Have you ever been excessively affected emotionally regarding an idea, a project, or a goal, so excessively affected emotionally that you felt like you could reach out and touch it - only to find that when you undertake to fetch it into actuality the whole thing breaks down?

It’s a mutual experience. In it is pure ungrounded form, in your fancy, the imaginativeness may look vastly invigorating and easy to achieve. But when you undertake to fetch it into realness, apparent and manifest it in all the myriad and fragmented dates and details of your life, more ofttimes than not you find that there are a good amount of obstacles along the way.

This is the stage that, as the saying goes, separates the men from the boys. The most easygoing thing to do at this point is to give up, to remain with your old habitual ways of being that can not be at long last fulfilling but are, at least, comfortably familiar and intimate.

But, whether or not you make up your mind to remain the course, to work through the obstacles and apparent and manifest your imaginativeness no matter what it takes, you will find at the end that you have not only updated your causes and circumstances, but you’ve grown hugely in the routine.

Light-darkness-light: a core principle of creation

If you’ve ever had this experience, you have unwittingly stumbled upon one of the core impalpable and spiritual mysteries of creation. Life is designed in such a way that our deepest and most noble and powerful growth occurs not as a smooth upward routine, but in a three-fold pattern of imaginativeness-breakdown-transformation, or light-darkness-light.

At the nucleus and beginning of the routine the light of your imaginativeness shines powerfully and distinctly – but in an external way, without taking account the myriad dates and details through which that light should be manifested. it is there, invigorating you, but it is not in truth yours, nor does it do anything to impact the earth around you.

Bringing your imaginativeness into actuality means that the light has to be contained in “vessels”. It should be indicated not only in your mind, but in the physical dates and details of time and space - your relationships, occupations and habits, and environs. The problem is that at this stage, these vessels are ofttimes too little and immature to comprise the light of the new realness you want to manufacture.

When this is the case, things do not work out the way you want them to. In fact, once in a while they really get worse.

As you undertake to manufacture new ways of being or employ new enterprises, your relationships can get even more unmanageable, your environs more disorderly, your schedule more stressful or your tender and aroused state more overwhelmed. As ofttimes occurs when we undertake something challenging, you may experience fear, resistance, uproar and confusedness, or disappointment. And necessarily, you will get in touch with things regarding yourself that you would have in all likelihood preferent not to see.

The choice: to give up or to grow up

Once this happens, you have a choice. You may give up, leaving all those constituents of yourself and your life (the vessels) the way they were when you started, your light unexpressed, and you with yet one more failure underneath your belt.

Or, you may proceed to move forward, taking a good hard look at what is in the way and making the solution and campaign, within those myriad dates and details of time and space, to rectify, remove or transform it. This stage may be challenging, even intensely so, and it ofttimes requires grounded and persistent solution and campaign to get through to the end. It means taking a good hard look at yourself and your life, working to exaggerate your qualities of being able to perform, ameliorate your relationships or your statesmanship and reputation, and build your inner force and courage.

If you are more than willing to do this, opportunities are high that you will succeed over time in making your imaginativeness a realness, altho this is never sure. What is sure, nevertheless, is that you will have grown as a humane being – the reason the obstacles were there in the primary place.

In fact, this growth, this routine of expanding beyond your own boundaries, of interacting with the g-d-given causes and circumstances of your life in such a way that your infinite soul expresses more and more of itself through the “vessel” of your finite physical body, is the intention and aim behind your very existence here on world.

Moses and the shattering

The story of the giving of the torah – distinctively, of how moses obtained the two tablets of the ten commandments – embodies this principle.

Altogether, moses expended 120 days and nights on mount sinai in uninterrupted and familiar converse with g-d. for the duration of the primary 40 days he was divested from all of his physical needs, and taught the mysteries of torah by the creator. At the end of this amount of time he descended from mount sinai with the primary set of tablets on which were engraved the ten commandments. This primary set was of heavenly sapphire and the words were engraved in the stone in a miraculous manner by g-d himself.

When moses brought these tablets down from the mountain he was confronted by the sight and sound of the jewish persons celebrating over the golden calf. In response, he smashed the tablets on the ground, shattering them to pieces.

After punishing the ringleaders, he once again ascended the mountain for another 40 days and prayed for g-d’s atonement and forgiveness for the persons.

Then, for the duration of the final 40 days, moses obtained the torah once again. But this time he did so as a humane being, in a body, through hard work and strain and struggle. quite than g-d carving the new tablets, moses had to carve them himself, on stone that came not from heaven, but from the ground. This time, altho g-d once again provided the light, moses had to manufacture the vessels.

Lights in vessels

At primary glimpse this episode looks like a tragic disappointment. But queerly, after moses smashed the primary tablets, g-d complimented him.

Why? Because from the inner plane of realness these events were an purely and perfectly rudimentary and essential allocation of the divine template for creation. The stage of “shattering” is an intrinsic allocation of the routine of the transformation of our earth – and us. It is through this routine that we manufacture a “dira b’tachtonim”, a dwelling place for g-d in the myriad physical dates and details of time and space.

In order for the torah – g-d’s infinite heroism and wisdom and will – to be genuinely and completely obtained by the earth, the earth should be a vessel for that infinity. And in order for that to take place, the torah had to be given from above, shattered, and at long last reacquired and contained in vessels from underneath - in the three-fold routine of light-darkness-light.

Although the second tablets were acquired with far more solution and campaign, much fewer fanfare, and were, on the surface, on a much lower level, in actual fact they had to prospective to be much higher. With this second set of tablets were included the prospective for all of the depth and breadth of torah that would be uncovered all-round the ages and generations by the study and heroism and wisdom of the jewish persons themselves. Divine heroism and wisdom would thence ebb and flow not only from above to underneath, but from underneath to above.

It is not each day that we accept the ten commandments. Most ofttimes our challenges are much more impertinent and personal and personal and particular than that. But that does not mean that they are not holy. In fact, making the impertinent and personal dates and details of your impertinent and personal life a dwelling place for the divine is the whole point of living in the primary place.

So, whether you are aiming to experience more love, connection and gratitude and generosity, more meaning in your work and life, more remainder, reconciliation and peace, harmoniousness and joy, or a deeper connection to your intention and aim, there is no need to be discouraged by the fact that it may once in a while get hard along the way.

Man and g-d: collaborators in creation

Unlike all other creatures, including the most eminent of impalpable and spiritual beings, only man has the prospective to be a partner to g-d. Only man is developed in g-d’s effigy, entire and finish with free choice. Only man may sin, and only man may repent – meaning, to use his distance from g-d to become even closer, more outstanding and holier than he would have been without it. genuine repentance has not one thing to do with self-hatred, with putting oneself down. On the contrary, it comes from self-love, from a sensing and acknowledgement of who you really are and what your life may really be.

That’s why the word for repentance in hebrew is teshuva, ‘return’, because genuine teshuva puts us in touch with our own essence and brings us closer to g-d.

The place and power of teshuva is our contribution to creation. It was acquired through the act of adam and eve when they ate from the tree of cognition, bringing exile, strain and struggle, suffering and death to themselves and all of humanity. This cycle will proceed until the vessels through which we experience life - our minds, hearts, activenesses and the earth around us – have matured sufficient to be competent to partly include a broader the infinite light of g-d.

At that point we, through our own attempts, we will have found g-d in the dates and details, where he was hiding all along, waiting with infinite submission and good-natured tolerance to be revealed. And in doing so, we will have caused the very darkness to shine.

*since the torah forbids the erasing of g-d’s name, it is customary to refrain from writing it out in full.

© 2006, shifra hendrie, kabbalah of transformation / www. Kabbalahoftransformation. Com.