michael_berg_new_moon_cancer_production_2006_20110426_eng
0 (0 Likes / 0 Dislikes)
I'm Monica Berg.
Welcome to Michael Berg's "New Moon of Cancer".
Thousands of years ago, the sages of Kabbalah understood the unique
challenges and opportunities the calendar presents for each of us.
Understanding the hidden forces that play in your life
will facilitate your transformation.
To understand the energy of the month of Cancer, also known as Tammuz,
we must look at the personality of the person born under the sign
to see how their energy expresses itself.
Let's start understanding Cancer by considering its symbol,
the crab. Like this little creature
Cancerians like to hide in their shell.
It's hard for them to express emotions because they feel them so strongly.
It takes time to feel safe enough to open up.
But once they do, they hold nothing back
and wear their heart on their sleeve.
Cancer is ruled by the moon, the ruler
of moods of which Cancers have many.
Overly sensitive, easily offended
and sometimes prone to self-pity.
However, they are good at being sympathetic to others.
When you are going through a hard time, a Cancer friend
is the best friend to stand by your side.
Because of their sentimentality,
Cancers can be thought of as weak.
Do not underestimate their tenacity.
When Cancers want something it's almost impossible to stand in their way.
Cancers place a high value on friendship and family.
They will do anything to protect
the people they love. This is just a little peek into the personality of Cancer.
To uncover the deeper secrets of how this month
will help you in your life, Michael Berg.
We are now entering the month of Tammuz,
as the kabbalists call it, the month of Cancer.
And for those of you who know Cancers,
those certainly of you who are Cancers,
you know that emotions are a very big aspect
of what makes Cancers unique, makes this month unique.
Now emotions have certainly a positive side
but also can be negative.
Sometimes, too often, we act or say things
in our emotional state.
Things we shouldn't say. Things that in retrospect
we realize we should not have said, we should not have done.
For all of us who are born in this month, myself included,
this is a very special month. It is a month in which we
recharge our soul. But for all of us
regardless of whether we are born in this month or not
we have the opportunity to truly take control of our emotions.
The power of emotions comes from this month,
from this month of Tammuz.
One of the great lessons that I learned from the great kabbalist
Rav Yehuda Brandwein, the Rav's teacher, my father's teacher,
is about emotions.
Even though it is good to have emotional highs
it is good to have and certainly as they are involved in our spiritual
work when we are doing actions of sharing,
to feel good about them, to feel happy with them.
But Rav Brandwein says to the Rav, he says,
you have to be careful not to be controlled by your emotion,
but rather to control your emotions.
Meaning, if we can come to the point
where we become happy only
during those right times, become excited only
during those right times, when we actually have control
over our emotions, that is when they enable,
assist our spiritual connection,
assist our development.
But when we become controlled by them,
when we only do things if it make us happy
when we only do things when we are excited about them.
When the emotions control the actions that we do,
then they are not positive.
Then they are not in our control and they are not bringing us
closer to the connection to the Light of the Creator.
They are not bringing us closer towards fulfillment.
And that is the key point and the key lesson for this month.
We need to be in control of our emotions
so that we are able to use them
in a way that enables and assists our growth
and our connection to the Light of the Creator.
But we have to be very careful not to be under
the control of our emotions. And the easiest way
to know that is, how many times do we do things,
sharing, things that go beyond what we want to do
that don't excite us,
that don't make us happy at that moment.
And that is the test, that is the question we will have
to ask ourselves, "Are we in control of our emotions?"
or "Do our emotions control us?"
And again the great gift of this month
is that we have the opportunity through our work
through our understanding and through our
connection in this month to take control of our emotions.
Because our emotions are tremendously powerful
and they can assist us in great ways
in growing, in developing, in connecting to the Light
of the Creator. But just as the Light that is within this power
there is also the potential for disconnect,
for darkness. If our emotions control us
if we become unhappy at times
and happy at other times, not in our control.
then our emotions limit our spiritual connection,
limit our growth. And this is the unique gift of this month.
So I'd like to talk about three important emotions,
love, fear and regret.
First I'd like to talk about love.
One of the single most important lessons of Kabbalah
as the the great kabbalist, Rabbi Akiva taught.
The whole purpose of all the work that we do,
the whole purpose of all of our spiritual endeavor
is one single statement-the Hafta {...Hebrew...}
Love your neighbor, your friend, as yourself.
As Rabbi Akiva teaches it and Rav Ashlag
the greatest kabbalist of our century,
teaches, the basis of everything that we do
of a spiritual nature. The basis of all of our connection
to the fulfillment and blessings
that we hope to bring into our lives
is dependent on how much we are developing
our internal love towards other people.
It is important that we differentiate between
two different types of love.
There is ego love, or selfish love
and there is true sharing love. And it is
the second type of love that connects us to the Light of the Creator
that truly brings into our life the blessings
and fulfillment that we all hope to bring.
When we find people who give us
whether it's physical things,
whether it's emotional things,
when we receive in return from the love that we give
that is not true love. It's love certainly
but it is a lower level of love.
The ultimate level of love is when we feel an innate
desire to care, to share
with other people who do not give us anything
in return. Love, as the kabbalists teach it,
that is not dependent on anything.
And that is the ultimate level of love.
When we realize, as the great kabbalist Rabbi Akiva teaches,
and as Rav Ashlag stresses in his book , "Gift of the Bible",
that the entire purpose of our life in this world,
that the only way we can achieve fulfillment,
and true connection with the Light of the Creator
is when we not only have love towards other people
but when we are constantly growing
that love that we feel towards all people, towards humanity.
That is the ultimate test of our spiritual growth.
When we realize that we can do a 101
different spiritual actions, even actions of sharing.
And we can make a 101 different connections
but if our love towards another person, towards
other people is not growing then we are
not connecting to the Light of the Creator.
And this is a very important point because I think most of us
if we think about our lives and we think about the way we interact with people,
most of us believe that we are loving people.
Certainly, we love our spouse, we love our children,
we love the people, our friends, those who are close to us.
But that is not the test of love.
That is not the ultimate true love.
My love for other people who do not give me anything
in return, physically, emotionally, in any other way,
is my love for them, for humanity
in general, for people in particular
those who do not give back to me is that growing
and that needs to be the constant question that
we ask. There's a great lesson that the kabbalists teach
about Abraham. Abraham, one of the patriarchs,
biblical patriarchs, was as the kabbalists teach
the channel for Chesed,
one of the ten sefirot, one of the Ten Emanations
one of the ten channels of Light
that come into this world. Chesed is the channel of
right column, of love, of kindess.
And the kabbalists teach that when Abraham lived
and his whole life centered around love,
sharing towards other people,
and awakening and growing his love towards other people,
he literally was the channel that opened up if you will
the faucet of love, the channel of love
that flowed into our world.
Before Abraham, the ability to love,
the channel of love from the supernal world
down to our world was limited.
And Abraham's great work
was that he opened up the channel of love
not only for himself more importantly, for the rest
of the world. And in the time of Abraham,
it was easier for people to love other people
than anytime before him. But unfortunately, the kabbalists teach,
people began using that love
in a negative way. They began loving things
that they shouldn't be loving.
They began expressing their love in ways that they shouldn't be expressing them.
Their love unfortunately was corrupted
by their selfishness, by their ego.
And what had to happen in order to protect humanity
is that the Creator shut down,
limited again that channel of love.
And it is a very important lesson
that has to do with every single one of us.
Every single one of us has the ability
to open up our channel of love
and to limit our channel of love.
We open up our channel of love by actively
pursuing, awakening our love towards other people.
The second emotion I'd like to talk about,
as we come into the month of Tammuz,
this month of Cancer, this month of emotions,
is the emotion of fear. And the
Zohar in Noach, in the portion of Noach,
has a very interesting and important discussion
regarding fear. So those of us who know the story
of the Bible, the biblical story of Noah,
it was the great flood. And only Noah and
and his family who were in the ark,
Noah's ark, survived the great flood.
And as Noah comes out of the ark,
the Creator tells Noah, {...Hebrew...}
You will be feared by the animals
by all of nature. You, Noah,
and your children and your family, will be feared,
and the Zohar explains, {...Hebrew...}
because you will have the image of man.
And the Zohar explains that there are different levels
of images, meaning, different levels of connection
different levels of how we
develop ourselves as humans.
There is the ultimate level of humanity
of a human. {...Hebrew...}
But if a person does negative actions
as the generation before the flood did
their selem elochim,
their image of God, their spiritual protection
that surrounds our body becomes diminished.
{...Hebrew...}
Because man was created in the image of God, meaning,
that every single one of us has around us, a
as the kabbalists call it, selem elochim
or image of God. We are surrounded
by a sphere, by a Light, that protects us.
That shows all of nature, though we
don't see it with our physical eyes
but the animals see it, all of nature sees it.
The entire universe sees a person when he has
this protective layer, this selem elochim.
This image of God surrounding him.
{...Hebrew...}
When the generation of the flood
and when any person does negative actions,
their image, their spiritual image, changes.
{...Hebrew...} and the supernal image,
{...Hebrew...}
and because their image was diminished,
that surrounding force of Light
of the Creator was diminished, they began to fear
all of nature. They began to fear all the animals.
{...Hebrew...}
Before the generation
of the flood, the negative actions,
when any animal would look up at a human
he would see the image of God.
He would see that Light surrounding them and protecting them.
{...Hebrew...}
And all the animals, all of nature,
would fear man. {...Hebrew...}
But once they did negative actions {...Hebrew...}
their image was no longer the image of God.
They would no longer have that protection around them.
{...Hebrew...}
And then people began fearing animals.
The Zohar here is teaching us a very, very important lesson.
It's telling us what happened then but it's telling us
what happens now. The kabbalists teach us, the
Zohar explains that every single one of us has the ability
and we were born with a selem elochim.
A image of God. A shadow of God
of Light that literally covers us
and shields us from anything negative
of a physical nature. Shields us
and makes the entire universe fear us
and stay away from us.
The third emotion I'd like to talk about is regret.
Many of us throughout our lives have done things
that we have regretted, very often for the right reasons.
We've done things that have either hurt ourselves
or hurt others. As the kabbalists teach, regret
is an important emotion.
But as every other emotion,
it has a positive side and a negative side.
If we look back at things that we've done
and become upset or saddened
or depressed about them
and therefore do nothing,
that is not a positive regret, that is a regret
from the negative side. But when we look back at our lives
at the actions that we've done, and that literally gives
us a push, an impetus, to do things
differently, to change, to grow, that is
positive regret. So it's important that we
know it and this is true for every emotion,
that there is a tremendously positive side
and a tremendously negative side to every emotion.
And what we have to accomplish, what we want to
accomplish this month is be able to take hold of these emotions
using them for growth. So regret, again,
is a very powerful and necessary emotion.
But we have to ask ourselves the question, "Where is it coming from"?
Is it coming from the positive side
or from the negative side? And the simple way
to know that is, what does it make you do?
If you feel regret and do nothing about it,
if you feel regret and become sad
and it just keeps you stuck, throw that regret away.
There is no purpose for it, it is only from the negative side.
But if you look back at things that you've done,
if you look back at things that you've done
and that pushes you to change,
that pushes you to do better next, and that pushes you
to change things about yourself, to change
things about the way you do things,
then it is coming from the positive side.
And I'd like to share with you a story that I have read recently
this story is from a great kabbalist,
his name was The Apta Rebbe Rabbi Abram Yehoshua Reshil
and he says that there is a certain person
who came to see him. We know that very often
people come to kabbalists for assistance, for advice,
for blessings, and there was this person who
came to visit this great kabbalist, The Apta Rebbe.
So this person comes to The Apte Rebbeni,
wants to get a blessing
{...Hebrew...}
The Apte Rebbe when he saw him and the
kabbalists have the ability to look at a person and see
who they really are, what their essence really is,
and as he looked at this person he realizes,
he's probably one of the worst people alive at his time.
There wasn't a negative action that
this person did not do. {...Hebrew...}
The Apte Rabbe raised his voice {...Hebrew...}
and he said to him this,
{...Hebrew...}
How dare you come, you evil one,
how dare you come into my presence.
Go out, I don't want to look at a person
as evil as you.
So the man of course was shaken up by his words,
this great kabbalist, started screaming at him, yelling at him.
So the man asks the kabbalist, The Apte Rabbe,
{...Hebrew...}
Is there any way for me to still correct my soul?
Can I cleanse? Because you know
sometimes you can touch somebody in a way
that awakens them to want to make
the biggest changes. And The Apte Rabbe
did that here by raising his voice towards this person.
the person for the first time in his life, realized
all the negative actions that he'd done, all the truly
negative things that he had accomplished in his life.
And he turns to The Apte Rabbe and he says, "Is there any way for
me to change? Is there any way for me to cleanse all that I have done?"
{...Hebrew...} so the kabbalist stopped, Rabbe answers to him
{...Hebrew...} he says, "Go away for one year."
he says, "I can't help you now."
He says, "All I can tell you to do,
is go away for a year.
Don't do anything negative for this year.
And find your own way that you think
you can correct yourself because right now,
as you are, I do not see a way that I can help you.
I do not see a way for you to correct yourself.
I do not see a way for you to perfect yourself,
to cleanse yourself of all the negativity that you have done,
all the negativity that you have created. {...Hebrew...}
And this is sort of a side point, but a very important
point in the story. That Saturday, after the
great kabbalist, The Apte Rabbe met with this man,
{...Hebrew...}
the children and family of the kabbalist
became ill, became sick.
And when The Apte Rabbe saw this, when the kabbalist saw this,
the reason why his family is becoming sick
is because he has broken a great negativity, a great,
as the kabbalists call, the klipa.
A great shell, a great source of darkness.
That his breaking of that man, his awakening of
that man broke and removed the tremendous
level of darkness from our world.
And therefore, that negativity
is trying to get back at The Apte Rabbe.
So again it's in the side but it is an important
point to note that true kabbalists,
a person who truly desires to help another person
is willing to do so even if it can bring him harm.
Even if he has to give up himself.
It's very easy to try to help somebody else
when it doesn't influence me,
when there's nothing negative that can come to me from it.
But a true kabbalist is a person who is willing to help another person
regardless of the consequences for himself.
But that's in the side.
After that first week, again this is only one week
from the time that the great kabbalist had met the man,
the kabbalist, The Apte Rabbe, calls back the man and says,
"Go home, and there as I said,
do whatever you think you can do
work on yourself, and after
one year, come back to me."
The man goes home to his town
and he works diligently for the whole year.
He studies and he thinks and he works
and he does much good as he can.
And he does this not just for one year,
and after two years but for seven complete years.
And after seven years, he comes back to The Apte Rabbe,
the great kabbalist because now he realizes
that he has only done enough work
during those seven years that he probably has created an opening
so that the kabbalist can truly help him change,
really help him cleanse.
When he walks into the room after seven years
to the great kabbalist, The Apte Rabbe stands up
And he says, "I see upon you that the
Light of the Creator, the Shechinah is resting.
He says, "Who are you?"
The Apte Rabbe turns to him and says, "Who are you?"
He says, "You must be a great man!"
So the man turns to The Apte Rabbe
and he starts crying. And he says,
{...Hebrew...} Don't you recognize me anymore?
I am that same evil person that
you saw seven years ago.
I had done everything negative possible
to do in my life.
So The Apte Rabbe started crying with him.
And he looked at his image,
at his selem elochim, the image of God that surrounded him now.
{...Hebrew...}
And he saw that he achieved a tremendous
level of connection to the Light of the Creator.
And that the Light of the Creator literally surrounded him completely.
{...Hebrew...}
And The Apte Rabbe hugged him,
and he kissed him. {...Hebrew...}
He says you no longer need anybody like me
to help you perfect yourself {...Hebrew...}
because your soul is completely corrected.
{...Hebrew...}
And you don't need anymore assistance, any more correction.
{...Hebrew...}
Not only had you perfected your soul,
but you have perfected your body.
You have achieved complete perfection.
And again like I said this is a very powerful and
important story. But the question that we have to ask ourselves
because we're talking about the emotion of regret.
And we are talking about perfecting ourselves
through the use of that emotion.
And the singular question we have to ask ourselves,
Iif this man has accomplished it in seven years
and where he started off was worse
than where any of us are at
But is our goal that complete perfection?
Are we constantly pushing ourselves
and looking back and asking,
How can I become as perfect as that negative person?
because if not, you know there is this famous
call it a joke or a proverb
"If you don't know where you're going, you're not gonna get there."
And that is the question we ask ourselves.
We know we have to use the emotion of regret.
We have to look back at everything that we do
and find ways to make it better to perfect ourselves more.
But the question is, "Where are we hoping to go?"
"What are we hoping to achieve?"
And what this story teaches us
is that within seven years, and for many of us probably
in a shorter period of time, we can achieve
complete perfection, complete connection
to the Light of the Creator. But when we are only
when are serially focused on that goal
and do everything that we can
and use all of our emotions,
all of our abilities to achieve that connection.
Like I said this is a, for me, a very powerful
and important story, one that has many, many different levels
and many different lessons.
But as we come now to this month of Tammuz,
a month of emotions,
a month within which we can grab control of our emotions-
love, fear and regret.
To be able to achieve
the purpose for which we came to this world
true, complete connection,
true, complete perfection
that ultimately gives us the joy and fulfillment
for which we came to this world.
Chodesh Tov.
If you wish to nurture your love for other people,
you must also nurture your love for yourself.
I'm not talking of becoming full of yourself
just simply appreciate the Light and power within.
It's a basic principle of Kabbalah.
We each possess a spark of the Light of the Creator.
Our spiritual work must be built on a foundation
of respecting and loving that part of ourselves.
Embracing our own Light makes it easier
to acknowledge the Light in others.
We need to be more tolerant and compassionate
towards our own faults. As Karen Berg says,
"Intolerance is the opposite of love,
since it is judgmental and rejecting, which love is not."
This month, exercise compassion and acceptance of yourself.
If you do something wrong, instead of a confirmation
of failure, practice self-tolerance.
See it as an opportunity for growth.
Take all of what Michael shared with you into your heart
and into your actions. We'll see you in the month of Leo.
Chodesh Tov.