Klippot Cracking
August 28th – September 3rd, 2005
One of the greatest things we can learn from Kabbalah is how to pass through the pain of life without suffering.
The Zohar explains that pain purifies and removes the shells of negativity (klippot) that surround our inner Light. These shells are created by our negative deeds and they cover and limit our spiritual development. They are barriers between us and the Light.
Suffering is resistance to this pain.
We often approach our daily lives with the mentality of avoid pain at all costs. And the moment we do feel it, we immediately look for ways to anesthetize ourselves. The Zohar teaches that by resisting the pain, we are only creating bigger problems for ourselves in the future.
Pain is transitory but suffering sticks around and keeps us stuck.
The story of a student of mine in New York articulates this point. She had suffered from a chronic bad ankle for years. After endless searching, she finally found a healing modality, called Rolfing, which cured her ankle. Rolfing is a structural re-balancing technique developed to improve movement through intense, hands-on manipulation of rigid muscles, bones, and joints. What the Rolfer does, essentially, is pull the muscle and tendon tissue away from injured joints. And though it doesn’t always have to be, it usually is painful.
Through this process of using the hands to writhe the tissue away, the joint is freed up and given a chance to heal. You see, when the joint is injured and attached to all the surrounding tendons, the muscle tissue don’t have room enough to repair themselves.
That is how it is with the klippot constantly clinging to us - it makes it hard for us to grow and change. But if we want to go to our next level in spiritual awareness, love, friendships, career - we need to go through the painful process of separating ourselves from our klippot.
And we separate ourselves from our klippot every time we put our all into a job and it fails, every time someone we love goes away, every time our trust is broken – in other words, every time we take a risk and get hurt.
Contrary to what it feels like in the moment, the pain is actually a sign that something good is on the way. Think about the painful moments in your past. Does what I am writing ring true for you?
So it’s important to remind ourselves this week that the pain is good - it’s our klippot cracking. And once this separation heals, we will be stronger, healthier and one step closer to our true fulfillment.
All the Best,
Yehuda