What Choice Are You Making?

Get up or snooze? Coffee or tea? Right lane or left? Salad or sandwich? Keep going or move on? Every day we make hundreds, maybe even thousands of choices bases on the information we have in front of us.

In The New York Times op-ed piece called “My Medical Choice,” Angelina Jolie recently revealed that she decided to have a double mastectomy after genetic testing concluded that she was at high risk for developing breast cancer. The mother of six, who lost her mother and aunt to the disease, called her decision “proactive” and hoped by sharing her story, she would let women know that “you have options.”

While she has been praised by some and criticized by others for various reasons, Jolie has raised a good point: When push comes to shove, we always have a choice.

I understand that going through pain and not wanting our loved ones, especially our children, to go through the pain we went through can be a strong motivation behind our choices. Here’s another one.

Kabbalists teach that the seed of our reality is our consciousness. Our consciousness creates our reality, and in today’s world, many of us have come to not only accept chaos as our reality but expect it. We try to prevent, prepare and safeguard against it, and sometimes, we still fall victim. But what other choice do we have?

We have the choice to change our consciousness.

The real chaos isn’t what happens to us, but how we perceive it. We can choose to keep having certainty in chaos or shift our certainty to the Light – the infinite energy of goodness.

Choosing certainty in the Light means taking responsibility for everything in our lives – the good, the bad, the ugly - seeing the order beneath the chaos, and knowing that every challenge is an opportunity to reveal Light.
Choosing the consciousness of certainty that the Light is always there even in the darkest and most difficult moment of our lives connects us to a reality beyond chaos, which Kabbalists refer to as the Tree of Life Reality.

We choose our reality by choosing our consciousness. If we decide to live according to the world of data and statistics, our reality is not so promising. Take marriage for instance. First marriages have a 50% chance of failing, while second marriages have a 60% chance of failing. With numbers like that, why bother getting married?

But data does not have to drive your life! You can! You can choose to be the success case. And why not? There are lots of success stories of people that have changed their lives around despite what doctors, statistics and the status quo has told them is possible.

It’s not about denying your circumstances or just having faith. It’s about taking charge over what’s happening in your life. We all are affected by family history, both physically and spiritually, but did you ever hear someone who was the first person in his/her family to graduate college? Despite generations who only could go so far with their education, it just took one person to break the cycle and start a new one.

We can be that one person!

Not every disease gene manifests and not every disease comes from a gene. There is a growing field of education that teaches about the mind body and soul connection and demonstrates that a change of consciousness can change your health.

We can change our consciousness by choosing to invest in exploring our spirituality, increase our connection to the life force that already exists in us and learn how to let that life force flow! Read books, talk to people and find a spiritual system that works for you.

For me, the spiritual path and greatest gift in my life is Kabbalah, which I’ve been studying for 20 years. It personally awakened my consciousness of certainty in the Light and helped me maintain that consciousness.

One of the many tools of Kabbalah provides to transform consciousness is the meditation on specific Hebrew letters combinations known as the 72 Names of God. Here, I’ve shared with you the combinations for healing (image below) and certainty (image above). Just by looking at the letters, reading the meditation and envisioning ourselves and those who need it surrounded by the bright Light of these energies, we can shift our consciousness and bodies for the better.

I wish to send Angelina Jolie and people all over the world who are facing an illness healing energy. I also wish for all of us the strength to choose Light over darkness and to experience the Tree of Life Reality full of miracles and blessings.

Love,
Sarah

Heal Your Life: The New Moon of Taurus

The extraordinary healing energy of Taurus is available to everyone this month. But what does it mean to have healing consciousness? And how can we put that consciousness into action to create real healing in our lives?

Tonight, April 10, we enter the second month of the astrological calendar, Taurus. In Hebrew, it is known as the month of Iyar, which stands for the words “Ani Hashem Rofecha” and means “I am God, your Healer.”

To connect to the healing energy of Taurus, there are three steps in consciousness we can take this month:

1. Not accepting chaos as a normal part of our reality

God created us to have healthy and happy lives. Good health is normal; sickness, illness, disease is not. We’ve come to expect the opposite though and are comfortable with chaos as random events that we feel we have little control over.

2. Taking responsibility for the current state of our lives

The only way to regain control now is to accept that we created our physical, spiritual, mental and emotional situations in the first place. When you are the driver in your life, then you can decide to make a u-turn. Taking responsibility isn’t about fault, guilt or shame. It’s simply recognizing that life is a chain of cause and effect. It’s realizing I am the cause, and knowingly or not, I planted seeds that have created my circumstances. In the moment that I accept that I am the creator, I awaken the unlimited power within me to create healing energy and plant new seeds.

There is an unlimited power within us that gives us life and heals us. It’s the divine power that joins an egg and sperm, creates trillions of cells and flows through our body pumping blood and performing a thousand other functions! Sometimes we block this life force through our own negativity. We need to get out of the way and let the Light flow with ease, rather than dis-ease.

3. Changing our physical reality by changing our thoughts

Curing our lives of dis-ease starts with cleansing our thoughts, as Kabbalist Rav Berg explains in the introduction to the spiritual text of Kabbalah, The Zohar:

Misfortune and illness are not considered separate and apart from thoughts. Our minds, bodies, thoughts, and environments are inseparable. Therefore, we must treat thought more than the disease itself. We must treat the entire thought process that is instrumental in bringing about the disease in the first place. We must also realize that the thoughts of others can cause some form of disease within our bodies. Our states of mind can make ourselves and others well and can speed recovery from illness. We have the power to heal and the power to remain well.

Thoughts are real, and they directly affect our body. In the book Evolve Your Brain, Dr. Joe Dispenza speaks about a new field of science called psychoneuroimmunology, which directly demonstrates the connection between the mind and the body. Basically, every thought produces a biochemical reaction in the brain that is then transmitted to the body. For more information, Rav Berg further explores this scientific truth of mind of matter in his book Nano.

Back to Action!

Change your thoughts, heal your body. Easier said then done. To start, time to discover the patterns of your thoughts - victim consciousness, me me me syndrome, fear, worry, doubt, denial - and break them. Most of our thoughts are about ourselves. Ask the Light force to shine through you to others. Ask what you can do for someone else. If you are physically limited, you can mentally send healing energy to others.

Interesting fact: For a body to be healthy, it needs to be oxygenated. The more a body moves, the more oxygen it has. Ironically, Taurus is characterized by a desire for comfort and lack of movement. To tap into the healing energy of Taurus, we must transform that energy and move! The more uncomfortable our acts of sharing are, the greater Light we will reveal.

Tools to Help Us:

72 Name of God & Letters of the Month: Meditate on these ancient channels of energy to draw down support for your efforts in shifting your consciousness and actions (see images at the top and bottom).
The ArchAngels Michael & Raphael: To call on the guardian angels of healing, connect to their energy and focus your intention on healing and desire for life-changing, everlasting Light.

I had a friend that was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. She identified her jealous thoughts and selfish acts. She went outside of herself to volunteer and share with strangers. She is now 3 years cancer-free!

You can heal yourself too! I wish for all of us a month of taking charge, mental cleansing, uncomfortable sharing and all-around healing.

With love,

Sarah Yardeni

Seeking Solutions After Sandy Hook

Behind the tears and overwhelming pain and shock…
While feeling deep desire to find out why this happened and who is responsible for such a tragedy…
And hearing calls to action to sign petitions, add security guards to our children’s schools and improve mental care…

…I am left with a clear picture: Chaos is looking at me – at all of us - straight in the face and with no shame.

Chaos manifests in a physical way. First, it infiltrates our mind and causes us to look outside of ourselves in search of someone to blame and judge. It points to someone and says, “Be afraid of them,” an unknown enemy separate from ourselves, and convinces us that the ultimate solution is a security guard with weapon in our children’s schools will increase their safety. The only thing more twisted that our kids being threatened at school, is our acceptance of these 1% fixes.

The real question is: What is the source of chaos?

Rather than treating the symptoms of chaos, we must seek deeper seed level solutions for the complete removal of chaos. Many spiritual paths offer answers, guidance and support. Personally, I have found answers in the universal wisdom of Kabbalah.

We all have an inner power of healing and an inner power of destruction. Recognizing these two forces and learning to overcome the negative power is what creates positive energy, known as Light.

As Kabbalists throughout history have taught, we are destined to live in a world of peace, harmony and love. Yet, chaos reigns because we accept it as part of our world. 10 or 20 years ago, hearing about someone with cancer was absolutely shocking. Today, how do you feel when you hear about someone diagnosed with cancer?

Chaos is not shocking anymore. Accepting disease, pain and random acts of violence is accepting chaos, and that is unacceptable – for you, me, our children and all of our fellow human beings!

Each of us has the power to defeat chaos and transform it to Light, and so many of us are already hard at work doing just that. Personal transformation, compassion, unity, living our best lives and taking global responsibility can create the harmonious world we are meant to live in. If we want to change the world, we have to change ourselves.

If you are on a spiritual path, push yourself to the next level. If you aren’t on one, find one because we are all in this world together.

To all of us, I wish a happy and harmonious 2013.

Thank you,

Sarah Yardeni

Time & Money

What would you do for another hour in the day and extra cash in your pocket? Get ready for a surge in those physical desires as we enter the month #Capricorn, the most materialistic sign of the Zodiac – and yet, potentially the most spiritual.

Tonight is the 6^th night of #Chanukah. It’s also the new moon of Capricorn. The 10^th sign of the #Zodiac is ruled by the planet furthest away from the sun, Saturn. Do you know a Capricorn? Maybe not very well at first. They enjoy their own company and take time to warm up to others.

They are also highly invested in the physical. Stable, systematic and overachieving, they make great scientists and business people. And they attribute all of their physical success to their hard work.

Similarly, we will all be influenced this month by this false sense of control and ownership of our accomplishments: Things are going my way. People are taking my advice. My hard work is paying off. And we will need to remember, as Kabbalist Rav Berg simply puts, “The source of all these things is the Light.”

The only thing we really control is our consciousness. We can choose to see the Light in every situation. We can choose to share that which we receive. We can choose to push away doubts and uncertainty. We have to take ownership of our consciousness and protect it.

When we choose to see that everything in our lives comes from the Creator for the purpose of revealing Light, the world will reflect that brilliant reality back to us.

Where there is the most darkness is the most Light, and therefore, beneath the materialism of Capricorn is the DNA of the highest spiritual connection: The 72 Names of God. We have a direct link to this powerful meditative tool through the Hebrew letters that control this month, Ayin and Bet (see below).

We can also focus on the specific sequence from the 72 Names of God for Defying Gravity (see below) to gain the power of mind over matter during Capricorn.

During the next 28 days, we have a choice: We can fall into the typical materialistic mode of Capricorn, or we can rise above to the highest spiritual levels by sharing everything we receive from the Creator. Only when we rise above do we truly gain control over time, money, love and so much more.

Chodesh Tov! (Good Month!),
Sarah Yardeni
Instructor, The Kabbalah Centre, NY

Resources: KABBALISTIC ASTROLOGY by Kabbalist Rav Berg and THE 72 NAMES OF GOD by Yehuda Berg

#Kabbalah #Time&Money

Our Most Important Meeting

How can we prepare for the most important meeting of our day? It starts just after midnight while we’re fast asleep but our soul is not! What exactly is our soul doing at night?

Every night, our soul leaves us and joins the Creator. Like meeting with a supervisor, our soul reports to the Creator to review our previous day and fortify us for the following day. As The Zohar, the ancient text of Kabbalah, all of our daily thoughts, words and actions – seen or unseen – are on record:

Come and see, During the time when people sleep and taste of death, the soul rises up and gets to stand in a certain place, where it is examined about its daily activities which are recorded in the book. What is the reason for this? Because the soul rises up and testifies about all the person’s activities and every single word that came out from his lips.

- Naso, verse 6

Our positive thoughts, words and actions create positive angels that serve to protect and provide us with those inspiring thoughts that seem to come out of nowhere: Call that friend you haven’t talked to in a while. Take that job. Our positive doings also serve to open up the gates of Heaven and bring us closer to the Creator for blessings, wisdom and strength, especially during those nightly connections.

Our consciousness and behavior determines the quality of the angels we create. Words and actions with an agenda will beget angels that are not perfect, and through negative behavior, we can create angels that speak falsehoods and can even be terrors. Our daily negativity not only locks the gates of Light but paves a pathway for chaos in our lives.

The good news is no matter the day we’ve had – our boss pushed our buttons or we volunteered from morning til night – there is something we can do before dozing off to ensure we have the most productive nightly meeting with the Creator. This preparation also determines how well we sleep, sending our soul to a place that it is nourished by the angels rather than lodged into a space where it is given false messages.

It’s all about transformation. The first tool of our transformation, known as Teshuva, has four simple steps to follow.

Step 1. Reflect on my day to find the moments I would want to pause, rewind and change something – a negative word that came up, or energy waisted with people I shouldn’t have been with – and recognizing the cause of the negative behavior. E.g. Pride, judgement, control, etc.

Step 2. Feel the pain of my negativity caused on a soul level. Imagine the consequences of my action for myself, others and the world.

Step 3. Replay your day again, and imagine being proactive in those moments. How would you feel, what would you think and what would you do differently?

Step 4. Make a sincere commitment to not repeat that behavior in the future. Imagine what my future would look like without that behavior.

The second thing we can do before going to sleep is to extend forgiveness to anyone who hurt us – in this lifetime or another, knowingly or unknowing – to ensure we don’t go to bed angry and resentful, which could block us from receiving Light during our meeting.

Knowing what you know now about the most important meeting of our day, what does the departure of the soul at night what does it mean to you? Think about what you can do differently during the day and before bed. Remember, the purpose is always to change.

Thank you,

Sarah Yardeni

A Message from Above…

Usually out-of-this-world stories come to us through a friend of a friend of a friend’s brother who knew the guy. However, I was urged to share this personal story by a student as a shining example that there is so much more to this world than meets the eye.

Last week, Lisa Mirchin, a longtime student of the Kabbalah Centre, and I went to her mother’s grave on her 3-year death anniversary to make a special connection. Kabbalah teaches that on a person’s death anniversary, his/her soul returns to its burial site, the place of its leftover physicality.

There we were on a beautiful sunny day, sitting up on a hill of a cemetery that felt more like a friendly garden, with all the Kabbalistic tools with us to make a connection and give energy to the soul of Lisa’s mother.

Lisa had a huge desire to receive a sign from her mother. Before her mother died, Lisa had asked her if she would send a sign after she passed, but at the time, her mother had been unwilling to discuss it.

“I don’t feel her.” Lisa kept repeated. Conversely, I had felt a surge of emotions from the minute we arrived. I reminded Lisa that she was here to give energy and to stop wanting to receive from her mother instead.

We meditated on the 72 Names of God for Contacting Departing Souls, and I asked help from my teachers, the Rav and Karen Berg, and righteous souls to really connect to and see what would be the best thing to happen right now.

I closed my eyes and saw a woman who was singing. I asked Lisa, “What’s your mother’s favorite song? I think she wants us to sing to her.” But Lisa quickly dismissed the idea.

As we continued reading The Zohar, Lisa told stories about her mom, including how
her mother died in Lisa’s arms with Lisa kissing her all over as she cried. Between her stories, I kept asking Lisa about her mom’s favorite song, and she kept averting the question.

Sensing Lisa frustration, I told her to just open The Zohar anywhere for guidance. With the book in her hands, Lisa closed her eyes, dramatically opened it wide, swung her arm around and drove her finger down. In volume 20, page 88, her finger landed on one word: song.

It was the wakeup call Lisa needed. She grabbed her iPod and hit play on her mother’s favorite song, Que Sera Sera – the familiar song about a mother and daughter talking about life. The tears started flowing.

Without further prompt, another song started to play – “Teo Torriatte (Let Us Cling
Together)” by Queen (video above). And in its lyrics, Lisa got a sign as clear as the day:When I’m gone

No need to wonder if I ever think of you
The same moon shines
The same wind blows
For both of us, and time is but a paper moon…
Be not gone

Though I’m gone
It’s just as though I hold the flower that touches you
A new life grows
The blossom knows
There’s no one else could warm my heart as much as you…
Be not gone

Let us cling together as the years go by
Oh my love, my love
In the quiet of the night
Let our candle always burn
Let us never lose the lessons we have learned

Hear my song
Still think of me the way you’ve come to think of me
The nights grow long
But dreams live on
Just close your pretty eyes and you can be with me…
Dream on

When I’m gone
They’ll say we’re all fools and we don’t understand
Oh be strong
Don’t turn your heart
We’re all
You’re all
For all
For always

Besides the wow factor, what can we take away from this story to help us in our lives?

No matter what happens, we must remember that love is everlasting - through time and yes, different dimensions. Especially when we are experiencing the pain of losing a loved one or darkness of any difficulty, we must remind ourselves that there is a bigger picture that we don’t see and in it, the Light is always there.

Thank you,
Sarah Yardeni

A note to Lisa: Thank you, dear friend, for inviting me to participate in, what turned out to be, an amazing experience.

Are you blessed or cursed in life?

We know that the Creator only intends for our lives to be filled with goodness and Light. So, who is blessing or cursing us? The truth is leading a life full of happiness or a life full of chaos is a choice that we make.

In life, there are two paths to choose. The path of happiness is filled with blessings of good health, abundance, love, fulfillment, peace – all of the good things we want. Meanwhile, the path of chaos makes us feel cursed with problems, anger, disputes, wars and chaos of all different ways, shapes and forms.

Choosing the path of happiness is choosing the path of proactive transformation, on which we stretch and transform ourselves, channel most of our energy towards caring for people and consider the effects of our actions.

Choosing the path of chaos is choosing the path of reactive transformation, on which we are pushed, through great pain and pressure, to stop, look at ourselves and change. Many times when we are taking this path, it feels like life is not going well or things do not happen for us – just as if we are cursed.

Each and every moment of our lives, we decide which road to travel in life. Take a moment to consider this reality. Which path are you choosing right now?

This week, be more conscious than ever that the actions, thoughts, words and feelings you choose promote proactive transformation in the long run, rather than reactive transformation now. It’s either one or the other; it cannot be both.

Some of us think that have everything we want is a blessing that will bring happiness. We look at people that have a lot of money, and we judge them to be happy. Yet, happiness can only be something a person feels inside, not what his/her life looks like from the outside. Nor is happiness the result of any external circumstances; it does not depend on what I have or do not have.

The greatest curse is to be sad, while the greatest blessing is to be truly happy. We experience true happiness when we are spiritually wealthy. Spiritual wealth is a person’s a deep connection to the Light and profound understanding of the purpose of life. When we have spiritual wealth, nothing can make us sad, nothing can make us poor.

Happiness is a choice. A beautiful tool to strengthen this type of consciousness is the Hebrew-letter combination of the 72 Names of God for happiness, Vav Hei Vav (see below). Whether you have 30 minutes or 30 seconds, take time to close your eyes and mediate on this combination and the corresponding affirmation:

I want to plant a seed for the rest of the week that I am choosing to be blessed, I am choosing the path of proactive transformation, and I am choosing happiness. I am dropping my ego and moving towards actual and lasting fulfillment. I restrain my selfish longings, and I ask for what my soul needs. Looking ahead, I want elevation for my soul and real transformation. I restrict my dark impulses and tendencies towards negativity and complaining. I appreciate everything around me and reach into my soul at the deepest level to connect with real happiness and true joy.

I wish that all of us are able to manifest this reality of true happiness idea every day, in every second.

Thank you,

Sarah Yardeni

Here’s some food for thought: Choose your thoughts, create your reality. It may be hard to believe that we can actually choose our thoughts - sometimes negative thoughts just come in! - but the power to cleansing our minds is now available in the healing month of Taurus.

At the beginning of this week, we entered the astrological sign of Taurus, the second month of the lunar calendar. Ruled by the planet Venus, this month is known in Hebrew as “Iyar,” which stands for the words “Ani Hashem Rofecha,” which means “I am God, your Healer.” It is also called the month of “Ziv,” which means Light.

Curing our lives of all chaos and sickness includes addressing the state of our thoughts, as Kabbalist Rav Berg explains in the introduction to the spiritual text of Kabbalah, The Zohar:

Misfortune and illness are not considered separate and apart from thoughts. Our minds, bodies, thoughts, and environments are inseparable. Therefore, we must treat thought more than the disease itself. We must treat the entire thought process that is instrumental in bringing about the disease in the first place. We must also realize that the thoughts of others can cause some form of disease within our bodies. Our states of mind can make ourselves and others well and can speed recovery from illness. We have the power to heal and the power to remain well.

Everything begins with our thoughts. When we heal our thoughts, our entire reality can be healed, including the body, which really suffers the impact of our consciousness because it is the lowest level where consciousness is being manifested. When we heal our consciousness, everything else, including the body, can be healed.

Thoughts have energy. Even if we never act on our thoughts to express the feelings born from them, they still impact our lives because the ability to think is actually a result of us tapping into a high level of the soul. We are using divine energy to think.

Our thoughts create our reality. When we use our thoughts to share energy, we create light and blessings in our lives. When our thoughts are selfish or judgmental, we create darkness and chaos. This month, we are supported by the energy of Taurus in clearing our minds of limiting, negative thoughts, and choosing to fill them with boundless, healthy thoughts.

Only you know what goes on in your mind. Only you can choose to make that shift. By simply starting to say to ourselves, “I want my mind to host healthy, sharing, loving thoughts,” we open up to receive positive ideas. With that energy, we will be able to create all of the beautiful, healthy, loving reality that we want for ourselves and for other people.

Practically, we can use on the two Hebrew letters that represent the month, Pei and Vav (see below) to draw the ability to heal our thoughts and our minds, to heal ourselves and others. Also, we can meditate on the three-Hebrew-letter sequence from 72 Names of God specifically for healing (see above).

I wish for all of us a great month of healing. Let’s extend that energy to everybody in the world around us.

Thank you,

Sarah Yardeni

What do our words really stand for? Do we consider our thoughts before we speak or do we let our them just roll off our tongue? It may require some effort to choose our words carefully, but it’s more than worth the energy.

Right now, we are in a period of time known as theOmer – the 49 days between the second day of Passover and the next holiday of Shavuot. Kabbalah teaches that these holidays celebrate special energy that enters our world and is available to everyone, rather than commemorate an event in history.

During Passover last week, we were gifted with a huge amount of energy, which freed us from all of our negativity, or klipot, we produce – fears, doubts, unhealthy habits, etc. Kabbalists explain that we cannot truly keep or hold onto to something for which we have not fully worked or earned. Therefore, that Light of freedom from Passover cannot stay with us without some effort on our part.

Life is about earning our spiritual fulfillment. Now, during the Omer, we have the opportunity to earn back the Light we received. As we do the spiritual work for 49 days, we will work our way up to a high level of energy known as Shavuot, and then, all the energy we earned will be able to stay with us.

In this week of the Omer, we are building our vessel to hold Light and are at the level of energy known Gevurah. Gevurah refers to judgment, and this week’s Torah portion highlights one of the main forms of judgment: negative speech. Our words have great power – the power to increase judgment or sweeten it for ourselves and others.

What is negative speech?

Negative speech is when we speak badly about another human being. It is derogatory and degrading talk that can harm another person or cause him/her shame or even, financial loss. It also includes revealing personal information about another or speaking harshly about people’s traits, feelings, family or actions. Negative speech awakens judgment for the person who is being discussed, the person talking and even those who are listening.

Yet, there are two antidotes to sweeten the judgment in our lives and others that we learn from Maggid of Mezritch, Rav Dov Ber. First, any characteristic we notice in others, especially those we criticize and find especially bothersome, are present in us. We are simple shown problems in others so that we may see them in ourselves – not so we can point out to that person that he/she, is at fault.

Understanding that people are mirrors for us can help us transform judgment into mercy and earn the specific Light available to us this week.

The second way to remove judgment is by doing the opposite: See people favorably. Even though we may think someone is wrong or at fault, always look for the good. Find the positive motive behind others’ actions. Come with compassion and with mercy, instead of judgment. As Karen Berg says, instead of prejudging, let’s prelove.

At the end of the week, the astrological month of Taurus begins, and with it comes the energy of healing. The seed level of all sickness, whether it is physical, emotional or mental, is the desire to receive for the self alone. This month, we can heal our desire – the driving force of our actions – and become motivated from a place of sharing.

I hope that all of us will be able to inject mercy and compassion this week. Let’s be especially aware of what comes out of our mouths.

Sarah Yardeni

“Of this it is written, ‘He who guards his mouth and his tongue keeps his soul from trouble.’”
- The Zohar, Tazria 86