Can People Really Change? – Creating Something From Nothing – Part 1 of 3

MOST PEOPLE NEVER REALLY CHANGE

Sad, but true.

Some people never even try.

But those of us who do – and I assume that you are in that group – often experience great frustration and disappointment as we encounter the same limitations over and over again.

Life can start to seem downright repetitive.

CREATING SOMETHING FROM NOTHING

Why is it that in most cases your life keeps looking like some variation of whatever you’ve experienced before?

The answer is: because you are creating something from something. You’re attempting to create a new and different future based on the limitations of your past.

Imagine that you are a potter and you have a piece of clay. You can study your craft and make pots that are smoother, sturdier, or more beautiful than before. But when all is said and done, they’re still just clay pots.

Who says you have to be a potter? And who says you can only make things out of clay?

G-D CREATES SOMETHING FROM NOTHING

There is a fundamental kabbalistic principle of Creation known as ‘yesh m’ayin’ – something from nothing.

This principle explains that G-d is bringing the entire world, including you, into existence from absolute nothingness at every moment.

G-d didn’t create this world once and withdraw back into Heaven, where He supervises from a distance and intervenes when appropriate. Rather, He is actively and intentionally speaking the world into existence from nothing in the present moment, again and again and again. In fact, if G-d would stop creating this world – with all of its myriad details – at any moment, the world and everything in it would disappear as if it had never been.

Based on this, two things are clear:

The world has no existence outside of G-d. Everything we experience in life is part of G-d and His intention and purpose for Creation. 

1. G-d desires the world – and you – with an intense and personal desire. Everything you do has great meaning and significance to Him. That’s why He keeps on creating you.

Remember those old commercials where a little kid said something like: “I must be good because G-d made me, and G-d doesn’t make junk”?

Actually, the truth is much more powerful than that. G-d doesn’t make anything or anyone without a profound purpose. He passionately desires you and just as passionately wants you to desire Him. And He is waiting – with bated breath – for you to embrace the Divine purpose for which you have been created. To make your life, your relationships and your circumstances a “dwelling place” for the Divine.

Stay tuned for Part 2 and 3. In part 2, we’ll review “What’s Nothingness”, and “How You’ve Already Created Something from Nothing.”

Who Do You Really Want to be in Your Journey Through Life?

One of the signs of our times is a lack of true leadership. This is not an accident, but a necessary part of the spiritual transformation that our world is going through today.  In the absence of that leadership, each one of us must – and has the power to – tap into our own innate leadership powers.

Kabbalah tells us that we each have a spark of Moshiach (the ultimate redeemer) within us, and that spark needs to be revealed. The promised leader, Moshiach, will come to bring redemption to the world as a result of each individual connecting to and revealing his own inner spark.

So I want to ask you a question:

Who do you really want to be in your journey through life?  Most people are receivers. They may complain about their lives, or they may even appreciate them (a much better thing to do!) But either way, they are still essentially passive. When you live from this perspective, the world is big and you are small. Whatever you get is what you get; you either like it or you don’t, and that’s the end of the story.  The world affects you, but you have no real power to affect the world.

Or, you can choose to become a leader. Leadership means taking action. It means considering yourself not just a recipient, but the “cause of all effects” in your life. True, there is a G-d in the world, and He is the ultimate cause. But being a leader means that you relate to whatever happens to you and around you in the light of your vision of leadership, determined to do whatever is in your power to make that vision real both in your own life and in the world.

Last week I woke up in the middle of the night and turned on the radio. They were interviewing a futurist – a person whom by some methodology or another has found a way to predict coming events and trends.

This futurist has a program that travels all over the internet monitoring what people say in chatrooms and blogs. It categorizes what kind of language people use when they talk about the future, whether it’s ‘hot and angry’, or intellectual and peaceful, whether it reflects scarcity or abundance, and so on. The computer puts its findings in 3-D models that can be used to predict trends. The really fascinating part is that the models don’t only predict social and economic trends (which would make sense) but such things as weather, natural disasters, etc.

Assuming it’s true, what does that tell us about our use of language – the stories, the beliefs, the complaints? What does it tell us about how we position ourselves in life, about whether we choose to receive or lead?

In every aspect of your life, I invite you to join me in seeing yourself as “cause of all effects” and act accordingly. From this place it doesn’t really matter so much what you do or don’t have right now. What matters is what you want to create. And, of course, what you are going to do about making that real.