Rabbi Infinity's Blog

Common sense has it that one plus one equals two. As is common, common sense is commonly wrong. There are two opposing laws to understanding how the universe works. One is entropy. The other is synergy. Entropy says that two divided by two equals zero. Synergy says that one plus one equals three—the third thing being something completely new. In the language of Kabbalah, that's Tohu and Tikun.

Tohu is how things fall apart. Tikun is how they're put back together again. When they fall apart, the essence-light vanishes and you get entropy—a movement towards chaos and eventual nothingness. When you put them together, a new light emerges as if from nowhere and you get synergy—the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

There's a simple reason things are this way. It's because, when the universe was first conceived, it was conceived as a single whole. In the beginning—the beginning is the sefirah of chochmah (wisdom), the yud, a single point that includes all. Only then comes, Elokim created—the sefirah of binah (understanding), the letter hey, an unfolding of the point. And then, the heavens—the six sefirot of tifferet (beauty), the letter vav, descending downward as a line—and the earth—the sefirah of malchut (dominion) and the final letter hey, the expanse of all creation, so that the initial single point becomes all the creations of an entire universe.

Then the whole thing blows to smithereens. The result: Our messy world.

It's like an author sat down with a single idea and developed a story around a single theme with a single plot, with every detail, every word wrapped around that one singularity—and then someone came and threw all the letters of his book up in the air, to be scattered to the four winds. The letters are still there, but the story is gone, the plot is gone, the concept is gone. And the author can no longer be found in his words.

That explains why whenever we put two things together in harmony in this world, something new and unexpected always emerges. Atoms becomes molecules—and suddenly, chemistry emerges. Molecules become organelles and biochemistry emerges. Organelles become cell and life emerges. Then microsystems, then organs, then supersystems, then individuals, then social groups and societies and finally a whole world—with each step, an entirely new wisdom appearing, as though ex nihilo, as we approach the whole.

Yet that whole is not the ultimate whole. The real wholeness of it all is metaphysical. It is the harmony that exists between created and Creator, finite and Infinite. And that only emerges once all the King's men (and women) put all the words of the story back together again.

See World Puzzle.

The Baal Shem Tov was fourteen years old when he was adopted by a wandering hidden tzaddik. His teacher sat with him in the forest and taught him the Kabbalistic teachings. Together, they practiced various forms of meditation upon the combinations of letters and words in the prayers and the psalms.

Later, he became an assistant to a melamed (a Torah teacher for children). Typically, the Baal Shem Tov understood that anything he had learned of Torah, even of its deepest secrets, must have meaning for even the simplest child. After all, it is only one Torah and it belongs to all of us. So he taught the children that the Hebrew letters were imprisoned on the page, and that their job was to free them from there to return to their Master Above. All they had to do was breathe life into them, by saying the words with passion and earnestness. Later, when he became the grand chassidic master of masters, he taught adults the same lesson.

The Zohar speaks of four aspects to every letter. Rabbi Chaim Vital, in the name of his teacher, the Ari, explains that these correspond to the four layers of the human being. Everything that has to do with the human being, the Ari explains, comes in fours:

1. Taamim: The motifs by which the words are sung, represented by cantillation marks that may be written in the text. This corresponds to the level of soul called neshama.
2. Nekudot: The vowel expressions for each letter, which may also be represented with simple points and lines under, above and within the letters. This corresponds to the level of soul called ruach.
3. Tagim: Small crowns that are added to many of the letters in a Torah scroll. This corresponds to the level of soul called nefesh.
4. Otiot: The letters themselves. This corresponds to the body of the human being.

You'll note a distinction between levels 1–2 and levels 3–4. The lower levels are both written on the parchment of the Torah scroll. The higher levels of taamim and nekudot are not. In many books, we may also write the taamim and nekudot, but only as an aid, not a requirement. Essentially, they are meant to be supplied by the reader.

Again, this corresponds to the human being: The body comes inherently with its own vitality, called nefesh. Even after death, the nefesh remains with the body until the time of resurrection.

Ruach, on the other hand, is a vitality that the body feels coming from beyond, picking it up and making it into a living being, so that every cell of the body acts with life and the entire organism, down to every cell protects and preserves that life with an ultimate sense of ownership. This is very much like the nekudot that we breathe into the letters, endowing them with form, movement and life.

Rabbi Chaim Vital compares this effect of the ruach to the craft of glass-blowing. Here again, we blow into a solid mass to provide it form. Rabbi Chaim's point is that the glass doesn't simply mold to the breath—it becomes a body to house the form of that breath. (Fascinating to note: Until about the 16^th century, glassmaking was almost entirely a Jewish craft. To this day, names such as Glaser, Glassner, Glasier, etc. are typically Jewish names.)

The nekudot, then, direct us to add basic life to the letters. Beyond this, the letters need a neshama, which we also provide. Neshama provides not only meaning and purpose to the letters, but most importantly some flavor. In fact, taamim literally means "flavors." Those who read the Torah without melody or song, the rabbis taught, demonstrate that it is a burden for them. So maybe we'll have to do another KToon on taamim and singing the Torah. Hmmmm…

In the meantime, keep singing life into those letters. Give them just a little life, and they'll give you back a whole lot more, as they say, "It is a tree of life for all those who hold tight to it..."

In the beginning, G‑d said, "Let there be light"—and zappo, the light was already there. Then G‑d saw that the light was good, so He put aside the good stuff for Himself and the world got what was left.

Now is that fair? What does He need the light for anyways?

So let me do the explaining for Him: You see, there's two kinds of light: Radiant light and dark light; light that extends outward and light that pulls inward. Generally known in Kabbalah as Ohr Yashar and Ohr Chozer, translate: Direct Light and Returning Light.

Like with your thoughts. Thoughts are a kind of light generated by the mind. Some thoughts yell at you, "You gotta tell everybody this!" Other thoughts feel private and personal. Many thoughts are so personal that you yourself are not at all aware of them—but a good shrink or a close friend can tell that they are there.

Those second kind of thoughts are the dark light of your mind, the inward pulling light.

Why is it called returning light? Because the only way you can know about those thoughts is if someone else tells you about them. One of those shrinks or good friends who can feel your inner pulse and read those subtle signals on your face and those spaces between your words to know what you really mean—and what you yourself don't know that you mean.

So when G‑d created light, there was the light that went out for His creation, and there was the personal light that had to stay with Him. Yet, nevertheless, at certain points, He finds that light returning to Him, traveling backward from within His creation. Which is what makes it all worthwhile for Him.

That's the upside down vav at the very end of the alef-bet—the light returning. And where is it found? Supporting the poor dalet. When people care for one another as though the other guy and you are one, so that you lift the guy up, rather than giving from your position above, because you are there with your buddy, 100%—that's when those sparks of returning light begin to fly.

And that itself is the reason the returning light is so good at healing—because this light was the whole purpose of creating a world all along.

Remember I promised, "Give me one minute and I'll give you cosmic consciousness"? Well here it is—the entire story of the cosmos in 1,2,3.

You see, the cosmos is best understood as a story. If you just look at the whole thing all at once, it's totally paradoxical. Take it as a story and somehow everything that's so crazy about it starts to make sense.

The story is about Shalom and it goes 1,2,3:

Step one is before there is anything. And before before. No, that's not B3, that's the Ohr Ein Sof—a.k.a the Infinite Light. Total Light that knows no space or time, within which anything and everything could happen and does happen but is totally meaningless since everything else could also happen. It's infinite, see.

That's not Shalom, because there's nothing to make Shalom with. There are no real things. Just nothingness. One.

Step two is a world. A finite, neatly-bounded and closed, not-so-much-light-but-a-lot-of-darkness world. Now there's more than one. There's the Infinite Light and there's that which the Infinite Light generates—namely, a world. And in that world there's a whole cacophony of stuff. A lot of it is in harmony, but some—mainly anything to do with human consciousness—is in total discord. That's definitely not Shalom. That's two.

Step three is Shalom. The world makes Shalom with it's source, the Infinite Light and the Infinite Light shines through the world that it generates.

But hold on—how is that possible? The Infinite Light is all about infinite and the world is all about bounds and limitations! The Infinite Light is all about light, transparent truth the real reality and the world is all about darkness, hiddenness and facade! The Infinite Light is all about nothingness and the world is all about somethingness!

The trick is in the letter shin—that tells you to look at the Source of All Things and discover that the infinite and the finite, light and dark, nothingness and somethingness are all nothing more than dual modalities of a single truth. That single, all-uniting truth is the number three. It is G‑d's name. It is Shalom.

"The Torah was only given," say our sages, "to make Shalom in the world." Every mitzvah you do makes Shalom between another chunk of this world and the Infinite Light. Each neshama enters the world with a mission to accomplish, to zero in on those nodal points of discord and reconnect them to their source, so that they achieve denouement, resolution, harmony—a.k.a. Shalom. Together, we've got the entire cosmos into a single symphony orchestra with the Infinite Light at the conductor's podium. Let it be now!

Which all goes to teach one simple thing: Next time you get in a snarl with your wife/husband/boss/employee/rabbi/congregant/kabbalist/kabbalistically-challenged nebuch—just remember that, yes, this is the way the world was meant to be: challenged. Peace is not when there is no one but me. Peace is when there is an other, in his/her own separate world, with his/her own separate consciousness, entitled to his/her own separate opinions that really get on my nerves—and nevertheless, we are still in love.

In the beginning, G‑d created everything out of nothing. He could have decided to make everything out of something, but He knew that nothing is better material than something. Because something is already whatever something is, but nothing can become anything.

That's why, at least as far as this universe is concerned, the only way to become a real somebody is by being a nobody first.

While you're trying to figure that one out, let me tell you a Baal Shem Tov story. It's about two tailors—let's call them Beryl and Shmeryl—who traveled from village to village somewhere in Eastern Europe, offering their services to the villagers, saving a few kopeks here and there until they would have enough savings to return home to their families.

On their way home, Beryl and Shmeryl stayed at the inn of a Jew who managed the properties of a feudal landlord. The innkeeper seemed to them very distraught, and when the two tailors insisted he confide in them, he explained his predicament.

"The landlord received some fine cloth as a gift from a prince. He got it in his head that this cloth must be made into the finest royal garb. But no tailor I bring him is good enough. And now he's telling me that if I do not find a first class Parisian-style tailor who can do the job to his meshugana standards, he's throwing me and my family into the dungeon!"

Beryl and Shmeryl were eager to help a fellow Jew. "We are fine tailors. We can do the job!" they insisted. Reluctantly, the innkeeper agreed. "What do I have to lose?" he said.

Miraculously, the landlord also agreed to hand over the precious material into their hands. Within two weeks, they stood before him, the finest robe imaginable in their hands. The landlord was happy. The innkeeper was happy. Beryl and Shmeryl were very happy—and made 30 rubles each, too.

Now, the landlord's wife was also standing there observing all this. She figured out what was going on—that these two tailors weren't just happy about making 60 rubles between them. What they were really happy about is that they had saved their fellow Jew and his family from the dungeon. So she turned to her husband and said, "Tell them about the family in the dungeon. Maybe they will pay the ransom."

That's the way they did things in those days: If you couldn't pay your rent, you sat in the dungeon until it was paid. Ingenious, right?

So the landlord told them about this Jewish family sitting in the dungeon, waiting to be ransomed. "How much?" they asked.

"Forty rubles."

"Sure," said Beryl. "We can put that together to save a family from the dungeon, can't we Shmeryl?"

But Shmeryl didn't look so sure. His share of 40 rubles meant over half his savings. He had been traveling almost a year without seeing his family. Sure, this family was suffering, but why should his family suffer on their account?

When Beryl saw he was getting nowhere with Shmeryl, he counted up his entire savings, asked Shmeryl for just a few more rubles, and came up with exactly 40 rubles for the landlord. It all happened so fast, he didn't have time to think what he was doing. Next thing you know, the family was up from their hell in the dungeon, pale and sickly, kissing and hugging his feet for saving their lives.

Then Beryl and Shmeryl went home. Shmeryl's family was happy to see him. He set up a tailor shop with merchandise ready for sale. Beryl's family was not so happy. He didn't want to tell them how he had lost all his money. It was a mitzvah, after all, and you don't brag about mitzvahs. And besides, they wouldn't understand. So they thought what they thought, and slowly Beryl became more and more depressed.

Until Beryl could do nothing but stand on a corner, his open hand stretched out for alms. He stood there through the heat of summer, the autumn rain and the freezing wind and snow of winter, a hollow and forlorn soul. Whoever dropped a coin in his hand received a blessing, but beyond that, he spoke not a word to anyone. He was nothing, he was nobody.

Then came a day that a merchant walked briskly by Beryl, late for an important deal, dropping a coin in Beryl's hand as he marched by, barely hearing Beryl's blessing as he passed.

"May G‑d bless you in all you do," said Beryl.

And He did. The business worked out better than the merchant could have ever imagined. And maybe, he thought, it had something to do with this beggar's blessing.

So next time the merchant had a deal to make, he made sure to pass by Beryl the beggar and hand him a coin. And this time he waited to hear the blessing and answer "amen." And again the blessing had its miraculous effect.

As you can imagine, this became the merchant's regular practice. Rapidly, he became one of the wealthiest merchants in the district. Everyone wanted to do business with him, knowing that whatever he touched made profit.

When the merchant bought a new mansion for his family, he held a grand party at which he got rather drunk. That's when he spilled the beans.

"You think I'm rich because I'm smart? Or because I'm shrewd? Or because of my good deeds? It's none of those! It's all due to the blessings of a ragged beggar who stands almost motionless at the corner on the way to the market!' he announced.

Which meant that the next morning there was already a lineup of customers for Beryl. People gave, Beryl blessed, miracles happened. Beryl was oblivious to it all, so lost he was to his depression. Yet his fame spread quickly, so that soon barren mothers were visited with pregnancy, the sick were healed and the biggest shlomozel in town actually got a job—all in consequence to Beryl's blessing.

That's when the Baal Shem Tov came into the story. He also heard about this beggar-tzadik whose blessings were as guaranteed to be effective as the spring rains bring seed to sprout. He traveled himself to see firsthand. And he took Beryl aside and told him, "Now tell me your story."

The Baal Shem Tov was that way. He could talk to anybody, and that person would open up to him, as though he was always his closest friend. Beryl told him the story of his life. But the story of the 40 rubles came hard. "You must tell," said the Baal Shem Tov. "You must remember and tell."

And when he did, the Baal Shem Tov hugged and kissed him. He took him back to Medzibuz, to his study hall and made him one of his closest students. Beryl studied Talmud and Kabbala and became a master of the secret lore. He became a tzadik. He became a real somebody.

Many of us today are nobodies. That's okay. The moon must disappear before it becomes full again. The seed must rot away before it becomes a great oak. See Feivel's Bad Day.

Nowadays it's a motorbike. Back then it was a fast horse. So this teenage kid pulls up to the shul on his speedy white horse, ties it to a post and swaggers in for a talk with the rabbi. The Alter Rebbe. Just so he can get his parents off his back.

"Hi Rebbe! Watzup?" as he leans back, hands behind head, boots on desk.

That's okay. The Alter Rebbe is also a cool dude. "Nice horse you got there," he says.

"Best you can get!" answers the horse kid.

"Fast?"

"Meanly fast!"

The Rebbe shakes his head. "Too fast is not good."

"Hey, fast is awesome! I can beat those Cossacks any day. Man, they see this Jewboy whoosh past them and their teeth are grinding."

The Rebbe still shakes his head. "What if a fast horse gets loose? A slow horse runs away, you could still catch him. If your fast horse is gone, he's gone."

"My horse won't run away. He knows I'm boss."

"What if he does? What if he figgers he just wants to be free? That he doesn't want a boss?"

Teenage horse kid is squirming around to see his horse out the window. Still there. But y'never know.

"But then," the Alter Rebbe said, "if he can run away so fast, he can run back home real fast, too."

Horse kid smiles again. "Yeah, that's right!"

The Rebbe smiles too. Then he leans forward and holds the kid's hand. His hand is warm and kind. "So what about you?" he says.

The kid liked the Rebbe. With a little more guidance, he became a super-fast, awesome cool chassid.

Now a lot of you are puzzling over this: What does Feivel have to do with me being a tzadik or not?

So let’s do this: Instead of me writing out another long-winded explanation of my kabbalistic intentions and poetic nuances, let’s see which of our viewers/readers can come up with the clearest, most enlightening and digestible solution to this question.

The winner receives, um, well...lots of recognition!

...and stay tuned for the next episode: "Tefillin Power"

Jim McGinn always wanted a power saw. The day he got his first pay check, he spent it on one—a big, powerful power saw. It gave him a manly, burly, beer-on-your-chest sense of, well, power.

His power saw was built of shiny, hard and heavy metal. It pumped a dynamo of mechanical energy into his hands, so that he had to grip real tight. With it he made stuff, fixed stuff and broke stuff. He almost got hurt bad. And it made a big noise, too.

Words, on the other hand, are wimpy. No substance other than a puff of air. Can't cut through a thing. Can be spoken by a small child or a frail old lady, the softer the better.

Yet the world is not built of power saws. Or of power drills, hammers, bulldozers, computers or even rocket ships. It's made of words. Without words, all that stuff is just a pile of tin.

Like the rest of us who see the world from the inside-out, Jim McGinn's perception of the world is upside-down. The world we see is built of hard matter at the core with words and ideas gently sprinkled on the surface. Sticks, stones and power saws are real stuff, words are just a harmless way of talking about them.

Along comes Kabbalah, seeing things from their origin and beyond, and tells us that no, words are the core reality. Things exist only because there are words for them. Words are the ultimate power.

G‑d said, "Be light!" and it was light. "Be a sky!" and there was a sky. "We will make man!" and there was a man. And then He blew into the nostrils of this man the breath of life, as Onkelos translates: A speaking soul. A soul composed of speech, of words. "And whatever Adam called each creature, that was its name."

Ever since, Adam has gone around making more and more names for G‑d's things, composing stories out of His music and dramas with His creations. He created a world out of words, and we bring it into focus, direct it, manipulate and mold it with our words. Our words make His words real.

Speak good things. Make a beautiful resolution out of this world.

Kabbalistically speaking, the world is wired. Just like your brain has your entire body wired, checking up on activity in every limb, so the universe has nodes of cosmic awareness planted everywhere. They're known as Ayins.

The Zohar calls them "the eyes that are constantly moving" and describes them as angels, continually transmitting information. Not just audio-visual data—even thoughts and emotions are noted, transmitted and stored. "Before I know my own thoughts," King David sang, "You already know them."

The question is, the Infinite Light is everywhere—why does He need data collectors? With a human observer, first something must happen, then he can observe it. But with the MasterMind of the universe it's the opposite way around: Things happen because He is imagining them. So why does He need a report stating, "Yes, sir, Your imagination came out just the way You imagined it!"

Quite simply, because a predictable world is boring. If you know everything before it happens, what's the point behind making a world? So the Infinite Light, so to speak, writes Himself into the story. He plays the role of Great Cosmic Consciousness, observing all and judging accordingly. In the language of the Zohar, it's called, "Lower Level Consciousness"—as opposed to the "Higher Level Consciousness" that brings everything into existence in the first place. Being infinite and totally unbounded, He can play both parts at once—the Ultimate Isifier bringing everything into existence, and the Ultimate Observer observing it subjectively at once. As in, "G‑d said it should be light" and then, "G‑d saw the light that it was good."

The main thing is that we need to keep Him engaged in both roles. Since His imagination is infinite, we have free choice to grind through the storyline or to enhance it. When we do things that bring His light into the world in a tangible way—acts of beauty, wisdom and kindness—the storyline works out so much nicer.

It must be neat to be G‑d.

Once upon a time, there was a little creature who lived in a one-dimensional known as a line. That was okay for him, since he was also only one-dimensional and what you don't know can't hurt you. Although it could sometimes get you pretty confused. As it did that one day when our hero decided to go on an adventure and investigate his world. Since there are only two paths you can take in a one-dimensional world--forward or backward--he took one of them and travelled bravely forward, leaving his tale behind, but stretching ever so much further and further forward until, to his great surprise, he came across nothing less than...his own tail!

"Now, how could that be," he thought, "that I have moved forward, not backward, and come across my own tail?" But it was a problem that he could never be expected to solve, for only with knowledge of a higher dimension could the solution be available to him. And so, there he sits ever since, in utter wonder, forming a perfect samech. For the line upon which our hero lived, you see, was a circle.

Really, there are three kinds of secrets: Fake secrets, Mem secrets and Samech secrets.

A fake secret is the kind of secret that people have put away and are holding for themselves, because they are afraid of what others might do if their secret is discovered. So these are not really secrets at all, since, if they would be discovered, everyone would know them.

A mem secret lies in a closed box sitting firmly on the ground and moving nowhere. There's a little opening to get inside, but no one notices, because it seems just so closed. These are the real secrets, for even if you would let them out and leave them lying around, even if you would announce them to the entire world, only a tiny few would take notice, those to whom those secrets truly belong. These are the secrets of those lonely souls that know they exist and that there is something, another dimension of being, transcendent of our own; that they are a smaller thing within a larger one; a child instance of a parent event.

For there are really only two kinds of beings, those that exist, and those that exist and are aware that they exist. And there are really only two kinds of consciousness: to be conscious, and to be conscious that you are conscious. Only to the second category do mem secrets belong; only they will notice and treasure them.

Then there are the samech secrets. A samech is a circle that has no beginning or end, neither has it any opening and it cannot stand in one place. It is the essential mystery of all things, and yet it is available to all. Even the small child perceives the wonder and mystery of all things; it is only the complicated mind of the adult that may lose that forest of wonder among the trees of explanations and reason. Yet even he will inevitably return, if not in the quiet years of later life, then in the moment of parting from this world, to see that none of it lay in his hand for the taking.

For all of us, there is a dimension which we can never grasp, the dimension that lies beyond our being.

How does a mezuzah work? How can such a tiny device, with no electronic parts, protect an entire household of people wherever they are and whatever they are doing (certain high risk activities may be excluded)?

True, it's not the mezuzah that provides the protection, it's the Master of the Universe Himself (you can find His name written on the backside of every mezuzah: Shin Daled Yud). He says, "Put up a mezuzah on your doorway and I'll protect you when you're inside and out." But still, why a rolled up parchment device? And why on the doorway? And why any device at all—couldn't He just say, "Trust Me, and I'll take care of you"?

To answer this question, we have to first escape our nanobrain, subjective boxes and view matters from a cosmic perspective. The entire cosmos is His masterpiece of architecture. But He doesn't really live within it until there's a mezuzah on the door. The mezuzah is something like the artist's autograph, so that anyone looking will know who did this.

The problem is, a whole lot of critters in this universe don't want to recognize Who did this. They don't want to recognize that anyone did this at all. They just want to be left alone in the universe as though it were always here and they can do whatever they like with it. Those are the critters you gotta watch out from.

So we put up a mezuzah, effectively signing His autograph onto His masterpiece. It needs to be written by a scribe with an awe of heaven and care to the finest details of the Divine law—so that it corresponds in detail to the Grand Autograph Above. What is that Grand Autograph? The original words of thought by which you were conceived: The story of a being called Israel who loves G‑d with all its heart, speaks words of Torah wherever it goes and translates that Torah into mitzvahs. Every nuance of every letter in the mezuzah has something to do with your life down here.

It goes on the doorway, because doorways are the interface between one world and the next—which cosmically speaking would be the sefira of Malchut (Dominion), a.k.a. "The Shechina" which is all about His presence in this world. By doing so, our homes are transformed into scaled down versions of His own cosmic home (the universe). The world we live in becomes effectively a different kind of world—one in which those nasty critters don't belong. But you do.

For some heavy-duty Kabbalah on the mezuzah, see Doorways and Shady Characters - The Zohar.

It's not easy to initiate a four year old into the secrets of the cosmos. But then, I wonder if the forty year old really understands any better. As long as there is wonder, that's all that counts.

Sometimes I wonder, if Miri were sixteen years old already, how would our conversation go?

Me: The bagel, you see, is a three dimensional representation of the concept of the original tzimtzum, as taught by the Holy Ari, may his memory be for a blessing.

Miri: The who?

Me: The Ari. Rabbi Yitzchak Luria. Greatest of all the Kabbalists.

Miri: He invented the bagel?

Me: No, no. But he did discover a great secret of the cosmos which happens to be hidden in the bagel as well.

Miri: Really. I thought they only did that with Chinese fortune cookies.

Me: In fact, the Ari may have never seen a bagel. He lived in Egypt most of his life, until he moved to Tzfat, Israel around 1570. He was much more familiar with pita bread. Hey--that's even better: An empty void in which is placed an entire world of crunchy round balls, assorted salads and various hot sauces and condiments. A perfect model of the universe!

Miri: Ughh! You mean planet earth is just a falafel ball?

Me: Miri, we're getting off track. What I meant to explain was like this: Before the Ari, everyone knew there was the Infinite Light and there was our world, but no one could really explain how things got from Infinite and Light to Finite and Dark.

Miri: Simple. Just turn off the lights.

Me: Well, that's sort of what the Ari said. He said that G_d just sort of punched a hole in the Infinite Light.

Miri: Like a bagel.

Me: Or a pita. And then, into that empty void…

Miri: Whoa! Hold it! You can't make a hole in Infinite Light!

Me: Why not?

Miri: Cuz then it's not infinite anymore! I mean, it's either infinite or it's got a hole in the middle. You gotta make up your mind.

Me: Way to go, Miri! Now I see you're really thinking!

Miri: But if I'm thinking, aren't things supposed to make sense?

Me: Not necessarily. At first, when you begin to think, things start to get darker and more confusing.

Miri: Sort of like punching a hole in the light.

Me: Sort of. And if you ask the right questions, you get down to the essential point behind all that light.

Miri: Like you really see it for yourself, not just cuz your kabbalistic Zaidy told you.

Me: Right. And then you can take that essential point and build a whole world out of it.

Miri: Actually, having a kabbalistic Zaidy is pretty kewel.

Me: So now you understand how, when G_d withdrew all the light from that hole, He was really still there. And He still is there. For Him, nothing really changed. He's infinite and beyond, just like before. It's just that He wanted a space where He could get across the essential point of everything.

Miri: I don't get it. Where's the empty space? You mean like outer space?

Me: No, no, Miri. Not that kind of space. I mean like psychological space. He makes space for us to have free will. To make our own decisions. To decide on our lives, where we want to go and what we want to be.

Miri: Do we get the keys to the car?

Me: He puts darkness and light in front of us, all mixed up, so that we will have a choice. And when we choose the right thing, we show that He is there, breathing within our freedom of choice.

Miri: So the empty hole is the space for us to be real people.

Me: Right.

Miri: And that freedom, that people-ness, is really G_dly.

Me: Right. It's what makes us divine. And makes the universe special. Just like the hole is what makes the bagel a bagel. Or the pita a pita.

Miri: Right. So what's with the falafel balls?

Some folks can't get into the miracle thing. Everything has to be attributed to natural causes, or at least, to an extreme extent of probabilities within natural causes. In their books, the Plague of Blood was an ancient version of Lake Erie, the Splitting of the Sea of Reeds could be reproduced on a Hollywood set with big enough air blowers, and the Giving of the Torah was due to mass ingestion of certain fungi that grows at the foot of Mount Sinai. They have relegated the Ultimate Isifier of All Isness to isifying what already is, within the neat parameters of each particular isness. Miracles, they claim, never happened and cannot happen, because miracles are by definition impossible. The impossible doesn't happen, right?

Or does it? Well, how did existence get here? How does nothing become something? As my buddy, Blaise Pascal, put it, "Why is it that there is anything at all and not just nothing?" Your very existence, and the existence of all around you is totally impossible. And yet it's here. If existence can happen (and most of us agree that it does), then anything can happen.

The problem always comes down to a certain syndrome called anthropotheism. That's when G‑d creates us in His divine image and we return Him the favor. Since we can't create something out of nothing, we determine that it's not fair for Him to do that either. We assert that without hardware, software or an upgrade to CS4 Professional Edition, nothing can come into being—so He must have some sort of limitations on creativity when He generates our realm of being. When we create art, beauty, fine literature and KabbalaToons, we are limited to the parameters of our raw materials, human perception, Adobe product limitations (a.k.a. glitches that aren't scheduled to be fixed) and the effects of morning coffee on Pilar Newton. Once we've created it and it's out there and published, the techies won't let us manipulate or change a thing, because, hey they got a schedule to stick to and KToon work is not due until April 14^th of 2013 from 14:15–13:35 hours. Why should He get special dibs?

But the Infinite Light knows no such bounds. If His techies don't have room on their schedule for His latest nifty projects, He just isifies some more time. Or slows time down. Or stops it altogether and lets them do it within an isolated time-stream isified just for that purpose. If the rules of cause and effect don't get Him His desired outcome, He can always rewrite those rules. Or do it anyways, without rewriting the rules. Or decide that these rules will achieve His desired outcome no matter what--after all, whose rules are they anyways?

So at every moment He conjures an entire universe—stars, planets, galaxies, amoebas, broccoli and bosons—out of utter nothingness. And if you're doing that already, what's the big dif if the water stands upright like a wall on occasion? If I'm imagining a flowing, harmonious symphony in my mind, I'm allowed to take a solo whenever I want and improvise a little. If all is consistent and predictable, where is the beauty? Where is the author within his work?

That's all a miracle is, really: The Author making a cameo appearance within His ongoing work.

If you still can't hack the whole thing, you're not alone. The Maharal of Prague writes that the Egyptians also couldn't get into miracles. He goes so far as to say that when Pharaoh and his army stood at the banks of the Sea of Reeds as the Children of Israel passed through on dry land, they saw nothing spectacular. For them, it was a perfectly natural event—why else would they kamikaze the waters? (There is evidence that Pharaoh suffered an extreme obsessive-compulsive disorder, or may have just been a typical adolescent passing through a phase of defiance and exaggerated self-assertion, but this is insufficient to explain the behavior of his army. Unless they were all fourteen years old.)

The Children of Israel were able to not only witness the miracle, but jump in, hands on. Feet on, too. Why? Because they had been crushed by the oppression of their taskmasters. They felt small. And so, they left Egypt with simple faith.

That was the greatness of Moses, as well. Sure, we was a fearless hero, pragmatic leader, wise sage and award-winning teacher. But his greatest quality was his simpleness. "The fool believes everything," writes Solomon the wise, "but the wise understand." Who was the fool? The sages say this was Moses, who believed everything G‑d told him. Before G‑d, we are all fools, so to receive from Him, we must be small and simple.

The more a person relies exclusively on the judgment of his left-brain, order-fixated arrangement of the universe, the less of the universe he can fit inside that hunk of grey matter and the less he can expect miracles. Stand in awe and wonder, make yourself small, and always carry a red cape.

So this biker guy parks his hog outside my Kabbalah Lab one day and stomps in saying he's looking for Kabbalah and I take one look and say, "Hey, you'd look great in black leather!"

He says, "Yeah?"

And I say, "Sure, just roll up your left sleeve."

I mean, how could he resist? Next thing, I'm tightening the knot on the first leather box around his bulging, tattooed biceps brachii and he's repeating after me, "Baruch….Atta…"

But then he blurts out, "Wait a minute! Why am I doing this? What's the point?"

I answer, "Thought you'd never ask."

"I asked."

"Okay, but first, let's wrap. Then we'll talk."

He's okay with that, wrapping, then saying Shma, then I play him this tv ad you just watched--and he still doesn't get it. So I show him The Tefillin Booth. Nope, still lost on him. So I try reading him my favorite episode of the Heaven Exposed series, The Tefillin Files. He's starting to get it. But it's tough. Tougher than the leather those boxes are made of.

Can't blame him. Wrapping tefillin has to be the weirdest thing we do. Who else would imagine tying leather scrolls in black leather boxes onto their head and arm? Scrolls are for reading, not for wearing, right?

Yet in those tefillin is everything there is to know about Kabbalah, in hard, physical form. The World of Atzilut crystallized in three dimensions. The closest you could come to touching the Ein Sof.

That's what happened when Tefillin came down to earth: G‑d took His thoughts and extended them into the physical domain of the World of Assiah (that's our world, in Kabbalistic terms). He contracted His thoughts into a tangible action that we humanoids can perform. He condensed the Cosmic Mind into words on parchment, so that we can read them, comprehend them, and even wear them. And black leather looks cool, too.

Check out The Tefillin Files. Everything's there.

There are three mother letters: Alef, Mem and Shin. So is stated in the Book of Formation, the ancient Kabbalistic text attributed to Abraham. Alef is a vowel--open your mouth. Mem is a consonant--close your mouth. Shin--well, open your mouth and close it at once. Three categories of all vocal sounds.

Mem is that closed, surreptitious sound humming beneath everything. Maybe it's the cosmic microwave background radiation that keeps on messing up my low-level EMP research. Mem stands for melech--meaning king. Apparently, that's the real meaning behind that hum--it's the sound of all things looking for their king, like characters of a play in search of their author. But the author can't be found anywhere in the play--because he is everywhere, in all that happens. So too, the King who authored reality is not any particular character in His play. Rather, like the mem that is closed and concealed, He is hidden from all perception and knowledge. And yet, the King is found in all things, in their busy humming of existence.

Each creature hums its song, and with that song it hovers within the realm of existence. The motifs of its song are the letters by which it was born into reality, the name by which it is called in the Holy Tongue. As each thought of G_d oscillates between being and not-being, selfhood and reabsorption within its source, each according to its part in the play and role in the Grand Symphony, so it vibrates and sings its unique melody of praise to its Creator. Those letters of its name, they are the resonance tones of its vibration, constantly sustaining it in existence.

All the trees sing their song, the grass sings theirs, the carrots sing another, the frogs, the dogs, the hippopotamus and the sasquatch. Every cell, every element, every particle has its song in which it is united with all of its species, harmonized with all the universe, and perfectly bonded with the Infinite Light from whence it is generated. When that vital light amplifies its signal, the song is magnified and that creature is full of life. Should the signal decrease, the creature winds itself down. And if its song would be silenced for a moment, in a nanoblink a phenomena once embedded in our reality would fall from existence into the utter void, to become a nonbeing that never was.

You know, maybe it really does have something to do with that background radiation. After all, wasn't that the clincher evidence that the world began?

Kabbalistic FreeRunning was inspired by a Discovery Channel Time-Warp video. You can find the Diving Flip segment on their site, but if you have iTunes, watch the whole thing on the Discovery Channel Video Podcasts. Look for Time Warp: Freerunners. It's mind-bending--plus you'll really get what I'm getting at here.

If the human psyche is a bustling city (and it is, trust me) then life is an urban obstacle course. Some have pleasant, calm suburban psyche's built with homogenous, low lying homes evenly distributed across the landscape. Others live hopping from skyscraper to towering skyscraper, regularly missing the open window and plummeting to the ground.

Everyone falls. Everyone occasionally comes crashing to the ground. The trick is knowing how to fall.

The first trick in falling is knowing how to let yourself compress into a little ball. Big guys crash hard. Make yourself small and it doesn't hurt so bad.

The next trick is knowing how to spring out of that ball. Of course, if you kept yourself big there's no spring effect. But once you are small, as the Zohar says, you can be big.

Then comes the trick we were talking about: Believe in the fall. Believe that the fall has a purpose--not to throw you down, but to propel you forward.

And then, with all the force of that downward thrust, spring ahead and leap that skyscraper in a single bound.

Just in case, make sure there's an open window in your path.

There's a nice article on this very topic called Windows.

The idea really comes from one of the major kabbalah teachers of all time, Moses. Moses got stuck with this position that he really wasn't looking for of being a leader, standing, as he put it, "between you people and your G_d". But, like I said, that's not where he wanted to be. So he always tried to engineer things so that, once he made that connection, he could just step out of the way and let things happen.

For example, at Mount Sinai, Moses didn't say, "Hey, I'm going up there to see what G_d wants and I'll come back and tell you all." Instead, he arranged for a meeting between G_d and the people, so that the people themselves should have their own multi-sensory, multi-layered, hyper-kabbalistic experience. Only when the people came and said, "Moses, we can't take this anymore. It's totally blowing our minds and souls out of orbit! You go and find out what He wants and come back and tell us."--only then did Moses reluctantly act as a middle man.

So that's what a real teacher and spiritual guide is supposed to be. A teacher isn't there to tell you about some experience s/he had and now here's what you do with your life. A teacher is supposed to lead you to have your own experience, to see things in a deeper way. To connect you with your G_d--and then get out of the way.

You've probably heard that all kosher animals wear shoes. Well, actually, they're called hooves. To get into the Kosher Club, you need cloven hooves, meaning that the hoof is split in two. If that's not status enough, cloven hooves also get you into the even-toed ungulates order of mammals called Artiodactyla—along with cows, goats, sheep, deer, giraffes, antelopes, okapis and pigs.

Yes, pigs. But the pigs got booted from the Kosher Club because they don't ruminate (meaning, they don't chew their cud). Turns out that the Kosher Club has even higher standards than the Artiodactyla.

So what do the Artiodactyla have to do with Kosher Club?

Well, you see, according to the Kabbalah when we eat food, our job is to reconnect the food with its spiritual source. Non-kosher animals are those animals that are so out of touch with their angelic source that when we eat them, we're not able to re-establish that connection. Kosher animals, on the other hand, are those animals that we can reconnect--if we slaughter them properly and eat them with the proper respect and intent.

Now, every animal on earth is really a mere reflection of some angel or set of angels above. So the physical features of the animal somehow must reflect the spiritual nature of that angel. That's why the kosher animals have hooves--because a hoof means--like I said in the video--that even as you are here on this earth, you still remain a little above it. You didn't sink in all the way; you can still reconnect.

The same with everything you do: If you want to raise up your world and reconnect it to its spiritual source, you need to stay a little above it at all times. Remember that these things you do in the world to survive, that's not the real you. Get into some rituals every day to remind yourself of your true identity--a G_dly soul, here on a divine mission. Be within, but stay above.

There was a time when people would sit and ponder their sins, their faults and just everything wrong, bad and crummy about themselves. They would cry and sob from their hearts, fall asleep weeping, and then they would get up the next morning with a pure soul to serve their Maker.

Nowadays, when someone ponders his failures, it almost inevitably leads to depression. When pondering a past sin, he usually remembers what a geshmak it was and ends up doing more.

So what happened? Quite simply, the darkness got thicker. When you're surrounded by light, it's okay to stick your nose into a few dark corners--maybe you'll find something valuable you lost in there. But when you live in a world with the lights dimmed and all the blinds pulled down, dark corners become bottomless, John Wheeler black holes.

That's why repentance is so darn dangerous nowadays. When someone calls me up and says, "Rabbi, I messed up! How do I repent?"--I tell them, "Repentance? Stay away from that stuff! It's hazardous!"

So they say, "But, whadja I gotta do about this sin messup deal in my life?" And I tell 'em, "Just start running towards the light." And they say, "But then I'll never do the teshuva thing, like it says in all those books, about deep remorse and weeping over your sins."

And I say, "Right now, forget the remorse and the weeping. Just get past it! It's a trap. It's your nasty, self-destructive snake inside trying to take you for lunch."

"No, rabbi, no! I gotta repent!"

"You don't wanta repent. You want a replay!"

"A what?"

"A replay. That's when your mind experiences something pleasurable and so goes back to replay it again and again, until it rewires all its neurons so it can get lots more of it. But you won't let your mind replay this particular messup, because you know it was real immoral, bad and crummy. So your mind, being just as smart as you are, since it is your mind after all, comes up with a solution: It says, "I don't want a replay--I want to repent." Well, you don't. You want a replay. Nothing to do with repenting."

And you say: "But when will I rip away all the ugly stuff clinging to me because of this lousy thing I did?"

And I answer: "When you are running towards the light, filling your life with more wisdom, more understanding, more mitzvahs, more joy, love, beauty and the light is getting brighter and brighter, but you just can't get it because something is holding you back, and you realize it's that crummy messup from the past, and you say, "Get off my back!" you look behind for a sec, throw it away, and fly ahead. That's when you repent. But not until then."

Why? What happened? The darkness got darker; the light got closer.

Today, only the children of light can rise.

I'm not sure what the word "teach" means, or whether it really exists. Semantically, it should be possible for a teacher to say, "I taught the pupils, but they didn't learn!" But does it make sense? And if it doesn't, why is there such a word?

In Hebrew, you don't teach. You can cause learning, you can assist learning, or you can learn with someone. They are all forms of the same verb—which happens to also be the 12^th letter of the alefbet.

And it's the tallest one, too. Because that's what learning is all about: Reaching up to grasp something way beyond where you stand now. As for teaching--I mean, learning with someone--you also do the same: You reach down to touch someone who stands in another world from your own. And to do that, you need to reach very deep, to discover a point that transcends all those boundaries of you, other, his place, your place, worlds and reaching.

That's another reason why teaching is really learning: To bring someone else to learn, you must be learning yourself. And your learning must far exceed the learning of the other. Here's how it happens:

First, you learn something. You ponder and examine it for many years. Like, say, how to teach--I mean, learn. Eventually, you have your whole, unique world worked out, in which all of these thoughts fit somehow in place--never perfectly, always growing, but somewhat consistent nonetheless.

Then one day, you find yourself in the lab with a bright five year old granddaughter, and she asks, "How do you learn Kabbalah?"

You look at this little girl, and her mind is in an entirely different world than yours. You want to give her all the answer--not just a brush off. But to do that, you need to put aside your lexicon, your imagery, your set of metaphors--all the ways you understand this concept, and find some way to give her the essential concept that you have for yourself.

Which means, first and foremost, discovering what that essential idea is. That's the process called tzimtzum (we talked about it in the bagel, remember?) All the light of your understanding is put aside, leaving just that essential idea.

Next, you need to find a place in your own mind where you can imagine the mind of this little girl. And then you start slowly building bridges--parables, analogies, imagery and tight little explanations--until you connect that essential point with that whole new world it needs to enter. And then you can say it, and help it enter. (Or make an animation out of it.)

Now look what you gained: Before, you understood it in your own abstract world. Now you understand it in the concrete world of a small child, as well. Before, you understood the explanations and information. Now you grasp the central point--a point so essential, it can enter an entirely different world and remain the same nonetheless.

And another thing you learned: You can now have some inkling of what it means to create a world. For what you just did, that's essentially what the Boundless-Isifier-of-All-That-Is does to generate entire worlds out of absolute nothing: He imagines up worlds and then brings them into being by connecting them to His Infinite Light with a single, essential point, a point that can never be grasped or known, and yet through which all is known.

A.k.a., the Yud. As it says, "You made all of them with Wisdom!"

This was inspired by a fellow Kabbalist of the Italian High Renaissance, Rabbi Yehudah Moscato. I say he was of the Italian Renaissance not just because he lived at that time, but because he really was a person of that time. He was very much into fine music, art and poetry. But he was also a very religious Jew and he gave popular lectures in the synagogue.

He compared every creature that G_d made to an instrument in a giganormous orchestra. (There is actually an ancient Midrash, "Perek Shira" that lists the song each creature sings, from the sun and the moon down to the frogs and the dogs.) But then, he says, they're not just playing a symphony, but a concerto. A concerto is when you have a soloist--such as a violinist or pianist (well, in those days, clavichord)--and he plays back and forth with the orchestra. He plays a melody or theme while they gently pluck away, and then they all come back in full strength, echoing his music.

So Rabbi Moscato said that the human being is the soloist. Each instrument plays his part, but the human being plays all the parts as one. Every human being is really playing from the same score, he says, only that some play with sensitivity and passion, while others tinker away, missing notes, chopping up phrases, totally out of tune with the composer's intent. Then, according to how each of us plays, the orchestra--the entire universe--echoes back.

When I read Rabbi Moscato, I realized that really this is the case with every instrument: All of them rely on a resonance chamber. We only see how we pluck the strings, little do we realize the waves that echo through the universe and how they come back to us.

Now you understand why I had to teach Miri the letter chaf before I could get to the letter tet. It's also going to help me with the letters lamed and mem, which are also constructed out of a chaf, a vav and a yud. And then there's the letter peh, which has the chaf and yud, but no vav. The scribe—called a sofer—when he makes his strokes, has all this in mind.

That's much of the beauty of a Torah scroll; just as any beautiful art, it relies on a small set of motifs of which everything is built: a yud-point, a vav-line and a space-curve-chaf. But the trademark feature is that ever-present yud.

That's because the world emerges out of nothing. At every moment.

Hold on.

Nothing? Isn't G_d there first? Is G_d a nothing? Isn't He the real Something? So, when He creates the world, He creates it out of His somethingness. Only that, compared to Him, it's all nothing. So really we should say that He creates nothing out of something. And what's the big deal of doing that?

Nope, all wrong. G_d is neither a something or a nothing. He is the grand Isifier of all isness and ideaness, including the idea of is and is not. Just that, in order to create a world with that "I'm for real" feeling to it, He has to start with nothing, and then get to something.

Here's how He does it: First, He emanates the Infinite Light—which is a total nothingness, because, hey, it's just His light, announcing His unknowable presence. So if it can't be known, there's nothing there, right?

Then He totally removes that light, leaving an absolute void. That's the second form of nothingness—where something can happen.

Now He draws a connecting line between these two opposite forms of nothingness, bringing infinite light into a finite void. That's when a something comes into being—namely us and our world. The yud is the nothing from where that line of light is coming, the vav is how it enters, and the chaf is the all-encompassing somethingness that results. That's one way of understanding it, among many. But the paradigm is basically the same.

Okay, I'm confusicating you with my Kabbalistic abstractions. So let's take this down into practical application:

Are you a something or a nothing? If you are thinking you are really something, you're losing out on life. Life is about being open to everything that's greater and bigger than you. Once you've decided, "I am something, and this is what I am"—you've shut off growth, new experience and, well, just life.

But if you are a nothing, then what's the point of living? Who wants to help out a nothing?

Or, in the classic words of Hillel the Elder, "If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? And if am for myself, then what am I?"

It's not just you, this is the how each thing in the universe exists—it has to both be and not be, at every moment. That's why each thing breathes, pumps, oscillates, vibrates, sings, swings and flutters—everything continually traverses back and forth between positive and negative, matter and energy, form and chaos, being and not-being. Nothing stands still, nothing just is (except when they have to draw a diagram for a science textbook, I mean, what can you do?).

That's because G_d never meant the world to just be for the sake of being. He meant it as the ultimate form of art, to express something. And what does it express? It tells of His impossible, totally paradoxical oneness, which neither is or is not and yet generates both at once.

That's beautiful. And that, as well, is the beauty of the letters of the alefbet.

Just a short interlude with something light. We'll be back to the alef-bet next week with the letter "Vav".

Send this episode as a Chanukah greeting card! Click here.
(Don't forget to come back to read the blog.)

Yes, I know this experiment looks ridiculous. Who would imagine that letting darkness out of a bottle could effect anything? And who says darkness is something that fits in a bottle, anyways?

But, you see, it's a way of making a point: Darkness is not a thing. It's just an absence of light. Just like cold is an absence of warmth, silence is an absence of sound and zero is an absence of anything at all.

And evil is nothing more than an absence of goodness.

Now, this lesson is a very practical one. If you had a dark basement and you thought darkness was a real something, you wouldn't just screw in light bulbs. You would first start up a war with the darkness, to weaken it or chase it away. You might even be afraid to bring some light into there, since the darkness might conflict with it, or even dirty it up a little.

But since you know that darkness is no more than an absence of light, you do the wiring, install the light fixtures, bring in some light, and now you can even bring in the ping-pong table.

The same with fighting all the challenges of life. You might choose to go head on with battering ram and catapult against the obstacles holding you back in life. You might even put aside all the good things you are doing to focus your energies on a full assault against all that rotten stuff out there. Argue with the boss, criticize your spouse, tell off the kids, complain about the weather, the recycling, the traffic and everything else that needs fixing.

What a waste of energy! What you really need to do is focus even more intensely on light. Talk about whatever good people are doing and they'll do more. Praise your wife's dinner or your husband's smile. Catch the kids doing things right. Look at whatever you are doing that is good and grab more of the same. Instead of being a darkness buster, become a lamplighter--and one bright morning you'll wake up and find the darkness has dissipated away.

This was actually the first ’toon Pilar and I did together. You can see that my gestures and mannerisms are just out of the development stage. By the next episode, Pilar had me pretty much figured out.

The laser beam idea--like the sunglasses, the husks, the airplane and more yet to come--is from Rabbi Schneerson, a.k.a. “the Rebbe”. He wrote it to someone who was complaining about all the restraints and restrictions of Jewish life. I think it applies just as well to any serious spiritual path: If you’re not focused, you’re just playing games.

It’s a deep metaphor: The way a laser beam is generated is by restraining light within an optical cavity. There it bounces back and forth through some medium that amplifies its signal until it breaks out through a semi-transparent window.

So if once in a while you feel like a tiger pacing his cage, all your talents locked in and restrained, just think of it as that optical cavity of the laser beam. You are the ray of light, gaining momentum and getting focused so you can blast out with power, big time.

--
-- Rabbi Infinity, world's most famous hidden tzadik

Some of you think I'm just making this stuff up as I go along. Chaf means hand and looks like a hand holding something, so the rabbi starts pontificating about how, "He's got the whole world in His hand" and signs off with a bracha on a drink, cuz it looks good.

So here's the real story: There's a little-used, tall volume with lots of small print of cryptic Hebrew notes called "Sefer Ha-Erchin Chabad, volume 4." That volume covers most of the letters of the alef-bet. For each letter, there's an explanation describing how that letter relates to different sefirot and relationships between sefirot. Each letter can be charged with a zillion sorts of different energy patterns depending on where it turns up and what's its function. In case you're finding Kabbalah too simple and straightforward, this is the book for you.

The KToons Alef Bet Series borrows a lot of material from that volume. Just that I've got the challenge of bringing it down to the level of a four year old girl and giving it a practical application.

So what's with Chaf? Chaf is for Ketter--meaning The Crown. The ten sefirot beginning with Wisdom/Chochma are all about how Infinite Light pours into creation to become all things and animates them. There's a mystery here, because it somehow stays infinite while investing itself within all these finite beings, but hey that just goes to show how infinite that light really is.

Ketter on the other hand, is where the Infinite Light hasn't poured into anything yet. It's just way beyond everything, high and pure. And yet, Ketter is the dynamo that gives all the sefirot their creative power to isify and sustain something out of nothing. Ketter is called the encompassing light, because it stays transcendent of everything and yet encompasses and holds each thing in existence. That's the light the letter Chaf conveys. All the other letters convey some sort of inner, vitalizing light, while Chaf brings with it a transcendent light. In this way, Chaf is the crown of all the letters.

It's a lot like your own life: You have thoughts and feelings and words and actions, but transcending all of them is an all-encompassing will and drive. Usually what drives you, what you really want out of life, is hidden from everyone that knows you, even from you yourself. If you think you've got it figured out, you're on the wrong track. It's not something you can put your finger on, because it's the core of what keeps you ticking. You can't know it, you can only be it.

Same with the universe: The energy source that keeps it ticking lies so deep that it's way beyond any created being's grasp. No thought can grasp it, not even the highest angel can conceive of it, even the deepest yearning of the heart only catches a glimmer of it. Everything else is measured somehow relative to something else, but the crown is absolute and beyond knowing.

You can't touch the crown, you can't know anything about it, you can't even have a hunch what it is. But you can become it. Meaning, you can allow the crown to shine through you. That's what a mitzvah is about--it's an expression of the inner will that sustains the universe. When you do a mitzvah, you become the vehicle through which that inner will is expressed. You and the crown become one. And so you are plugged into its light.

Since the crown is beyond knowing, it doesn't matter if you are Rabbi Infinity or little Miri--everyone is equally distant and equally close to the crown. The encompassing light of the crown is beyond higher and lower, closer and further. The difference is only that complicated people make a big show that gets in the way and doesn't allow the light to break out into the open. Simple people--like little granddaughters--just do the mitzvah with an earnest, open heart. And then the light breaks through and glows.

Hurray for little people. They can reach that which is beyond high and low.

This one I learned from a paramedic. He said it came in very useful in panic situations and places like the emergency room. There, if you just react, you could end up killing someone. Better to take a moment to stop and size up the situation before acting. The problem is, you’re often in panic yourself. So you need to just stop in your tracks and restrain yourself, so that your brain can catch up to your feet.

In ordinary life, the experience of sitting there quietly while the world around you is going berserk takes real fortitude. You can feel yourself growing wiser and more mature as you do it. Every moment, you can feel yourself pulling the reins and holding back the wild horses inside you that want to go running wild. Once those reins feel a little slack, that’s when you can get up and go about your business—with a head on your shoulders.

In Kabbalah language, this state is called “Mochin D’Gadlut”—literally meaning “large brains”. That’s when the mind controls the emotions, rather than the other way around.

Okay, so this is more about the letter hey than about it's sister chet. It's also more about Passover than Chanukah.

There are two words that are very similar, yet opposites. Chametz is the regular, yeast-risen bread that is totally off-limits for Passover. Matzah is the flat, humble bread we eat instead. Now take a look:

חמץ Chet Mem Tzadik = Chametz

מצה Mem Tzadik Hey = Matzah

What's the difference between the two? A small window. That's what changes the hey into a chet. Otherwise, they're built of exactly the same letters (in slightly different order).

What's the window? It's the ability to climb out of yourself, out of the mess you got yourself into, and to see what needs to be fixed. When that window is closed, you've got chametz on your hands. Bad news. Open it and you're back to matzah.

Why does the window get closed? Because a person, like yeasty dough, gets too full of himself. Yeast feeds off the sugars of the dough and produces gases that blow it larger and larger. The ego feeds off the good deeds of a person and produces lots of hot air that swell his head way out of proportion. Once swollen, there's no way he can see himself objectively anymore. No way to return back to his authentic self. No way to recapture the divine spark that got buried under all that sticky dough. Stuck in a rut with only one way to go. (Sound familiar? We did that one in MT Therapy.)

So what do we do with this chet guy? One way is to just break a window in that solid wall and transform him back into a hey. Get him into a little humility, so he can see his mess and start to fix it.

But that's not the ideal. After all, the chet must have some purpose of its own. Human beings weren't given an ego, a sense of pride and self-esteem just so they could smash it down. Really, the ultimate redemption of the letter chet is not to be broken, but to rise so high that nothing can ever go wrong to begin with. That's what an ego is there for: So that a person will take ownership of his life and do the best he can, rising even higher and higher, seeking out a relationship with the ultimate, true Ego, the only one who can really call Himself "I".

But to get there, you need to first make yourself a humble hey. Now open that window and breathe in some fresh air.

(Note just for you Kabbalah buffs: Hey and Chet both signify Malchut. Chet is Malchut all by herself, while Hey is Malchut as Chochmah shines into her. Now go meditate on that one.)

Sources: See Menachot 29b, elucidated in Likutei Sichot vol. 1, pg. 130; ibid vol. 8, pg. 113. Sefer Ha-Erchin on chet, s'if 8.

This is something that my dear friend, Rabbi Tzvi Freeman, has written about quite often--I suppose he must have a lot of setbacks. Or maybe he just identifies with rubber bands.

His writing on the subject first appeared in the Chabad.org daily mailing called The Daily Dose. But it's all collected in the two volumes of Bringing Heaven Down To Earth--meditations on the wisdom of the Rebbe and in The Book of Purpose.

Here are some excerpts I could think of:

Progressive Failure

There are two ways to ascend: You can step upward, leaving one foot in its place as the other moves ahead. Or you can crouch down and leap.

This is the true meaning of failure: Failure is not just a setback. Everything in life is a step forward, because everything has meaning.

So too, failure: It is the crouch before the jump, the break away from the past so that we can leap into the future.

Bouncing Up

Why does Man destroy? Why does he wreak havoc in the world?

This world was designed so that there is no progress forward without first a step backward. Night comes before day, pain before pleasure, confusion before wisdom.

But then G_d made man, who strives beyond the design of things, who yearns to leap past nature, to embrace the infinite.

Man, too, must first fall so that he can leap upward. But since his leap is beyond nature, he must first fall beneath it.

That is sin—a fall beneath nature.

And that is the power of return
—to leap beyond nature.

The River Up

When the Divine Light began its epic descent—a journey that conceived worlds lower and lower for endless worlds, condensing its unbounded state again and again into innumerable finite packages until focused to a fine, crystallized resolution—it did so with purpose: to bring forth a world of continuous ascent. Since that beginning, not a day has passed that does not transcend its yesterday.

Like a mighty river rushing to reach its ocean, no dam can hold it back, no creature can struggle against its current. Even we, its voyageurs, cannot turn back. We must only move on with the river, on in its relentless ascent to the sea.

We may appear to take a wrong turn, to lose a day in failure—it is our delusion, for we have no map to know the river's way. We see from within, but the river knows its path from Above. And to that place Above it is drawn.

We are not masters of that river— not of our ultimate destiny, not of the stops along the way, not even of the direction of our travel. We did not create the river—its flow creates us. It is the blood and soul of our world, its pulse and its very fibers.

Yet of one thing we have been granted mastery: Not of the journey, but of our role within it. How soon will we arrive? How complete? How fulfilled? Will we be the spectators? The props? Or will we be the heroes?

That is all. And that is all that counts.

Knowing you're here with a purpose certainly makes a lot more sense of life. Provides fuel to keep going, as well.

Like when you see how tough it gets to move ahead and accomplish just one good thing. If you didn't realize what's going on, you might give up pretty fast. But when you think of yourself as an agent with a mission to repair and heal the world, you say, "Hey, there's something major in the way over here! We're taking on a big one now!" After all, the more resistance, the more you must be accomplishing.

That's the idea of the sandpaper. One thing that sandpaper knows for sure--if life is going too easy, it's not accomplishing a thing.

Here’s the story I got that line from.

I know, everyone's going to ask, "How do you stay connected? Why does this Infinity guy have to always talk in such riddles? Why can't he give us cosmic consciousness in one minute without the confuzzling metaphors and cutesy aphorisms?"

Well, for one thing, most people don't really appreciate being told outright what to do with their lives. As in, "Who is this Infinity guy anyways that he thinks he can preach at me what I should do and what I shouldn't?" Zap, there goes my Nielsen Rating.

So I figure much better to keep the message clothed in a harmless cartoon about some commonplace activity like Hang Gliding or Xtreme Ironing. If people want to get the message, they'll get it. If not, they'll just figure this is a nice 'toon to watch with my little kids on my lap at the PC so their mother will think I'm being a good daddy and hold off on blowing up my machine.

Nevertheless, just out of that insane self-defeating impulse dormant in all of us, I'll spell things out a little this time around. If you read on, it was your choice.

Staying connected means keeping up your spiritual routine. If you wake up every day to the joys of international disaster and local homicides blasting from your flashing obnoxalarm, rush out the door spilling your hot coffee on the four-legged rug who likes sprawling in the doorway, spend your lunch hour trying to impress the same water-logged brains you spend the rest of the day with, fall asleep plugged into another dumb home video on YouTube--and catch a little spirituality "when you have the time"--that's not called staying connected. That's called drowning in the ocean.

On the other hand, staying connected doesn't mean you can't do anything else but connecting. Hey, you're in this world for a purpose--to find those pearls and other treasure. Which means you have to get involved in what's happening down here.

So to stay connected, what you need is a regular, daily routine. You don't say, "I ate yesterday, who needs food today? I breathed oxygen two minutes ago, why should I breathe again now?" So why should you say, "I got a spiritual fix at the meditation retreat last summer. Cost me $2500 bucks plus transportation, plus a real sore tush from sitting on the grass all those hours. Why do I need anything more?"

Sorry, guy. You need nourishment and fresh air for the soul every day anew. You need to get up in the morning and thank G_d for your body and soul, learn uplifting stuff, meditate, pray from the heart, watch inspiring cartoons, (okay, you can do that at lunch). You need to prime your brain in the morning so that the whole day looks different, cuz you turned on your high beam before you ventured out into the gooky deep sea of the city. And in those most vital last moments of the day, when all you dream about at night is determined, you need to review your day and check if you grabbed any pearls of truth, beauty and wisdom while you were down here. Hey, now you're breathing pure oxygen. You're connected.

There I go getting all preachy again. Genug! (that's "enough" in Kabbalistic Yiddish)

You think it's pretty silly of a grandfather kabbalist to run around with his granddaughter on his shoulders. I could go the kinetic-experiential learning route with you. But instead, let me fill you in on the kabbalistic implications of having a Miri on a Zaidy's shoulders:

Zaidy is a vav. Sixth letter of the alefbet. That's the six sefirot Chesed, Gevurah, Tifferet, Netzach, Hod, Yesod. Six modalities of the Infinite Light in creating a world. Reflected in the microcosm of the human psyche as six modalities of human emotion:

1. Benevolence 2. Judgment 3. Beauty

4. Competitiveness 5. Surrender 6. Connection.

Miri is a yud, which in this case is the sefira of Malchut. Dominion. Being a king over your world. As in, taking effective action, really doing something. Nice feelings and noble intentions are so nice and noble, but unless they blossom into action, they just whither away and surrender to the wind with the autumn leaves. Malchut, then, is where it all happens.

But wait! That should put the yud at the foot of the vav—since malchut is the final result of the six sefirot before it! Like a gimmel, chasing after the dalet to do some real good. But here's a zayin with the yyud on top! What's Miri, the yud, doing up on top of my vav shoulders?

So here's the secret. Once those nice feelings and good intentions pour down into solid action, an amazing thing happens: Your whole character is picked up to a new plane of being. Everything changes. You discover emotions and capabilities that you never imagined could be there. What's going on?

Here's where we need some deep Kabbalah. The Kabbalists explain that plain physical action—even though it's the last stop, ground floor level of the soul—taps into a place far beyond the conscious or even subconscious mind, to the essence-core of the human being, a place called "the crown" (Ketter, for your kabbalah-lingo buffs). From there, a whole new person can be shaped, an entire life can be transformed.

Which explains the meaning of the ancient, enigmatic kabbalistic koan, "Just do something!!!" Meaning: So what that there isn't a drop of hope left in your heart—just do, throw yourself into it like a mad horse, and suddenly you will discover that you are a king and the whole world falls in place at your command. A royal horsey-zaidy!

This episode is dedicated to all the people who write to me to kvetch about everything that's wrong in the world and who's doing it and just how bad it really is that even the rabbis and the teachers and the kabbalists fall into the pits along with everyone else. In other words, the whole world is full of dirt.

So I tell them: Imagine after 120 years down here--may the Infinite Light grant you long and luminous years-you walk through those mahogany doors into the supernal court and they ask you, "Nu? So what did you get done down there?"

And you answer, "Oh, did I find dirt! Lots of dirt! Let me tell you about it:..."

Know what they're going to answer you? 'Zakly as I did: "We sent you to a gold mine and all you can come up with is dirt?!"

In fact, the great kabbalist, Rabbi Chaim Vital, writes that his teacher, none other than The Ari, Rabbi Isaac Luria, taught that this world is lowest of all worlds, the final repository of all the mud from the higher worlds, almost all of it dark, thick shells, with only a tiny bit of the good stuff mixed in. But that good stuff! Whoa! Nothing comparable to it! Not in any of those angel worlds above and not even in any place higher!

And the real neat thing is: Once you fight with the mud to grab away the sparks of goodness it holds, the mud itself begins to shine. It shines the transcendent light, a light so intense even the highest world cannot contain it.

Hey, what are we sitting around talking for! There's gold in them thar mud piles!

Don't you think it's rather unfair to take this pristine G_dly soul, throw it into a bag of meat and bones, and then tell it, "Now go about life like a mentsch. Don't sin. Only do good. Remember, it's all on video."?

So I'll let you in on a secret. A Kabbalah secret. According to the master Kabbalist, the Arizal, as a soul is descending through the higher worlds, it passes through a place called, "the lower garden of Eden"--and there it picks up a practice body. The practice body is not your regular hunk of meat like we get down here. It's a lot more responsive to the soul and more flexible, too. It can handle both spiritual and physical realms, transporting smoothly from one to the other. It doesn't need food to survive and isn't so hampered by other physical limitations, such as matter (it can go through walls) and space (it can be projected to a far distance faster than the speed of light).

Nevertheless, this practice body looks and functions just like the body which the soul is scheduled to pick in the material world. So the soul gets a practice period, learning how to do things like move a body's arms to put on tefillin or light a Shabbat candle, talk nicely and share its toys, eat food so it can say a blessing before and after--all the basic Torah stuff a soul is commissioned to do down here. In other words, a hands-on rehearsal of the entire Torah before birth.

Once born, this practice body (known sometimes as the tzelem--which literally means a shadow or a form, and sometimes as the levush--meaning a suit, like in spacesuit) invests itself within the physical body. This physical body, however, comes pre-programmed with a mind of its own. A meat mind. It's interests are in matters such as eating, drinking and otherwise deriving pleasure from its surroundings. In a way, that's a good thing, since the G_dly soul isn't the slightest bit interested in those things, yet it cannot fulfill its mission without them. On the other hand, it also presents a great challenge to the soul, which will have to rein in this meat-brain animal from rolling in the mud looking for all those pleasures when it's supposed to be helping the soul with its divine mission.

So now you have a soul invested within a semi-spiritual body invested within a physical body pre-programmed for physical life. If the connections are all clean and solid, the soul will have a much easier time taking control of this body, even when it wants to run wild through the swamps of life. If, however, the practice body connection was never really tight, then life down here is going to be much more challenging.

(Some Kabbalists know how to project their semi-spiritual levush to distant places, in order to perform special missions without actually having to go there. The people who see this levush, believe they saw the Kabbalist himself, while he may have been sitting somewhere on the other side of the planet. Most of us, however, should not attempt such practices, since you never know if you'll be able to get the levush back into the body.)

Now let's get to the practical stuff: The body your child gets is a product of your DNA plus your partner's DNA, along with some mitochondrial and environmental factors. The soul is chosen Up Above. There's a schedule that says, "at time x, the world needs soul x to descend to place x and get x done."

And here's the scary part: The practice body, the levush, is formed by the thoughts and mindset of the parents, especially at the time of the child's conception. Throughout the child's life, this levush remains connected to the parents, which is why a child has a mitzvah to honor his mother and father. So, practically speaking, your purity of thought and attitude to your spouse has a very profound effect on your child's journey through life. And your child's journey has a profound effect on you.

Before I get to the Kabbalah behind the letter hey, I need to ask you a simple question: What's the world made of?

Your high school textbook says energy and matter—whatever those are. Before they had high school textbooks, philosophers thought the world was made of form and matter. Kabbalists say everything is light and packaging. But if you look in the Book of Genesis, you'll see that everything is made of nothing more than G‑d's speech, as King David (a really great kabbalist) puts in the Psalms, "By the word of G‑d, the heavens were made and with the breath of His mouth, all their host."

But then, speech itself has two components. You need air, pumped up from the lungs. And you need to contour that air with certain vibrations, as contributed by the larynx and the mouth cavity.

That's why King David also says, (in the same Psalms), "All that He desires, G‑d does"—implying that there is another element here besides G‑d's speech, and that is G‑d's desire. The speech would be just plain hot air if there was no desire involved to add some vibrations and resonance to that air.

Now, before you begin thinking that all this is arcane babbletalk, let me explain that no, I don't believe that G‑d is an opera star with gigantic lungs pumping out a universe through his throat. Let's get a little abstract here:

Desire:

Human desire is a prison of wants and deficiencies that move us in directions often beyond our control.

Cosmic Desire is entirely His free choice, nothing more than a simple nuance of the Infinite Light in some direction or other.

Speech:

Human speech is how we produce physical sounds so that we can escape our own little shells and share our consciousness with others.

Cosmic Speech is how the Essence of the Infinite transcends itself to generate "otherness".

Comes out that, while we look at the universe and see energy and matter, the Existifier of all of this only sees desire and otherness.

Now, in the Hebrew alefbet, there are two letters that exemplify these two elements of otherness and desire more than all the others. The letter yud is all about desire and form. The letter hey is all about breath. It's the only letter that has no tone of its own, just a signal to breathe out. That breath is what makes the sound go outside of you, to another person. So the hey is all about creating otherness.

That is why King David also said, "For with yud-hey, G‑d forms worlds." Two worlds: The world to come was formed with the yud, while this world was formed with a hey. This world is like a hey, because it's whole theme is "here I am, here I was, I am just a thing that is." It doesn't speak out about how it's being brought into being at every moment out of total nothingness—you have to figure that out on your own.

The world-to-come theme is "I'm an art form, an expression of the desires of my creator."

Really, the world-to-come is nothing more than the inner reality of this world. Our job is to look beyond the outer façade that conceals it and fuse together desire and otherness, light and the packaging of light, form and matter, energy and its mediums, the yud and the hey.

Many of you are wondering exactly how Matzah Therapy works. Although the therapeutic value of MT has been well known for thousands of years, it is only due to recent research in our lab here in Unspecified Location, Planet Earth, that a plausible explanation can be described in biochemical terms.

The matzahs used in MT are produced from powdered triticum and dihydrogen monoxide. Of course, these are the essential ingredients in most breads. There are, however, several key factors in the baking process that distinguish MT from other breads. To understand the impact of these factors, we need to understand the metabolic processes that are peculiar to Feivels.

Unlike other mechanical pets, Feivels do not live by battery packs alone. Feivels are in constant need of mental input originating from the mind of their owner. This input not only directs the emotional state of your Feivel, but also serves to replenish electrical circuits. and ensure smooth function of all parts.

Another peculiarity of Feivels is that they are programmed to be a lot of fun and very challenging. To accomplish this, they require an EF (ego function). The algorithms used to generate this state are proprietary intellectual property of SecretKabbalaSociety.com and will not be discussed further in this forum. What is important to understand is that EF, although a key element in any Feivel profile, can make an awful lot of noise. When that noise level passes over a critical threshold--this is known as "Hyper-Ego Functioning"--it effectively drowns out any signals from outside. Feivel's circuits begin auto-reiterating in recursive loops, evidenced by an expanding head, heavy eyelids and all round obnoxiousness. A Feivel suffering HyperEF displays intolerance of any other conscious being occupying a similar space or performing similar functions. Eventually, productive activity grinds to a halt, to be replaced only by demands for service and attention, often accompanied by terse insults and bad jokes.

At this point, the only way to get a mind-signal into a Feivel is by dropping one straight into its I/O port (aka mouth). That's the MT matzah. The mind-signal is embedded into an MT matzah by processing all the materials manually and mindfully. At each step along the way, those handling the MT materials recite verbally that they are doing whatever they are doing, "for the sake of matzahs for mitzvahs." At Infinity Labs, even the harvesting of the MT wheat and the drawing of MT water is performed with this mindfulness state. This is also known as "handmade matzah shmurah" or "handmade shmurah matzah"--depending on who you want to impress.

MT matzahs are capable of retaining mindfulness embedded within their molecular structure because they are flat. The eukaryotic micro organisms known as saccharomyces cerevisiae attack the fermentable sugars within moist grains, releasing carbon dioxide that inflates the dough thereby negating the mindfulness state previously embedded there. MT matzahs are placed in a fired stone oven before those nasty saccharomy guys can get to work, keeping the matzahs flat and ego free.

Consuming MT matzahs on the first night of Passover is a guaranteed method to embed their ego-balancing signal in your Feivel for an entire year. Just make sure you use quality matzahs, supervised throughout their process and hand-baked for the sake of the matzah mitzvah. Follow the instructions from your Feivel manufacturer. And remember, you can always rely on Infinity Labs for the highest quality Kabbalistic solutions.

For most of us, this is one of the greatest challenges in life: Knowing when to be tough and when to be soft. Somehow, that little needle managed to figure it all out.

It really comes down to knowing your purpose in life. At the very least, you have to know that you have a purpose. And that it has to do with this world you're stuck in.

When you keep that purpose at front-center stage in your mind, the rest of your act is set out for you. If something is standing in the way of that purpose, you gotta be tough. And if something is there to help you out, you gotta open up and let it in.

Knowing your purpose and how everything fits into that great patchwork whole isn't always cut and dry. A lot of people get really off track--and start sewing their thumbs to their fingers. That's why we have all the wise teachings of the Torah and its sages--sort of like a stitching guide. Nowadays, you can't get by without some basic Kabbalah, as well.

Hey, it's true. It really is a time and space warp device. Take a look at what the Torah says:

"You should dwell in sukkot for seven days. Every member of the Jewish People shall dwell in sukkot…"

The sages of the Talmud commented on this: "All the Jewish People can fit into one Sukkah." This is the inner meaning of what they meant--that, in a certain inner reality, al the Jewish People are in one Sukkah. So every single Jew is there in every Sukkah. Because really it's one single sukkah, just with many different doors in different spacial and temporal locations.

This makes more sense once you understand that the greenery covering the Sukkah (they call that schach--hard to pronounce, easier to get hold of) is an extension of the Encompassing Light. That's the energy field that isifies the universe into isness at each moment. Generally, it remains way beyond our perception, but for Sukkot, as a result of the shofar blowing and all the prayers and fasting, it makes a cameo appearance in our lives as that green stuff up above our heads.

When we take the lulav and etrog into the Sukkah and do the "shake it up Zaidy" thing, we draw that Encompassing Light inward into ourselves as well.

So since this is an all-encompassing energy, it obviously transcends the time-space continuum. And we're sitting inside it. Like they used to say when I was much younger, wow, what a trip!

For this particular Kabbalistic secret, you don't have to look much further than the Babylonian TalmudShabbat 104. Here's how it goes:

Rabbi Joshua the son of Levi walked into the academy one day and the rabbis told him, "Some schoolchildren were here today in the study hall and they said things the like of which was not heard even in the days of Joshua the son of Nun."

"They said that alef bet means "learn understanding."" (Alef means learn; bina means understanding.)

"Then they said that gimmel daled means "give generously to the poor."" (Gemol means to give generously; dalim are poor people).

"They asked, "Why is the foot of the gimmel stretched toward the daled?" And they answered, "Because it is the way of the giving person to run after the poor.""

"And why is the leg of the daled slanted slightly back toward the gimmel? Because the poor person must make himself available to those who can give."

"And why is the face of the daled turned away from the gimmel? So he can give to him in secret, so the daled won't be embarrassed."

There's more there--those little kids covered the entire alef bet until the last letter. But you can already see that these kids were more than a step beyond Sesame Street. They tell us that the first step is to learn to understand. And then, as soon as you learn to understand, what's the first thing you will do? Acts of kindness.

But real kindness. Not the kindness where you need to wait for someone to ask. Not the kindness where you let the other guy know, "Hey, lookee here! I'm giving you something." But rather, the kindness where you feel indebted to the recipient for providing you the opportunity to help him out. And so, he gets his help with dignity and respect.

Which means that once you have learned understanding, you see that there really is no hierarchy of givers and getters in this world. It's only on the surface that it seems that way, but in the understanding view from within, no one gives without getting, no one gets without giving.

For more on this giving-getting idea, take a look at The Lunar Files. Now that's real kabbalistic.

Okay, all you KToon fans! Now it's your turn: Explain to all of us what's GLT and why thinking about higher things is the best strategy to get out of it.

Then maybe you can also explain why GLT is an effective energy source when exploited strategically.

Best explanation wins the opportunity to collaborate on a KToon script!

Having your head in the clouds and your feet on the ground is really not so hard. The hard part is keeping the head and the body connected while they're stretched so far.

Esau was a guy who didn't do too well at this. He was a brilliant student of his father Isaac, but his feet weren't just on the ground--they were in the mud. Esau understood and wanted all the right things--his father's teachings, his blessings, his heritage--but his body just wouldn't let him. He was a torn man in everything he did. In fact, to this day, the head of Esau is buried together with Isaac, while his body is buried out in the field.

Esau set the precedent for another great philosopher--the one everyone blames for the mind-body disconnect. His name was René Descartes and his skull is sitting on display in the Museum of Man in Paris, while his body is lying in a church. Talk about putting Descartes before the horse!

So how do you keep the lines of communication open over such a distance? The key is a switchboard designed just for this purpose called the heart. If your mind is satisfied with gazing at the beauty up there beyond the clouds, uttering an occasional, "How nice, how transcendental!"--then it's just floating away. It's likely to get snagged on one of those tree branches or swallowed by a blue whale.

But if your mind keeps in regular dialog with the heart, as in:

"So what are you seeing up there, mind?"

"Oh, it's neat, real cool, heart!"

"Neat and cool--very nice. But how does it help me deal with the weather down here?"

And then the mind starts to describe to the heart its vision in vivid detail, until the heart, too, catches aflame with awe and amazement and pumps that inspiration out into the rest of the body to create an inspired life down here on earth.

That's when you get a well-integrated, harmonious person like Jacob, Esau's brother. His life was an exercise in applied spirituality under the most earthly circumstances. In fact, his soul and body were so well integrated that even after his last breath, his soul remained with his body. And so they lie there together in the Cave of Machpelah, as the sages say, "Jacob, our father, never died."

What's a nice neshama like that doing in a nasty place like this? Why does a really nice G‑d send a poor innocent neshama down into the world knowing full well how messed up she's going to get? She's got a one in a million chance of coming out unscathed. Even if she is successful and manages to do some mitzvahs in the end, look at the collateral damage incurred. I mean, is it really worth it?

Must be. Otherwise we wouldn't be here, right? And the hero of our story is a case in point. Look at what he accomplished: If he had just stayed good and nice his whole life, well that would have been good and nice. But there's no way he would be doing mitzvahs with the hyper-energy he's putting into them now. And where did all that energy come from? From biking, partying and all the other big-trouble stuff. That's a kind of energy you just don't get out of being nice. Only that now all that Big Trouble energy is being channeled into making the world a beautiful place.

In Kabbalah lingo, we call this rescuing the sparks from Tohu. Tohu, you'll recall from World Puzzle, is that ideal but impossible world that exists before our world can happen. Because everything there is so absolutely ideal, it all shatters and the sparks fall downward. The highest, most powerful sparks fall to the lowest places—like Big Trouble Land. Nice people who are nice their whole lives can't get to those sparks. Only bikers and other troublemakers who are running away from their neshamas can get there. Then, when they turn around and break out of the Other Side, they bring all those hyper-sparks with them, reconnecting them back to their power generator in Tohu, and converting them into super-dynamos for healing the planet.

More on Tohu at Fallen Sparks and Tohu Wars.

A few notes about how Big Trouble Meets Small Shofar was made. Although it may look small, this was undoubtedly our biggest project to date. Miri (Nitzeves Freeman) practiced her part for a week or so. She doesn't yet read, so I had to say the words and she repeated them after me. Then we cut out my voice and sewed hers together. But she sure put a lot of expression into it.

We had to decide whether the hero of the story would be a hero or a heroine. I had originally imagined a heroine, but Pilar pleaded that heros are so much easier to stick-draw and animate. For that and other reasons, he became a guy. The biker idea came from Pilar, as did the final planet scene. I blew the shofar. We would really like to make this into a storybook. What do you think?

Pilar, anything to add?

If you've been following, you've probably realized that teaching how to ride a bicycle has a lot to do with eating bagel holes. It's all a matter of finding something in nothing. Kabbalists, even when they have something, continue searching in the nothing to find even greater something.

Maybe that's why we're releasing this episode just on time for Simchat Torah. That's a celebration where we dance with a Torah. Pretty ridiculous, right? I mean, a scroll, one would think, is for reading, chanting and incanting. Which are all pretty kabbalistic activities themselves. But who ever heard of dancing with a book--even a rolled-up, scroll book?

But there again is the whole finding-something-in-nothing thing: As a bagel has a hole, so the Torah has silence. And the essence of the words of the Torah and all its guidance, wisdom and secrets is found best in the Torah's silence, as it is rolled up and wrapped up and dances with us. There we touch more than wisdom, there we touch the essential relationship between us and our G‑d.

That's why we celebrate with the Torah this way after Yom Kippur, and not on Shavuot. Shavuot is the time of year when the Torah was originally given--so why not dance with the Torah then? But then, when we first received the Torah, we hadn't yet tapped into this deep relationship thing yet. We first had to mess up and break the relationship with the Golden Calf affair. Then, once we had found the emptiness, the point where the Giver of the Torah lets go of the handlebars and we start to fall--and then we discover He is still there and we are able to keep on riding, that He is still with us even when we fall and we are still with Him--then we touch that essence-core of the Torah, that which is never lost. The silence. And with that we dance.

Sometime I muse that all the teachings of the Kabbalah are really nothing more than everything the Hebrew language contains inherently. This teaching about creation with words is a good example.

In English (and other languages), you have objects, material, physical, things, stuff. How do you say any of that in Biblical Hebrew? You don't. No word matches the meaning of any of those. When Jews wanted to translate the words of foreign philosophers into Hebrew, they had to abduct words meant for desires, clay and rain and twist their arms into becoming code words for Greek concepts.

In Hebrew, there is only the word. Davar (that's how you say word in Hebrew). Whatever exists is a word. If there's more than one, they are dvarim. The tree is a word, the earth is a word, the heavens are a word and you and I are words, too. So is running, eating, speaking and even being. Nothing is a thing, everything is a word.

Makes sense. After all, G_d said "Be light!" and light came into being. So what is light? Nothing more than G_d saying that light should be. And the same with every other creation: They are all words, Divine words. Not static things that are just here because they are here, but articulations of G_d speaking, telling a story about a world that exists only because He is telling a story about it

What is a word? It is a thought in crystal form. A person perceives the world a certain way, feels about it accordingly and articulates that in his thoughts. Then when he wants to communicate those thoughts to those outside of him, he condenses them into a stream of spoken droplets, or frozen crystals upon a page.

So, too, when the Great Isifier desires to create a world that would seem outside of Himself, He condenses His thoughts of this world into tight packets of creative energy, combining and mixing them to generate all that is.

(Hey, it's not much different than what's happening on this computer right now. Think about it: Everything you see and hear on this machine is generated by combinations of words in the programmer's code.)

Kabbalists know that the 22 letters of the Hebrew Alphabet are hard-wired to those 22 articulations of energy that are sustaining the universe. They master ways to manipulate those letters in order to heal fractures and fissures in the cosmic whole. It's dangerous stuff, so these secrets are transmitted only orally. Some of it has been written down, but their true meaning can only be understood by someone who has received the tradition from a teacher.

Nevertheless, any child--or even an adult--that learns to read the Hebrew letters, and says the words of our Torah out loud with joy and with love, that child also brings light and healing into the universe. The same with our prayers, which were arranged by prophets and sages according to the hidden knowledge. In that way, everyone can be a Kabbalist, and the whole world can be healed.

Hold on. It will take us a while, but we're planning to bring you the whole set of 22 letters in episodes coming up.

It's a strange, strange thing, but the Torah opens with a bet. No, not that sort of bet. Well, maybe it does that too. But what I meant is that the first letter of the first word of the opening verse of the Torah is the second letter of the alephbet--the letter bet. Why the Torah doesn't open with an aleph is explained in The Aleph Files. But why a bet?

Now you're asking, "Why does this long-bearded Kabbalist who's kind of a little strange himself think it so strange that the Torah starts with a bet? What's the big deal anyways? It had to start with something."

The point is that if the Torah starts with a bet when describing the emergence of a created world, that means the world itself begins with--and is contained within--the letter bet.

Because, you see, the Torah is not like other books about the world. With other books, first there's a world and then the book tells a story about that world. But the story of the Torah preceded the world. First there was the story, then G_d said, "Great story! Let's do it!" and then it came to be.

So if the Torah starts with a bet, the bet contains everything that will happen from that point on.

They say that when the Alter Rebbe and many of his followers were being escorted by the Russian Army away from the battlefront with Napolean, they would stop at each fork in the road, the Alter Rebbe would lean on his staff and ponder and then say which way to go. One time, when he pondered quite long, his grandson asked what was the problem. He answered that it all depended on which way to learn the first bet in the Torah.

Starting the Torah with the letter bet means to say that there was something before, but we can't see it from here. That's crucial. If we could see what came before the world, there would be no world. It would be like living in a house where all the walls were transparent and allowed you to walk right through them. There would be no house. So too, a transparent universe is not a real universe. That's why the word we use for world in Hebrew is olam--which means "a concealment." To be a world, it must conceal its origin. It cannot tell you about the aleph, only about the bet.

Yet, the world was made with compassion. It could have been made with a samech or a closed mem--a perfectly closed system with no view in any direction except within. All would be driven by fate, like a pre-programmed mechanism, and we would be nothing more than the mechanical dolls going through our motions for the entertainment of our Maker. Who would probably get quite bored after a few thousand years of this.

Instead, we live in a bet. Bet is related to bayit, meaning a house. And a house has windows and doors. This house also has windows--the tzadikim who draw light into our world and the miracles that scream at us, "There's something more here than your little universe! Look up! Look yet higher!"

There's also a door, and the door is not locked. True, the door only opens in one direction--not to what came before, not to what is above or what is below, but only to what will be. But that is all we need for our escape to freedom: The power to open the door, to walk outside of our defined little universe, and to plant a garden and grow the future.

We live in a world not of what is, but of what could be.

Vote here: Mister Poll

But first, keep this in mind: You're not just choosing some nice little chatchka to entertain the kids for a few hours. Neither are you choosing a cute pet to integrate into the family. You're going to get this Feivel and he's going to be connected to your brain. That's right: You'll be the mind, Feivel will be the heart. You're choosing who you want to be.

Along with an easy-to-assemble Feivel in a choice of infinity-blue, kabbalah-pink or candy-turquoise, a battery recharger with a universal adapter, and a brain-to-Feivel transmission device, you'll get the training DVD that demonstrates all the mind-over-heart issues we talked about in past blogs. Basically, according to the state of your brain waves, that's what's going to be happening in Feivel. Together, you and Feivel will become one person.

Now you're asking, "Why on earth would anybody want to do that?"

So here's why: Controlled, double-blind studies in our lab have demonstrated that consistent Feivel training over a period of only three months drastically increased mind-mastery, self-confidence, concentration, emotional stability, cosmic consciousness and general enjoyment of life in 98.72% of subjects who survived to complete the term. Furthermore, before-and-after fMRI scans conclusively demonstrated permanent structural changes in the frontal cortex and basal ganglia of these subjects. It is theorized that these changes could be a major factor in offsetting ADD, OCD, PDD, GLT, NYPD and just about anything else a pediatric psychiatrist could throw at you.

Obviously, this is something that no budding Kabbalist fan would want to pass up. The question is only: Feivel Lite™ or Feivel Pro™?

Feivel Lite™ leads you to a state of ultimate mind-heart mastery, tranquility and serene higher consciousness. Your heart becomes a crystal vessel for the enlightenment of the mind. Your emotions and behavior are guided in perfect harmony to your inner vision. You gain high social status and could likely even start your own cult, if it weren't for the selflessness clause in the Feivel sales agreement.

Feivel Pro™, on the other hand, leads to an unpredictable life of incessant challenge. Setbacks, mess-ups, tantrums and burnouts are all default features of the Feivel Pro landscape. It's certainly possible to avoid serious disgrace, outrage and abomination of lasting repercussion, but only by being forever on guard. In a word, the job of the Feivel Pro master is to continually be Feivel and not be Feivel at once.

For further information on the two modes of Feivelness, please examine chapters 12–16 and 27–28 of the world's first Practical-Kabbalah-for-the-Everyman book, Sefer HaTanya by Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi.

Now here's the Big Deal: As a dedicated KToons addict, this is your once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to provide your input. Just comment below, telling us which Feivel you would rather integrate into your personality and why. Then, don't forget to register your vote at Mister Poll so we can begin mass production accordingly.

It should be noted that the Original Manufacturer seems to have had an overwhelming preference for Feivel Pro. Unless you have a better explanation for the human race.

For information on Feivel Inc. investment opportunities, please visit our corporate site.

Some airplanes fly because they are pushing air downward. But most of them fly because they are pushing air upward. Don’t believe me? Look here.

This is beautiful. It fits so well:

Like an airplane, we are placed inside a fluid environment. For airplanes, that’s air. For us, that's reality. Air is fluid because you can move your hand inside it. Reality is fluid, because it’s up to us which direction it goes in.

So when we move with enough force and the right design so that we move our fluid environment upward, we move upward as well. Sure, there’s going to be a lot of drag, inertia and friction—and take-off isn’t so easy either. But all that is just evidence that you’re getting somewhere.

Basically that means: Take life head-on. Instead of avoiding all the stress, wear and tear of life, use it to your advantage. Let it all just carry you higher.

I’m trying to think of some examples. But maybe you have one yourself?

Now you understand why we had to first learn the yud, then the vav, and only then look at the alef. As we go through the alefbet, you'll see that not only the alef, but every letter, is a composite of the vav and different forms of the yud.

The alef, however, tells it all. Hey, look at this: Every letter of the alefbet has a numerical value. The alef--you guessed it--is 1. It also has another numerical value, because you can spell it out: Alef (1), Lamed (30), Feh (80) spells Alef in Hebrew letters. Add those up and you get 111. All three bases loaded with ones.

That's because the alef isn't just about oneness, it's about creating oneness. When there is nothing else but one that's not the real oneness. The real oneness is when there is more than one--there are at least two--and yet both find a common essence and come together as one. Which means the first step is that there is only one; the second step is that there are two; and the third step is that there are two that become one. One above, one below and one together makes three ones.

Practically speaking: I'm here on planet earth thinking there's nothing else but me. The Infinite Light (as we Kabbalists like to call Him) looks upon the whole scene and sees there is nothing else but Him. But then I realize, hey that's ridiculous, I didn't make this place, there must be someone way bigger than me behind all this. So I reach up to Him. Which was just what He was waiting for so that He could reach down to me. And so we are two that become one.

Now, you're asking, "How on earth does a meat and bones human being reach up to the Infinite Light?" The answer is that the Infinite Light set things up so that we have a whole repertoire of mitzvahs and beautiful deeds for connecting with. They look small and innocent enough, but in fact, they are all really trigger-points to elicit response from Above. He says, "Reach up to me by doing these things, and I will reach down to you in a similar way. Make light with a candle for Shabbat, and I will shine into your home. Give a coin to those in need, and I will give you life and the things you need. Put a mezuzah on your door, and I will protect you in all you do. Wrap these leather boxes with scrolls to connect your mind and heart, and I will focus my supernal mind and heart on you and your world. Turn to me in love, and I will mirror that love back to you--only that it will be in my infinitely unbounded terms."

That also explains Miri's puzzle: Why is it that the lower yud reaches high up, while the higher yud reaches way down? Well, it's because the higher I reach up to Him, the further down He reaches to me. To make the worlds of the angels one with the Infinite Light, you don't have to reach so high. But to take all the stuff of this everyday world of ours and make it one with Him, for that you have to reach very high indeed. Which is just what the ancient Book of Formation teaches: The lowest is connected to the highest and the highest is connected to the lowest.

People look for deep things in high places. Like lofty mountaintops and profound philosofizicationing. But the Infinite Light is simple. And so it is found in the simplest of places.

Like this little girl lighting a candle. Looks pretty innocent, right? But the Kabbalist will tell you that this little girl is the sefira of Malchut bringing the light of the innermost of Chochmah into the created worlds of Briah, Yetsirah and Assiah. And that innermost light is the same as the innermost of the Ancient of Days, a.k.a. the Hidden Light of the Seven Days of Creation which is in turn the innermost of the Infinite Light--meaning The Essence. Now we're getting heavy. Simple=heavy. Get it?

The main point is: Wanna impact the world big time? Get Kabbalistic. Get a little girl to light a candle. There's a lot more power in that little candle than in all the philosofications of your entire library.

In the Kabbalah, the forces of darkness and evil are called “shells” and “husks”. Which means that they are not inherently bad, they’re meant simply to protect the fruit. It’s just when we humans confuse the fruit with the husk and vice-versa that we cause them to become truly evil.

With some fruits, like dates, figs, grapes and pears, the peel is just as edible as the fruit itself. Other fruits, like bananas, oranges and grapefruits, have a peel that’s easily removed. But some, like coconuts, require real effort to crack.

So too in life: There are things we do that are all good, like mitzvahs. Other things are permissible, but you can find a way to make a mitzvah out of it. Then there are major challenges that put everything you believe to the test. But when you crack the nut and break through the test, you find yourself lifted higher, way beyond where you started off. Those are the best fruits of life.

The problem with religion is all this talk about faith. Why believe in something just because somebody else--or even a lot of people--believe it is true. After all, why do they believe it? Because they believe someone else. And what kind of proof is that? Because a lot of believers believe, I should believe too?

Then there's philosophy. The problem with philosophy is all this talk about reason. Reason doesn't move you anywhere, because for every good reason in one direction, there's always another equally good reason in the opposite direction--and even if you don't know of one, once you've had enough experience with reason proving you wrong you're always going to have that nagging feeling that this is also going to be a dead end.

So what's a living, breathing, suposedly sentient being supposed to do?

Nobody ever took a risk, made a gamble or invested in a business by force of reason. But only fools do such things on pure faith. The tried and proven approach to life is a proper balance of the two.

First you have faith that there is an answer. Nothing can happen without a place to stand.

Then you use your mind to look clearly, casting aside preconceptions, assumptions and prejudices. Even if the answer is not what you expected, not what you would like, not where you were planning to head, hey, it's the answer. Then you look again, even deeper. And yet deeper.

And then a voice inside says, "Yeah, this is it. I gotta go with this one."--that's when you commit. That's when reason ends and faith takes over.

Like a marriage: It starts with an attraction, a kind of faith that this the right one. And it ends with a commitment, that we're going to make this work, no matter what. It doesn't start with reason and it doesn't end with reason. But if there's no reason in between, man can you get in trouble.

Once you've done your homework and you know this guy has no history of violence, has got his act together enough to support a family and is who he says he is--or the similar kinds of factors with a gal--then you go beyond that. You get married. Marriage is the point where you say, "Ok, now I can believe in you. Now I have faith. Now, even if one day I wake up and see you lying there makeupless, in your curlers, and even a few wrinkles and grayish hairs, snoring and grumpy-looking after our terrible quarrel last night, still I'm there for you, I believe in you.

Really, you started with that faith to begin with. You just needed some reasoning to make sure you're not being duped.

So too, the Jew is married to the Torah. He doesn't want to study the books of all those who say he is a fool--just as a faithful husband doesn't want to hear criticism of his wife. Just like an athlete in training doesn't want to hear all the reasons why he might not win. He has 100% faith that he will win--otherwise he would not be killing himself over the grueling rigors of his daily training?

Just like the acrobat will not take his eyes off his goal, so the Jew after more than 3,300 years is not ready to say, "Hey, maybe we made a mistake back there. Maybe we didn't think it through properly after all. Maybe we gave our lives to the Greeks, the Romans, the Crusaders, the Inquisition, etc. all in vain? Maybe all our history was a big waste after all and our fathers and mothers were plain fools for three millenium?"

Okay, if you want, you can think all those things.

Just as the acrobat is about to place his foot on the platform at the far end of his rope, he looked back and...

There's so much to talk about on this one. I'm anticipating a loud KToon community buzz, sharing experiences, reactions, rebuttles, rejections, rebellions, reconciliations, rethinkings, repercussions, recapitulations and more.

The idea is actually one of the early teachings of the great kabbalist and chassidic master, Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, from when he used to say short teachings before his time in Czarist prison. What's neat is the way he teaches you to objectify your feelings, saying, "That's not really me, that's just a fire burning inside."

You see, the #1 booby-trap on the path to self-mastery is self-blame. As soon as you say, "Oy! I'm so bad for feeling that way!"—you've already sentenced yourself to eternal slavery. Why? Because you've identified yourself with those feelings. You've said, "That is who I am, that is how I feel." And you have to be who you are, right?

But if you say, "Oy, it's that burning fire/dumb animal/secretion of hormones happening again!"—so now you can choose to ignore/tame/master that fire/animal/limbic response system.

After all, you are not the animal inside. You are a G_dly soul.

The Kabbalah of Dips, Downs, Outs and Transformation:

They say life has its ups and downs. It's not true. Life is ups and downs.

Let's start with breathing. Pretty important for life, right? All the major classes of structural molecules in living organisms need oxygen, so you gotta breathe. You do that by creating a vacuum inside. At that point, you become weaker, more helpless. You don't want to take a punch when you're inhaling. But that's when you pull in the oxygen that your hemoglobin will carry from your lungs to every cell in your body. That's how you recharge.

For that oxygen and everything other vital substance to get around your body, your heart needs to pump. It also does this by creating a vacuum—a hydraulic vacuum—so it can pull in the old blood and pump out the new.

Then there's your neurons, firing in a harmonious rhythm conducted by the field marshall of your brain, the thalamus: positive charge—fire; negative charge—receive; marching at about 20 times per second when you're active, mellowing to a soft 10 or so when you relax.

Those aren't the only rhythms drumming away in your body and your environs. You may have noticed that even your money works this way: You spend in order to get. You invest in order to earn. Even money joins in the cosmic dance, the song of being, that resonates through every participant of existence in the universe. Everything is in constant pulse, because everything is energy and all energy oscillates in waves. There is no crest that is not preceded by a trough, no positive without first a negative; everything is constantly moving, vibrating, pulsating with the breath of life. As soon as any particle would cease this dance of life and retreat to stillness, it would disappear into the void of zero energy.

The Kabbalah describes the songs of the angels in constant "running and return." The Midrash speaks of the song each creature sings, the song by which it achieves life, those rhythms, those vibrations of life. Time itself is simply the grand pulse of the entire universe in a cycle of millennia, years, days and moments.

The Energy Problem

Why must the universe do a song and dance to earn its right to exist? Here's what the Kabbalah has to say:

Everything that exists is projected onto the four-dimensional stage of space and time by a boundless, transcendent source of energy, a.k.a. the Infinite Light. Every moment, every galaxy, every star, every critter and every subatomic particle must be sustained by that light or it will return to the void. Just like the stuff in my Isifier.

Problem is, the Infinite Light is infinite. The stuff that it's sustaining is decidedly finite. So how do you funnel infinite energy into finite stuff?

Now that I've got the interest of the Energy Commission, I'll explain the Big Problem:

The Big Problem isn't just that infinite is too big to fit into finite. It's that, from the perspective of the truly infinite, finite things simply don't exist. If you would break the membrane between the Infinite Light and the finite creation, the whole caboodle would just be gone. No fizz. No pop-bang-zap burnout. Just gone, like it never was. Because from the Infinite's perspective, this whole reality of ours was never really there to begin with.

So here's the trick: For each thing in the universe to be a something, it has to first dip back into a place where it is nothing. That's when it receives it's vitality and can become a something again. Then, returning to somethingness, it finds itself orphaned, cut off from its source. So it returns to nothingness once again, and becomes revitalized, in an endless loop.

That's how energy works: The trough of a wave is the return to nothingness, the crest is the retreat to somethingness. The more something you want to be, the more nothing you have to become first. There's just no other way to receive.

And that's how it happens in life on earth as well. If you just want to move along step by incremental step, you can be satisfied with the regular cycle of dips and bounces through life. But when it's time for you to make a major leap in life, to reach to something that was previously way out of your bounds, that's when you find yourself dipping into an all-time low. That's the crouch before the jump, the kvetch of a spring before its release, the compression of gases before a big gaboom.

How To Squeeze a Lemon

Of course, not every retreat leads to victory, just as not every seed that rots under the ground will break through and blossom. For us human being, it's a matter of choice: You could choose to remain cramped within that crouch, and eventually just collapse—or just go on as though it never happened. What a shame—such a waste of a good depression!

Or you could exploit that depression to your advantage. Be like the child on a swing, pumping her feet just as she reaches the apex of her backward climb. Go with the flow, play along with the game, take advantage of your sour state to make lemon juice, saying, "Hey I'm not the ultimate center of the universe after all. In fact, I'm pitifully far from where I really want to be."

In case you didn't know, every act of life pulls energy from somewhere; either from the supernal channels of light or from the dark matter of Otherness; from the sweet springs of Divine Life or the sewer of the cosmic parasites; in harmony with the transcendental symphony or totally out of tune in the wrong key and meter; sitting at lunch with the Master of All Things or reaching to the dregs of His refuse containers out back.

So you start asking, "Where am I connected? Look at all the stupid fantasies playing incessantly in my mental meTube. What kind of a crazy channel are they tuned into? The words that come out of me, the habits I can't break—what station am I on?"

The depression turns to bitter, seething resentment. That's good. Depression is death; bitterness is the resurrection of the dead, where Dr. Life meets Mr. Death and performs CPR. There is anger, a kind of internal fury as the soul begins to catch fire. Like the Zohar says in the name of the Dean of the Academy of the Garden of Eden, "When you want a log to catch fire, you break it up. When you want to catch fire, you also need to break yourself up, to shatter your old self and start again."

Out of the ashes, a new self emerges. That's when you hear a small voice whisper, "There's a lot of things about me that need to be jettisoned, like a lizard sheds its skin, or a crustacean abandons its shell in order to grow. Inside me lies a G_dly soul, with infinite power. If only I could let go of my self-infatuation, my nutty fantasies and dumb habits, perhaps then the light of that Divine soul could shine through."

It's in that broken state that you are able to receive, to open up to the light within you and thereby tap into the unlimited power source from which that light extends. Finally liberated from that cumbersome backpack of artificial ego, unhindered by the baggage of false self-concept, now you can really start to fly, carry-on only.

Beyond Success

Sometimes, it's time for not just a major leap, but a quantum leap. Not just from little bear to big bear, but metamorphosis, from creepy-crawly bug to beautiful butterfly. From dinky little seed to big strong oak.

This may sound crazy, but the only way to totally break out of who you are and become something entirely new is through failure. "The Tzadik," wrote Solomon the Wise, "falls and stands seven times." Nothing can get you greater success than failure.

Everything we talked about until now is part of the natural order. Failure is not within the natural order. True failure is when you mess up and dip beneath your capabilities, beneath your nature. True failure is not just being incompetent. It's when you are capable of being great and you let the world down. That's when you're having a real bad day.

But the Kabbalah reveals that failure is also part of The Plan. Because dipping below nature is the only way a being can soar beyond it. Only once broken, are we able to put the pieces back together and build something totally new.

The moon is darkest when closest to the sun.

Become small, receive and then shine.

For more on failure and transformation, see Broken & Whole.

I know, I know...it's toooo esoteric. There's a mind walking a heart that has a mind sleeping inside it...you're thinking, how many minds does this Infinity guy think I have?

Well, the news is, we all have many minds. We like to think of ourselves as single-celled protozoans unicycling through life, when in truth we're all bustling metropolises of many, many neighborhoods, businesses, associations, organized crime, street gangs and, yes, politicians—each party competing for its voice to be heard.

Your doctor might explain to you the "hormone wars" taking place between your hypothalamus, pituitary, thyroid and adrenal glands. Neurologists discuss the dynamics going on between your right brain, your left brain, your reptilian brain and your limbic stuff in the middle of it all. Freud talked about the ego, the id and the superego. The Zohar talks about three rulers of the human body: the brain, the heart and the liver. However, it works, there are many voices in there, all clamoring for attention.

Nevertheless, the two major parties in this race are the brain and the heart. Those are the only two that feel they gotta have it all—each one vying for complete and exclusive dominion over the entire body. And they've got the wiring for it too: One holds dominion over the vast network of the nervous system, the other over the vital cardiovascular system. You could say that human life is about making war or peace between these two.

I can already hear you protest, "How on earth can a heart have a mind? It's just a meat-muscle pumping blood!"

But then, is it any less wondrous that the slab of grey matter in your skull is the seat of consciousness and imagination? Even more: that hunk of skull-marrow has the amazing capacity to rewire itself according to new choices and habits made in adult life; i.e. it has free will to direct its own design.

That's why many contemporary scientists are revisiting the idea of something that oversees the brain, even though it doesn't turn up in fMRI scans. They call it the mind, and many are convinced it's not just something the brain does, but something that does things with the brain. (You can read both sides of the story in David Chalmers' anthology entitled, Philosophy of Mind.)

This is the Kabbalistic explanation as well: The brain is just a device manipulated by something called "the thinking soul" to bring thoughts into physical reality. (The thinking soul in turn acts as an interface for the G_dly soul, but we'll have to get to that another time.) It seems the hyper-complexity of the brain together with the electro-conductive tissues of which it is made grant it the special place of middle-man between the ethereal soul and the gutsy body.

Same thing with the heart—it's also made of similarly electro-conductive tissues. It's the only organ of your body that will keep running even if it were removed and placed in a saline solution (don't try this except under clinical conditions). It too serves as a kind of receiver/transmitter for another kind of soul—titled "the animal soul."

Naa--I'm getting oversimplificated. You see, the thinking soul also has some very important offices holed up within the heart. Problem is, the staff there are usually asleep; and even when awake, they have great difficulty getting their messages out due to all the racket coming from the animal soul guys in the next office. The animal soul, too, is continually using the heart to pump messages to the brain in a kind of guerilla warfare, often clogging up the entire system to the point of declaring a coup d'état. Many of us are walking around much of the time with the brain occupied by the forces of the heart and the mind in political exile.

Now, each of these souls is a full person, with a mind and emotions. The mind of the thinking soul is like a parent that gives birth to its emotions, nurses them, feeds them and dresses them up snug and warm before sending them off to work. The mind of the animal soul, on the other hand, is more like one of those parents who is scared to death that his children may throw a tantrum, constantly running after them and giving in to their every demand. So too, the animal mind is a servant to its emotions, constantly on the lookout for things to fear and things to desire, relaying the information to the emotions and then finding ways to flee, fight or grab. Along its way, it tries to wrest control of the brain from the mind, like we said before, to enlist more forces in its maneuvers.

(Sometimes I wonder if perhaps the mind of the heart might reside in the limbic system. We'll leave that up to the neuro-kabbalists.)

Look, if you're an animal, that's great. That's what being an animal is all about, and its beautiful. Problem is, you're a human being. And a human being that doesn't get control over that big beast beneath the brain-blood barrier can get darn mean and ugly. No animal can be more destructive than a human being that thinks its an animal.

Simply put: The animal soul sees itself as the beginning and end of all things. There's no future, no past, no others, no higher goals--just get what you want and get it now. The thinking soul looks out there at the world and realizes that that's stupid, saying, "I didn't make this place. There's a lot more out here than just me. There's more to life than me feeling good now." And then each one tries to convince the other that it's wrong.

So here's how the mind takes control: First, it gets inspired. That's through study, contemplation and meditation upon inspiring thoughts. Like Kabbalah. Things that really awaken this vision of a universe megazillions times greater than itself, created by the power of the Infinite Light that transcends all things and vitalizes each one. Or the thought of how this Infinite Light reaches down to each person, treating each one of us as the center of the universe, including (and especially considering) yourself, and asking, "Please can you find a way to let me into your world?" Taking that seriously can melt the coldest soul.

When the mind is absorbed 100% into these things, without distraction, in clear 20/20 focus, it gives birth to a fire of deep emotions; a sense of amazement and awe, a burning attraction and a deep thirst to become one with the Infinite Light. The lines get hot enough to wake up those sleepy-bodies in the heart department, and a wild party ensues in which the staff members of the animal soul are totally overwhelmed and caught up in all the flurry.

Classically, this is what is supposed to happen at the time of prayer and it's called spiritual ecstasy. Again, best attempted under clinical conditions. For most of us, in the privacy of our homes and synagogues, we can achieve a modest simulation. Look, as long as we get enough inspiration keep us standing on our hind legs, above the mud and muck out there. At the very least, we can imagine what it must be like to be inspired.

The hitch with this stratagem is that the animal soul plays an entirely passive part in the whole drama. Sure, it may get caught up in the excitement, but essentially, it's an alien to the experience. It figures, "Hey, what have I got to do with Infinite Light and higher visions? If it can't take mustard and ketchup, it can't be in my department." Basically, it's mind is shut down for the process, just waiting for breakfast.

So when the drama is over and it's time to sink teeth into something real, the alarm clock goes off and there goes all the lovely inspiration of the higher mind down the garburator with the tomato peels and egg shells.

There are two tricks to avoid this scenario. One is that during the time of meditation and inspiration, you engage the mind of the animal as well. Try explaining the whole Infinite Light vision in simple, down-to-earth terms. Like, "Now does it really make sense that you are actually the entire center of the universe, Mr. Animal? Come on, let's make a list of at least three things that are bigger and smarter than you..."

Or how about, "I bet you like chocolate. Chocolate is sweet. Music can be sweet, too—sweeter than chocolate. Helping someone in need can be way sweeter. Well, where does all this sweetness come from? I'll give you a hint: It starts with Infin..."

Animal souls are clever when it comes to mud, mustard and money, but not too bright with Kabbalah stuff, so you gotta go real slow and easy on them.

This ensures that the mind of the animal is engaged and actively involved in the whole inspiration process. But it still doesn't take it all the way. The real transformation takes place when you meet the animal on its own turf: in the middle of the day, when it's occupied in those things that churn its blood the most. Especially when one of those blood-churning, heart-pumping, viscerally-vibrating, real ugly and morally compromising temptations stares it seductively in the face.

That's when you need those guys down in the mind-heart department to gently remind the heart, "Hey, don't you remember the discussion we had about chocolate versus Infinite Light? You guys were really buying into the whole story, remember? We all agreed that the ultimate path was to tune into higher goals in life and stay bonded with that sweet light from Above."

"But, hey, this situation here is primed to rip you out of that connection and render you a royal sucker to the dark forces of the Other Side. This is a major test. So, how about we just keep walking calmly like nothing happened. Don't say hello, don't say goodbye, just keep walking. No one will get hurt and we'll be all the better for the experience."

That's when transformation occurs. Powerful transformation. An animal soul becomes a G_dly being, sacrificed on the altar of light and truth. It's what the Zohar is talking about when it says, "When the Other Side is put in its place, the glory of the Infinite Light rises in all the worlds."

And that is the ultimate purpose for which all things were made.

Jack Schwartz was so big into Kabbalah, he left his upscale Long Island home to travel for many days so he could meet with a great Kabbalah master hiding out in a health spa in Guadalajara, Mexico. In breathless awe, he asked the master his one burning question, "Great Kabbalah master! My name is Jack Schwartz and I have come all this way to ask you: What is Kabbalah?"

In typical Jewish form, the great Kabbalah master answered, "Who is Jack Schwartz?"

That was all Jack needed to open his eyes and his heart to the mysteries of Kabbalah.

You see, you could wonder for years, "Who am I, really?" Some people think they are their job. Others believe they are their clothes, or their car. A lot of people believe they are their portfolio. Well, they used to, but nowadays, they don't have much of that left anyways. So they're starting to realize, "Hey, maybe I exist even without my portfolio! But then, who am I?"

And that, really, is what Kabbalah is all about.

Well, it's a little more complicated. You see, you are not just one person. You're two people. Actually three. Actually, you're a whole bustling metropolis of people and personalities. A study on bilinguals revealed that they had one personality when ordering a hamburger in English at McDonalds and another when ordering papas y beer at the Casa del Chili. So which one of these many people are you really?

Among all those personalities inside, the two main players are the human-animal person and the G‑dly person. Feivel is nothing more than a material manifestation of the human-animal person within most of us. Miri, on the other hand, is playing the part of the G‑dly person. The clothes and disguises she is talking about are the behaviors a person takes on—clothes to express the soul.

Feivel always remains Feivel no matter how you dress him up. You can teach him, train him, discipline him and maybe he'll even start acting a little more civilized. You can inspire him with love, imbue him with a sense of awe and fire him up with a taste of wonder. But under all that, he still remains the same instinct-driven creature as he was born and you can just never be sure what he might do next. The clothes look nice, but clothes can't make you a man.

The G‑dly person inside you, that's like Miri—just the opposite of Feivel. Even when she is not dressed in her royal robes, without any inspiration, no clue of how she's supposed to act, unadorned with the regalia of mitzvahs and jewels of Torah that belong to her as a princess—nevertheless she remains untainted, a pure and dignified G‑dly Soul. Dress her in that regal finery and immediately you see her true essence come out. The clothes become her—because they are really her clothes.

So who are you really? It's hard to answer because each of these souls inside is vying for that position—the position of being you. The truth is, however, that even the animal inside knows that it can never be complete without that G‑dly spark guiding and directing it. And eventually, with the help of a tzadik, that animal-person will also be a least a little transformed.

Happy Purim!

You are probably wondering why the second letter we're doing is the sixth letter of the alefbet. Well, once we get to the Alef (coming up soon), you'll understand. Just hang in there.

Being #6 is pretty significant. There are six directions (because there are three dimensions and two directions within each dimension) which means that there are also six sides to a cube. And that is because G_d created the world in six days, which were extensions of the six modalities of light in the World of Atzilut, a.k.a The Six Midot (because the three Intellects did not descend into creation and Malchut is Shabbat) which are because G_d had in mind a creature with six modalities of emotion which is us--so He set the whole system up to get what He wanted.

Turns out that all of human expression can be reduced to some combination of six modalities, which are:

=========

The Three Sensitive Modalities of Human Emotion (closer to Mind):

Chessed=Benevolence/Giving/Kindness/Positive Flow of Energy outwards and downwards

Gevurah=Might/Judgment/Severity/Negative Withholding of Energy and Withdrawal inward and upward

Tifferet=Beauty/Compassion/Truth/Balance of Opposites and life within paradox which is necessary to survive

The Three Instinctive Modalities of Human Emotion (further from Mind):

Netzach=Victory/The Drive to Win/Competitiveness/Overcoming and Conquering

Hod=Sense of Awe/Surrender/Submission/Restraint and Service

Yesod=Firm Foundation/Connection with other/Reaching to outside

=========

When I taught Miri, I tried to embed a few deep truths in the lesson. Perhaps as she grows older she will find and unravel them.

Growing up and becoming a mature adult is all about drawing the Yud (which is Wisdom) into all these emotions. If there is no Yud there, then the Vav is "just a line" and the emotions are pitted against each other. Yud is that higher perspective of things, the sense of purpose that gives emotions meaning and shows a place for each one. Like a conductor to an orchestra, the Yud of Wisdom brings many diverse voices into collaboration to create a wonderful harmony.

Tzadikim are able to tune the strings of their emotions directly, like a guitarist tunes the six strings of his guitar. The rest of us can only work on our emotions indirectly, by focusing our thoughts, speech and especially our action on matters that are "good for the yud"--and thereby nourishing a health, flourishing vav. Then, when we connect with a Tzadik, he can do the rest and leave us with a finely tuned instrument to play through life.

This one is a little deeper--but it’s important for a lot of us. So many people believe that the only way to be spiritual is by ignoring their bodies. To them the body is just a lead weight chaining down the spirit. Others believe the opposite--they think that by doing Yoga and Tai Chi and other physical practices, they’re going to reach a spiritual high.

Both paths are headed down a cul de sac. The body isn’t an end in itself, but neither is it the ugly monster some make it out to be. The Kabbalists say that a soul waits above in a heavenly place of abundant light and ever-increasing ecstasy for thousands of years for a chance to come below into the confines of a physical body. Why? Because when the soul is just spiritual, it can only receive light. Light is like information--it can be very exciting, but it’s not “the thing itself.” Only by entering a physical body and doing some mitzvahs and learning some Torah while it’s there, can the soul touch the Essence, the place from where all that light comes.

That’s why the great Chassidic Master, the Maggid of Mezritch, said, “A small hole in the body is a big hole in the soul.” Because the soul really needs the body, just like an astronaut needs his spacesuit. Whatever path you are on, make sure it’s taking care of both the body and soul in harmony, as one.

--
-- Rabbi Infinity, your favorite Kabbalist

This episode is dedicated to all the people who write to me to kvetch about everything that's wrong in the world and who's doing it and just how bad it really is that even the rabbis and the teachers and the kabbalists fall into the pits along with everyone else. In other words, the whole world is full of dirt.

So I tell them: Imagine after 120 years down here--may the Infinite Light grant you long and luminous years-you walk through those mahogany doors into the supernal court and they ask you, "Nu? So what did you get done down there?"

And you answer, "Oh, did I find dirt! Lots of dirt! Let me tell you about it:..."

Know what they're going to answer you? 'Zakly as I did: "We sent you to a gold mine and all you can come up with is dirt?!"

In fact, the great kabbalist, Rabbi Chaim Vital, writes that his teacher, none other than The Ari, Rabbi Isaac Luria, taught that this world is lowest of all worlds, the final repository of all the mud from the higher worlds, almost all of it dark, thick shells, with only a tiny bit of the good stuff mixed in. But that good stuff! Whoa! Nothing comparable to it! Not in any of those angel worlds above and not even in any place higher!

And the real neat thing is: Once you fight with the mud to grab away the sparks of goodness it holds, the mud itself begins to shine. It shines the transcendent light, a light so intense even the highest world cannot contain it.

Hey, what are we sitting around talking for! There's gold in them thar mud piles!

Send this episode as a Chanukah greeting card! Click here.
(Don't forget to come back to read the blog.)

Yes, I know this experiment looks ridiculous. Who would imagine that letting darkness out of a bottle could effect anything? And who says darkness is something that fits in a bottle, anyways?

But, you see, it's a way of making a point: Darkness is not a thing. It's just an absence of light. Just like cold is an absence of warmth, silence is an absence of sound and zero is an absence of anything at all.

And evil is nothing more than an absence of goodness.

Now, this lesson is a very practical one. If you had a dark basement and you thought darkness was a real something, you wouldn't just screw in light bulbs. You would first start up a war with the darkness, to weaken it or chase it away. You might even be afraid to bring some light into there, since the darkness might conflict with it, or even dirty it up a little.

But since you know that darkness is no more than an absence of light, you do the wiring, install the light fixtures, bring in some light, and now you can even bring in the ping-pong table.

The same with fighting all the challenges of life. You might choose to go head on with battering ram and catapult against the obstacles holding you back in life. You might even put aside all the good things you are doing to focus your energies on a full assault against all that rotten stuff out there. Argue with the boss, criticize your spouse, tell off the kids, complain about the weather, the recycling, the traffic and everything else that needs fixing.

What a waste of energy! What you really need to do is focus even more intensely on light. Talk about whatever good people are doing and they'll do more. Praise your wife's dinner or your husband's smile. Catch the kids doing things right. Look at whatever you are doing that is good and grab more of the same. Instead of being a darkness buster, become a lamplighter--and one bright morning you'll wake up and find the darkness has dissipated away.

The first human being to successfully glide through the air with man-made wings was a German Jew by the name of Otto Lilienthal, the man who Wilbur Wright called, "the father of aviation."

While enjoying the beauty of the Baja California coastline, my children and I spotted two giant birds frolicking together by a cliff. "No Dad," one said, "those are not birds." We watched in jealous wonder as the two defeated gravity for at least two hours, eventually landing on the sandy beach.

I always tell my kids, "You can learn from books, but real learning is from being a nudnik." So we ran over to the people-birds to nudnik. That's how I learned the lesson of this week's episode. As they put it, "It would be nice to get lost in the flow of air, the thrill of flight. But you can't do that--if you did, it would probably be your last flight. Instead, while you glide upward, downward and all around, you're always glancing down, saying "There's my place to land. But if not there, I can always do that other spot."

The Talmud tells of four wise men who meditated upon the mystic names of G-d and entered into Paradise. One went insane, another's soul expired, a third underwent a dark transformation to become a heretic. Only one, Rabbi Akiva, "entered in peace and left in peace."

The Talmud is careful in choosing it's words, providing us not just a story but a lesson. Why was Rabbi Akiva alone able to leave in peace? Because he entered in peace. The Rebbe explained: The others entered in disharmony between their own body and soul, therefore heaven and earth were for them also in conflict. They were forced to choose one or the other, or fall into insanity. All except for Rabbi Akiva. When he entered, he looked below and said, "Where am Ii going to land?" How will this jourmey through heaven help me in my joourney on earth?"

The current record for long distance han gliding is 705 kilometers, about the distance from Toronto to NY.

This is the true story of a professor of computer science by day and teacher of Kabbalah by night who had a student who made movies by day, worked out by afternoon, earned money by evening, chased after her desires by night and sometimes learned Kabbalah as well.

One evening, the Kabbalah teacher computer science professor calls up the movie producer and says, “I have a plant in my home and it is dying. You know about plants. Please come over and help my plant.”

Miss Movie Producer jumps into her convertible, speeds over to the professor Kabbalist’s apartment, is introduced to a lovely but dying tropical plant and ponders the plant. She says, “Do you have some scissors?” With the scissors she proceeds to cut away at the plant. “What are you doing to my plant?” asks the Kabbalaprofessor. “I thought you would heal it, not destroy it.”

“I am healing it. It is spreading its life in too many directions. Dead-end directions. We need to put it in a better environment, give it proper nurture. But first we need to get rid of all the dead ends where it is wasting life.”

“That,” the Kabbalist told her, “is why I called you here this evening.”

If Miss Movie Producer is out there watching this animation and reading this blog, perhaps she can tell us the rest of the story.

The Kabbalist was Professor Abraham Polichenco.

--Rabbi Infinity, PhD

In Kabbala, the Yud usually represents the point of wisdom from which all begins. It also represents the essence-spark of G_d within each of us. Here's the story that inspired this episode:

This happened when Rabbi Shalom Dovber was about nine years old. He was walking home from school with his older brother, Zalman Aaron, who was about eleven. Zalman was a stickler with grammar, scrupulous about every word of the prayers. Shalom on the other hand, was not so meticulous about these things. So now and again, Zalman would scold his younger brother about how he prayed.

This time, Zalman demanded of his younger brother, "Why is there a point after the word B'chemla in Modeh Ani?"

Zalman was referring to a comma. It seems his little brother was ignoring the punctuation and stringing words together that really should be apart, thereby convoluting the meaning — which was just the sort of thing his older brother couldn't tolerate. But the little boy had an alternative explanation for that little point.

"The whole idea is in a point," he answered. "And the point has to expand and spread throughout the entire Tefilla."

When the boys' father, the Rebbe Maharash, heard about this, he told their teacher, "Teach my younger son all you want. Just take care not to cause damage."

This one is the key to everything. It was the most radical breakthrough in human thought since Abraham discovered that G_d was playing the universe interactively. This discovery was made by the supreme kabbalist, the Arizal (Rabbi Isaac Luria, 1534–1572) and it changed the way everyone thinks to this day.

Here's what I mean: Until the Arizal came up with this, the classic version of world theo-history was, "G_d made a nice world, but we messed it all up. So now, you better be good, because boy is He going to give it to those who made this mess."

Then the Arizal comes and turns everything upside down: "The whole mess is G_d's fault. He had a great idea, but it came out a big mess. And He put us here to clean up the mess and get His dream working."

Get it? In scenario A, G_d is the active party, and we are entirely passive. In scenario B, it's all up to us. That's a major revolution.

This idea is called tikun, meaning "fixing." The Arizal and his students spoke about every mitzvah as a way to fix something in the universe. Remember those nuggets of gold in The Gold Mine episode? Or the pearl in Deep Sea Diving? Those are references to the sparks of luminous vessels that feel from the primal world of Tohu.

Hey, why re-explain the whole thing here? Read Fallen Sparks and you'll get the whole idea. And then you'll see that just about everything we have to say about the world today is in the shadow of the Arizal's Big Idea.

Many of you are wondering exactly how Matzah Therapy works. Although the therapeutic value of MT has been well known for thousands of years, it is only due to recent research in our lab here in Unspecified Location, Planet Earth, that a plausible explanation can be described in biochemical terms.

The matzahs used in MT are produced from powdered triticum and dihydrogen monoxide. Of course, these are the essential ingredients in most breads. There are, however, several key factors in the baking process that distinguish MT from other breads. To understand the impact of these factors, we need to understand the metabolic processes that are peculiar to Feivels.

Unlike other mechanical pets, Feivels do not live by battery packs alone. Feivels are in constant need of mental input originating from the mind of their owner. This input not only directs the emotional state of your Feivel, but also serves to replenish electrical circuits. and ensure smooth function of all parts.

Another peculiarity of Feivels is that they are programmed to be a lot of fun and very challenging. To accomplish this, they require an EF (ego function). The algorithms used to generate this state are proprietary intellectual property of SecretKabbalaSociety.com and will not be discussed further in this forum. What is important to understand is that EF, although a key element in any Feivel profile, can make an awful lot of noise. When that noise level passes over a critical threshold--this is known as "Hyper-Ego Functioning"--it effectively drowns out any signals from outside. Feivel's circuits begin auto-reiterating in recursive loops, evidenced by an expanding head, heavy eyelids and all round obnoxiousness. A Feivel suffering HyperEF displays intolerance of any other conscious being occupying a similar space or performing similar functions. Eventually, productive activity grinds to a halt, to be replaced only by demands for service and attention, often accompanied by terse insults and bad jokes.

At this point, the only way to get a mind-signal into a Feivel is by dropping one straight into its I/O port (aka mouth). That's the MT matzah. The mind-signal is embedded into an MT matzah by processing all the materials manually and mindfully. At each step along the way, those handling the MT materials recite verbally that they are doing whatever they are doing, "for the sake of matzahs for mitzvahs." At Infinity Labs, even the harvesting of the MT wheat and the drawing of MT water is performed with this mindfulness state. This is also known as "handmade matzah shmurah" or "handmade shmurah matzah"--depending on who you want to impress.

MT matzahs are capable of retaining mindfulness embedded within their molecular structure because they are flat. The eukaryotic micro organisms known as saccharomyces cerevisiae attack the fermentable sugars within moist grains, releasing carbon dioxide that inflates the dough thereby negating the mindfulness state previously embedded there. MT matzahs are placed in a fired stone oven before those nasty saccharomy guys can get to work, keeping the matzahs flat and ego free.

Consuming MT matzahs on the first night of Passover is a guaranteed method to embed their ego-balancing signal in your Feivel for an entire year. Just make sure you use quality matzahs, supervised throughout their process and hand-baked for the sake of the matzah mitzvah. Follow the instructions from your Feivel manufacturer. And remember, you can always rely on Infinity Labs for the highest quality Kabbalistic solutions.

Always be in control. If you're not in control of your life, someone or something else is. And that's usually not to your advantage. Because it's your life--not someone or something else's. You need control.

Now, there are two ways of being in control. One is by doing something. The other is by doing nothing. Both require lots of effort.

Doing something is for when there's some particular order and sense to what is happening around you. Okay, admittedly that doesn't happen very often in this life. But at least enough order and sense that you can figure, "If I do this, this will most likely happen, but if I do that…" So do this or that. Or something. Because if you don't do something to affect the world around you, the world around you will do something to affect you. It's your choice--either you're in control of your world, or your world is in control of you.

Then there's another situation. This is when you've done whatever makes sense, but things are going so nuts it's all out of your hands. At times there comes a point where you need to employ a new, radical and totally counter-intuitive strategy. It's called: Do nothing.

Now, by doing nothing, I don't mean hiding under your blankets with your thumb in your mouth. I mean a kind of doing nothing that takes more confidence, more focus and more wherewithal than any sort of doing something. I mean a heroic doing nothing.

Take the experience of freefall. Let's say I would try to do something about the fact that I am falling through the sky at 300 miles per hour towards the hard ground, but it's not the time to do anything. I might decide to deploy my parachute. Or I might panic, start hyperventilating and get cramps. Or maybe just start crying, call my mom on my cell phone and get her all upset, too. Anything I would do at this point to deal with the situation would be totally counter-productive and might even really mess things up real bad. My mom might not let me go sky diving ever again.

Better to stay calm, enjoy the scenery, and wait for the vital point when you need to bend your legs and land with ease.

In life, it's more than that. In life, by doing nothing, and doing it with utter calm and serenity, you are rearranging the cosmic order. You are making a statement that there is absolutely nothing to worry about because everything is entirely in the hands of your Maker, and He certainly has prepared a parachute. And by making that statement you cause it to be true.

This is an ancient tradition of the Kabbalists: that even a person was meant to go in one direction and he's not going that way, but on totally the opposite path, so much so that all the angels are screaming, "Oy gevald! He's totally off track! There's just no way to help him through this" (because angels are assigned to help people get through difficult situations, but they can't do that if he's going in in totally the wrong direction) --if he shows complete and utter confidence that the Maker of the Universe will take care of him (as long as it's not one of those paths with the big signs that say Wrong Way and he took it anyways. I mean there are limits…)--then He-Who-Knows-All-and-Runs-Everything will rearrange the entire cosmic order just to make the wrong path this guy took into the right path.

Imagine yourself a small child, walking through the park with your dad, when thunder and lightning and a sudden downpour of rain begin to strike. You don't flinch, you show no signs of fear. You look up to your dad and your face says it all: "My dad will take care of me. I have nothing to fear."

So when your dad sees that look on your face, he delivers. He picks you up, tucks you under his jacket and runs you home safe and sound. Who made your dad into such a great dad? You did--with your trust in him. As Wordsworth wrote, "The child is the father of the man."

Bet you didn't know Wordsworth was a Kabbalist.

I'm going to tell you a secret, so listen carefully.

Actually, there are two kinds of secrets: Fake secrets. And real secrets.

Fake secrets are only secrets because someone is hiding them from you. Real secrets are the kind that don't have to be hidden from anyone, because even once you tell them, they remain a secret. Because nobody gets what you're talking about anyway.

This secret I'm going to tell you is of the second kind. Only that now that I showed you this video, maybe, just maybe, you will get what I'm talking about.

Start by thinking of the verb "to be". Think isness. How many things do you know that have that property? Do you know of anything that doesn't have isness? Even things that don't exist have isness--they have negative isness.

Take your time on this. Close your eyes and really try to feel what isness is all about. Or else you're not going to get what I'm going to tell you next.

Now think of isifyingness. Not just something sitting there and ising, but actually causing everything that is to is. The Grand Isifier.

This is the only thing that doesn't really fit into the category of isness. Everything that is, can be not is. But that which isifies doesn't work that way. It neither is nor isn't. Instead, it isifies. If you were a computer engineer, you might say it's pre-binary--not a zero, not a one, but something that generates both.

Now I have a surprise for you. Actually, if you know a little Hebrew, it shouldn't be a surprise. But it probably will be anyways.

Look at the way we write G_d in Hebrew--the four letter name that we don't pronounce.

Guess what it means. Three chances and the first two don't count.

The Isifier is actually mentioned elsewhere at Chabad.org. See:

The Adam Files

Where is G‑d?

Next week we have an even more super-awesome video about the Isifier. Come back then. Make sure you have mind insurance--in case it gets blown too far away.

Sometime I muse that all the teachings of the Kabbalah are really nothing more than everything the Hebrew language contains inherently. This teaching about creation with words is a good example.

In English (and other languages), you have objects, material, physical, things, stuff. How do you say any of that in Biblical Hebrew? You don't. No word matches the meaning of any of those. When Jews wanted to translate the words of foreign philosophers into Hebrew, they had to abduct words meant for desires, clay and rain and twist their arms into becoming code words for Greek concepts.

In Hebrew, there is only the word. Davar (that's how you say word in Hebrew). Whatever exists is a word. If there's more than one, they are dvarim. The tree is a word, the earth is a word, the heavens are a word and you and I are words, too. So is running, eating, speaking and even being. Nothing is a thing, everything is a word.

Makes sense. After all, G_d said "Be light!" and light came into being. So what is light? Nothing more than G_d saying that light should be. And the same with every other creation: They are all words, Divine words. Not static things that are just here because they are here, but articulations of G_d speaking, telling a story about a world that exists only because He is telling a story about it

What is a word? It is a thought in crystal form. A person perceives the world a certain way, feels about it accordingly and articulates that in his thoughts. Then when he wants to communicate those thoughts to those outside of him, he condenses them into a stream of spoken droplets, or frozen crystals upon a page.

So, too, when the Great Isifier desires to create a world that would seem outside of Himself, He condenses His thoughts of this world into tight packets of creative energy, combining and mixing them to generate all that is.

(Hey, it's not much different than what's happening on this computer right now. Think about it: Everything you see and hear on this machine is generated by combinations of words in the programmer's code.)

Kabbalists know that the 22 letters of the Hebrew Alphabet are hard-wired to those 22 articulations of energy that are sustaining the universe. They master ways to manipulate those letters in order to heal fractures and fissures in the cosmic whole. It's dangerous stuff, so these secrets are transmitted only orally. Some of it has been written down, but their true meaning can only be understood by someone who has received the tradition from a teacher.

Nevertheless, any child--or even an adult--that learns to read the Hebrew letters, and says the words of our Torah out loud with joy and with love, that child also brings light and healing into the universe. The same with our prayers, which were arranged by prophets and sages according to the hidden knowledge. In that way, everyone can be a Kabbalist, and the whole world can be healed.

Hold on. It will take us a while, but we're planning to bring you the whole set of 22 letters in episodes coming up.

Ever have an urge to do something you know you shouldn't do? Ever felt enslaved by obsessive thoughts about a food, behavior, person or event, cartoon character?

Jeff Schwartz is a nice Jewish research prof at UCLA psychiatry and the author of two popular books, Brain Lock and The Mind and the Brain.

Jeff was researching treatment for OCD. That's Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, and it ain't fun. People's brains get locked into obsessive thoughts that compel them into repetitive behavior, like washing their hands over and over because they still feel dirty, checking the doors every night 100 times because they might not be locked properly, or logging on to KabbalaToons.com every five minutes just in case a new episode might have been posted just now.

Jeff noticed something fascinating about these people: They know very well that what they are doing is ridiculous. He also noted that fMRI scans showed the limbic system in their brains doing strange things.

So Jeff showed these people those scans of their brains and said, "See, it's not you! It's this out-of-whack part of your brain making you do it!"

"Oh," said those people. "Then I don't really have to listen to a whacked-out part of my brain, do I?" And they didn't.

Jeff developed his method into simple steps. Basically, you observe this as a benign thought, rather than as an all-powerful master; you choose to ignore it; you get into some other more pleasant activity or thought instead; and you identify that obsessive kind of thinking with a part of you that's not really you. Just an out-of-whack part of the brain.

The real neat thing is, eventually that part of the brain gets unwhacked-out. The mind changes the brain.

Jeff says he got a lot of these ideas from his Buddhist meditation classes. Really, he could have just consulted his local Kabbalist. Or simply looked in the standard handbook of Jewish life known as the Kitzur Shulchan Aruch, which advises, "If you have disruptive thoughts, these are from the yetser hara [i.e. evil inclination, contemporarily known as wild hormones]. Ignore them and think about something else instead, like words of Torah."

The Zohar tells us that the mind has an innate ability to ride the heart, as a rider upon a horse. But most of us are scared to death of our heart. When it starts panicking and screaming, we run fast to give it whatever it wants. (Some people do the same with their pets. Others with their two year olds.) Funny thing is, we all know our mind is so much stronger. But we reserve use of our mind for math and science, and let the heart and the hormones run everything else.

Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi gave this advice: When you are driven by one of those maddening passions, imagine that you are surrounded by a fire. Then, walk through the fire. You won't get burned, because, you see, the fire is only in your imagination. Just like that crazy obsession.

Liberate your mind from the tyranny of its pet brain/heart/hormones. Just say no to stupid urges, passions and obsessions. Then, cold-blooded, do/think/speak about something else altogether.

Like, check if there's another KabbalaToon episode out already.

A flurry of excitement shook the KToon world last week as pundits struggled to decode the meaning behind GLT. Proposals include:

1. Getting Lost in my own Tracks
2. Genuine Lovable Talk
3. Genuine Love for Technology
4. GLT-1 is the most abundant Glial subtype of gLutamate Transporters in mutant mice (learned something new)
5. eGo (look, he got one letter right)
6. GaLuT (exile, diaspora)
7. GoLiaTh (no wonder Saul was so afraid of him)
8. the next pause to take breath (I think this has some numerical correlation somehow)
9. Go Learn Torah
10. GeLT (money)
11. Get Lost in Things
12. Ground Level Thinking
13. Depression (depressed people have difficulty with details of anagrams, etc.)
14. Gooey Liquid Technoguck
15. Great way to Lose Time thinking of stupid ways to decipher a meaningless anagram

Two skilled detectives, David in LA and Eli in Melbourne, actually determined the author's original meaning: GuiLT. But, of course, that in no way diminishes the value of all other submissions. As Jews, text is reality. Who cares about author's intentions?

Choosing a "best explanation" in the face of such an unexpected whirlwind of submissions lies far beyond my capacity. However, as we await the Passover Edition of KToons (next week), how 'bout this:

Send me your concepts, your ideas, your dreams for KToon scripts. Post them all here. Requirements are simple: They require a prop, allow for lots of action, and provide an opportunity to communicate a life-impacting truth from kabbalistic wisdom.

Note required by the lawyers: Anyone posting their ideas here agrees that what they post will lie within the public domain, excluding, of course, all elements of past and planned KabbalaToon episodes.