabbalah explores the Who and What of G-d.  It fleshes open the mystery of G-d's Oneness yet immanence within all the infinite details of Creation.  It articulates how this Divine entity interacts with Existence.

And Kabbalah explains the purpose of it all.  Yes, even the purpose of slipping on ice, falling in love, losing your job, having a baby, dying slowly and painfully in a smelly hospital, the reason your venture took off, the reason your venture failed, why you invested in the right stock and why you invested with Madoff!  I could go on.

One of the root words from Kabbalah is derived from is lekabel, which means “to receive.”  Another is lehakbil, which means “to align.”  I will explain.

Kabbalah is a received tradition.  It can be traced back to the Revelation at Sinai and then some, all the way to the Garden of Eden itself.    To become a vessel for this wisdom we must a) become willing to receive its truths and b) to seek and find our teachers.  Kabbalah cannot (only) be learned from books.  It is an Oral Tradition.  And those who teach should be those who live it.  Eat (receive) only from masters who embody the teachings.

All easier said than done!  We may say we are willing to receive the truths but…well…we just ain’t.  Recently I shared an insight with someone who professes to love the teachings of Kabbalah and the KC method.  Truth is she likes to listen to me talk to others!  It all sounds good and easy, all fits together so well when the focus is on someone else.  But when the principals were applied to her, my primitive mind coulda sworn she turned into a cat with claws.  Don’t worry.  I’m not talking about you.  I’m talking about her.  And me.  To become willing is a great blessing.  I think it takes Grace to be able to GET HONEST and GET OPEN.

The second aspect of receiving involves imbibing from Holy sources.  Meriting this also takes Divine Grace.  I’m not going to get myself into a law suit (thank you very much.)  Suffice it to say there’s a robust troupe of imitators on the loose.  When you touch and taste the truth from the source, you get it!  Rare.  Delicious.  Divine.  And truthfully, once in a lifetime is enough.  It helps weed out the charletans.  Keep looking; keep asking until you find the authentic thing.

So much for the “receiving” of Kabbalah.

The second meaning has to do with “aligning,” making one thing parallel to another.  My all-time favorite school teacher taught me about Correspondances by Baudelaire.  It prepped me for this understanding.  In their source, all things are aligned with each other.  But in the Garden we slipped a spiritual disc.  We got out of alignment. 

Kabbalah is a chiropractic adjustment for the soul.  Our purpose is to recover the balance and alignment we once had, even if only for a few brief hours.  In so doing we don’t only find our way up the river to the Garden, we generate something radically new.  So Kabbalah is the body of teaching which helps us re-access and even surpass our original state.  It aligns us with The Way Things Are.  We uncover the delusions, we recover the Truth.

I want to say one last thing about it before I fall asleep.  And that is that Kabbalah loosens the delusion of independent existence.  G-d creates ex-nihilo.  Our creative contribution happens in the reverse.  We must reveal the Nothing within the Apparent Somethingness of Existence.  It’s an inverse creative process.  Practically this means we surrender our ego.  THAT feels like death.  And THAT’S what the sages mean when they say, “There is no such thing as a free person other than one who toils in the study of Torah.”  Dying is the most life-affirming thing we can do.  It means we become G-d centered.  We surrender the ego.  In surrendering our sense of self, we discover who we are.  Holding on to the Tree of Life, we gain the courage to let the Ego die.

Having said this, it becomes obvious that Kabbalah is largely about the letting go of our sense of self and discovering who we actually are. But I’ll go in to this more at another time. The clock just turned 2:46am. Cinderella is long gone, her carriage turned into a pumpkin. My mind feels like a pumpkin too. Goodnight. I will look for the rest of this answer among the seeds and pips of my mind by the light of morning.

Hot-Ice for Channukah

A Lesson in Metaphysics from a Street Drain, Hot Ice, and the Chanuka Flames





Marion Place surrounded a wild field where scorpions roamed and hardi-ha birds nested. We lived at number 66 and the field was our other playground. I loved the rawness of the place. There were large stones on which to sit and dream, and places to hide in play. The street circled the field like a belt. Beneath it ran a drain gutter. Etched in my memory like scratches in the tar is the recollection of lowering my body into the channel, raising my hands to receive the pushcart passed to me, taking my seat and gazing down the tube whose only light came from rain drains up above. G-d knows what could have been if the heavens opened and flooded the intestine of the road. But time and again I took off, racing faster and faster down the hill, fleeting beneath the slatted light, and finally curving to a halt at the bottom of the hill. Then the long walk back and the haul out. Each ride was always a first!

The upside of the street held its pleasures too. Sitting on the rubber tire swing, we read stories about children who sold lemonade on the curb. They were stories of other lands. No one really passed Marion Place other than the people who lived there. And no one was interested in buying lemonade, or the biscuits we baked. But that didn't stop us from setting up our stand. And then we'd wait, like Charlie Brown, for the elusive customer who never came.

What children did buy was ice-cream. The ice-cream man rode by most afternoons. His skin burnished deep and dark. He rode a bike to which a large box was attached at the front. It was filled with hot ice. Playing on the front lawn, shaded by a garden-bed packed tight with aloes and stralitzias, we'd hear his bell. It was a tin manual one, strapped with string to the handlebar. Inside the darkness of the box his ice smoked, its metallic smell mixed with that of the sugars and chocolates of the ice creams. Oh how good it was to dip my hand into the black space and pull up wrappers of different colors, searching for the chocolate cone, the orange sorbet, the milky bar…

It was a Sunday when I learned how hot the cold was. Dad offered the ice-cream man some extra pennies for a chunk of the stuff and cut a deal. He pulled on the work gloves tucked into his pocket and lifted the ice from the darkness. It smoked white and hard against the backdrop of his shirt, then past the shrubbery and along the red brick wall that skirted the driveway.

“Come see,” he said, walking towards the pool.

He was our Pied Piper, leading us to the water that glistened beneath the sun. Smells of chlorine and fermenting peaches mingled in the air.

“Let me touch Dad, let me touch”

“Careful, it burns”

“No ways,” I bounced, reaching my hand out.

It sure did, sticking to my skin and holding it as I pulled back in surprise.

“Step away,” he said, flinging the ice into the water.

Boom! It exploded in an instant, a white volcanic eruption right there in the very water we splashed about in noon-after-long-African-afternoon. Our mild pool, reserved for gentle play, or spirited dives and games of Marco-Polo at most, was spewing forth hot vents as if it were a deep dark ocean bed. Bubbles burst to the surface and popped open from the blue below. It fascinated me that something so cold worked like fire. The ice burned a memory within me.

It was one of those days you don’t get the full significance of until later. I frequently return to the black tar and the open veld. To the street’s underbelly with its slatted light. To memories of my father. I am standing poolside and the ice is burning, bubbling. It frightens me. And it excites me. Was it that even then at the age of ten I intuited the questions I would only articulate with the weight of a couple more years? Are things as they appear to be? Or is everything also its opposite? Is heat hot? Or is it cold as well? Is ice fire? And am I no-thing?

I think of that day and ponder most deeply how each thing contains its opposite as I sit before the fluttering glow of the Chanuka lights and our children twirl their dreidels, tossing hazel nuts at each other across the floor. I gaze at the flames. They are born of oil rather than wax and glow gold against the doorway, luminously balancing the mezuzah which shines behind my back. They pull me in to their glimmer. At the epicenter float black cords – silent charred strands blacker than night. Yet it is this darkness that feeds the fire. Each wick is framed by a purple light itself surrounded by a pale light, and then ephemerally framed by a halo hovering between matter and spirit. I look at the flames and then I’m standing at the pool watching the ice burn. Just as that moment was soaked with contradiction; it jars my mind that the black wick is the core of the plasma and halo. How is so much light and such radiance born of the charred stuff? And how is it that the fire is hottest right there where the wick is dying?

In some way gliding on my rocker with the lights on low as the flames multiply night to night, I sense I am sitting before the secrets I spend my life in search of. The flames are a parable not only of my body and soul but also of my purpose. The black wick is my body, the flame is the G-dliness my labors of love generate, and the oil the Divine deeds enacted each day that fuel the fire.

The body sweats and excretes, desires pleasure, decays and dies. Even in its prime it proclaims its limits. It is black in death and albeit pink, is black in birth. But the inner dimension of that darkness is brilliance. It is shining luminescent G-dliness. With my body I birthed our children. My wick is the fulcrum from which I host guests, give charity, wipe a bleeding nose, sweep the floor, light the lamps. My body serves my life just as the wick serves the flame. In the same way that the cotton cord is the anchor for the light so too is my physical existence the anchor and support for my entire existence.

The world itself, the very matter I engage with, is also a wick. Black beans. Black table. Black fruit which even in its robust sweetness is decaying. A world of wicks. The universe is matter that in and of itself is dense and dark even as it is pleasurable. But – and this is the crux of it all – when I use that world in service of the Divine, it becomes a source for Divine radiance. This is our deepest purpose. To be lamplighters.

Lest the light die quickly, I feed the flame with oil. The fuel for G-dly light is the acts my Creator charges me with: Take a citron with a palm frond, some willows and a sprig of myrtle. Wave it just so. And lo and behold, Divine light. Take the skin of an animal, tan it fine. Take ink and write the following words on the leather. Lo and behold, Divine light. Take money and give it to someone in need. Lo and behold, Divine light!

So dark is light, and black matter is G-dliness. Each thing is transmutable. The principal holds true for every act mandated by G-d. A mitzvah is a candle. But the two mitzvot that most embody this principal are the Shabbat and Chanukah candles. Both shine forth the secret that counter-intuitively each entity holds within itself its contrary dimension. Each shines forth the message that the darkness of matter is in essence Divine light when properly channeled. Beside the menorah, our children play. The dreidel spins…Everything is in motion, each thing is itself and simultaneously its opposite. The oil has become flames and the flames are light and the light is the desire of G-d. G-d’s presence is hovering manifest in our dining room, shining at us from the cups of oil.

This notion that matter can be transformed is uniquely Jewish. That’s why it so irked the Greeks. “You want to philosophize? Fine. Go ahead and indulge in pleasure. But don’t come telling us that you can take a wick and turn it into a holy flame. Don’t spew nonsense proclaiming that oil squeezed from a bitter olive can be sacred!” And so, in violent reaction to the radical notion that ice is fire and black is light and matter is Divine, they ransacked the Temple looking for…for what?! For cruses of oil! They would not, could not have us calling out that either physical pleasure or philosophical inquiry or anything in between can be G-dly.

A small group of radicals persevered. They were the visionaries of their generation. They knew the secrets of ice and fire and light. And their entirely non-logical relationship to reality undid an entire army bent on their destruction. They lived from the place of the impossible. Their grasp of the contradictions inherent in reality enabled them to re-invent the way people saw themselves. They gave us back our access to the wondrous principal, “Let there be light.” At the very outset of the creative process, “in the beginning,” G-d told us our mandate was to bring forth the light from all the chaos. The Maccabees took that command and ran with it. The G-dliness they generated captured the primordial vision of G-d and still shines forth from each Chanukah candelabra lit anywhere on the globe. Let there be light.

With this point I can risk the death of my ego. Let it burn! The death will be a birth. Through the surrender of selfhood and in giving over our personal willfulness to the will of G-d, we generate light. We do not have to hold on to the external form of reality. Entering the hidden opposite dimension sets us free. Existence is transmutable. When I think of Marion Place, I realize that the drain belly of that crescent was as sweet for me as the ice-cream lying in the box above. And the tar was as black as the belly. It was always the same street, just top and bottom. Both were dark and both were sweet. Even in the bowels, there was a thrill. Even in the cold, damp darkness the pushcart raced beneath the grids of light and filled my heart with heated joy.

This article was originally published on www.thejewishwoman.org. If you're a writer, submit your work to the editor Sarah Esther Crispe here.

Birthing Light

Illuminating the Month of Kislev

I once birthed a woman through a mental breakdown much as a midwife would deliver a baby. Our time together began as a conversation but a blackness in the woman was on its way out. Talk turned to tears and quickened to a deep mourning. Her body heaved with the burden and force of a secret that for over a decade had cost all her mental health to hide. And when she could no longer hold it in, she knelt on all fours, wailing, her pain spewing forth with such force it flashed her limbs outward. My impulse was to jump to my feet and run. I was young. The sounds in her throat frightened me. But I stayed, kneeling beside her, one hand on her back and the other on the ground, like the earth element in an electric circuit. When it was over, she slumped into the rug. Her cries became softer and her body limp. I waited a while, then left for help.

That dark evening, it struck me that perhaps it is not our descents that fill our heart with fear. Rather, the coldest terror is in not knowing where the bottom of the descent is. We turn and flail in a gyre of pain. We sense things falling apart but cannot identify the precise moment at which they actually disconnect. Our dark moments are rarely as dramatic as my friend’s. They run the gamut of human experience: a relationship in bad shape, finances in worse, ill health or a state spiritual dis-ease. But regardless of the specific issue at hand, it is only once we reach the bottom that we can actually be present to the new reality we are faced with. Only when we become present to a reality can we begin to move on from it. So “hitting rock bottom” is not the worst thing after all. The fear that our fall is possibly into an endless pit is, it seems to me, worse than lying on the gravel we finally fall on. For it is precisely when we sink to the lowest level, at the very moment we are furthest, that we can begin to return.

Living takes skill. Getting toilet trained and learning how to hold a pencil is a starting point. And then there’s the rest of it. There’s the skill of laughing at ourselves, of delaying gratification, of introspecting and demanding that we step up to the plate, and even the skill of knowing when to neglect an ideal in order to keep it. Long lists of life-skills that all the coaches in the world cannot embed in our hearts. Could it just be that we don’t grasp the other stuff because we know neither how to run nor return?

Each of us has to discover the secret of “running and returning.” “When I grow up,” we tell ourselves, “Well…when I grow up I’ll run and run. To tinsel town and the bank. I’ll run errands. I’ll run my household, the office, my very self! I’ll run for President of My Own Life!” Schools train us to gallop ambitiously forward. But if I’m running for the wrong reasons then I’m not truly moving forward. And if that’s the case, then I’ll never learn the secret of coming back. If ego is what compels me forward, I am blind to the deep mysteries that can free me when I fall. I become so locked into moving on that I lose access to the very skill that makes “moving on” possible under any circumstance. I need to acquire the ability to say, “I’ve made a mistake. A big one. And this is where I’m at. But beneath the mistake lies my true G-dly identity. With this I can begin to return and rebuild.”

Being that learning how to return is the key to going forward, it is vital to know how to discern the point of the deepest darkness. Many times we think we’re in that darkest moment of the night when the shadows are thick and indigo black. But we’re not sure. And the uncertainty fills us with fear. We fall into a depression. But if I can recognize the bottom, I can begin to navigate my way out.

It takes more than that though. I also have to know, even when I’m all the way down in the pit, that Darkness comes from Light: When G-d began to form existence, there was much light. So much, in fact, that nascent reality couldn’t hold it all. Much as a crystal goblet would shatter at the bottom of a waterfall, the vessels of the emerging creation burst in their inability to hold onto the radiance – and darkness was born…So darkness is the product of too much light, or at least that highest luminescence which exceeds the capacity of our vessel! I must absorb this knowledge in order to acquire the skill of returning. As we navigate our journeys and encounter the challenges G-d has prepared for us, we can open avenues of redemption through remembering that the concealment around us is pregnant with this primordial light.

That’s the reason the first commandment given to us as a nation was to sanctify the moon. As Jews, we must watch the night waiting for the light. Regardless of who we are and what our circumstances are, each must take to her hill or hideout and look to the sky in search of emerging rays. Correct, we don’t want to “go gently into the night,” but our approach is not so much to “rage against the dying of the light” as it is to await the dawn. And with the intensity of our gaze to hasten its coming. Whatever news the day has brought us, no matter the feelings that well up within us – and no matter the elegance and eloquence with which our thoughts and feelings impress upon us that things are bleak and hopeless – we must gaze into the darkness, looking for the glow it conceals, while we await the new moon. Through doing that, we actually birth it into being.

As we gaze at the blackened sky looking for the moon, we must remember yet another secret. Namely, that not only is the night permeated with a luminous essence, but that the moon is darkest precisely when it’s closest to the sun. Counter-intuitively, just as the earth is closest to the sun in the dead of winter, so too is the moon when it disappears. The closer it moves to the shining source of all its light, the smaller the moon is.

Life is like that, too. Have you observed the silence of someone in the presence of a remarkable person? To experience the greatness of another, is to be a moon up close against the sun. And then, if the other is truly great, she doesn’t swallow you up like a black hole sucking stars into its core. If the other is truly great, she empowers you to slide outwards on your orbit and gather light as you go. Similarly, all learning has its new moon phase. It happens when you’re sitting before a master, and what you knew becomes effaced and a new understanding is born. True healers, the redeemers, help us navigate these dark intervals. They remind us that darkness is pregnant with light. But even more so, they teach us that in the very moment that we disappear, we are born afresh. And thereby, we become a sun that lights up the heavens.

That’s why we were given the commandment to sanctify the moon at the time of our liberation from Egypt. The two are one – the moon being born of nothingness, and our people emerging in freedom from dismal servitude. When we reached the forty-ninth level of impurity, that’s when we could find the light. Just like the moon that has to turn squid-ink black before its crescent can appear. Our point of deconstruction is the very moment when our movement back to G-d and Truth began. It is the moment we were born as a nation. It is our new moon phase. That point delineates the secret of all our returns.

Every new moon encapsulates this paradoxical truth. But the dark new moon that is most pregnant with light is that of Kislev. In the Northern hemisphere we’ve turned the clocks back. The sugar red leaves of autumn crunch underfoot. Tree barks are white and pinkish grey against a darker sky. Afternoons are cut short, and indoors steam hisses at the cold. The whole month of Kislev calls out, Kes, Kes!, “Concealment, concealment!” It’s a month when darkness around us is on the ascendency. And yet Kislev is the month of Chanukah, the festival of light. It’s winter. The earth is closer to the sun. And on Kislev’s New Moon, the moon is closer still. All that blackness bespeaks an infinite revelation. The last two letters of the Hebrew name of the month, the lamed and the vav, call forth “Light! Revelation! Manifestation!” Lo, they can be read in Hebrew. To him! Bring out the light and shine it to the other, out into the world. Kes-lo. From the concealment comes revelation. From within a new moon pregnant with light, come the thirty six lights of eight nights, the flames of Chanukah.

It’s one thing to look back and know that my friend, in her most painful moment, was being set free. It’s one thing to know that from kes comes lo, from concealment comes revelation. It’s another thing entirely, to get that in our own lives. But if we meditate on the secrets of “returning” and remind ourselves that G-d is, after all, the One who directs our waxing and waning, we might just find ourselves born into a consciousness and world of light. It is the light that the darkness has held in utero since the outset of creation. It is the radiance of our future. It is our most natural state.

This article is based on a teaching of Rabbi Nachman of Breslev, Likkutei Halachot, Rosh Chodesh, and the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Sefer HaSichot 5752, Shabbat Parshat Vayishlach. It was originally published on www.thejewishwoman.org. (And if you're a writer with something meaningful to say, email the editor Sara Esther Crispe with your offering.)