Feel Me
March 12 – 18th, 2006
This week your ability to channel certainty into people’s lives is especially strong. When someone comes to you with a physical or emotional problem, your certainty can be a Lighthouse guiding them out of their darkness.
But be careful that your “certainty” is not just a mask for insensitivity.
I have a story about someone who approached me with a realization about this very idea. He had a friend who went for a physical exam and discovered he had colon cancer. He told the friend, “Don’t worry, it’s going to be okay. Trust the Light, scan Zohar, do more acts of sharing, and you’ll overcome this.”
But in retrospect, he realized how insensitive he was being. He didn’t stop for a minute to feel his friend’s pain or to acknowledge the difficult situation he was going through. He didn’t come to his friend’s level.
Being a positive channel for certainty involves understanding the pain of other people. Only then can you bring them to a point of trusting the Light.
You have to feel their pain as if it were your own, rather than jumping to give advice.
As I’ve said in recent Tune Ups, advice is our biggest vice. Sometimes there is a time to just listen and empathize and keep your mouth shut. If you do this, you’ll know the right time to offer solutions on using the Light of the Creator to make things happen. And it doesn’t necessarily have to be in the same conversation.
If you want them to “get it,” you’ve got to “get it” too.
Think about the positive channels in your life. Chances are they are the people who will sit and cry with you when the chips are down. It’s their actions that show they care, not their words. I recently read an interesting statistic that says 55% of communication is non-verbal. To me this means that you can push the Kabbalah rhetoric until you’re blue in the face, but if you don’t demonstrate the love, the message will get lost in the ether.
In ancient times, the Cohanim (the healing class of the Israelites) would heal and cleanse an impure person by taking on the person’s impurity for a day. In a sense, you have to do the same. If not, the person you want to help won’t feel that you genuinely care about him or her and will remain closed to your words.
Here is a story from my brother Michael’s book Becoming Like God that drives this point home:
A man once made the long journey to his teacher to bring him sad news: The man had a son whose medical condition had become grave, and doctors had given up hope. Without his teacher’s intercession, the son would surely die. “Is there anything you can do to help?”
The master began to pray and meditate, trying everything in his power, but after hours of effort, he turned sadly to his student. ”I’m sorry,” he said, “but the gates of heaven are closed. There is nothing I can do for your son.”
The man was desolate. He got on his horse and began traveling home. As evening fell, he heard a horse galloping behind him. He turned around and saw his master. Immediately, he thought perhaps the master had been able to open up the gates of heaven after all.
“What’s the news?” he asked eagerly. “I’m sorry,” said the master, “the gates of heaven are still closed. But after you left, I realized that even if I cannot help you with my prayers and meditations, at least I can cry with you. That is why I have come.”
The two men sat together on a rock by the side of the road and wept.
All the Best,
Yehuda
72 Name of the Week
My motivation of self-interest, ulterior motives, and hidden agendas give way to pure acts of friendship, unconditional love, and giving.
When I take myself out of the way, I create a space for true and loving friends, joy and fulfillment.
