Knowing Your Purpose with Michael Berg

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We Share This Ship

One day a man onboard a ship walks by one of the cabins and notices a man drilling a hole in the floor. He shouts, “What are you doing? Are you crazy?!” The man looks up bewildered and says, “This is my cabin, and I can do whatever I want in it.” The other man becomes irate. “You fool, a hole in your cabin will sink the whole ship.”

This seems like a simple story, but The Zohar uses it to clarify a deeper secret of life: we’re each responsible for one another.

This is a two-way street and includes two basic lessons for life. First, we must realize that our actions, both negative and positive, influence many other people in ways we can’t begin to imagine. On the other side of the coin, we must realize that other people’s actions, good or bad, directly influence our lives.

This is why we have a responsibility to help others grow and improve. We are truly all in the same boat – we all sink or swim together.

This understanding of our basic need to help others develop spiritually is one of the aspects that separates a person who is living Kabbalah from one who is browsing. That’s not to say there is anything wrong with testing the waters, but it’s important to always be pushing oneself to the next level so that spiritual inertia doesn’t set in.

Often we focus only on ourselves and our own spiritual growth – disregarding the rest of the world. Truth be told, we must help others in their spiritual development because we cannot fulfill our purpose and goal in this world without assisting others. A hole in another’s cabin floor will sink our ship as well.

We each find ourselves in different positions in life. But regardless of how big or small our sphere of influence is, the Creator gave us each our unique domain wherein we can impact others. We must understand that this gift of influence comes with responsibility: The greater our sphere of influence, the greater the responsibility.

Have a wonderful Aquarius. May the actions you take, and the words you speak, reveal Light for many lives.

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Keeping Our Gifts Warm

Frequently things in life are exciting in the beginning and then they lose their excitement over time. Most people are more in love on the first date than they are 15 years into marriage, or more enthusiastic about a job in the first week than three years into that job.

And that’s the reality of this world. Most of our new and positive experiences in life are fascinating and we are grateful for them in the beginning, but then as time goes on, we lose appreciation. We lose our excitement for our gifts; they get old. And most of us accept this reality. We believe that this is the way life is. Things are always more stimulating at the beginning, and then the energy wanes, and you’re lucky if you’re able to have some positive experiences much later into a marriage, work or any experience in life.

Yet the truth is that there is another way. Our blessings are meant to remain as filled with excitement, joy and warmth as on the first day. Everything that we have in life, every gift — marriage, family, work, friends—are meant to be as energizing, as fulfilling on the hundredth day as they were on the very first day. So we have to try to understand, why do our gifts get old?

Before we can answer that question, we have to first understand where our gifts come from. The kabbalists teach a very important basic principle, which is that all of our gifts– whether physical, emotional or spiritual– have one source. The joy we feel in the food that we eat, in the beauty that we see, in the love that we experience, every single aspect of that fulfillment, joy, or excitement that we feel, has a source. And it is called the Light of the Creator. It is the Light of the Creator that infuses the energy into all the gifts that we have in life.

If you understand that, you also realize that if you detach these gifts from their source, they will no longer have that energy, that excitement, that newness. For instance, if you’re using a lamp and it’s connected to electricity and the bulb is strong, it can stay lit for hours and hours. But if you detach the lamp from the electrical socket, suddenly everything goes dark.

This is true in the blessings and gifts that we all have in our lives too. If we detach them from their source— and now we understand their source is what we call the Light of the Creator—just as the lamp, they go dark, they get old, they lose their excitement, they lose their fulfillment.

We all know that when you have bread or cake straight out of the oven, it’s nice and warm. We all enjoy eating that bread. It’s much better when it’s warm, straight out of the oven. A day later? Not as good. A week later– terrible; you can’t even eat it. We know that when something is initially created, there is that warmth, there is that energy in it that we all enjoy much more than we would three days later.

If it is true that the source of all of our blessings, the fulfillment, the joy that we feel in any of our blessings is the Light of the Creator, then we know that when we detach them from their source— just as one unplugs the lamp from the electrical socket — a process of deterioration begins; of less joy, less excitement, less fulfillment. So the question we have to ask ourselves is: What is it that we do that detaches our blessings from the Light of the Creator? If we can learn to stop doing that, if we can learn to keep our blessings connected to their source, then they should stay warm, they should stay exciting, even more exciting on the 10th day, on the hundredth day, than on the first day.

And the answer is simple. When we take ownership of our gifts, when we begin to see and feel that they are ours, we are, with that consciousness, detaching them from their Source, from the Light of the Creator.

In this world, if I want to give somebody a gift, I have it in my hand and I give it to them; it is passed into their hands. It has been completely detached from me, the giver, and received completely by the receiver of that gift. And that is what most of us do, to one degree or another, with all of the gifts that we receive from the Light of the Creator.

When we have a relationship, a job, money, or physical objects and we forget that their source is the Light of the Creator, when we take ownership of them, they have become detached from their Source and they lose their energy. They will get old, and that is why most of us experience less excitement in the 10th year of marriage than on the first date; and why we enjoy a job less in the third year than on the day we first started, because we have– through our consciousness of ownership– detached them from their Source, from the Light of the Creator.

So what do we do? Now that we understand that all of our gifts can and are meant to be as warm, as exciting, as fulfilling, always, as they are in the beginning, what do we do? Well, the answer again is simple. To the degree that we can, we need to look at every single gift that we have— be it our spouse, our friend, our children, our money, our physical objects, our spiritual blessings— and consistently remind ourselves that they are not ours; they have a Source and the Source is what we call the Light of the Creator. We have the ability to use these gifts, they come into our hands, but they do not, and we do not, through our consciousness of ownership, detach them from the hand of the Light of the Creator. Only then do they have the ability to remain warm and exciting and endlessly fulfilling forever.

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The Enemy Within

Sometimes it breaks over us like a slow-moving wave, other times it strikes as suddenly as lightning. The cause may be hidden or all too obvious: someone says the wrong thing or says nothing at all. In an instant we’re red-faced, unable to speak, perhaps close to violence. Overcome, we not only forget who we are, but we literally become someone else.

It’s called anger, and this month we have the opportunity to transform the hold it has on our lives.

The Zohar says that there is not much worse than acting out in anger. When a person loses control and reacts angrily towards someone, “he tears and uproots his soul because of his anger and causes a foreign spirit to dwell within him.”

Chances are you will be tested often this month in the relationship and work areas of your life. When you appreciate the danger of becoming angry and take steps to work through it, you will find it easier to soften your judgments with mercy.

Thousands of years ago the kabbalists revealed the secret that anger is the spiritual cause of illness because it severs our connection to our source of life – the Light of the Creator.

The great kabbalist and original founder of The Kabbalah Centre in 1922, Rav Yehuda Ashlag, shed enormous light on the insidious nature of anger. He revealed that our anger is not us, but rather a negative entity that has insinuated itself into our consciousness which manifests as a voice telling us to react.

We must disassociate ourselves from this entity and realize that the person we are angry at is not our enemy – the negative entity within us is the enemy.

Rav Ashlag clearly teaches us that we need to use anger to our advantage. Yes, there is a positive side of anger, what the Zohar calls the Anger of the Sages. This type of anger comes from our soul, and it helps us to reclaim our power. The focus of this anger needs to be directed toward the negative voice in our minds telling us to hurt another with words or actions.

This month, when someone cuts us off on the highway or insults us with a remark, rather than reacting with fury, we can instead be furious with the voice in our minds that tells us this person is bad and deserves punishment. That’s the only way we can accomplish what we came to this world to do, and this is the greatest gift of this month.

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Illuminating the World

We are now entering the month of miracles, and soon opening the gift of Chanukah, referred to by kabbalists this way because there is almost nothing required of us.

It is simply a gift. All that’s required is the desire and knowledge to receive it. On other holidays there are many prayers, meditations, and physical actions designed for drawing the Light.

At Chanukah, we light candles with a few short prayers, and that’s all. This is because the Light at Chanukah is so elevated and so powerful that there is almost nothing that we need to do in order to draw it.

There is a story about one of the great kabbalists who asked people who came to him with their problems if they would write down their names and the difficulties they were facing on a piece of paper. The sage would then meditate on what had been written.

One day, a man came to the master with two pieces of paper: one was his own piece of paper and the other was a paper from one of his friends. First he gave his own paper, and the kabbalist looked at it and meditated on his name.

Then the man handed over his friend’s paper. The kabbalists looked at it and said, “I see that this man’s soul is shining with tremendous Light.” He meditated on the friend’s name and prayed for him. A few months later, the same man came back to the kabbalist.

Again, he presented the kabbalist with both his own name and that of his friend for the kabbalist to pray and meditate on.

But this time when the kabbalist looked at the friend’s name, he literally threw it out of his hands, shouting, “How could you bring me this man’s name? He’s such a negative person. I don’t even want his name in my house!”

The visitor replied, “I’m very confused. A few months ago, I gave you that same person’s name and you told me that his soul was shining with tremendous Light. Now you tell me that he’s a terribly negative person?”

The kabbalist thought for a few moments, then said, “I understand what happened. A few months ago when you first came in with that person’s name, he was lighting the candles for Chanukah.

When a person lights the candles on Chanukah, no matter how negative he is and no matter how many negative actions he’s done, the Light of Chanukah shines in his soul. Unfortunately, your friend didn’t continue that connection with the Light when Chanukah was over.

He gave it up. Now I see the true darkness in his soul.” The lesson for us all is to understand the immense power of Chanukah and the concealed Light it reveals. The more we appreciate how powerful this is and what it can do, the more we can bring it into our lives.

Once we believe our power to be a channel for the Light of the Creator, there is nothing that is beyond us. Now we can draw on the energy of Chanukah to remove the negative, insidious voice that tells us we are helpless, that we can’t do great things.

As the kabbalists explain, every single one of us is destined to become a limitless conduit for the Light of the Creator. Lighting the Chanukah candles shows us what our purpose in the world really is. It is to have the Light of the Creator in our lives at all times.

It is to illuminate candle after candle, and ultimately to bring the removal of all darkness forever.

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Living Your Soul

Michael discusses the concept of “living in the Upper Worlds.” According to the kabbalists, we can choose to live in one of two realities – our current world of worry, disappointment and fear or a world without the chaos of everyday existence. Learn how to connect with the pure part of the soul and choose to live in a world without fear, disappointment or worry.

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Recovering The Sparks

The month of Scorpio gives us the gift of becoming aware of our sparks of purity, and the ability to fan them into huge flames, to recover our true selves.

The Zohar teaches us that within every single one of us exists a spark of purity that can never be corrupted – no matter how negatively we may act.

How do we accomplish this practically? It all starts with consciousness. We each have diminishing thoughts where we tell ourselves “I can’t,” or “I don’t deserve.” Every time these thoughts come, we must remind ourselves that it is just the negative side trying to extinguish our spark of perfection.

We must counter these thoughts by injecting the consciousness of “my true self is great.”

Secondary to this idea is a lesson taught by the Rav’s teacher, Rav Brandwein. He explains that we cannot draw great Light unless we have a great vessel. Most of us have an imperfect vessel which is why we are often lacking the blessings we are destined to have.

Rav Brandwein reveals the remedy as “borrowing vessels.”

According to Kabbalah, every single one us will eventually achieve perfection-whether it takes one incarnation or one hundred incarnations. Wherever we need blessings in our lives, we can draw on our future perfected vessels and bring it into our lives today.

In spirituality there is no time, space and motion, so whether it is one year away or one hundred years away, we can connect to our future joy and peace now. As a matter of fact, only by connecting and drawing from our future selves can we really be able to draw Light into our lives.

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Rebirth of Soul

The kabbalists teach that Rosh Hashanah is the beginning of the New Year, when our true self is born anew. But what does that really mean?

Every one of us has a spark of the Light of the Creator within us. The kabbalists explain no matter how many negative actions we have committed, this true essence – our real selves – never becomes disconnected from its source. The Creator is always within us.

The only problem is, we cover it up. We cover it up with veils of darkness created by self-centered thoughts and actions. Too often I hear people say they don’t deserve the blessings in their life. The truth is, this type of thinking is from the negative side, the side of our nature that doesn’t want us to realize how powerful we are.

There is a famous kabbalistic teaching that says in the nine months prior to birth, there is a specific angel that teaches us the secrets of the universe. However, the moment before we come into this world, we are made to forget all this wisdom we have been taught.

The kabbalists ask, if we are going to be made to forget this wisdom, what is the purpose of teaching it to us in the first place?

The answer is, although on one level we forget all the wisdom, on a deeper level – the soul level – we never forget. Our true work in this world is to reveal the Light we already have within us.

The gift of Rosh Hashanah – and all the holidays of Libra – is the assistance to remove the veils, to scrub away the dirt that surrounds our true essence. To the degree that we remove those veils, will be the degree to which our connection to the Light of the Creator will shine forth and manifest the Light we need in our life.

Every one of us should desire in this year to truly manifest our potential, for ourselves and for the world. We will accomplish this when we have the strength during the difficult times to not only get through them, but to remember how amazing and abundant we truly are.

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The Shining Of Our Negative Actions: The New Moon Of Virgo with Michael Berg

The kabbalists reveal that the purpose of Kabbalistic Astrology is to understand the influences we will encounter each month and to create control in our lives. The first day of each month, known as Rosh Chodesh, is considered to be the seed level for the entire month. It is on this day that we gather to learn about the influence of the month with a lecture specific to the energy of the coming month. Join Michael Berg as he reveals the wisdom of the kabbalists about the month of Virgo.

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Close to Call

We are now in the beginning of the month of Elul, better known as the month of repentance.

On a simple level, it can be understood that in the upcoming month of Tishrei (sign of Libra), we will all be judged. Therefore, we should cleanse ourselves beforehand. But there is a deeper secret to this month.

The Creator imbued every month with a different essence and Light. In the month of Elul the Gates of Heaven are opened, and the Creator is closer to all of us. The kabbalists say, “the Creator is close to all those who call him . . . ” This refers to the month of Elul. This month is a gift – don’t let it pass without taking full advantage of it.

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