Kabbalah Consciousness | Look in the Mirror

The Zohar says the best years of Jacob's (Yakob or Yakub) life were those spent living in exile in Egypt for 17 years. The name of Egypt in Hebrew is mitzrayim. It also means narrow or problem. The Zohar is teaching us that Jacob was most alive when he was facing his problems and his garbage head on.

Our tendency is to want to get rid of problems, to solve them on the spot. But as Jacob is teaching us, our garbage is also our blessing. Pain and struggle lead us to seek more, to give more, and to reveal more. In fact, this is how most people take their first step onto the spiritual path.

The Zohar is not saying wallow in depression and feel sorry for yourself. That comes when we don't face our problems. But it is teaching us that when we confront our deepest fears and negative beliefs and behaviors, we uncover the spark of Light hiding beneath the harsh exterior of the circumstance. Kabbalists refer to it as revealing the concealed.

The longer we look at ourselves in the mirror, the faster our ugliness becomes beautiful.

It reminds me of a story my mother (and teacher) Karen Berg tells. It is of a man sitting in a field enjoying the sun when suddenly he is bitten on the hand by a lizard. As his hand starts to throb with pain, he walks to a nearby river and sticks his hand in to soak it. While sitting there, he notices a man drowning. He dives in, grabs hold of the man, and pulls him to shore.

"Thank you. You saved my life!" the man exclaims. "You should thank the lizard that bit my hand," the bitten man replied.

Many times chaos/challenges occur, and we should see them as opportunities to express the Light. So when we help others and they thank us, we can think, "Don't thank me. Thank the Light that I was allowed to reveal."

A problem is only a problem because we think it is. It's all how we look at it.

from: Weekly Kabbalah Consciousness Tune Up by Yehuda Berg

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