Some more great tools from Kabbalah / Chassidus

 

This is an exceptionally complex but all-encompassing tool:

 

As Kabbalah teaches, we all want to be happy (feel pleasure) and not be in pain (feel miserable.)

 

However, although of course, we should not be miserable, nonetheless, there is a great danger in only feeling pleasure – nowhere is this more evident than in drug addicts, who in their feeling pleasure, lose all their compassion, desire, even soul/heart, and simply exclusively pursue the pleasure (this of course, doesn’t mean they cannot come back to themselves, but that in the meanwhile, the pleasure overtakes their soul) so to combat this, we need to simultaneously feel both pleasure and a bit of pain! like a pinch of bitter salt, not only can preserve, but enhances the taste and benefit of food!

 

The following are a few good techniques from Kabbalah to do this:

1. Be proud of your Divine soul (love, compassion, good-heartedness) but simultaneously, be embarrassed of your body (instincts for pleasure, ability to get angry etc. etc.)

2. Be ecstatic that Moshiach, the long awaited Messiah (as mention in the back flap of the book) is already here! hence the incredible transformation from darkness to light the world is experiencing; be upset, that the full benefit of the Messianic miracles, such as peace in the world, total enlightenment, all Jews returning to Israel, the Third Beis Hamikdosh (Holy Temple on Mount Moriah in Jerusalem) has not already, come!

* Another all-encompassing principle is erasing the divide many of us feel between the mundane and the spiritual.

Our goal is to live a spiritual life through the mundane world; like shining light into a dark room.

Practically, the way to do this (ideally as a child, to spend the first twenty years or so, immersed in Torah study and then take this light into life, but in any event) after waking up, getting showered, brushing teeth etc. to pray (there is a 2,500 year old tradition of daily prayers Jews use every morning (also afternoon and evening) in the Siddur-Prayer Book); for men to also put on Teffilin (see Chabad.org for more info.) and then to study any subject of Torah (Judaism); the reason for this is: we begin our day with connecting to Divine energy, then we take this energy imbued into our hearts and when we go to whatever we have to do in the mundane world, be it work, home, etc. we do so with integrity, with honesty, with compassion, with love!

 

In addition, money can be an idol – in fact our sages clarify, that in the olden days there used to be a strong attraction to idolatry, but in our time, that attraction has shifted to attaining wealth – this of course will divide a person between a spiritual and mundane reality, which whenever we feel conflicted between separate desires, we cannot have internal peace.

 

Now obviously money and even wealth is a very good thing! for besides the fact, it is a necessity; the more we have, the less we need to worry about, say the mortgage, even food, etc. however, the way to bring our spirit into a oneness, instead of being driven in separate directions, is by realizing, that money is only a tool for the higher purpose of doing good – which obviously would be to care for ourselves, our family, in dignity, and even more so, caring for other people with dignity (charity the highest, noblest commandment of God!)

Collaborate!

One of, the, of-course, most important, painful, and in contradistinction, when successful, pleasurable! experiences in life, is relationships.

 

Why are relationships so important to us?!

 

What we fail to appreciate, is, that all is God – so you and I are not two separate people, but as God is one, we are similarly manifestations of the same individual God, in different bodies!

 

Nowhere is this more evident than in marriage, which the Kabbalah teaches, “two parts of the SAME SOUL, the male and female part, representing different powers, abilities and complementary strengths (this is a very lengthy subject which we can’t get into now, but suffice it to say, all of Kabbalah is based on the idea of male and female energies and how their union creates offspring) have descended into earth, to find one another.”

 

A lady, once asked the Rebbe about sex – he replied, it is like a nuclear energy, if harnessed for the good, it can literally light up the world; but if for the bad, literally God-forbid annihilate humanity.

 

Sex is the ultimate union of these two forces into one, as God says “Therefore man shall leave his (attachment) to his parents, and unify with his wife, and become one with her.”

 

The idea of learning to become one with your spouse, is the most important idea in the world!

 

Apart from the physical pleasurable sensation which is actually a distraction (at least from the male point of view) for the much holier union of souls, of hearts meant to occur; a deep psychological/spiritual union is occurring, for two beings, truly one, are returning to their unique oneness.

This is the deep secret of the famous sin of eating the forbidden fruit: what really happened was, Adam and Eve were engaging in union and when they ate the forbidden fruit; instead of seeing it as something holy, Adam descended into the realm of selfishness, and saw it as something in which his ego was enhanced.

 

From that day on, the ego mixing with G-d (e.g. intimacy with ego, as opposed to selfless union) marred the act of sex and to some extent, all acts.

 

I have written a booklet, summarizing Kabbalah’s wisdom for marital union, called Kabbalah for Marital Intimacy (available on my website) but the fundamental point I would like to bring out, is that life is really solely about creating selfless unity.

 

Nowhere is the joy of this, more acutely felt when it works, then in marriage; and nowhere is the pain of division more acutely felt, when it fails, then in marriage!

 

Our generation – myself included – are victims of an erroneous viewpoint, seeing marriage as an ego enchantment, not as an arduous selfless exercise to create unity.

 

We need to readdress the fundamental raison d’etre of marriage – namely, to live in peace and unity – and once we do that, 99% of the problem is solved.

 

In my own marriage, I once read (also a very worthwhile book to read) in “Toward A Meaningful Life” (“The Wisdom of the Rebbe”) how the Rebbe teaches, the goal of marriage is unity – so I wish I could say I did it for longer – but for about two weeks, I made that my goal, and I saw an amazing shift; suddenly the little things (all of-course related to ego, “My-way”) failed to matter, for all that mattered to me was having unity.