Rabbi Infinity's Blog

Now you understand why I had to teach Miri the letter chaf before I could get to the letter tet. It's also going to help me with the letters lamed and mem, which are also constructed out of a chaf, a vav and a yud. And then there's the letter peh, which has the chaf and yud, but no vav. The scribe—called a sofer—when he makes his strokes, has all this in mind.

That's much of the beauty of a Torah scroll; just as any beautiful art, it relies on a small set of motifs of which everything is built: a yud-point, a vav-line and a space-curve-chaf. But the trademark feature is that ever-present yud.

That's because the world emerges out of nothing. At every moment.

Hold on.

Nothing? Isn't G_d there first? Is G_d a nothing? Isn't He the real Something? So, when He creates the world, He creates it out of His somethingness. Only that, compared to Him, it's all nothing. So really we should say that He creates nothing out of something. And what's the big deal of doing that?

Nope, all wrong. G_d is neither a something or a nothing. He is the grand Isifier of all isness and ideaness, including the idea of is and is not. Just that, in order to create a world with that "I'm for real" feeling to it, He has to start with nothing, and then get to something.

Here's how He does it: First, He emanates the Infinite Light—which is a total nothingness, because, hey, it's just His light, announcing His unknowable presence. So if it can't be known, there's nothing there, right?

Then He totally removes that light, leaving an absolute void. That's the second form of nothingness—where something can happen.

Now He draws a connecting line between these two opposite forms of nothingness, bringing infinite light into a finite void. That's when a something comes into being—namely us and our world. The yud is the nothing from where that line of light is coming, the vav is how it enters, and the chaf is the all-encompassing somethingness that results. That's one way of understanding it, among many. But the paradigm is basically the same.

Okay, I'm confusicating you with my Kabbalistic abstractions. So let's take this down into practical application:

Are you a something or a nothing? If you are thinking you are really something, you're losing out on life. Life is about being open to everything that's greater and bigger than you. Once you've decided, "I am something, and this is what I am"—you've shut off growth, new experience and, well, just life.

But if you are a nothing, then what's the point of living? Who wants to help out a nothing?

Or, in the classic words of Hillel the Elder, "If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? And if am for myself, then what am I?"

It's not just you, this is the how each thing in the universe exists—it has to both be and not be, at every moment. That's why each thing breathes, pumps, oscillates, vibrates, sings, swings and flutters—everything continually traverses back and forth between positive and negative, matter and energy, form and chaos, being and not-being. Nothing stands still, nothing just is (except when they have to draw a diagram for a science textbook, I mean, what can you do?).

That's because G_d never meant the world to just be for the sake of being. He meant it as the ultimate form of art, to express something. And what does it express? It tells of His impossible, totally paradoxical oneness, which neither is or is not and yet generates both at once.

That's beautiful. And that, as well, is the beauty of the letters of the alefbet.

Some of you think I'm just making this stuff up as I go along. Chaf means hand and looks like a hand holding something, so the rabbi starts pontificating about how, "He's got the whole world in His hand" and signs off with a bracha on a drink, cuz it looks good.

So here's the real story: There's a little-used, tall volume with lots of small print of cryptic Hebrew notes called "Sefer Ha-Erchin Chabad, volume 4." That volume covers most of the letters of the alef-bet. For each letter, there's an explanation describing how that letter relates to different sefirot and relationships between sefirot. Each letter can be charged with a zillion sorts of different energy patterns depending on where it turns up and what's its function. In case you're finding Kabbalah too simple and straightforward, this is the book for you.

The KToons Alef Bet Series borrows a lot of material from that volume. Just that I've got the challenge of bringing it down to the level of a four year old girl and giving it a practical application.

So what's with Chaf? Chaf is for Ketter--meaning The Crown. The ten sefirot beginning with Wisdom/Chochma are all about how Infinite Light pours into creation to become all things and animates them. There's a mystery here, because it somehow stays infinite while investing itself within all these finite beings, but hey that just goes to show how infinite that light really is.

Ketter on the other hand, is where the Infinite Light hasn't poured into anything yet. It's just way beyond everything, high and pure. And yet, Ketter is the dynamo that gives all the sefirot their creative power to isify and sustain something out of nothing. Ketter is called the encompassing light, because it stays transcendent of everything and yet encompasses and holds each thing in existence. That's the light the letter Chaf conveys. All the other letters convey some sort of inner, vitalizing light, while Chaf brings with it a transcendent light. In this way, Chaf is the crown of all the letters.

It's a lot like your own life: You have thoughts and feelings and words and actions, but transcending all of them is an all-encompassing will and drive. Usually what drives you, what you really want out of life, is hidden from everyone that knows you, even from you yourself. If you think you've got it figured out, you're on the wrong track. It's not something you can put your finger on, because it's the core of what keeps you ticking. You can't know it, you can only be it.

Same with the universe: The energy source that keeps it ticking lies so deep that it's way beyond any created being's grasp. No thought can grasp it, not even the highest angel can conceive of it, even the deepest yearning of the heart only catches a glimmer of it. Everything else is measured somehow relative to something else, but the crown is absolute and beyond knowing.

You can't touch the crown, you can't know anything about it, you can't even have a hunch what it is. But you can become it. Meaning, you can allow the crown to shine through you. That's what a mitzvah is about--it's an expression of the inner will that sustains the universe. When you do a mitzvah, you become the vehicle through which that inner will is expressed. You and the crown become one. And so you are plugged into its light.

Since the crown is beyond knowing, it doesn't matter if you are Rabbi Infinity or little Miri--everyone is equally distant and equally close to the crown. The encompassing light of the crown is beyond higher and lower, closer and further. The difference is only that complicated people make a big show that gets in the way and doesn't allow the light to break out into the open. Simple people--like little granddaughters--just do the mitzvah with an earnest, open heart. And then the light breaks through and glows.

Hurray for little people. They can reach that which is beyond high and low.

Okay, so this is more about the letter hey than about it's sister chet. It's also more about Passover than Chanukah.

There are two words that are very similar, yet opposites. Chametz is the regular, yeast-risen bread that is totally off-limits for Passover. Matzah is the flat, humble bread we eat instead. Now take a look:

חמץ Chet Mem Tzadik = Chametz

מצה Mem Tzadik Hey = Matzah

What's the difference between the two? A small window. That's what changes the hey into a chet. Otherwise, they're built of exactly the same letters (in slightly different order).

What's the window? It's the ability to climb out of yourself, out of the mess you got yourself into, and to see what needs to be fixed. When that window is closed, you've got chametz on your hands. Bad news. Open it and you're back to matzah.

Why does the window get closed? Because a person, like yeasty dough, gets too full of himself. Yeast feeds off the sugars of the dough and produces gases that blow it larger and larger. The ego feeds off the good deeds of a person and produces lots of hot air that swell his head way out of proportion. Once swollen, there's no way he can see himself objectively anymore. No way to return back to his authentic self. No way to recapture the divine spark that got buried under all that sticky dough. Stuck in a rut with only one way to go. (Sound familiar? We did that one in MT Therapy.)

So what do we do with this chet guy? One way is to just break a window in that solid wall and transform him back into a hey. Get him into a little humility, so he can see his mess and start to fix it.

But that's not the ideal. After all, the chet must have some purpose of its own. Human beings weren't given an ego, a sense of pride and self-esteem just so they could smash it down. Really, the ultimate redemption of the letter chet is not to be broken, but to rise so high that nothing can ever go wrong to begin with. That's what an ego is there for: So that a person will take ownership of his life and do the best he can, rising even higher and higher, seeking out a relationship with the ultimate, true Ego, the only one who can really call Himself "I".

But to get there, you need to first make yourself a humble hey. Now open that window and breathe in some fresh air.

(Note just for you Kabbalah buffs: Hey and Chet both signify Malchut. Chet is Malchut all by herself, while Hey is Malchut as Chochmah shines into her. Now go meditate on that one.)

Sources: See Menachot 29b, elucidated in Likutei Sichot vol. 1, pg. 130; ibid vol. 8, pg. 113. Sefer Ha-Erchin on chet, s'if 8.

You think it's pretty silly of a grandfather kabbalist to run around with his granddaughter on his shoulders. I could go the kinetic-experiential learning route with you. But instead, let me fill you in on the kabbalistic implications of having a Miri on a Zaidy's shoulders:

Zaidy is a vav. Sixth letter of the alefbet. That's the six sefirot Chesed, Gevurah, Tifferet, Netzach, Hod, Yesod. Six modalities of the Infinite Light in creating a world. Reflected in the microcosm of the human psyche as six modalities of human emotion:

1. Benevolence 2. Judgment 3. Beauty

4. Competitiveness 5. Surrender 6. Connection.

Miri is a yud, which in this case is the sefira of Malchut. Dominion. Being a king over your world. As in, taking effective action, really doing something. Nice feelings and noble intentions are so nice and noble, but unless they blossom into action, they just whither away and surrender to the wind with the autumn leaves. Malchut, then, is where it all happens.

But wait! That should put the yud at the foot of the vav—since malchut is the final result of the six sefirot before it! Like a gimmel, chasing after the dalet to do some real good. But here's a zayin with the yyud on top! What's Miri, the yud, doing up on top of my vav shoulders?

So here's the secret. Once those nice feelings and good intentions pour down into solid action, an amazing thing happens: Your whole character is picked up to a new plane of being. Everything changes. You discover emotions and capabilities that you never imagined could be there. What's going on?

Here's where we need some deep Kabbalah. The Kabbalists explain that plain physical action—even though it's the last stop, ground floor level of the soul—taps into a place far beyond the conscious or even subconscious mind, to the essence-core of the human being, a place called "the crown" (Ketter, for your kabbalah-lingo buffs). From there, a whole new person can be shaped, an entire life can be transformed.

Which explains the meaning of the ancient, enigmatic kabbalistic koan, "Just do something!!!" Meaning: So what that there isn't a drop of hope left in your heart—just do, throw yourself into it like a mad horse, and suddenly you will discover that you are a king and the whole world falls in place at your command. A royal horsey-zaidy!

Before I get to the Kabbalah behind the letter hey, I need to ask you a simple question: What's the world made of?

Your high school textbook says energy and matter—whatever those are. Before they had high school textbooks, philosophers thought the world was made of form and matter. Kabbalists say everything is light and packaging. But if you look in the Book of Genesis, you'll see that everything is made of nothing more than G‑d's speech, as King David (a really great kabbalist) puts in the Psalms, "By the word of G‑d, the heavens were made and with the breath of His mouth, all their host."

But then, speech itself has two components. You need air, pumped up from the lungs. And you need to contour that air with certain vibrations, as contributed by the larynx and the mouth cavity.

That's why King David also says, (in the same Psalms), "All that He desires, G‑d does"—implying that there is another element here besides G‑d's speech, and that is G‑d's desire. The speech would be just plain hot air if there was no desire involved to add some vibrations and resonance to that air.

Now, before you begin thinking that all this is arcane babbletalk, let me explain that no, I don't believe that G‑d is an opera star with gigantic lungs pumping out a universe through his throat. Let's get a little abstract here:

Desire:

Human desire is a prison of wants and deficiencies that move us in directions often beyond our control.

Cosmic Desire is entirely His free choice, nothing more than a simple nuance of the Infinite Light in some direction or other.

Speech:

Human speech is how we produce physical sounds so that we can escape our own little shells and share our consciousness with others.

Cosmic Speech is how the Essence of the Infinite transcends itself to generate "otherness".

Comes out that, while we look at the universe and see energy and matter, the Existifier of all of this only sees desire and otherness.

Now, in the Hebrew alefbet, there are two letters that exemplify these two elements of otherness and desire more than all the others. The letter yud is all about desire and form. The letter hey is all about breath. It's the only letter that has no tone of its own, just a signal to breathe out. That breath is what makes the sound go outside of you, to another person. So the hey is all about creating otherness.

That is why King David also said, "For with yud-hey, G‑d forms worlds." Two worlds: The world to come was formed with the yud, while this world was formed with a hey. This world is like a hey, because it's whole theme is "here I am, here I was, I am just a thing that is." It doesn't speak out about how it's being brought into being at every moment out of total nothingness—you have to figure that out on your own.

The world-to-come theme is "I'm an art form, an expression of the desires of my creator."

Really, the world-to-come is nothing more than the inner reality of this world. Our job is to look beyond the outer façade that conceals it and fuse together desire and otherness, light and the packaging of light, form and matter, energy and its mediums, the yud and the hey.

If you've been following, you've probably realized that teaching how to ride a bicycle has a lot to do with eating bagel holes. It's all a matter of finding something in nothing. Kabbalists, even when they have something, continue searching in the nothing to find even greater something.

Maybe that's why we're releasing this episode just on time for Simchat Torah. That's a celebration where we dance with a Torah. Pretty ridiculous, right? I mean, a scroll, one would think, is for reading, chanting and incanting. Which are all pretty kabbalistic activities themselves. But who ever heard of dancing with a book--even a rolled-up, scroll book?

But there again is the whole finding-something-in-nothing thing: As a bagel has a hole, so the Torah has silence. And the essence of the words of the Torah and all its guidance, wisdom and secrets is found best in the Torah's silence, as it is rolled up and wrapped up and dances with us. There we touch more than wisdom, there we touch the essential relationship between us and our G‑d.

That's why we celebrate with the Torah this way after Yom Kippur, and not on Shavuot. Shavuot is the time of year when the Torah was originally given--so why not dance with the Torah then? But then, when we first received the Torah, we hadn't yet tapped into this deep relationship thing yet. We first had to mess up and break the relationship with the Golden Calf affair. Then, once we had found the emptiness, the point where the Giver of the Torah lets go of the handlebars and we start to fall--and then we discover He is still there and we are able to keep on riding, that He is still with us even when we fall and we are still with Him--then we touch that essence-core of the Torah, that which is never lost. The silence. And with that we dance.

It's not easy to initiate a four year old into the secrets of the cosmos. But then, I wonder if the forty year old really understands any better. As long as there is wonder, that's all that counts.

Sometimes I wonder, if Miri were sixteen years old already, how would our conversation go?

Me: The bagel, you see, is a three dimensional representation of the concept of the original tzimtzum, as taught by the Holy Ari, may his memory be for a blessing.

Miri: The who?

Me: The Ari. Rabbi Yitzchak Luria. Greatest of all the Kabbalists.

Miri: He invented the bagel?

Me: No, no. But he did discover a great secret of the cosmos which happens to be hidden in the bagel as well.

Miri: Really. I thought they only did that with Chinese fortune cookies.

Me: In fact, the Ari may have never seen a bagel. He lived in Egypt most of his life, until he moved to Tzfat, Israel around 1570. He was much more familiar with pita bread. Hey--that's even better: An empty void in which is placed an entire world of crunchy round balls, assorted salads and various hot sauces and condiments. A perfect model of the universe!

Miri: Ughh! You mean planet earth is just a falafel ball?

Me: Miri, we're getting off track. What I meant to explain was like this: Before the Ari, everyone knew there was the Infinite Light and there was our world, but no one could really explain how things got from Infinite and Light to Finite and Dark.

Miri: Simple. Just turn off the lights.

Me: Well, that's sort of what the Ari said. He said that G_d just sort of punched a hole in the Infinite Light.

Miri: Like a bagel.

Me: Or a pita. And then, into that empty void…

Miri: Whoa! Hold it! You can't make a hole in Infinite Light!

Me: Why not?

Miri: Cuz then it's not infinite anymore! I mean, it's either infinite or it's got a hole in the middle. You gotta make up your mind.

Me: Way to go, Miri! Now I see you're really thinking!

Miri: But if I'm thinking, aren't things supposed to make sense?

Me: Not necessarily. At first, when you begin to think, things start to get darker and more confusing.

Miri: Sort of like punching a hole in the light.

Me: Sort of. And if you ask the right questions, you get down to the essential point behind all that light.

Miri: Like you really see it for yourself, not just cuz your kabbalistic Zaidy told you.

Me: Right. And then you can take that essential point and build a whole world out of it.

Miri: Actually, having a kabbalistic Zaidy is pretty kewel.

Me: So now you understand how, when G_d withdrew all the light from that hole, He was really still there. And He still is there. For Him, nothing really changed. He's infinite and beyond, just like before. It's just that He wanted a space where He could get across the essential point of everything.

Miri: I don't get it. Where's the empty space? You mean like outer space?

Me: No, no, Miri. Not that kind of space. I mean like psychological space. He makes space for us to have free will. To make our own decisions. To decide on our lives, where we want to go and what we want to be.

Miri: Do we get the keys to the car?

Me: He puts darkness and light in front of us, all mixed up, so that we will have a choice. And when we choose the right thing, we show that He is there, breathing within our freedom of choice.

Miri: So the empty hole is the space for us to be real people.

Me: Right.

Miri: And that freedom, that people-ness, is really G_dly.

Me: Right. It's what makes us divine. And makes the universe special. Just like the hole is what makes the bagel a bagel. Or the pita a pita.

Miri: Right. So what's with the falafel balls?

For this particular Kabbalistic secret, you don't have to look much further than the Babylonian TalmudShabbat 104. Here's how it goes:

Rabbi Joshua the son of Levi walked into the academy one day and the rabbis told him, "Some schoolchildren were here today in the study hall and they said things the like of which was not heard even in the days of Joshua the son of Nun."

"They said that alef bet means "learn understanding."" (Alef means learn; bina means understanding.)

"Then they said that gimmel daled means "give generously to the poor."" (Gemol means to give generously; dalim are poor people).

"They asked, "Why is the foot of the gimmel stretched toward the daled?" And they answered, "Because it is the way of the giving person to run after the poor.""

"And why is the leg of the daled slanted slightly back toward the gimmel? Because the poor person must make himself available to those who can give."

"And why is the face of the daled turned away from the gimmel? So he can give to him in secret, so the daled won't be embarrassed."

There's more there--those little kids covered the entire alef bet until the last letter. But you can already see that these kids were more than a step beyond Sesame Street. They tell us that the first step is to learn to understand. And then, as soon as you learn to understand, what's the first thing you will do? Acts of kindness.

But real kindness. Not the kindness where you need to wait for someone to ask. Not the kindness where you let the other guy know, "Hey, lookee here! I'm giving you something." But rather, the kindness where you feel indebted to the recipient for providing you the opportunity to help him out. And so, he gets his help with dignity and respect.

Which means that once you have learned understanding, you see that there really is no hierarchy of givers and getters in this world. It's only on the surface that it seems that way, but in the understanding view from within, no one gives without getting, no one gets without giving.

For more on this giving-getting idea, take a look at The Lunar Files. Now that's real kabbalistic.

It's a strange, strange thing, but the Torah opens with a bet. No, not that sort of bet. Well, maybe it does that too. But what I meant is that the first letter of the first word of the opening verse of the Torah is the second letter of the alephbet--the letter bet. Why the Torah doesn't open with an aleph is explained in The Aleph Files. But why a bet?

Now you're asking, "Why does this long-bearded Kabbalist who's kind of a little strange himself think it so strange that the Torah starts with a bet? What's the big deal anyways? It had to start with something."

The point is that if the Torah starts with a bet when describing the emergence of a created world, that means the world itself begins with--and is contained within--the letter bet.

Because, you see, the Torah is not like other books about the world. With other books, first there's a world and then the book tells a story about that world. But the story of the Torah preceded the world. First there was the story, then G_d said, "Great story! Let's do it!" and then it came to be.

So if the Torah starts with a bet, the bet contains everything that will happen from that point on.

They say that when the Alter Rebbe and many of his followers were being escorted by the Russian Army away from the battlefront with Napolean, they would stop at each fork in the road, the Alter Rebbe would lean on his staff and ponder and then say which way to go. One time, when he pondered quite long, his grandson asked what was the problem. He answered that it all depended on which way to learn the first bet in the Torah.

Starting the Torah with the letter bet means to say that there was something before, but we can't see it from here. That's crucial. If we could see what came before the world, there would be no world. It would be like living in a house where all the walls were transparent and allowed you to walk right through them. There would be no house. So too, a transparent universe is not a real universe. That's why the word we use for world in Hebrew is olam--which means "a concealment." To be a world, it must conceal its origin. It cannot tell you about the aleph, only about the bet.

Yet, the world was made with compassion. It could have been made with a samech or a closed mem--a perfectly closed system with no view in any direction except within. All would be driven by fate, like a pre-programmed mechanism, and we would be nothing more than the mechanical dolls going through our motions for the entertainment of our Maker. Who would probably get quite bored after a few thousand years of this.

Instead, we live in a bet. Bet is related to bayit, meaning a house. And a house has windows and doors. This house also has windows--the tzadikim who draw light into our world and the miracles that scream at us, "There's something more here than your little universe! Look up! Look yet higher!"

There's also a door, and the door is not locked. True, the door only opens in one direction--not to what came before, not to what is above or what is below, but only to what will be. But that is all we need for our escape to freedom: The power to open the door, to walk outside of our defined little universe, and to plant a garden and grow the future.

We live in a world not of what is, but of what could be.

There was a time when people would sit and ponder their sins, their faults and just everything wrong, bad and crummy about themselves. They would cry and sob from their hearts, fall asleep weeping, and then they would get up the next morning with a pure soul to serve their Maker.

Nowadays, when someone ponders his failures, it almost inevitably leads to depression. When pondering a past sin, he usually remembers what a geshmak it was and ends up doing more.

So what happened? Quite simply, the darkness got thicker. When you're surrounded by light, it's okay to stick your nose into a few dark corners--maybe you'll find something valuable you lost in there. But when you live in a world with the lights dimmed and all the blinds pulled down, dark corners become bottomless, John Wheeler black holes.

That's why repentance is so darn dangerous nowadays. When someone calls me up and says, "Rabbi, I messed up! How do I repent?"--I tell them, "Repentance? Stay away from that stuff! It's hazardous!"

So they say, "But, whadja I gotta do about this sin messup deal in my life?" And I tell 'em, "Just start running towards the light." And they say, "But then I'll never do the teshuva thing, like it says in all those books, about deep remorse and weeping over your sins."

And I say, "Right now, forget the remorse and the weeping. Just get past it! It's a trap. It's your nasty, self-destructive snake inside trying to take you for lunch."

"No, rabbi, no! I gotta repent!"

"You don't wanta repent. You want a replay!"

"A what?"

"A replay. That's when your mind experiences something pleasurable and so goes back to replay it again and again, until it rewires all its neurons so it can get lots more of it. But you won't let your mind replay this particular messup, because you know it was real immoral, bad and crummy. So your mind, being just as smart as you are, since it is your mind after all, comes up with a solution: It says, "I don't want a replay--I want to repent." Well, you don't. You want a replay. Nothing to do with repenting."

And you say: "But when will I rip away all the ugly stuff clinging to me because of this lousy thing I did?"

And I answer: "When you are running towards the light, filling your life with more wisdom, more understanding, more mitzvahs, more joy, love, beauty and the light is getting brighter and brighter, but you just can't get it because something is holding you back, and you realize it's that crummy messup from the past, and you say, "Get off my back!" you look behind for a sec, throw it away, and fly ahead. That's when you repent. But not until then."

Why? What happened? The darkness got darker; the light got closer.

Today, only the children of light can rise.

The problem with religion is all this talk about faith. Why believe in something just because somebody else--or even a lot of people--believe it is true. After all, why do they believe it? Because they believe someone else. And what kind of proof is that? Because a lot of believers believe, I should believe too?

Then there's philosophy. The problem with philosophy is all this talk about reason. Reason doesn't move you anywhere, because for every good reason in one direction, there's always another equally good reason in the opposite direction--and even if you don't know of one, once you've had enough experience with reason proving you wrong you're always going to have that nagging feeling that this is also going to be a dead end.

So what's a living, breathing, suposedly sentient being supposed to do?

Nobody ever took a risk, made a gamble or invested in a business by force of reason. But only fools do such things on pure faith. The tried and proven approach to life is a proper balance of the two.

First you have faith that there is an answer. Nothing can happen without a place to stand.

Then you use your mind to look clearly, casting aside preconceptions, assumptions and prejudices. Even if the answer is not what you expected, not what you would like, not where you were planning to head, hey, it's the answer. Then you look again, even deeper. And yet deeper.

And then a voice inside says, "Yeah, this is it. I gotta go with this one."--that's when you commit. That's when reason ends and faith takes over.

Like a marriage: It starts with an attraction, a kind of faith that this the right one. And it ends with a commitment, that we're going to make this work, no matter what. It doesn't start with reason and it doesn't end with reason. But if there's no reason in between, man can you get in trouble.

Once you've done your homework and you know this guy has no history of violence, has got his act together enough to support a family and is who he says he is--or the similar kinds of factors with a gal--then you go beyond that. You get married. Marriage is the point where you say, "Ok, now I can believe in you. Now I have faith. Now, even if one day I wake up and see you lying there makeupless, in your curlers, and even a few wrinkles and grayish hairs, snoring and grumpy-looking after our terrible quarrel last night, still I'm there for you, I believe in you.

Really, you started with that faith to begin with. You just needed some reasoning to make sure you're not being duped.

So too, the Jew is married to the Torah. He doesn't want to study the books of all those who say he is a fool--just as a faithful husband doesn't want to hear criticism of his wife. Just like an athlete in training doesn't want to hear all the reasons why he might not win. He has 100% faith that he will win--otherwise he would not be killing himself over the grueling rigors of his daily training?

Just like the acrobat will not take his eyes off his goal, so the Jew after 3,320 years is not ready to say, "Hey, maybe we made a mistake back there. Maybe we didn't think it through properly after all. Maybe we gave our lives to the Greeks, the Romans, the Crusaders, the Inquisition, etc. all in vain? Maybe all our history was a big waste after all and our fathers and mothers were plain fools for three millenium?"

Okay, if you want, you can think all those things.

Just as the acrobat is about to place his foot on the platform at the far end of his rope, he looked back and...

Now you understand why we had to first learn the yud, then the vav, and only then look at the alef. As we go through the alefbet, you'll see that not only the alef, but every letter, is a composite of the vav and different forms of the yud.

The alef, however, tells it all. Hey, look at this: Every letter of the alefbet has a numerical value. The alef--you guessed it--is 1. It also has another numerical value, because you can spell it out: Alef (1), Lamed (30), Feh (80) spells Alef in Hebrew letters. Add those up and you get 111. All three bases loaded with ones.

That's because the alef isn't just about oneness, it's about creating oneness. When there is nothing else but one that's not the real oneness. The real oneness is when there is more than one--there are at least two--and yet both find a common essence and come together as one. Which means the first step is that there is only one; the second step is that there are two; and the third step is that there are two that become one. One above, one below and one together makes three ones.

Practically speaking: I'm here on planet earth thinking there's nothing else but me. The Infinite Light (as we Kabbalists like to call Him) looks upon the whole scene and sees there is nothing else but Him. But then I realize, hey that's ridiculous, I didn't make this place, there must be someone way bigger than me behind all this. So I reach up to Him. Which was just what He was waiting for so that He could reach down to me. And so we are two that become one.

Now, you're asking, "How on earth does a meat and bones human being reach up to the Infinite Light?" The answer is that the Infinite Light set things up so that we have a whole repertoire of mitzvahs and beautiful deeds for connecting with. They look small and innocent enough, but in fact, they are all really trigger-points to elicit response from Above. He says, "Reach up to me by doing these things, and I will reach down to you in a similar way. Make light with a candle for Shabbat, and I will shine into your home. Give a coin to those in need, and I will give you life and the things you need. Put a mezuzah on your door, and I will protect you in all you do. Wrap these leather boxes with scrolls to connect your mind and heart, and I will focus my supernal mind and heart on you and your world. Turn to me in love, and I will mirror that love back to you--only that it will be in my infinitely unbounded terms."

That also explains Miri's puzzle: Why is it that the lower yud reaches high up, while the higher yud reaches way down? Well, it's because the higher I reach up to Him, the further down He reaches to me. To make the worlds of the angels one with the Infinite Light, you don't have to reach so high. But to take all the stuff of this everyday world of ours and make it one with Him, for that you have to reach very high indeed. Which is just what the ancient Book of Formation teaches: The lowest is connected to the highest and the highest is connected to the lowest.

You are probably wondering why the second letter we're doing is the sixth letter of the alefbet. Well, once we get to the Alef (coming up soon), you'll understand. Just hang in there.

Being #6 is pretty significant. There are six directions (because there are three dimensions and two directions within each dimension) which means that there are also six sides to a cube. And that is because G_d created the world in six days, which were extensions of the six modalities of light in the World of Atzilut, a.k.a The Six Midot (because the three Intellects did not descend into creation and Malchut is Shabbat) which are because G_d had in mind a creature with six modalities of emotion which is us--so He set the whole system up to get what He wanted.

Turns out that all of human expression can be reduced to some combination of six modalities, which are:

=========

The Three Sensitive Modalities of Human Emotion (closer to Mind):

Chessed=Benevolence/Giving/Kindness/Positive Flow of Energy outwards and downwards

Gevurah=Might/Judgment/Severity/Negative Withholding of Energy and Withdrawal inward and upward

Tifferet=Beauty/Compassion/Truth/Balance of Opposites and life within paradox which is necessary to survive

The Three Instinctive Modalities of Human Emotion (further from Mind):

Netzach=Victory/The Drive to Win/Competitiveness/Overcoming and Conquering

Hod=Sense of Awe/Surrender/Submission/Restraint and Service

Yesod=Firm Foundation/Connection with other/Reaching to outside

=========

When I taught Miri, I tried to embed a few deep truths in the lesson. Perhaps as she grows older she will find and unravel them.

Growing up and becoming a mature adult is all about drawing the Yud (which is Wisdom) into all these emotions. If there is no Yud there, then the Vav is "just a line" and the emotions are pitted against each other. Yud is that higher perspective of things, the sense of purpose that gives emotions meaning and shows a place for each one. Like a conductor to an orchestra, the Yud of Wisdom brings many diverse voices into collaboration to create a wonderful harmony.

Tzadikim are able to tune the strings of their emotions directly, like a guitarist tunes the six strings of his guitar. The rest of us can only work on our emotions indirectly, by focusing our thoughts, speech and especially our action on matters that are "good for the yud"--and thereby nourishing a health, flourishing vav. Then, when we connect with a Tzadik, he can do the rest and leave us with a finely tuned instrument to play through life.

Just a short interlude with something light. We'll be back to the alef-bet next week with the letter "Vav".

In Kabbala, the Yud usually represents the point of wisdom from which all begins. It also represents the essence-spark of G_d within each of us. Here's the story that inspired this episode:

This happened when Rabbi Shalom Dovber was about nine years old. He was walking home from school with his older brother, Zalman Aaron, who was about eleven. Zalman was a stickler with grammar, scrupulous about every word of the prayers. Shalom on the other hand, was not so meticulous about these things. So now and again, Zalman would scold his younger brother about how he prayed.

This time, Zalman demanded of his younger brother, "Why is there a point after the word B'chemla in Modeh Ani?"

Zalman was referring to a comma. It seems his little brother was ignoring the punctuation and stringing words together that really should be apart, thereby convoluting the meaning — which was just the sort of thing his older brother couldn't tolerate. But the little boy had an alternative explanation for that little point.

"The whole idea is in a point," he answered. "And the point has to expand and spread throughout the entire Tefilla."

When the boys' father, the Rebbe Maharash, heard about this, he told their teacher, "Teach my younger son all you want. Just take care not to cause damage."

Sometime I muse that all the teachings of the Kabbalah are really nothing more than everything the Hebrew language contains inherently. This teaching about creation with words is a good example.

In English (and other languages), you have objects, material, physical, things, stuff. How do you say any of that in Biblical Hebrew? You don't. No word matches the meaning of any of those. When Jews wanted to translate the words of foreign philosophers into Hebrew, they had to abduct words meant for desires, clay and rain and twist their arms into becoming code words for Greek concepts.

In Hebrew, there is only the word. Davar (that's how you say word in Hebrew). Whatever exists is a word. If there's more than one, they are dvarim. The tree is a word, the earth is a word, the heavens are a word and you and I are words, too. So is running, eating, speaking and even being. Nothing is a thing, everything is a word.

Makes sense. After all, G_d said "Be light!" and light came into being. So what is light? Nothing more than G_d saying that light should be. And the same with every other creation: They are all words, Divine words. Not static things that are just here because they are here, but articulations of G_d speaking, telling a story about a world that exists only because He is telling a story about it

What is a word? It is a thought in crystal form. A person perceives the world a certain way, feels about it accordingly and articulates that in his thoughts. Then when he wants to communicate those thoughts to those outside of him, he condenses them into a stream of spoken droplets, or frozen crystals upon a page.

So, too, when the Great Isifier desires to create a world that would seem outside of Himself, He condenses His thoughts of this world into tight packets of creative energy, combining and mixing them to generate all that is.

(Hey, it's not much different than what's happening on this computer right now. Think about it: Everything you see and hear on this machine is generated by combinations of words in the programmer's code.)

Kabbalists know that the 22 letters of the Hebrew Alphabet are hard-wired to those 22 articulations of energy that are sustaining the universe. They master ways to manipulate those letters in order to heal fractures and fissures in the cosmic whole. It's dangerous stuff, so these secrets are transmitted only orally. Some of it has been written down, but their true meaning can only be understood by someone who has received the tradition from a teacher.

Nevertheless, any child--or even an adult--that learns to read the Hebrew letters, and says the words of our Torah out loud with joy and with love, that child also brings light and healing into the universe. The same with our prayers, which were arranged by prophets and sages according to the hidden knowledge. In that way, everyone can be a Kabbalist, and the whole world can be healed.

Hold on. It will take us a while, but we're planning to bring you the whole set of 22 letters in episodes coming up.

This one is the key to everything. It was the most radical breakthrough in human thought since Abraham discovered that G_d was playing the universe interactively. This discovery was made by the supreme kabbalist, the Arizal (Rabbi Isaac Luria, 1534–1572) and it changed the way everyone thinks to this day.

Here's what I mean: Until the Arizal came up with this, the classic version of world theo-history was, "G_d made a nice world, but we messed it all up. So now, you better be good, because boy is He going to give it to those who made this mess."

Then the Arizal comes and turns everything upside down: "The whole mess is G_d's fault. He had a great idea, but it came out a big mess. And He put us here to clean up the mess and get His dream working."

Get it? In scenario A, G_d is the active party, and we are entirely passive. In scenario B, it's all up to us. That's a major revolution.

This idea is called tikun, meaning "fixing." The Arizal and his students spoke about every mitzvah as a way to fix something in the universe. Remember those nuggets of gold in The Gold Mine episode? Or the pearl in Deep Sea Diving? Those are references to the sparks of luminous vessels that feel from the primal world of Tohu.

Hey, why re-explain the whole thing here? Read Fallen Sparks and you'll get the whole idea. And then you'll see that just about everything we have to say about the world today is in the shadow of the Arizal's Big Idea.

There's so much to talk about on this one. I'm anticipating a loud KToon community buzz, sharing experiences, reactions, rebuttles, rejections, rebellions, reconciliations, rethinkings, repercussions, recapitulations and more.

The idea is actually one of the early teachings of the great kabbalist and chassidic master, Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, from when he used to say short teachings before his time in Czarist prison. What's neat is the way he teaches you to objectify your feelings, saying, "That's not really me, that's just a fire burning inside."

You see, the #1 booby-trap on the path to self-mastery is self-blame. As soon as you say, "Oy! I'm so bad for feeling that way!"—you've already sentenced yourself to eternal slavery. Why? Because you've identified yourself with those feelings. You've said, "That is who I am, that is how I feel." And you have to be who you are, right?

But if you say, "Oy, it's that burning fire/dumb animal/secretion of hormones happening again!"—so now you can choose to ignore/tame/master that fire/animal/limbic response system.

After all, you are not the animal inside. You are a G_dly soul.

This episode is dedicated to all the people who write to me to kvetch about everything that's wrong in the world and who's doing it and just how bad it really is that even the rabbis and the teachers and the kabbalists fall into the pits along with everyone else. In other words, the whole world is full of dirt.

So I tell them: Imagine after 120 years down here--may the Infinite Light grant you long and luminous years-you walk through those mahogany doors into the supernal court and they ask you, "Nu? So what did you get done down there?"

And you answer, "Oh, did I find dirt! Lots of dirt! Let me tell you about it:..."

Know what they're going to answer you? 'Zakly as I did: "We sent you to a gold mine and all you can come up with is dirt?!"

In fact, the great kabbalist, Rabbi Chaim Vital, writes that his teacher, none other than The Ari, Rabbi Isaac Luria, taught that this world is lowest of all worlds, the final repository of all the mud from the higher worlds, almost all of it dark, thick shells, with only a tiny bit of the good stuff mixed in. But that good stuff! Whoa! Nothing comparable to it! Not in any of those angel worlds above and not even in any place higher!

And the real neat thing is: Once you fight with the mud to grab away the sparks of goodness it holds, the mud itself begins to shine. It shines the transcendent light, a light so intense even the highest world cannot contain it.

Hey, what are we sitting around talking for! There's gold in them thar mud piles!

Many of you are wondering exactly how Matzah Therapy works. Although the therapeutic value of MT has been well known for thousands of years, it is only due to recent research in our lab here in Unspecified Location, Planet Earth, that a plausible explanation can be described in biochemical terms.

The matzahs used in MT are produced from powdered triticum and dihydrogen monoxide. Of course, these are the essential ingredients in most breads. There are, however, several key factors in the baking process that distinguish MT from other breads. To understand the impact of these factors, we need to understand the metabolic processes that are peculiar to Feivels.

Unlike other mechanical pets, Feivels do not live by battery packs alone. Feivels are in constant need of mental input originating from the mind of their owner. This input not only directs the emotional state of your Feivel, but also serves to replenish electrical circuits. and ensure smooth function of all parts.

Another peculiarity of Feivels is that they are programmed to be a lot of fun and very challenging. To accomplish this, they require an EF (ego function). The algorithms used to generate this state are proprietary intellectual property of SecretKabbalaSociety.com and will not be discussed further in this forum. What is important to understand is that EF, although a key element in any Feivel profile, can make an awful lot of noise. When that noise level passes over a critical threshold--this is known as "Hyper-Ego Functioning"--it effectively drowns out any signals from outside. Feivel's circuits begin auto-reiterating in recursive loops, evidenced by an expanding head, heavy eyelids and all round obnoxiousness. A Feivel suffering HyperEF displays intolerance of any other conscious being occupying a similar space or performing similar functions. Eventually, productive activity grinds to a halt, to be replaced only by demands for service and attention, often accompanied by terse insults and bad jokes.

At this point, the only way to get a mind-signal into a Feivel is by dropping one straight into its I/O port (aka mouth). That's the MT matzah. The mind-signal is embedded into an MT matzah by processing all the materials manually and mindfully. At each step along the way, those handling the MT materials recite verbally that they are doing whatever they are doing, "for the sake of matzahs for mitzvahs." At Infinity Labs, even the harvesting of the MT wheat and the drawing of MT water is performed with this mindfulness state. This is also known as "handmade matzah shmurah" or "handmade shmurah matzah"--depending on who you want to impress.

MT matzahs are capable of retaining mindfulness embedded within their molecular structure because they are flat. The eukaryotic micro organisms known as saccharomyces cerevisiae attack the fermentable sugars within moist grains, releasing carbon dioxide that inflates the dough thereby negating the mindfulness state previously embedded there. MT matzahs are placed in a fired stone oven before those nasty saccharomy guys can get to work, keeping the matzahs flat and ego free.

Consuming MT matzahs on the first night of Passover is a guaranteed method to embed their ego-balancing signal in your Feivel for an entire year. Just make sure you use quality matzahs, supervised throughout their process and hand-baked for the sake of the matzah mitzvah. Follow the instructions from your Feivel manufacturer. And remember, you can always rely on Infinity Labs for the highest quality Kabbalistic solutions.

A flurry of excitement shook the KToon world last week as pundits struggled to decode the meaning behind GLT. Proposals include:

1. Getting Lost in my own Tracks
2. Genuine Lovable Talk
3. Genuine Love for Technology
4. GLT-1 is the most abundant Glial subtype of gLutamate Transporters in mutant mice (learned something new)
5. eGo (look, he got one letter right)
6. GaLuT (exile, diaspora)
7. GoLiaTh (no wonder Saul was so afraid of him)
8. the next pause to take breath (I think this has some numerical correlation somehow)
9. Go Learn Torah
10. GeLT (money)
11. Get Lost in Things
12. Ground Level Thinking
13. Depression (depressed people have difficulty with details of anagrams, etc.)
14. Gooey Liquid Technoguck
15. Great way to Lose Time thinking of stupid ways to decipher a meaningless anagram

Two skilled detectives, David in LA and Eli in Melbourne, actually determined the author's original meaning: GuiLT. But, of course, that in no way diminishes the value of all other submissions. As Jews, text is reality. Who cares about author's intentions?

Choosing a "best explanation" in the face of such an unexpected whirlwind of submissions lies far beyond my capacity. However, as we await the Passover Edition of KToons (next week), how 'bout this:

Send me your concepts, your ideas, your dreams for KToon scripts. Post them all here. Requirements are simple: They require a prop, allow for lots of action, and provide an opportunity to communicate a life-impacting truth from kabbalistic wisdom.

Note required by the lawyers: Anyone posting their ideas here agrees that what they post will lie within the public domain, excluding, of course, all elements of past and planned KabbalaToon episodes.

Okay, all you KToon fans! Now it's your turn: Explain to all of us what's GLT and why thinking about higher things is the best strategy to get out of it.

Then maybe you can also explain why GLT is an effective energy source when exploited strategically.

Best explanation wins the opportunity to collaborate on a KToon script!

Vote here: Mister Poll

But first, keep this in mind: You're not just choosing some nice little chatchka to entertain the kids for a few hours. Neither are you choosing a cute pet to integrate into the family. You're going to get this Feivel and he's going to be connected to your brain. That's right: You'll be the mind, Feivel will be the heart. You're choosing who you want to be.

Along with an easy-to-assemble Feivel in a choice of infinity-blue, kabbalah-pink or candy-turquoise, a battery recharger with a universal adapter, and a brain-to-Feivel transmission device, you'll get the training DVD that demonstrates all the mind-over-heart issues we talked about in past blogs. Basically, according to the state of your brain waves, that's what's going to be happening in Feivel. Together, you and Feivel will become one person.

Now you're asking, "Why on earth would anybody want to do that?"

So here's why: Controlled, double-blind studies in our lab have demonstrated that consistent Feivel training over a period of only three months drastically increased mind-mastery, self-confidence, concentration, emotional stability, cosmic consciousness and general enjoyment of life in 98.72% of subjects who survived to complete the term. Furthermore, before-and-after fMRI scans conclusively demonstrated permanent structural changes in the frontal cortex and basal ganglia of these subjects. It is theorized that these changes could be a major factor in offsetting ADD, OCD, PDD, GLT, NYPD and just about anything else a pediatric psychiatrist could throw at you.

Obviously, this is something that no budding Kabbalist fan would want to pass up. The question is only: Feivel Lite™ or Feivel Pro™?

Feivel Lite™ leads you to a state of ultimate mind-heart mastery, tranquility and serene higher consciousness. Your heart becomes a crystal vessel for the enlightenment of the mind. Your emotions and behavior are guided in perfect harmony to your inner vision. You gain high social status and could likely even start your own cult, if it weren't for the selflessness clause in the Feivel sales agreement.

Feivel Pro™, on the other hand, leads to an unpredictable life of incessant challenge. Setbacks, mess-ups, tantrums and burnouts are all default features of the Feivel Pro landscape. It's certainly possible to avoid serious disgrace, outrage and abomination of lasting repercussion, but only by being forever on guard. In a word, the job of the Feivel Pro master is to continually be Feivel and not be Feivel at once.

For further information on the two modes of Feivelness, please examine chapters 12–16 and 27–28 of the world's first Practical-Kabbalah-for-the-Everyman book, Sefer HaTanya by Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi.

Now here's the Big Deal: As a dedicated KToons addict, this is your once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to provide your input. Just comment below, telling us which Feivel you would rather integrate into your personality and why. Then, don't forget to register your vote at Mister Poll so we can begin mass production accordingly.

It should be noted that the Original Manufacturer seems to have had an overwhelming preference for Feivel Pro. Unless you have a better explanation for the human race.

For information on Feivel Inc. investment opportunities, please visit our corporate site.

The Kabbalah of Dips, Downs, Outs and Transformation:

They say life has its ups and downs. It's not true. Life is ups and downs.

Let's start with breathing. Pretty important for life, right? All the major classes of structural molecules in living organisms need oxygen, so you gotta breathe. You do that by creating a vacuum inside. At that point, you become weaker, more helpless. You don't want to take a punch when you're inhaling. But that's when you pull in the oxygen that your hemoglobin will carry from your lungs to every cell in your body. That's how you recharge.

For that oxygen and everything other vital substance to get around your body, your heart needs to pump. It also does this by creating a vacuum—a hydraulic vacuum—so it can pull in the old blood and pump out the new.

Then there's your neurons, firing in a harmonious rhythm conducted by the field marshall of your brain, the thalamus: positive charge—fire; negative charge—receive; marching at about 20 times per second when you're active, mellowing to a soft 10 or so when you relax.

Those aren't the only rhythms drumming away in your body and your environs. You may have noticed that even your money works this way: You spend in order to get. You invest in order to earn. Even money joins in the cosmic dance, the song of being, that resonates through every participant of existence in the universe. Everything is in constant pulse, because everything is energy and all energy oscillates in waves. There is no crest that is not preceded by a trough, no positive without first a negative; everything is constantly moving, vibrating, pulsating with the breath of life. As soon as any particle would cease this dance of life and retreat to stillness, it would disappear into the void of zero energy.

The Kabbalah describes the songs of the angels in constant "running and return." The Midrash speaks of the song each creature sings, the song by which it achieves life, those rhythms, those vibrations of life. Time itself is simply the grand pulse of the entire universe in a cycle of millennia, years, days and moments.

The Energy Problem

Why must the universe do a song and dance to earn its right to exist? Here's what the Kabbalah has to say:

Everything that exists is projected onto the four-dimensional stage of space and time by a boundless, transcendent source of energy, a.k.a. the Infinite Light. Every moment, every galaxy, every star, every critter and every subatomic particle must be sustained by that light or it will return to the void. Just like the stuff in my Isifier.

Problem is, the Infinite Light is infinite. The stuff that it's sustaining is decidedly finite. So how do you funnel infinite energy into finite stuff?

Now that I've got the interest of the Energy Commission, I'll explain the Big Problem:

The Big Problem isn't just that infinite is too big to fit into finite. It's that, from the perspective of the truly infinite, finite things simply don't exist. If you would break the membrane between the Infinite Light and the finite creation, the whole caboodle would just be gone. No fizz. No pop-bang-zap burnout. Just gone, like it never was. Because from the Infinite's perspective, this whole reality of ours was never really there to begin with.

So here's the trick: For each thing in the universe to be a something, it has to first dip back into a place where it is nothing. That's when it receives it's vitality and can become a something again. Then, returning to somethingness, it finds itself orphaned, cut off from its source. So it returns to nothingness once again, and becomes revitalized, in an endless loop.

That's how energy works: The trough of a wave is the return to nothingness, the crest is the retreat to somethingness. The more something you want to be, the more nothing you have to become first. There's just no other way to receive.

And that's how it happens in life on earth as well. If you just want to move along step by incremental step, you can be satisfied with the regular cycle of dips and bounces through life. But when it's time for you to make a major leap in life, to reach to something that was previously way out of your bounds, that's when you find yourself dipping into an all-time low. That's the crouch before the jump, the kvetch of a spring before its release, the compression of gases before a big gaboom.

How To Squeeze a Lemon

Of course, not every retreat leads to victory, just as not every seed that rots under the ground will break through and blossom. For us human being, it's a matter of choice: You could choose to remain cramped within that crouch, and eventually just collapse—or just go on as though it never happened. What a shame—such a waste of a good depression!

Or you could exploit that depression to your advantage. Be like the child on a swing, pumping her feet just as she reaches the apex of her backward climb. Go with the flow, play along with the game, take advantage of your sour state to make lemon juice, saying, "Hey I'm not the ultimate center of the universe after all. In fact, I'm pitifully far from where I really want to be."

In case you didn't know, every act of life pulls energy from somewhere; either from the supernal channels of light or from the dark matter of Otherness; from the sweet springs of Divine Life or the sewer of the cosmic parasites; in harmony with the transcendental symphony or totally out of tune in the wrong key and meter; sitting at lunch with the Master of All Things or reaching to the dregs of His refuse containers out back.

So you start asking, "Where am I connected? Look at all the stupid fantasies playing incessantly in my mental meTube. What kind of a crazy channel are they tuned into? The words that come out of me, the habits I can't break—what station am I on?"

The depression turns to bitter, seething resentment. That's good. Depression is death; bitterness is the resurrection of the dead, where Dr. Life meets Mr. Death and performs CPR. There is anger, a kind of internal fury as the soul begins to catch fire. Like the Zohar says in the name of the Dean of the Academy of the Garden of Eden, "When you want a log to catch fire, you break it up. When you want to catch fire, you also need to break yourself up, to shatter your old self and start again."

Out of the ashes, a new self emerges. That's when you hear a small voice whisper, "There's a lot of things about me that need to be jettisoned, like a lizard sheds its skin, or a crustacean abandons its shell in order to grow. Inside me lies a G_dly soul, with infinite power. If only I could let go of my self-infatuation, my nutty fantasies and dumb habits, perhaps then the light of that Divine soul could shine through."

It's in that broken state that you are able to receive, to open up to the light within you and thereby tap into the unlimited power source from which that light extends. Finally liberated from that cumbersome backpack of artificial ego, unhindered by the baggage of false self-concept, now you can really start to fly, carry-on only.

Beyond Success

Sometimes, it's time for not just a major leap, but a quantum leap. Not just from little bear to big bear, but metamorphosis, from creepy-crawly bug to beautiful butterfly. From dinky little seed to big strong oak.

This may sound crazy, but the only way to totally break out of who you are and become something entirely new is through failure. "The Tzadik," wrote Solomon the Wise, "falls and stands seven times." Nothing can get you greater success than failure.

Everything we talked about until now is part of the natural order. Failure is not within the natural order. True failure is when you mess up and dip beneath your capabilities, beneath your nature. True failure is not just being incompetent. It's when you are capable of being great and you let the world down. That's when you're having a real bad day.

But the Kabbalah reveals that failure is also part of The Plan. Because dipping below nature is the only way a being can soar beyond it. Only once broken, are we able to put the pieces back together and build something totally new.

The moon is darkest when closest to the sun.

Become small, receive and then shine.

For more on failure and transformation, see Broken & Whole.

I know, I know...it's toooo esoteric. There's a mind walking a heart that has a mind sleeping inside it...you're thinking, how many minds does this Infinity guy think I have?

Well, the news is, we all have many minds. We like to think of ourselves as single-celled protozoans unicycling through life, when in truth we're all bustling metropolises of many, many neighborhoods, businesses, associations, organized crime, street gangs and, yes, politicians—each party competing for its voice to be heard.

Your doctor might explain to you the "hormone wars" taking place between your hypothalamus, pituitary, thyroid and adrenal glands. Neurologists discuss the dynamics going on between your right brain, your left brain, your reptilian brain and your limbic stuff in the middle of it all. Freud talked about the ego, the id and the superego. The Zohar talks about three rulers of the human body: the brain, the heart and the liver. However, it works, there are many voices in there, all clamoring for attention.

Nevertheless, the two major parties in this race are the brain and the heart. Those are the only two that feel they gotta have it all—each one vying for complete and exclusive dominion over the entire body. And they've got the wiring for it too: One holds dominion over the vast network of the nervous system, the other over the vital cardiovascular system. You could say that human life is about making war or peace between these two.

I can already hear you protest, "How on earth can a heart have a mind? It's just a meat-muscle pumping blood!"

But then, is it any less wondrous that the slab of grey matter in your skull is the seat of consciousness and imagination? Even more: that hunk of skull-marrow has the amazing capacity to rewire itself according to new choices and habits made in adult life; i.e. it has free will to direct its own design.

That's why many contemporary scientists are revisiting the idea of something that oversees the brain, even though it doesn't turn up in fMRI scans. They call it the mind, and many are convinced it's not just something the brain does, but something that does things with the brain. (You can read both sides of the story in David Chalmers' anthology entitled, Philosophy of Mind.)

This is the Kabbalistic explanation as well: The brain is just a device manipulated by something called "the thinking soul" to bring thoughts into physical reality. (The thinking soul in turn acts as an interface for the G_dly soul, but we'll have to get to that another time.) It seems the hyper-complexity of the brain together with the electro-conductive tissues of which it is made grant it the special place of middle-man between the ethereal soul and the gutsy body.

Same thing with the heart—it's also made of similarly electro-conductive tissues. It's the only organ of your body that will keep running even if it were removed and placed in a saline solution (don't try this except under clinical conditions). It too serves as a kind of receiver/transmitter for another kind of soul—titled "the animal soul."

Naa--I'm getting oversimplificated. You see, the thinking soul also has some very important offices holed up within the heart. Problem is, the staff there are usually asleep; and even when awake, they have great difficulty getting their messages out due to all the racket coming from the animal soul guys in the next office. The animal soul, too, is continually using the heart to pump messages to the brain in a kind of guerilla warfare, often clogging up the entire system to the point of declaring a coup d'état. Many of us are walking around much of the time with the brain occupied by the forces of the heart and the mind in political exile.

Now, each of these souls is a full person, with a mind and emotions. The mind of the thinking soul is like a parent that gives birth to its emotions, nurses them, feeds them and dresses them up snug and warm before sending them off to work. The mind of the animal soul, on the other hand, is more like one of those parents who is scared to death that his children may throw a tantrum, constantly running after them and giving in to their every demand. So too, the animal mind is a servant to its emotions, constantly on the lookout for things to fear and things to desire, relaying the information to the emotions and then finding ways to flee, fight or grab. Along its way, it tries to wrest control of the brain from the mind, like we said before, to enlist more forces in its maneuvers.

(Sometimes I wonder if perhaps the mind of the heart might reside in the limbic system. We'll leave that up to the neuro-kabbalists.)

Look, if you're an animal, that's great. That's what being an animal is all about, and its beautiful. Problem is, you're a human being. And a human being that doesn't get control over that big beast beneath the brain-blood barrier can get darn mean and ugly. No animal can be more destructive than a human being that thinks its an animal.

Simply put: The animal soul sees itself as the beginning and end of all things. There's no future, no past, no others, no higher goals--just get what you want and get it now. The thinking soul looks out there at the world and realizes that that's stupid, saying, "I didn't make this place. There's a lot more out here than just me. There's more to life than me feeling good now." And then each one tries to convince the other that it's wrong.

So here's how the mind takes control: First, it gets inspired. That's through study, contemplation and meditation upon inspiring thoughts. Like Kabbalah. Things that really awaken this vision of a universe megazillions times greater than itself, created by the power of the Infinite Light that transcends all things and vitalizes each one. Or the thought of how this Infinite Light reaches down to each person, treating each one of us as the center of the universe, including (and especially considering) yourself, and asking, "Please can you find a way to let me into your world?" Taking that seriously can melt the coldest soul.

When the mind is absorbed 100% into these things, without distraction, in clear 20/20 focus, it gives birth to a fire of deep emotions; a sense of amazement and awe, a burning attraction and a deep thirst to become one with the Infinite Light. The lines get hot enough to wake up those sleepy-bodies in the heart department, and a wild party ensues in which the staff members of the animal soul are totally overwhelmed and caught up in all the flurry.

Classically, this is what is supposed to happe