Monthly Archives: November 2011

Suffering as External Displacement

Posted on by

In Kabbalah, the essence of a healthy existence on all levels is the maintaining of balance and harmony. This is the function of the middle pillar of the Tree of Life. For any of us to have equilibrium in our lives, we cannot allow ourselves to become too heavily focused either internally or externally. That will throw us out of alignment. To stay balanced, we cannot get too locked into ourselves or conversely too absorbed by the people and events around us. There has to be a balance, an even give and take in both directions.

In discussing the Kabbalist view of some of the primary causes of suffering, I would like to start with the issue of suffering as External Displacement.

External Displacement is when we reference ourselves too much with what is going on around us and it becomes difficult to distinguish who we are from what we are doing and what is happening. The common result of this over-focus on the external is that we lose sight of ourselves and what we are meant to be expressing in our lives. We become over-identified with the drama, with other people’s realities and with the intensity of the energy in general.

It is one thing to be an actor in the play of life and consciously assume a role. It is yet another, to be a member of the audience witnessing and responding to what is taking place. Both of these functions involve balance, when there is parity between inner awareness of self and outer connection with others through self.

However, from the Kabbalist perspective, suffering is induced by imbalance. There is great suffering, if we lose our innate inner sense of our self. Our center of gravity has then shifted to an extreme, if we define ourselves by what is outside of us, what is happening to us. The Kabbalah teaches that neither external reality nor outer events and circumstances is actually us. It is not who we are.

Our external reality constitutes our experience of life, not our being. Neither what we are going through nor what is happening to us is who we are. Who we are has everything to do with our spiritual reality and so; it goes much deeper than the circumstances we have to work with. As the Kabbalah sees it, what happens to us, what we feel about it and how we interpret it are the dimensions of our life experience. Living life is the “what”, not the “who”. The course of our life is the process that the “who” is going through. Who we are is our soul, the divine essence at the core of our being.

The teaching in Kabbalah is that who we are as a soul involves a life purpose. Events on the physical, emotional and psychological levels impact us, but do not constitute who we are. The circumstances and events of our lives are patterns playing themselves out. They are the result of will, not its origin. They may play out our desires and drives, but not always. They may express our life purpose, but often not. Frequently, the events in our life may be expressing a host of other energies and realities being generated by the will and intentions of others.

When we remain connected to our inner sense of self and the integrity of our own uniqueness, then we are rooted spiritually. When so rooted, we can truly express ourselves from a place of purpose. We are then truly and steadfastly balanced. We know exactly who we are and can extend ourselves out into the world from a position of confidence and a place of great joy.

If, on the other hand, we become engrossed and absorbed in the events of our lives, or overly invested in the drama, we are no longer living our lives. We have displaced our conscious existence and have become far too attached and focused on the external; confusing the “who” with the “what”. We have lost our internal frame of reference, forgotten our purpose and surrendered our individuality. In the Kabbalah, this External Displacement is a primary source of pain and anguish that leads directly to tremendous suffering.

 

Rabbi Steven Fisdel, an active Kabbalist for over 30 years, does spiritual diagnostic and spiritual counseling work professionally with clients from all over the country and from diverse backgrounds. Rabbi Fisdel is a Master Kabbalist author and teacher. He is the director of the Center for Jewish Mystical Studies in Albany, CA.

 www.classicalkabbalist.org/

The Basis of Suffering in Kabbalist Thought

Posted on by

The second significant variant meaning of the verb, SVL which generally means “suffering”, is to transport something. Here suffering is understood to have an important purpose in the course of living one’s life. The Kabbalists see suffering, in its pure form, as the process of moving things in one’s life from one point to the next in order to complete one stage and begin the next. So, suffering has a great deal to do with self-development.

In the view of the Kabbalah, each of us in our lives has specific commitments to work through. Natural suffering, therefore does not involve pain and anguish. Rather, in order to make progress spiritually in our lives, we simply need to assume specific responsibility for all of the different aspects of our life and move them diligently from one phase to the next so as to fulfill our obligations to ourselves and to others.

Suffering, then, takes on the dimensions of pain and anguish when we find ourselves moving around in a circle rather than in a spiral upward. If we are focused on self-development and self-realization,  then we work through the stages of fulfilling our life responsibilities and we progress from level to level in a spiral. That is, one cycle of our life leads immediately to its natural successor. We grow and evolve.

However, if we fixate emotionally on uncertainty, self-doubt or on our fears, we get stuck and move in an endless circle. If we allow others to hand us their issues to solve in order for them to avoid taking responsibility themselves, we are also trapped in a circular movement going nowhere . There is no way to vicariously resolve someone else’s problems or do their work for them.

One way or the other, we end up trapped either within our own inner turmoil or imprisoned in the impossibility of fulfilling another person’s responsibility.

The result of this circular movement is that we are held hostage. We are confined internally by fear and hopelessness. In the prison of such movement, we are not in a position to extend our true inner being out into the world. We, therefore, experience suffering not as the spiral of accomplishment and fulfillment, but rather as pain and torment; neither of which is a necessary component of suffering.

If you understand suffering as integral to self development, as the process of transporting some meaningful part of your life from one important juncture to another, it becomes clear that if one is stuck inside oneself ruminating, you cannot extend yourself to the outside world. There is no forward movement. You cannot, therefore, effectively express your potential, if at all. The denial of potential is the absence of self-fulfillment and that is extremely painful and anxiety producing.

The key to experiencing suffering as the process of personal growth rather than as pain is found in the Kabbalist interpretation of the third related definition of the Hebrew verb, SVL. The verb also has the meaning, “to tolerate”. What the Kabbalah infers at this point is that toleration is not enough if you want to carry your responsibilities forward  and not create anguish and burden. The concept here is that if you are only tolerating something, you are not fully accepting it.

To fully accept something, you must be open to it. You need to be happy with it or excited about it. To be tolerant just means you are willing to acknowledge something, but not necessarily embrace it.

If one simply complies with a commitment and does it perfunctorily, the obligation is met, but there is not necessarily any emotional connection or any spiritual component. There is simply no joy, without which no possibility exists for full self-expression, satisfaction or contentment. The lack of complete acceptance when assuming the legitimate responsibilities of life and the resulting joy of making gradual, tangible progress is recognized by the Kabbalah as another central factor in turning suffering from a process of personal growth into one of constriction and pain instead.

 

 

 

Rabbi Steven Fisdel is  an experienced, practicing Kabbalist for over 30 years, who specializes in Spiritual Diagnosis and Counseling, Life Reading and Life Direction. He works with seekers of all spiritual backgrounds and is the founder of the Center for Jewish Mystical Studies in Albany, CA.

www.classicalkabbalist.org/

How the Kabbalah Understands Suffering 2

Posted on by

Rabbi Steven Fisdel, Practicing Kabbalist

The Basis of Suffering: Perspective One

In the approach taken by the Kabbalah, a couple of primary conceptions underlie the basic reality of suffering and they are not what we usually identify suffering as.

One very important element in Kabbalist thought has always been the Hebrew language itself. The Kabbalah draws conclusions and concepts from an analysis of specifically how the Hebrew language understands verbs.  For action is the very basis of life experience.

The verb root for suffering, in Hebrew, is SVL. Besides meaning suffering, this verb root has several additional meanings. The first of these is that of “bearing a burden” and “carrying a weight’.

So, in the view of the Kabbalah suffering involves being burdened by something heavy that you are carrying around. The most common connotation here is that this burden is often something that has been handed to you and you are obligated to carry it on behalf of another person. The idea is that suffering is not so much pain as it is a weight on one’s shoulders that has been imparted to us or that we have taken on voluntarily.

One way of understanding suffering from the Kabbalist perspective is that it is a natural and vital part of life that needs to be recognized for what it is and subsequently handled correctly. Suffering, in the view of the Kabbalah, has to do primarily with responsibility and spiritual growth. We all need to take on responsibility in our life and carry the important things forward, whether we have made the personal decision to do so or we have undertaken it on behalf of another.

However, taking on responsibility is not synonymous with being burdened with or by something. Suffering, as we think of it, ensues a couple of ways. Firstly, when we are saddled with and made to carry something that is not necessarily our responsibility. Secondly, when we directly assume responsibility for something that is not appropriate or warranted and yet continually carry it around with us anyway.

The first implication from understanding the idea of suffering from a Kabbalist standpoint is that agony is the distortion of suffering. It is the experience of being saddled with that which makes life a burden, when in its essence suffering is the positive act of carrying on, moving forward and accepting appropriate levels of responsibility.

 

Rabbi Steven Fisdel is  an experienced, practicing Kabbalist for over 30 years, who specializes in Spiritual Diagnosis and Counseling, Life Reading and Life Direction. He works with seekers of all spiritual backgrounds and is the founder of the Center for Jewish Mystical Studies in Albany, CA.

www.classicalkabbalist.org/

 

How the Kabbalah Understands Suffering 1

Posted on by

The General Nature of Suffering

In order to deal effectively with the reality of suffering, it is very important to get a clear perspective on what suffering actually is from a spiritual vantage point.

The true root of suffering is, in essence, a disruption of the soul’s ability to express itself fully and to live out its purpose in being present in life.

The main purpose of existence from the Kabbalah’s perspective is the evolution of the soul, which occurs through using our innate ability to manifest continually the infinite creativity each of us possesses as unique expressions of the Divine. This process can, however, be impeded, thereby creating suffering.

The soul is in a state of discomfort, anguish or pain, if its capacity to manifest fully in the world is disturbed, hindered or blocked. Moreover, the greater the disruption, the greater the distress one experiences and hence the more difficult the process is of living a fulfilling and joyful life.

The contention in Kabbalist thought is that the soul knows exactly what its life purpose is and is always intent on manifesting it through all aspects of life. The Kabbalah teaches that when we experience joy, satisfaction and contentment in whatever we are doing, we are in alignment with the soul, with the divine within ourselves.

However, because we as human beings are endowed with free will we can make positive choices or negative ones. This, in and of itself, is not a problem. Rather it is a gift. We learn and grow through the process of experiencing what works and what does not. We evolve as we come to understand and internalize what is truly beneficial and what is decidedly destructive. This learning is absolutely essential to soul growth.

So what engenders suffering?

The emergence of suffering arrives when we become fixated on the negative and begin giving it exaggerated significance. By overemphasizing our experiences and focusing on our subjective reactions, the effect is uniformly negative. We automatically impart a concentration of energy to our relationship with our life events that is disruptive, distorting and ultimately painful.

What is important to understand here is that a large part of our suffering in life is self-induced. Under such circumstances, we need to take responsibility and consciously take steps to either prevent or reverse such torment through conscious choice and mindful action.

When we are faced with suffering, the disruptions producing it take place on the lower three levels of our experience, the intellectual, emotional and physical planes, not on the spiritual per se. As incarnated beings, we are present in the world, though not “of the world”. The soul operates on the material plane via these three extensions of itself, through the three dimensions of our consciousness. That is, the soul experiences life and expresses itself through mind, emotion and physicality, which are extended modalities of spirit into the world.

Rabbi Steven Fisdel

What causes suffering at it root is distortion of the natural flow of our spiritual energy and the disruption of its ability therefore to manifest fully and effectively in our lives. So, if we become aware of how some of suffering’s primary causes commonly manifest, we are then in a position to rectify the problem and move forward with our lives purposefully and joyfully.

www.classicalkabbalist.org