Archive for March, 2006

Energy Vampires

Saturday, March 18th, 2006

March 19 - 25, 2006

Last week I wrote about how to deal with someone who comes to you with their pain. I received an overwhelming response from readers asking me what to do with those friends who are repeat customers. We all have them in our lives — friends who complain, don’t change, and leave us feeling drained and empty. You know - energy vampires.

As someone studying Kabbalah, you have more wisdom - and reveal more Light - than you probably realize, and chances are you’re attracting people in need of advice. How do you know when you are sharing or simply being taken advantage of? How can you draw boundaries that will protect you from getting sucked dry while at the same time not hurting the other person - and still leaving them with the desire to change?

There are a few things to keep in mind. First, it’s important to remember that becoming a being of sharing doesn’t mean changing people. If somebody is unwilling to take responsibility, is in denial, or is simply so steeped in anger or self-pity that they can’t see out of their situation, it’s important to be sensitive to that and to give them their space.

Let yourself off the hook. You don’t need to fix everyone – nor can you.

Sometimes, people just need to go through the pain. An integral part of the process of revealing Light is facing the pain and walking through it, as difficult as it may be. Looking back on my greatest achievements in life, they all required me to get intimate with the feeling of pain. And while I didn’t like it while I was going through it, I wouldn’t have done it any other way.

Rav Ashlag, in The Gift of the Bible, says that the source of all pain comes from the desire to receive for the self alone (Ego). And all fulfillment comes from the desire to cleave to the Light (Soul). When people call you just to relieve themselves of temporary pain, remember that their Ego needs this pain so their Soul can reveal itself.

But please do not use this as an excuse to turn your cheek to another’s pain because Yehuda Berg said pain is good for you. If you are sincere in your devotion to becoming a being of sharing, you need to look at someone as if you were looking at yourself, or better yet, as if you were looking at your own child. Many of us treat ourselves worse than we treat others.

Moving on, another thing to ask yourself is am I helping or hurting? Helping means leading a person to a proactive place where they can see the action(s) that created their current chaos.

You generally can recognize if you’re hurting when you offer a suggestion and the person argues with you and tries to tell you where you’re wrong. If they’re not open to listening, then there is no vessel for them to receive the Light you have to share.

Another sign of hurting is they just call you to bad mouth someone else who hurt them. Agreeing that so-and-so is a you-know-what is just another temporary band-aid for a much larger problem.

The ideal thing to do is ask them to step outside of the situation and look at it as if they were a spectator of their own life. You want to gently guide them to the point where they can identify their part in the situation. If you can do that, but they still can’t see it, then the best help you can give is to let them wrestle with it on their own. Because you can bring a horse to water…
All the Best,
Yehuda

72 Name of the Week





I am aware of the divine sparks in every person.

Their true essence is awakened in my heart.

I become wiser in the ways of the world.

I perceive the repercussions of my every word and deed, and I know that sharing acts toward others are always in my own best interest.

Posted in Weekly Consciousness Tune-Up | No Comments »

Feel Me

Saturday, March 11th, 2006

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.

Posted in Weekly Consciousness Tune-Up | No Comments »

Injecting Excitement

Saturday, March 4th, 2006

March 5 - 11, 2006

We are now entering week two of the month of Pisces.  I don’t know about you, but I am feeling the beneficial energies this month has to offer – happiness, creativity, intuition. 

But on the flip side, I am sort of falling into a mellow routine.  Pisces are all about the mellow and the routine.  Routine can be a detriment to spiritual progress, so I opened The Zohar and asked for guidance from the Light as to how to fight my natural inclination this month.

The next day I got an email from two old friends about this exact issue.  (Don’t you love when that happens?)  It was from Janet and Chris Attwood who are motivational speakers and authors famous for creating The Passion Test.  I’ve gone through the steps of this test in the past and found it to be a great, practical solution for identifying passions of mine I didn’t even know existed.

I called them, and they took me through the test again, and it led to a breakthrough on a project I’ve been working to get off the ground for years.  It’s an effective tool that helped me, and I want to let you know about it because it can help you too. 

It’s important to identify what it is that speaks to your soul when it comes to work, relationships, and spiritual practice.  Many of us fall into careers or relationships that are less than satisfying because we simply aren’t aware of what speaks to us. 

And going through this process in a month like Pisces - when it is most difficult to ignite the internal fires – is beneficial to you because there is an opening now to ignite your passions for the rest of the year. 

But once you identify what you want to do – which is only 1 percent of the issue – you need to look at how you do it – which is the remaining 99 percent.

When Kabbalists speak of the energy of passion, they actually refer to it as excitement.  They explain that excitement is not something that is a result of just enjoying what you are doing or who you are doing it with.  Excitement is something you consciously inject into an action or situation.

When I say excitement, I don’t mean jumping up and down and pumping your fist.  I mean embracing whatever you are doing with 100 percent of your attention and dedication, whether it’s going to dinner with the family, initiating a project at work, making spiritual connections, or just going to the gym.

This week, if you notice that you like what you are doing but just aren’t feeling passionate about it, try injecting excitement into it.  And if you find that you aren’t doing what you know you were meant to be doing, I definitely recommend checking out my friends’ The Passion Test. 

And most important, meditate with the Name below and let the Light be your guide.



All the Best,
Yehuda

72 Name of the Week





This Name stokes the fires of passion in my heart and soul.

The letters give me the power to maintain sincerity, devotion, and correct consciousness in my prayers, meditations, and spiritual connections.

Posted in Weekly Consciousness Tune-Up | No Comments »