blog 29

Blog 29:    2^nd March 2010

Of ‘Bluebeards’ and Soul-speak

-          Laibl Wolf, Dean, Spiritgrow - The Josef Kryss Wholistic Centre, Australia

I was participating at a farbrengen tisch last night – it being Purim. farbrengen, you ask? An old style Hassidic rap-session around a table where you get high on Torah, charisma, and a little help from the ‘geller’ and ‘vaysser’.  Purim?  Read: carnivale - Jewish style. ‘geller’ -  Yiddish: yellow, colloquial Hassidic jargon for whiskey). ‘vaysser’ – Yiddish: white, colloquial jargon for vodka.  Tisch – Yiddish: lit. table, but laden with food.  Now you know exactly where I was and what I was as doing last night. Reads like a long tweet, no?

Here we were – a bunch of ‘blue-beards’ (and some younger black-beards) and some ‘fremder mentchen’ – guys off the street who don’t get it as yet because they walk the ways of the western person. Quite a motley assortment of humans cutting loose because Purim is when you cut loose.

And the ‘blue-beard’ with the whitest hue was holding forth, regaling each guy around the table with his ‘neshomodicker’ (soulful) challenge: “You’re laughing but are you really happy?”. The ‘vaysser’ was really kicking in and a truer level of self was beginning to reveal itself. (Lest the cynical distort this modern tale with a suggestion that a farbi - Aussi slang for Farbrengen – is a tenuous excuse for a drink too many, let it be quickly notedf that the elders in our tradition keep the less experienced ‘farbrengenners’ well in check!)

There are occasions when intellectual repartee can lead to truths. Off hand. I don’t recall any example. Just watched an u-tube when a supposed ‘Kabbalist’ ( a dime a dozen these days on Google)  posed this question  and went on to dissect the elements of happiness with such depth and clarity that I felt truly sad. Oy! Painful. Happiness is experienced not intellectualized, man!  Don’t you get it? Well I guess he won’t because he makes a mint dissecting – bit like a spiritual morgue.

So the head ‘farbengenner’ was beginning to work his way deeper into the psyche of his fremder mentchen and they were beginning to wonder whether they should be smiling or crying because the ‘bluebeard’ was now challenging their most basic understandings of happiness. You mean watching a guy kicking a piece of leather around the ground does it for you? Conquering another chic is your high point of life? (These contemporary Hassidic types are quite up with the lingo!). And so he went on destroying each one’s veneer of happiness.

‘Don’t you get it?’ he roared. “Happiness means connecting! Means looking the guy seated next to you and being willing to put your life on the line for him. Looking G-d in His face and saying with the fullness of heart: I am with you Man! Happiness is not about ‘me’.  It’s about Oneness. You know how Haman (the villain of the Purim piece) got so close to annihilating the Jews of ancient Persia?  Because they were ‘scattered’. No, not just scattered in mind, that too, but scattered from each other, separate, uncaring, unable to act in unison, lacking a sense of achdus (one-ness).”     

And so it went. And the miracle occurred – as it does at all farbengens. The façade disappears.  The veneer is penetrated. The lies we live dissolve. The feet might feel a fraction rubbery as we leave the tisch but the wobble gives us freedom to change direction. We swivel on a new fulcrum. It’s not longer the play of mind and heavy rationalizing justifying why we are the way we are and a mentality of ‘poor me’.  It’s the soul singing. We stop being a victim and wake up from our stupor. And we feel a new liberation – the pathway to true happiness.

Purim is about waking up, not about losing it!  Where were you this Purim? Where are you now? Happy? Pesach is around the corner - spiritual liberation. Get ready. How?  Make Purim every day till Pesach. 

(Your comments are invited: Click on reception@spiritgrow.org and let me have the benefit of your insight) 

Laibl’s web site: www.laiblwolf.com                                                                                                                                                                      - Laibl’s blog site: www.laiblwolf.com/blog/                                                                                                      – Spiritgrow – The Josef Kryss Wholistic Center, Australia site    www.SpiritgrowJosefKryssCenter.org

 

BLOG 29 ADJUST YOUR RADAR SCREEN

Blog 28:    23^RD FEB.  2010

Adjust Your Radar Screen

-          Laibl Wolf, Dean, Spiritgrow - The Josef Kryss Wholistic Centre, Australia

(Apologies: the link to my new mini-meditations was unresponsive last week – so here it is – live and active!    )

Speaking of unresponsiveness, why is the world so unresponsive to my needs? I want happiness. I want security.  I want consideration.  I want time for myself.  I want to engage in a meaningful life.  Why doesn’t it happen?

The short answer is: it is happening all the time, but our ‘inner ambience’ is not registering it.

If a radar system is set to pick up air traffic within the parameters of 1000 feet and 25,000 feet it will display the blips of all approaching planes between those height limits. What if a plane flies in ‘below the radar screen’ – below 1000 feet? It simply won’t register. Is it there? Of course! Is it being detected? No!

Our formative childhood experiences, our relational background, and our life’s circumstances – all these calibrate our internal radar screen. Couple with that the particular radar system we are using – the nature of our particular soul - and you have individual and limited vision on your consciousness-screen. For one person a nasty retort leaves a deep anger that festers for days.  Another person will treat the incident as a passing annoyance and treat it like water off a duck’s back not giving it a second thought. For one person a difficult parent/child relationship will leave deep emotional scar-tissue undermining future relationships.  For another, childhood pain is simply neutralized in the joy of new relational opportunities in life.

What can we do to recalibrate our internal radar system? We begin with the proposition that life presents us each, individually, with just the right opportunities that perfectly match our soul’s potential.  This is an axiomatic teaching in Kabbalah. But we are given the choice of registering life’s offerings correctly on our consciousness screen. The designer of our ‘radar system’ provided us with the capacity to change the settings.  This mechanism is called free choice. But if we are technologically impoverished, we don’t know how to adjust the settings. Our consciousness might be calibrated poorly. Life’s opportunities and teachings pass by undetected. The world seems unresponsive to our needs!

I assure you that learning the skills to change your consciousness settings will provide you with an abundance of life’s gifts. But to become a spiritual radar technician you must train - especially if life has taken a toll on your ‘settings’.  The training program has many tools. To let go of fear (link     ), to detoxify poisonous emotions and enjoy happiness  (link      ), to think well of ourselves through self esteem (link   ) , to experience the inner radar system – our soul  (     link) – these are important tools that reshape our minds and hearts, our consciousness – our inner ambience.

The world is indeed responsive to your needs. Train the inner eye to recognize the wonderful opportunities that arise daily in your life. Train to experience change. Change your radar settings.

   (Your comments are invited: Click on reception@spiritgrow.org and let me have the benefit of your insight) 

    Laibl’s web site: www.laiblwolf.com                                                                                                                                                                      - Laibl’s blog site: www.laiblwolf.com/blog/                                                                                                      – Spiritgrow – The Josef Kryss Wholistic Center, Australia site    www.SpiritgrowJosefKryssCenter.org

 

blog 26 inspired living

Blog 26:    10^TH  Feb. 2010

Inspired Living

-          Laibl Wolf, Dean, Spiritgrow - The Josef Kryss Wholistic Centre, Australia

Mechanics. Going through the motions. Waking. Working.  Sleeping. And same again. What does it mean? Does it mean? Am I simply using up other people’s air by breathing.

So many people go through life without their soul flowing! Their most uplifting moment is the cheeseburger and coke - gastric juices rather than spiritual juice. Their momentary high is chemically generated. After which the sugar/cocaine/fats fix wanes.  And then?  Of course. The screen. Escape into virtual living (or dying). Or, for more escapism, alcohol or drugs do the job so effectively.  No need to cope with anything – except the after-effects.  But at least you don’t have suffer the boredom, the monotony, the meaninglessness. Just the downers to be relieved by the uppers.

This ‘soul-less’ condition, is increasingly prevalent. The cure? Seek a ‘soul-mortgage’. Seek a loan from the Intergalactic Inspiration Bank.  It works like this.

You heard of a ‘dybbuk’?  Read Sholom Ansky’s book of the same name or watch the movie and you will have a fictionalized rendition of the phenomenon – a soul that doesn’t quite make it back to its source and hangs around trying to invade convenient bodies, vying with that body’s true soul for domination of the body. In Kabbalah there is also a phenomenon of a ‘Tzaddik’s (master’s) spiritual touch’.  A spiritual master is aware of many souls and can touch their souls from the distance and across time resulting in moments of profound inspiration. The many masters have over time created an ‘inspiration field’ from which we can draw on. But since we operate on the plane of time and space, the inspiration needs a physical catalyst – an inspiring book, an inspiring lecture, an inspiring meditation, an inspiring sunset.

Creation anticipated the explosion of mechanical jobs, routine lifestyles, repetitious fast food, and small boxed apartments. It also planted Tzaddikim throughout the generations to lead and inspire. The Tzaddik’s ‘messengers’ include prosaic venues like the world wide web, the blogosphere, social networking through face-book and twitter, cinema, and even the i-phone and its apps. But the soul must tap into the right wave-length of reception, otherwise it’s just another book, another film, another phone call.  Only when you are truly open to the Tzaddik’s touch will your loan from the Inspiration Bank be approved.

How can you prepare to be inspired? Join a team. Join a movement. Join an idea. Join something larger than yourself.  Pursue a value. Reform society. Help someone in need. Communicate, read, watch. But look for the message.  It will always be there. But your spiritual eyes must be open. It may be 106.7 on the FM dial or page 331 of Crime and Punishment. The bank loan can be approved everywhere. The Tzaddik’s power is awesome – especially in death when the Tzaddik’s soul is free to roam without limits.  

How is the loan repaid? With your good works.  Inspiration to make the world a better place. Make the world a better place and your credit rating improves allowing you to seek an even larger loan. Sounds like a good and affordable deal.  

 

(Your comments are invited: Click on reception@spiritgrow.org and let me have the benefit of your insight) 

    Laibl’s web site: www.laiblwolf.com                                                                                                                                                                      - Laibl’s blog site: www.laiblwolf.com/blog/                                                                                                      – Spiritgrow – The Josef Kryss Wholistic Center, Australia site    www.SpiritgrowJosefKryssCenter.org

 

NO.25 BIONIC SPIRITUALITY

Blog 25:    3^rd Feb. 2010

Bionic Spirituality

-          Laibl Wolf, Dean, Spiritgrow - The Josef Kryss Wholistic Centre, Australia

Man is becoming increasingly G-d-like. Artificial intelligence machines and bionic engineering point to our ingenuity. We are trying hard to mimic components of life itself.  Surgically rerouted nerves provide arms or legs to replace limbs blown away by road bombs. Modular prosthetic limbs are miracles to the victim of negligent driving. Electronics circumvent damaged light receptor cells providing sight to those injured in drunken bar brawls.  Motorized springs allow an artificial ankle to push off, simulating real leg movement for the player injured by foul play. It is not inconceivable that we will be engineering skin that senses temperature and touch for those burned by deliberately lit bushfires. 50% of our inventiveness is G-d-like.  The other 50% is the product of human frailty – poor choices, fear-drivenness, and ego centrism.

We are clever – even prophetic. Much science fiction of the past 70 years anticipated the world of today and even tomorrow. Where we seem to fail miserably is how to be wise with the external mechanical forms that we ‘create’. Will the merger of man and machine produce bionic warriors instead of healing the blind? Will the immensity of power latent in the micro energy fields of inner matter become agents of destruction? Will greed and power corrupt our cleverness producing pain in the place of wholeness?

In truth the gap between man-made bionic engineering and the perfection of divine wisdom remains infinite. We can mimic external elemental forms but cannot create even the smallest living microbe, let alone the ‘particle of wisdom’.

But we are potentially G-d-like in one very real way: we exercise choice. We can choose to master the limb to strike our fellow human in pugilistic ‘entertainment’ or to embrace the stranger. The same limb, the same intricate bionic ‘machine’, perfectly crafted by the divine craftsman, can kill or save.  We humans play with the toys of matter and have achieved noble success, but it is the arena of mastery and wisdom that defines our progress or regress.

We have colleges, universities, institutes of technology, all feverishly working towards discovering arrays of sophisticated gadgetry with patent potential, thereby lining the institutional coffers to cope with surging administrative and employment costs. But where are the higher halls of learning that equip our scientists, technologists, healers, participators in social mechanics, with the mastery of their bodies guided by the wisdom of their choices? We teach our children to read, write, add, and subtract – right through to the sophistication of quantum physics and Shakespeare sonnets. But where are the courses on how to harness the power of speech to create comfort zones and esteem, to manage body behavior to be congruent with a sensitive nature, to live consciously and compassionately in the moment of provocation – the other person’s weakness?

The pathway to mastery and wisdom holds the key to the future impact of our bionic adventures. The skills needed to exercise choice wisely require wisdom-masters and mastery-coaches. The tools of meditation, introspection, change-practices, positive thinking, and empathic postures - these are the real measure of society’s progress. If mechanics outstrips wisdom we are doomed. We are becoming increasingly powerful in manipulating the energies and matter of creation. But are our mechanical successes handicapped (if not rendered, ironically, self-destructive) by the foolishness of poor choice, absence of mastery and wisdom, and stricken though myopic fear and egocentrism.

All of us need to embark on ‘the road less travelled’ – self-understanding and self-mastery, which flow from wise and guided contemplative and practical meditation. A wise one with awareness once said:  we have discovered the enemy and the enemy is us. The ancients in Kabbalah taught: rather than destroy the enemy, transform him into a friend. To be a friend, know yourself – and practice change.

(Your comments are invited: Click on reception@spiritgrow.org and let me have the benefit of your insight) 

    Laibl’s web site: www.laiblwolf.com                                                                                                                                                                      - Laibl’s blog site: www.laiblwolf.com/blog/                                                                                                      – Spiritgrow – The Josef Kryss Wholistic Center, Australia site    www.SpiritgrowJosefKryssCenter.org

 

BLOG 24 You are a Brand

Blog 24:    27^th  Jan. 2010

You Are a Brand

-          Laibl Wolf, Dean, Spiritgrow - The Josef Kryss Wholistic Centre, Australia

One of the major marketing tenets is the significance and strategy of branding. The experts inform us that successful branding holds the key to marketability and sales. Two companies whose branding strategies are often cited as models are Virgin and Apple. Both are hugely successful companies. Virgin is noted for its adventurousness and flair, and Apple is associated with creative elegance and remarkable techno-prophecy.

Their success goes well beyond the efficacy of their products.  It goes to the core of our belief systems – our belief in these companies.  Branding launches beliefs. Once you have flown with Virgin you are hooked by youthfulness, jocular approach, cabin lighting effects and the Virgin touch in all on-board services.  Once you experienced the Apple Mac or i-pod, it is difficult to revert back to an ‘ordinary’ PC or a renegade MP3 player. Our belief in their legend is supreme. So when Apple notifies the market that a Mac Tablet is about to be launched, even though the concept is not new, the compelling belief that Mac does it right immediately guarantees a successful market launch.

Choose a leader whose ‘branding’ excites you and encourages you to place your beliefs in him or her. Not too many, right?  Obama exuded charisma that launched the Obama brand. Yet it has largely dissipated in the tatters of false hope and broken promises. The rhetoric outstripped real-politik and the brand tarnished in the dust-heap of economic woes and geo-political failures. Even a Nobel prize couldn’t resuscitate the brand. The Obama brand has lost its sparkle.  

Marxism, communism, and socialism were also once touted as political brands of their future. But the after-shocks of their human failures left belief in their brand in the coarse hearts of a few hardened radical leftists. The Palestinian brand of an oppressed and humiliated nation became undressed and naked through competitive self-aggrandizement, adoption of Goebbels’s lies strategy, and a culture of blackmail-induced European market countries handouts.

So what leadership brand inspires you? What political, philosophical, psychological , or religious brand compares to Apple and Virgin? Is that cynicism I espy in your eyes?

The answer: You have to become the brand.  You have the capacity for honesty, decency, consistency, and personal leadership.  You can overcome temptation and peer group pressure.  You can express your giftedness and abilities. You are a brand. You are Apple.  You are Virgin. But it takes an act of courage to believe in your own brand to the point that you actually live it.

Tomorrow morning, wake up with a sense of mission.  Allow the world to benefit and be inspired by your uniqueness, the image of your higher self. Your brand is much more powerful than Apple or Virgin. But for the brand to have reach you have to live a true version of you! Allow others to believe in you by living your brand – openly, courageously, and truly.

 

(Your comments are invited: Click on reception@spiritgrow.org and let me have the benefit of your insight) 

    Laibl’s web site: www.laiblwolf.com                                                                                                                                                                      - Laibl’s blog site: www.laiblwolf.com/blog/                                                                                                      – Spiritgrow – The Josef Kryss Wholistic Center, Australia site    www.SpiritgrowJosefKryssCenter.org

 

BLOG 23

Blog 23:    21^st  Jan. 2010

A Spiritual Illusion

-          Laibl Wolf, Dean, Spiritgrow - The Josef Kryss Wholistic Centre, Australia

Kabbalah leveraged this message: all is One. We are in constant states of inter-relationship. There are no states of ‘separateness’. There are no gaps between concentrations of matter. These are filled with consuming energy. There are no gaps between the petals of a rose. These ‘spaces’ are dusted with a  cacophony of fragrance. There is no gap between you and me.  An ever-changing kaleidoscopic consciousness field embraces us.

Spiritual energy coagulates into concentrated forms: humans, animals, plants and things. These appear for the briefest sub-set of infinite time – for 120 years, for a few months, for a brief micro-second. All time is naught in the face of infinite. Sometimes the energy-space simmers and bubbles in the heat of estrangement and fear. At other times its soft undulating spiritual landscape stills, softly basking in the entrancement of love and connectedness.  

Words are so poor. How can I, a finite human being, begin to speak about the non space of Oneness? Trapped as we are in the consciousness fields of discrete moments, of an uneven but ongoing now, we can only stutter sounds of inner awareness – that all is One, that what our seemingly mundane and ordinary lives experience is really a spiritual illusion.

There is a treasure chest of insight entombed within the mortal heart. Words are poor containers for its expression. If it could be pried open our seeming separateness from each other would shimmer and disappear, like the entry of Stargate or when the voice says ‘Scotty, beam me up’.  So many people and nations smart from myopia – oblivious of their higher consciousness. In truth, we are projections from the same Source. We are brothers and sisters. If only we basked in the brightness of the other, then there would no longer be strife, quarrel, war and carnage. Nation would not lift sword against nation, nor would they practice war any more.

How can we part this curtain of illusion – the purposeful sleight of hand of the holy Magician? Through deep meditation and profound contemplation. The Chabad masters call this hitbonenut. Then could we carry the refined spiritual postures with us wherever we go.  At least we should strive to hear the echo of that meditation and recall the aura of that contemplation. This is 24/7 spiritual work of consciousness and awareness to arouse the sensitivity to mutual respect, profound appreciation, and deep love.

We must strive beyond the illusion of separation. We must allow the mind’s inner-knowing to overcome the veil of insecurity and fear of separation.

In the year 2448 of the Torah calendar, time stood still and space was undressed. We were rewarded with a brief glimpse beyond the veil of illusion. This experience was encoded onto our psyche. Since then that encrypted truth dominates the soul seeking its freedom. Free it and the tipping point of creation will have been reached.

(Your comments are invited: Click on reception@spiritgrow.org and let me have the benefit of your insight) 

    Laibl’s web site: www.laiblwolf.com                                                                                                                                                                      - Laibl’s blog site: www.laiblwolf.com/blog/                                                                                                      – Spiritgrow – The Josef Kryss Wholistic Center, Australia site    www.SpiritgrowJosefKryssCenter.org

 

 

blog 22

Blog 22:    14^th Jan. 2010

A Carpet of Snow

-          Laibl Wolf, Dean, Spiritgrow - The Josef Kryss Wholistic Centre, Australia

Being an Aussi, gazing at a snow covered mountain-side, close- up, is an exhilarating and rare experience. I am in Aspen, Colorado to deliver a lecture, but cannot help but stare at the majestic panorama and thank the Divine sculptor for the immense beauty of the cosmic handicraft.

From the distance, the glistening white carpet covers the cracks and fissures of architectural ineptitude. Our boxed houses often jar the undulating smoothness and curvature of a perfect landscape. But come the gentle snows and the white-covered roofs hide this disparity bringing a commonality with the gentleness of the white pure and pristine vista that meets the eyes here in winter.

In the same way, human misbehavior jars the beauty of human potential. Terrorism is a cancerous blight. Greed and envy are reflections of human ugliness. Self deprecation, a result of absent self-worth, is a vacuous cavern of emptiness. Sometimes however, the landscape of human frailty enjoys the purifying and uplifting cover of spiritual whiteness. These glistening crystals of whiteness sparkle through love, forgiveness, compassion, and profundity.

For the Jewish soul, the universal blanket of whiteness is viscerally felt on Yom Kippur (also notated in the plural as Yom Kippurim - the Day of Atonements). On this sacred occasion the soul is purified, stains are scrubbed clean, and a weight of darkness is lifted off our shoulders. Another time-zone is approaching that offers this opportunity again – Purim (the festival of drawing lots). Interestingly, both names have the common letters of Purim. At a Kabbalistic level this bespeaks a connection. But how could the gravity and seriousness of Yom Kippur at all compare with the seeming lightheartedness and raucous festivities of Purim? Therein lays the power of whiteness. When are we most profoundly at one with our soul?  When we are in a state of intense Deveikut (profound meditative state of connectedness with the All), but also when we are in a state ecstasy, totally in love with life, fully experiencing its moment of intense beauty. Purim reflects the glistening whiteness of joy. Yom Kippur reflects the intense whiteness of inner retreat.   

The physical and spiritual snows melt. The ‘reality’ of our daily lives fills the stage of our present tense. The working days of the week confront us with their urgency and necessity. Yet the truly spiritual person allows the ambience of whiteness to enter into the arena of the seeming ordinary and mundane.  The snow continues to reflect its whiteness in the exigencies of the daily events. The potential purity within all things can be opened, uncovered, and the core of whiteness perceived.

I watch the skiers gliding gracefully down the white velvet of earth’s carpet. And I think: how much easier life can be if we allow ourselves to glide upon the whiteness of positive disposition, joyful personality, compassionate nature, deep insight. These choices are always available for us to make. Do you have the courage to make this choice?  Do you have the commitment to glide gracefully through life? Do you have the dedication to train, practice, and focus on the goal?  I believe in you. You can do it!

   Laibl’s web site: www.laiblwolf.com                                                                                                                                                                      - Laibl’s blog site: www.laiblwolf.com/blog/                                                                                                      – Spiritgrow – The Josef Kryss Wholistic Center, Australia site    www.SpiritgrowJosefKryssCenter.org