Tag Archives: Personal Growth

Meditation and the Moral Compass

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Begin analyzing the structure of Biblical Law and you will find that the nature of all of the Commandments is predicated on morality. When you boil down the essence of Biblical Law, you are dealing with a universal, divine imperative. God speaks to us with the direct intention of imparting to us, specifically what He wants from us. From the biblical standpoint the very law of the universe that governs humanity is based squarely on the importance of moral behavior.

The covenant at Mount Sinai sets down in terms of our relationship with the divine. Not only is that relationship worked out directly with God, but also involves to an even more explicit extent how we interact with each other. In short, our relationship to God and our relationship to mankind are two sides of the same coin. Therefore, the Commandments are meant to be an intricate fabric of moral instruction.

On the practical level, all of the Commandments found in the Bible are meant to be a training process for the soul. The objective is twofold. First, by following the Commandments one is trained spiritually on how to approach God.  Drawing close to God involves reverence and devotion. By being able to sense the holy, we are imbued with an abiding sense of reverence. With a deepening of reverence comes the growing desire to serve with devotion. These are the keys to an expanding experience of the divine.

Second, the Commandments are designed to instruct us as to how to interact with one’s fellow man. Communication and interchange with other human beings requires moral consciousness. From the biblical vantage point, the entire universe is governed by the laws that God has set down.  In regard to the cosmos as a whole, the law of God is understood as natural law. The counterpart of natural law as it applies to humanity is moral law. It is a specific application of universal law.

Because humanity is endowed with both high intelligence and free will, there is a great capacity within human experience to move away from the divine toward self-aggrandizement and self-interest. Therefore, God articulated the Commandments as a system of moral instruction. The objective of this instruction is to move the soul consciously and deliberately toward holiness and a deeper connection with the divine.

In communicating with us at Mount Sinai, God was setting down a behavioral pattern that is to regulate human interchange along moral lines, which parallel universal law. Hence, the injunctions regarding the approach we need to take with the divine are designed to bring the soul into more direct experience of the holy and the Holy One.

Moreover, the divine imperatives that underlie the Commandments are also designed for the spiritual development of the soul. This is accomplished by setting specific, moral guidelines for ones interaction with others that train the soul in the behavioral imperatives that are essential for peace, harmony and alignment with the divine will.

One way of understanding this concept simply is to understand that service to God comes primarily through action. How we relate to the world is also how we relate to God. Morality has to be understood as an absolute. It is universal law as applies specifically to human beings. In other words, morality is righteousness.

It is through the process of moral behavior that we walk in the path of righteousness. Righteous conduct honors God as creator. Righteousness produces, as well, continual benefit and great blessing specifically for others. In Jewish tradition it says that throughout his whole life Noah strove to help and enlighten all those around him. That is why the Bible states clearly that Noah was a righteous man that walked with God.

Righteousness is the realization that every soul, as a created being, is interconnected as part of the divine fabric that constitutes humanity. By following a righteous path, a soul is affirming its connection to God through acting in accord of the divine will as laid out through the moral instruction revealed at Mount Sinai.

The reality of our sojourn on earth is that we are continually navigating life and the  lessons that the experience imparts. Righteousness is the compass that allows the soul to navigate one’s lifetime successfully. On the path of life, one has to have faith both in God and in one’s own divine spark in order to fulfill the mission of one’s life purpose. Righteousness and the moral law that underlies it is what guides our steps and makes them steadfast.

The road of life is always one of trial and error. If we are walking in the world  consciously, we’ll learn from both our successes and our mistakes. With an operative moral compass, we are much more likely to be aware of our mistakes and confident of our successes. We become eager and willing to learn from them both. It is also likely that we will be much more appreciative of the wisdom we’ve gained from our overall experience and willing to model it behaviorally and spiritually.

Walking the path of righteousness leads to a practical crescendo. By strengthening our moral compass, we deepen our connection to spiritual life and to the higher worlds. When we do this, we gain access to increasing light within the soul. The more light the soul has the more we are in line with righteousness, which in turn allows us to continue to evolve more efficiently. As we evolve, we succeed in improving the accuracy and the calibration of the compass itself.

The moral compass is internal and reflects a direct connection to higher consciousness. If we err and transgress the boundaries set by God, our compass can be repaired through repentance. If we acknowledge and regret what we have done, we are acting consciously and therefore in a position to know what needs to be done by way of rectification both with others and with the divine. Once that is done, our inner compass is more directly aligned to the higher and higher realms as well as our own  reservoir of inner wisdom.

Calibration of the moral compass of righteousness is most effectively accomplished through meditation. Since meditation allows us to move inwardly, to initiate the introspective process and elevate consciousness, it is a superb tool not only for self-enrichment, but also for aligning the soul with the divine will.

In Kabbalist meditation, there is always a conscious focus. There is an aim and goal to any specific meditation. However, the objectives are generally always the same. They include subordinating the ego, so as to move into deeper levels of self, to open doors of perception, to explore the structure and reality of creation and one’s relation to it as a creative being and to allow for the ascension of consciousness in order to encounter and experience the Divine.

All of these facets of meditative experience have the effect of strengthening the soul by expanding consciousness. The result is a direct increase in the light of the soul and a subsequent refinement of the moral compass. Increased experience of higher consciousness through meditation leads to a deeper connection to moral law, which results in a strengthening of not only ones moral fiber, but of one’s moral sense as well.

To sum up; If we move into ourselves and thereby expand to higher consciousness we not only come to understand ourselves more deeply, but also what God is instructing us to do. Aligning to the divine will and evolving as souls is predicated both on understanding the deeper nature of moral imperatives through meditation and study on one hand and the righteous action taken at the behest of ones moral compass on the other.

When we internalize the principles God is imparting either through the Commandments or through our Higher Self we become more aligned with divine wisdom, which is the basis for both natural and moral law. This alignment between our Self and the divine imperative, in turn, places us more firmly on the path of righteousness. Whereby, we are led to increased wisdom and connection with the divine will as a result.

 

The Basis of Suffering in Kabbalist Thought

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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/