Thoughts, Advice, Tools and Tips

 

In His great Goodness, the Almighty created the universe as a veil behind which His Presence is hidden and yet, the cosmic garment is all sprinkled with signs and allusions, in order to allow us to search and hence to draw closer to Him out of our own free will. From then on, He renews the world in order to offer to those who wish it, at each instant, a new opportunity to unveil His Presence.  For each new day, specific thoughts, words and acts are suggested to each individual.  These are all intended to provide us with hints and direction.  We should therefore seize hold of the new circumstances of each day and discern out of these elements, the new tools that are suggested to us in order to draw closer to God.

 

 

Know that God can delight in the lowliest of His children: The most distant man can give immeasurable joy to the Almighty.  It is never too late to come back to God, to be able to improve. 

 

For this reason, it is strictly forbidden to lose hope, however low we may have fallen, for God has not abandoned His love for us. 

 

To succeed in this, we must be inspired.  Let us seek out the true believers, those righteous individuals who know how to find the good in every person, instill in us self-confidence and bring our hearts back to God.

 

 

When one wishes to advance spiritually, one must of necessity go through a crisis.  Only in the middle of a struggle our hidden capacities can appear and grow.  The important thing is not to let ourselves be discouraged, but to take heart, no matter what happens during this crisis.  Then if we hold firm, we will succeed in transforming  all our past falls in to instruments for true progress.

 

 

 

Conveying vital elements for the soul as well as for the body, food can influence our spiritual condition to a great extent, either positively or negatively.  If we only knew how to feed ourselves properly, we would gain tremendous growth and reach actual holiness. Since the human mind is mostly equipped to analyze the perceptible aspect of reality, the wisest nutritionist could only identify the physical, emotional, and mental influence of the food over the individual. However, no human wisdom can select proper nutrition on an ethereal level, being that this plane is beyond the brain’s grasp and can only be reached through prophecy.  Therefore, one who wishes to select the energies that could be suitable for his upper soul’s well being will have to rely on Divine revelation.

 

The Hebrew word kosher literally means apt; a kosher diet is the judicious selection of energies adapted to the needs of both upper and lower souls.  Due to its prophetic essence, the Torah knows very well the proper criteria for food selection on such a level and orientates us towards it, while keeping us from negative animations.  While electing what is in our welfare to absorb, the Torah recommends us to avoid foods that might weaken us to any degree. A good example of hostile influence would be the insect that the kosher diet drastically prohibits (observant Jews check carefully all grains, vegetables and fruits where insects are to be found).  The Cabalists tell us that this interdict is due to the enormous charge of melancholy that these small beings encompass and which then transfer itself into the soul of the consumer.

 

Simultaneously, through it’s extensive prescriptions, the Jewish dietetic provides the basic switches that direct us to the mystical quality of the dynamism contained in our aliments: by observing them, we will be privileged to locate the Divine sparks hidden in their material shells (the physical bread), extract them and hence elevate a plain meal into the most holy celebration.

 

This is how the Tree of Knowledge (that was basically and unrefined type of energy) can be transformed into an eternal source of vitality: The Tree of Life.

 

 

(Used with permission from COURAGE by Israel Isaac Besancon. Published by Shir Chadash Publishers)