Potato, Potahto, Cabbalah, Kabalah

KABALAH means to receive.  People assume the reason for receiving Kabalah privately from a teacher is to keep it secret and esoteric, only for the students who are trusted not to misuse it.

While this is true, the deeper reason is that Kabalah is not like a grammer book to study.  By knowing the meaning of Kabalistic terms and how they interrelate, one has gained little.  It is only by contact with a master that one is really changed.  

It was the blessings of Avraham, Yitzchok and Yaacov that were important and struggled for.  Notice - the blessings were personally transferred, not intellectually taught.  That’s a big part of what Bereshit (Genesis) is about.  

One time, I was in the audience of Stuart Wilde, a modern teacher of energy.  People each paid hundreds and thousands for his lectures and retreats,  He told us from the podium that his long speeches and exercises were just fancy dressing.  Unneccesary.  But if he didn’t have them, his attendees wouldn’t have thought they were getting their money’s worth.  Mr. Wilde said that he could have just stood up and said, “G’day!  I’m Stuart Wilde, have a nice rest of your life.  Thanks for help making me rich,” and they would have gotten his energy and more than their money’s worth.  Then they could have spent the weekend sking or riding a horse of making love instead of sitting in an uncomfortable lecture hall.  (Here, the Wilde story starts to get real interesting, but I can only continue it in person.)

You see, everyone has an energy level.  If you’re depressed, it’s lower.  If you’re consistantly upbeat and highly diciplined in life, say a concert level cellist who runs his billion dollar company with ease and humor, it’s higher. 

What comes to you in life, comes at the energy level you're at.  A car accident, a teriffic job offer, finding a $20 on the sidewalk, or something akin to J. K. Rowling suddenly coming up with the idea to write a novel about a wizard called Harry.  It's not luck or fate, it's the level you choose to live at.  

And just by interacting with someone of a different energy level, your energy levels equalize.  Sometimes a lot, sometimes less than a smidgen - like when you pass someone on the street.  That doesn’t mean you should avoid less advanced people, but you don’t want to spend a whole lot of time with critical, negative, morose people.  It’s common sense.  Everyone knows you get affected by others. 

It was said that in olden times, (whenever that was, mate), a great sage (perhaps Lao Tsu?) would walk through a village and everyone’s destiny would change, people would heal, the drought would stop, only other villages would be pillaged by bandits, or whatever.  

So, should you seek out the spiritual giants and buy the house next to where they live?  Not neccessarily.  You see, when your energy goes up by hanging out with a master, you get uncomfortable after a while.  He will even start to annoy the guts out of you.  You are comfortable living at the energy level you are.  And you’ll just end up thinking he’s a pushy jerk, probably think he’s lazy to boot.  To raise your energy permanently, you have to up your discipline, your balance, and not be critical of what comes your way.  But yeah, it is great to hang with a master or two.

Funny thing though. . . most people wouldn’t recognize a master.  Watch the scene in Star Wars again where Luke and R2D2 encounter this petty, annoying little creature who rudely paws through their foods, talks like a spoiled three year old, and grabs a lamp, banging R2D2 over the head with his stick for it, shouting “Mine, mine.”  He’s dressed worse than a smelly beggar, living in a stinking, backwoods swamp.  

Imagine, not the movie, but you pass by an unshaven, old bum in Everglades on your nature vacation.  He’s living in a leaky shack on a mud island.  Imagine he acts as rudely infantile as Yoda did.  Do you suspect he's the greatest master on earth?  You can’t tell by what people think they can tell by.  Or a master could be that pimply assistant-manager at the Burger King down the road.

You have to have a high enough energy to recognize.  And you have to have the humility to see.  If you over-respect the trappings of your superiors and the powerful, famous, and successful by worldly standards, you will never see.  This is called Daat, knowledge, the ability to recognize, among other things, a master.  Daat is the hidden sefirot, the 11th one.  (This last stuff is for those who want some ancient Kabalah facts.  There’s a great story about how it works.  Maybe I’ll get ‘round to putting it down someday.)

If you want homework, go read Bernard Malmud's short story Angel Levine.  It'll teach you more about Daat in twelve pages than a thick, Kabbalah-theory book.