Last week’s Tune Up brought up one very important question for many readers:
How do I open the gates that are closed to me?
A few emails asked if it’s enough to think positive — and the answer is no. Some surmised that we should accept that can we can’t open some gates and just move on. Even others answered that they will be discussing the concept with their therapists.
The bottom line is we all want to move forward. We want to be different next year than we are today, even a few months from now. We want to actually change, not just have different people in our lives, but actually be a different person. But if we don’t unlock these gates, no amount of positive thinking will help.
So here, my friends, is a formula for breaking the locks on those gates.
1) Find your emptiness. Rav Ashlag, founder of The Kabbalah Centre, explained that when the world was created, it was created with empty space (”chalal panui” in Hebrew) for the world’s creations to fill. We are born with that emptiness and our work in this world is to fill that emptiness. That’s part of the thought of Creation. We came into this world with specific emptiness. Sometimes we think if we just move forward, the emptiness will be filled, but it can’t be. We must figure out what it is that we do — what is our emptiness — the anger, depression, the guilt. I’m not suggesting you spend hours and days on someone’s couch. We do need to focus energy on moving forward in our lives, but not without knowing what is stopping us along the way.
2) Ask: How does my emptiness serve me? There’s always something we get out of our emptiness. We are all selfish people, there’s no getting around that. We must be getting something out of the emptiness. We do things or not do things because there is a payoff. There is always a payoff. Even if we hurt other people, somehow we benefit. There’s even a benefit to doing nothing. We may be afraid; we may feel we can’t, that the task at hand is beyond us, we may fail on purpose — because we don’t think we deserve to go any higher. We may be sabotaging ourselves to feel incapable of moving forward, or may be making mistakes on purpose that will stop our growth. Think about it like this: if you wouldn’t get energy, you wouldn’t go to that emptiness (anger, depression, guilt, etc). We all want energy all the time. Our godlike feature is a magnet to energy. Unfortunately some of it is good, most of it is bad. We’ve all had the negative energy pull; it’s still energy … and then …
3) Figure out what we are giving up for that energy. In Kabbalah, we talk about missed opportunities. What about the years we give up, willingly lose in search of the negative energy? Isn’t that a missed opportunity as well? Imagine if we didn’t spend hours a week in that place we go to. The lifetime of hours and years that we give up because we’re getting some kind of enjoyment, some kind of Light, energy, something — all from being empty. It’s not a few ounces. It’s not even a few milligrams. It’s a couple of tons of energy. And what do we have to show for that energy we’ve given up? Nothing. That’s the real missed opportunity. We all have those spaces that we end up in, and if we aggregate all the time spent empty, we would be depressed just from that. We’d be angry at ourselves just from that, and give up a few more years.
We need to do these three steps. We could listen to the Torah, scan the Zohar, meditate profusely, but if tomorrow w e go back to the same place, that same emptiness and get the same energy, nothing has actually changed. Nothing.
This week, let’s focus on these three items. We’ve got to find the emptiness, where exactly we go; we’ve got to find what energy we get out of it; and most importantly we’ve got to feel what we’re giving up for it.
It’s one of those aspects of the journey that’s hard to do alone — but do it with someone — a mentor, teacher, partner. It’s one of those things we have to fix in order to move forward.
Remember, every second that we spend on our emptiness is time we’re not spending moving forward.
All the best,
Yehuda
