Dealing With Negative Emotions - Weekly Energy Boost

When we experience unwanted feelings of anger, jealousy, or envy, we ultimately suffer the consequences of these emotions in our own lives. But there is a spiritual approach to using these negative feelings to reveal light and greatness instead. Episode 3 of 3 on Emotions. Original airdate: 8/24/20

Transcript

Good morning,

Everyone.

Good evening,

Good afternoon,

And welcome to this week's Weekly Energy Boost.

My name is Eli Sheva,

And I'm here this morning with David.

And we are also excited to have with us a longtime Weekly Energy Boost fan,

Kabbalah student and all-around fabulous human being,

Karen Adler,

Who will be sharing with us some of those techniques and teachings behind the power of emotions and specifically releasing them for a healthier and happier life.

We wanted to bring Karen in for this episode specifically because we're now in the month of Virgo,

And every Weekly Energy Boost we dedicate to providing our listeners with the most powerful tools and wisdom to take advantage of the opportunities of the coming seven days.

But even more so in this month,

We are supported to have,

I would say,

The most effective spiritual transformation of the entire year,

That our abilities this month are so magnified and so strong to go back.

Really,

The whole month provides us with this,

I don't know,

You could call it like a time tunnel back to all of the moments in the past year,

Which inevitably also reflect on patterns throughout our lives.

And we have the opportunity to correct those patches that we may have not done our best or might not have done,

Served ourselves or the people around us in the most elevated way possible.

So this whole month we're going to be giving you that wisdom and those tools to accomplish the most powerful growth and the most powerful letting go of the entire year.

Kabbalah is universal spiritual wisdom that explains the spiritual laws of our universe.

And the crux of what we teach in this wisdom and that we're emphasizing on the show is that all of us as souls,

We desire fulfillment,

We desire pleasure in this world.

And instead of going out there in a needy or reactive way to chase these energies and chase these pleasures,

Which is one way of doing it,

But it doesn't last,

We're talking about building the vessel to have these blessings come to us.

So everything that we talk about on the show is how to prepare our consciousness,

How to prepare our thoughts,

Words and actions so that we can become the perfect vessels to attract and draw these blessings.

There is an interesting,

I don't know if you want to call it story or anecdote,

I guess you can just call it a teaching really,

That in this month we are much closer to the light force of the Creator.

It makes it sound like it's a proximitall,

I don't mean to use the word,

It's not that the Creator is more spatially near,

But that it's a lot easier to access the light in this month.

We have this as humanity,

Not as specifically spiritual people even,

This ability to reach out and connect with greater ease.

For that reason,

Again,

We brought Karen to show us and to share with us some of,

I think sometimes when I hear her wisdom,

It's so obvious,

Meaning this is something that I think we all know,

It's this innate wisdom that we have in our minds,

In our bodies,

In our souls,

But because of the day to day,

Whatever goes on,

We sort of shut it off and numb it because it's inconvenient or it might get messy,

It's not efficient right now to deal with this so we put it aside.

Before we got into the topic of emotions these last few weeks,

We had two episodes on anger.

We had so many questions that came up because I think even today more than ever,

There seems to be a social acceptance around being angry.

Don't take offense,

Karen,

But there's even this archetype of the Karen.

My nine year old son said to me,

We were watching a show and he said,

Oh my God,

She's such a Karen.

What is it about anger?

When people come to you with anger issues,

And we had questions in the show asking us when is anger okay?

What if someone's angry at you?

When you have clients that come to you with anger issues,

How do you deal with that or how do you help them deal with that?

Anger isn't bad.

There's no bad emotions.

Emotions are what got me here today.

Negative emotions are what got me here today.

The positive ones were just markers that said,

Yeah,

You're on the right path,

But I can say it,

I've been studying Kabbalah 17 years,

I've been a therapist for 35 years.

It was a lot of pain,

A lot of anger,

A lot of fear that got me to the doorstep of self acceptance work,

Which is the therapy I do,

And all that deep transformational work of going into the emotion and allowing it to kind of be acknowledged in my body transformed me to the point where I could come to the door of Kabbalah and be at a place where I could receive what Kabbalah was going to teach me,

Which is the spiritual laws of the universe,

Which even expands it even further.

So all emotions are there for growth,

All of them.

And the issue is they need to move.

And anger is one of many negative emotions that is there for a purpose.

Anger sets a boundary.

I have kind of a pleaser personality.

I have a contractor who is abandoning the project and creating all kinds of stuff.

And I was trying to be kind and compassionate.

And it wasn't until I showed him anger that he stopped.

So it provides a boundary.

So it's a good thing.

The issue is that emotions need to move.

That's what they're here for.

Do you guys know how long an emotion lasts if you just let it run its course?

No.

Tell us.

It takes 90 seconds to two minutes.

Wait,

Wait,

Wait.

Hold on a second.

So let's have a scenario.

Let's say somebody that I've invested in or maybe I shared with or had a relationship with for years where the abundance of giving was coming from me when I wasn't reciprocated.

And then all of a sudden,

This person does something to hurt me.

And it's like a really bad type of hurt.

It's like a really bad type of betrayal.

And let's say I'm angry.

I'm angry with them.

I'm angry with the situation.

You're saying that if I allow it to run its course,

Whatever that means,

I want to know what that means.

That's 90 seconds to two minutes.

And it seems like even if that were true,

It's still coming back.

And I'm still angry at this person anytime I think about them.

How do you.

.

.

You're re-triggering the anger.

You're not working with your anger.

Anger is a tool for you to get deeper into yourself,

To explore blockages and past traumas that have caused you to be a reactive person to that particular scenario.

And through Kabbalah,

Scenarios come to you to work on yourself.

So anger is one of those that is an issue that's asking to be looked at.

And emotions,

The body is the container of everything that has ever happened to us.

And the emotion,

Whatever comes up for you inside,

Is like those orange batons on the tarmac that they put in me.

Telling you where it is stored,

Where you need to take a look at it so you can work with it and transform it.

So practically let's go through that because I think our listeners want to know,

How do you guide them?

What are the questions you ask?

Where do you take them?

With my clients,

What do I do when anger comes up?

Well,

Can I define self-acceptance first?

Because I think that's the key to sort of.

.

.

How does what you do differ from what anybody else with your certification might do?

And before you answer this,

Karen,

I just want our listeners to know that you can throw in questions in the chat.

We'll send your questions to Karen as time permits.

Anger is a topic we're talking about.

No,

No,

No.

We're going to talk about a few different.

.

.

Yeah,

I want to tell them.

Okay.

We're going to talk about anger,

Anxiety,

We're going to talk about shame,

Maybe we'll get to anything you want to.

So just throw it in the chat for us.

Go ahead,

Karen.

So I got to self-acceptance training because I sort of had a dark note of the soul and it showed up in my throat.

It threw a goiter the size of a,

I don't know,

An apple.

It was huge.

And it wasn't until I sort of.

.

.

It manifested that way that I learned that I was on a path where I needed to learn to express myself.

It was my body kind of showing up for me what I needed to work on.

So when I ended up.

.

.

I'm a therapist and if I go to a talk therapist who are amazing and they are very helpful and I do talk therapy too,

But it wasn't until I came to a person who navigated me through my body where I was holding my emotions,

Right,

Was I able to actually heal and actually transform that emotion.

So the mode of therapy is called self-acceptance training,

Meaning I experience who I am in any given moment without judgment,

Self-criticism,

Self-evaluation or effort to change.

You know,

It's the judgment that perpetuates it.

It's the thoughts that perpetuate,

You know,

It builds and builds and builds upon these layers of blockages,

Right?

So the way it kind of works is like.

.

.

Well,

I mean,

Can I give you a little example?

So we come into the world.

Can you see this?

Yes.

For people who are listening to this on podcasts.

.

.

So I have a.

.

.

So I have a.

.

.

So I have a.

.

.

.

.

.

That's open,

Right?

With a little crease on the metal that I'm kind of tightening.

So we come into the world pretty open,

Right?

Maybe with whatever,

Maybe in womb trauma or,

You know,

Past life,

Whatever.

But for the most part,

We come in the world clean,

Right?

And then something happens where the external world gives us some sort of feedback,

Right?

Maybe at eight,

Your parents get divorced,

Right?

That,

If that's not fully expressed,

Will then kind of create a fold in your person,

Right?

You just created a hot dog bun.

I just want people to know on the podcast,

You just folded the tissue into a hot dog.

Right?

Right.

And then something else like that.

Hot dog.

So let's say you.

.

.

And she folded it in half again.

So it's now one quarter.

Now it's a hamburger.

.

.

.

Kind of trauma or negative things happen.

You get bullied in school,

Right?

You have a broken relationship.

So I'm continuing to fold these into.

.

.

And then by the time people get to me,

Usually they're pretty tight,

Right?

So they're really holding on to whatever's happened to them,

Right?

So the idea is when I go in there and I navigate through the body,

Through their eyes are closed,

Hopefully laying down with their knees up,

And I start to relax the body a little.

And I kind of want to talk a little bit about sort of the mechanism of emotion.

But I calm the body and then you begin to explore.

And the body will start talking to you.

You'll probably maybe say.

.

.

They'll say,

I feel I have a headache because anger often stores in the head.

Are we sticking with anger or anything?

Anything you want,

But this is good.

I'm following.

Love,

Loss,

And longing is in the heart.

Expression is in the throat.

Fear is in the diaphragm area,

Right?

So whatever's kind of up,

Some kind of sensation,

It could be a pain,

It could be a tingling,

It could be anything.

What about the neck and the back?

I think everyone's telling me about their neck and their back.

The anger is in the back.

The neck is control,

Right?

I'm nodding and I'm shaking my head,

Right?

The neck is about control.

So whatever they're experiencing,

I will explore there that particular issue.

Like where's the control in your life?

Where's the anger?

Well,

You know,

Whatever example you were giving David about that person,

Right?

You know,

You start to talk about that person,

But would you talk about that person?

No,

I would have you talk to that person.

Talk to that person with you in the session.

And what am I telling this person?

Yeah.

So you're telling them what you're feeling.

But you're feeling the sensation in your body while you're doing it.

Why?

Because the body has its own brain.

The body is actually more accurate than the mind in terms of storing memory.

So you're going into that part of the body and you're expressing.

And it may get,

You know,

My walls are soundproof.

So it could get loud in there,

Right?

Or it could be very subtle and soft.

It doesn't have to get loud.

But the idea is to discharge the emotion.

What happens after you discharge the emotion?

What do you see?

When you change,

Then you experience a change,

Then it dissipates.

And it dissipates,

Then you've given the emotion what it wants to do,

Because the emotion just wants to move.

That's I think that's the key here.

The emotion wants to move.

That's very powerful.

We spoke about that a couple weeks ago.

Emotion is energy and motion.

And what we tend to do is we tend to lock in on it,

Hold it and not release it.

So that we maybe don't remember we were talking about this,

The idea that,

You know,

You get hurt in a relationship 20 years ago,

And you're in a new healthy relationship,

But you're still defending yourself from the hurt of the 20 years ago because you didn't do the work that Karen is talking about.

So I have an important question.

And we have to see how this relates to what we teach in Kabbalah 1,

Which is a person experiences a challenge,

And then these negative emotions come up.

We want this emotion to move,

Right?

How do you reconcile that with what we say,

Which is to pause not reacting to the emotion?

Because I think we're seeing the same thing,

But I need our listeners to reconcile the two.

I'm excited that you said that because I did want to talk about that.

It's that actual tool,

Believe it or not.

It's physiologically an important tool,

Right?

First I want to say this because I don't want to leave people with an incomplete idea.

So see I've left everyone folded as an napkin,

Right?

So as I go through we travel through the body and we sort of do the unfolding.

And there's an important point here,

Because what you'll see is as we work and you kind of go into the emotion,

Like a pendulum,

You give it as much expression as you're willing to,

As your body's willing to,

Whatever is safe for it,

Right?

And then you kind of continue to excavate through the body,

Right?

And we're moving these emotions,

Right?

And what we're creating,

So what it looks like.

.

.

Karen's opening up the napkin now for all of us.

Now some of those creases are going to go away.

They'll transform out of there,

Right?

But some,

You see those little light lines?

Yeah,

Those wrinkles.

Those are the creases.

Those are going to be your tendency when under pressure to fold into that.

To fold back into that.

Interesting.

So the trigger that happened when your parents got divorced,

Right,

And then a breakup happens,

Right?

Well,

Hopefully you've done a lot of work,

But your tendency is to kind of maybe get anxious around that,

Right?

You're going to go into the fold.

My clients come to me and they'll say,

I'm going to fold.

Literally,

You know,

And we're like,

Okay,

Let's get to work.

So anyway,

I just wanted to complete that point.

So what was the last question you said?

Pause,

What a pleasure.

How does pause,

What a pleasure that we learn in Kabbalah 1,

Not to react to our negative emotions,

Not to run after instant gratification,

Right?

To become proactive.

How does that relate to what you're saying?

How do you reconcile the two?

Okay,

So I'm going to back up for one second and talk about the mechanism of emotion for a minute because I think it's important.

Okay.

So you've talked about the primitive brain in the fight,

Flight,

Freeze,

Right?

So what happens is,

You know,

We're hardwired for survival,

Right?

For self-preservation,

Whether it's the ego or whether we're going to die,

Right?

We're hardwired for preservation.

So what happens is,

Under threat,

It kicks off the fight,

Flight and freeze,

Right?

So then what happens is the emotion wants to discharge,

Right?

So I have this video of this impala that I show people in my workshops and what happened in the wild,

The impala is in the wild and a cougar comes up and gets it by the neck,

Right?

And as the impala is not a car,

It's an animal.

I just want to understand.

It's kind of like a deer with horns,

Okay?

It's laying there limp.

Okay.

And it's about getting ready to die.

So it's fight,

Flight,

It's in a frozen state.

Then a hyena,

Another predator,

Kind of comes up and the cougar looks up and takes off.

And both of the predators are gone and the impala is laying there as if dead.

But then all of a sudden you see this deep breath and then you see the animal start to shake,

Like vibrate like this,

Okay?

It just starts shaking and then it jumps up,

Trauma gone.

Humans have a second brain,

The cerebral cortex that allows us to think,

Hold memory,

Have consciousness and all these great things that help us grow.

But what it also does is it gets addicted.

It can think and stop the discharge process and it can cause thoughts and become addicted to that sensation,

That emotion,

That adrenaline,

Which is why people get addicted to anger.

People get addicted to worry.

People get addicted to sadness.

We get addicted to it and we look for it in our life to recreate it.

Why do we do that?

Because we're addicted to it.

Because it provides some gratification.

It's hard.

It makes you feel alive,

Right?

A lot of people create a lot of drama.

It makes you feel alive.

You're kind of recreating that adrenaline,

Right?

Good stuff.

So the work is to allow the discharge to happen,

To clear the emotion.

That's what the emotion wants to do.

But if this pleasure of anger or whatever it is,

You know,

Is addictive,

I mean,

The person is still looking for pleasure.

In their mind,

They don't think it's a bad thing.

That's why they go back to it.

That's what we learn in Kabbalah.

That's why they ultimately are unhappy.

It's a short term fix.

So how do you convince them that the pleasure is either not there or do you provide a new pleasure?

The person's got to go for one pleasure.

When you move the emotion,

You feel real pleasure.

You feel expansiveness.

You feel,

You know,

When they're laying there and they've expressed,

Let's say they've expressed a discharge to emotion,

Usually what they're feeling is tingling all over or a sense of calm.

And they're going to get addicted to that emotion over the initial one.

Well,

That's the light of the Creator right there.

Beautiful.

I understand how that might work with anger because there is or drama,

Like you said,

There's a rush that comes with it.

But there's other emotions like sadness that are draining.

Right?

I'm an absolute sadness junkie.

Absolutely.

I think it can be very addictive to be.

I'm an earth sign.

You know,

I wake up and I have to move my energy before I look at all the sad scenarios.

So yeah,

No sadness too.

It gives you but that's because of my history.

So you know,

Everyone's got their own personal sort of addiction to the to whatever their baby whatever trauma they have unresolved.

Right.

So that's why we need to resolve it.

So I want to get back to David what you were saying about the stopping because it's it's a tool that I use all the time because the thought is what perpetuates you continuing to get into angry scenarios or whatever you're dealing with.

Right.

And you need these blockages that become bigger and bigger and bigger,

Bigger,

Bigger,

Right.

So when you're in a moment,

Especially with anger,

The stopping,

There's a lot happening in that stop.

So much is happening in that stop.

It's like,

So the way I talk to my clients about with the stop,

The pause that we still what we call the pause.

Yeah.

It's a magical place.

If you can get it because because what happens is,

If you would all have them do is I'll have them feel their feet.

That'll ground anger because anger is like a lightning bolt,

You know,

And it needs to be grounded.

Well,

All emotions seem to be grounded,

That one especially.

So when you feel anger,

Feel your feet,

You can't feel your feet and be in your thoughts at the same time,

I tell them to wiggle their toes.

That's good.

And then you start to bring your breath down in a nice low breath,

Because anxious breath is hyperventilating,

The opposite is a long breath,

Holding it at the end and feeling your feet.

Right.

What that does is it turns on the vagus nerve,

Which which nerve is not spelled like Las Vegas,

V-A-G-U-S-S,

I think.

And that is this really interesting nerve that's kind of throughout the whole body and it's informed by the fight or flight that primitive brain.

Right.

And it goes in and it's through your throat,

It's through your heart,

It's through your lungs,

And it really settles a lot in your gut,

Which is why when you have a gut feeling,

It's coming from the vagus nerve.

Right.

So when you're feeling a sense of doom or when you're feeling,

You know,

Fear and when you're feeling even a sense of peace,

It's coming from that activated vagus nerve.

When you stop,

When you let yourself feel your feet and grounded,

And when you breathe down to your feet,

You're activating that nerve.

That's why meditation and mindfulness,

They can be so effective because what they're doing is it's activating the vagus nerve and you're causing,

You're allowing your body to settle and metabolize the negative emotion and allow it to do what it only wants to do,

Which is to move,

Make room for the soul to step forward.

That's why they call it the soul nerve.

All right.

I got a couple more things if I can throw it out there.

All right.

So what about people who have,

I have two.

One is why do people choose unavailable relationships?

This is a big one,

Right?

People choose men or women that are destructive,

Toxic.

Everyone else sees it.

They don't see it.

And number two,

Sex addiction,

Right?

Everyone's not going to say everyone,

But it's probably one of the most powerful things in this world,

Things that have to do with sex.

So I would like you to talk about both those things.

Okay.

I'm going to take it back.

You cannot ask any questions.

Completely hijacking the show.

Ellie Sheva knew this was coming.

I'm talking about what's popular and what people are.

And we're here to talk about emotions,

Not sex.

I mean,

I can kind of answer that from an emotional space.

Yes,

That's all emotions,

Ellie Sheva.

Okay.

And if we go back to what I was talking about with early trauma,

Right?

That's why for people to really transform,

They really need to get this idea about bringing the body into it.

People want to be spiritual from the mind and it really all comes from the body.

And so we get messages throughout our life,

Especially early childhood,

There's messages.

You're talking about sex addiction.

I don't know.

I can't say for each person why they're sexually addicted,

But there may be shame.

There's likely shame.

Why does shame lead to sexual addiction?

I always wondered that.

Well,

Shame,

If you think about sexuality,

It's a primitive thing,

Right?

We're all sexual beings,

Right?

I mean,

That's why religion is so harmful because it shames you around a natural animal instinct,

Right?

And so if you're doing something sexual,

Like children playing together sexually,

Which is normal,

And you say,

Wow,

Are you doing such a horrible thing?

Shame on you,

Or any sort of exploration that's normal.

And in the church or wherever,

Any religious group is capable of shaming you,

Right?

What it does is it makes you feel like you're inherently bad.

And so it's going to come out sideways,

Right?

I think shame is like the bottom feeder of all emotion.

It binds all of the negative emotions together.

And that's why I think we're really at shame right now in this time of the pandemic,

Because people,

It's like a pressure cooker,

And the darkest emotions are able to be accessed,

Which I think is a wonderful thing because shame,

It calcifies over the soul.

We're defining shame as I feel bad about myself.

I am in here.

Not shame.

There's healthy shame,

Which is,

I know my limitations as a human.

I'm not going to,

I'm not shameless.

I'm not going to go jumping out the window.

I know that I'm limited,

Right?

I know I have limitations as a body,

Right?

But toxic shame is telling yourself,

I am inherently flawed.

Damaged goods.

Yeah,

I am.

And there's no repair.

And as a result,

Because I'm damaged,

I'm going to choose damaged people to be in relationship.

Is that what we're saying here?

Absolutely.

Well,

Just yeah,

Damaged situations.

And you're also,

You know,

People who ghost people a lot,

You're always hiding and skirting around because you don't believe your authentic self is good.

Hold on,

Let's let that set in for a moment.

People who ghost other people is because they're afraid or it's top of their mind that their authentic self is not coming forward.

Is that what you're saying?

That they don't feel authentic in the moment?

Yeah,

I used to judge people for not showing up,

No shows or,

You know,

I used to,

And then somewhere I woke up to what that was really about.

And I felt a lot of compassion because the mental gymnastics they did to get out of the house and come out or show up was so hard in a way that I couldn't personally relate to.

Although,

You know,

I think all of us have shame in us and all of us have toxic shame in us.

It needs to be cleared.

And I think right now,

You know,

With the situation we're in,

People are sort of willing to go there.

I'm getting new clients who are willing to go to that deep,

Dark emotion.

And if you can clear that calcification over the soul,

You're free.

Now you can talk about the sin of Adam.

I'm going to get to that in a moment.

I'm going to get to that in a moment.

David,

Sin of Adam moment.

I still want to because we're approaching the sin of Adam.

You know,

In self-acceptance work and probably,

You know,

You have to name the shame.

Okay,

So give me an example.

So I really want to hammer home with these two because I get this all the time.

The relationships part,

The sexual part,

This is something that plagues a lot of people and I think it holds them back.

Kabbalistically,

We know there's so much energy in those two realms that if the energy is abused,

You know,

The person has chaos.

So I mean,

It can be as I was sexually abused.

I and people who are sexually abused are more apt statistically to do what?

Yeah,

It really gets at that base and base based behavior of you know,

We're sexual beings and then to have that shamed it's you know,

It's a tough it's a tough thing to work with.

It's a great thing to work with.

It's so transformative when people are willing to go there,

But it's it's yeah,

And there's a lot of it out there.

And you know,

That's why you know,

Often you have religious leaders,

You know,

Who are who are repressed sexually acting that out on people.

That's interesting.

That's a whole nother you know,

You don't want to totally open that up.

But you have to you know,

When I work with people,

It's naming the shame.

And sometimes it takes a really long time.

And I will say what's been so interesting about the pandemic is that I'm getting to a lot of things that I don't think without it,

I would have gotten to even with this kind of therapy.

It needed to they needed to have this kind of pressure with no external distractions.

No one not being defined by how you're achieving and people telling you who you are based on what you're doing out there,

Right?

You're really set with yourself.

People are starving for affection.

I mean,

You know,

We can't touch.

Right.

Well,

You know,

That study that Maslow did on the Reese's monkeys,

You know,

And the people,

They would go to the cloth monkey over the wire one,

Even though the wire was the one that had the food,

They would starve to death,

Right?

We need touching this culture.

We're getting it.

They're isolated.

So emotions are up.

And the deep ones and the dark ones people are able to access.

And so you have to name the shame and you need to be,

You know,

In this place where you really,

Really to go there.

What about what about getting us a couple questions about this?

What about people who are verbally abusive people who are just like negative,

Verbally negative,

Maybe sarcastic,

Always kind of seen the negative behind stuff,

Kind of poo and everything.

What would you say about that?

Invulnerable people.

So it's a it's a it's a protection.

You know,

We build our we build a personality around our blockages,

You know,

Like in self acceptance work,

You know,

Where you like the tendency to hold grief and loss in the heart,

The tendency to hold anger in the head.

And wherever you're sort of piling up your blockages,

You adapt your personality around it.

We're such adaptive creatures.

And it's amazing what we are able to like live through and like still become doctors and lawyers,

Right?

Because we go through the head and we're rewarded in this culture for achieving.

So you can achieve I have the most miserable professionals that come to me because their bodies are so tight.

They're so anxious.

They're depressed,

You know,

And yet they're successful.

So you know,

It's a protective shell that we put to put to hide and protect whatever traumas happen to us.

And when in self acceptance work,

You don't judge that you just underline it.

And when you underline it,

And say,

You know,

That must have really hurt,

You're protecting your heart,

And that's okay.

Then you'll get to a real emotion.

And you'll probably get some weeping and wailing and crying and some real truth about what happened that made them check their heart.

I want to segue to the point that Elisha brought up about the Kabbalistic point of view from why the souls have come to this world.

The whole concept of the sin of Adam,

Whether it's a story or a metaphor,

It's a seed level of why we have our spiritual process according to Kabbalah.

And that Adam is a term that represents all the souls of humanity.

So what it really represented without going into the whole historical story is that the sin of Adam was that he connected,

Or he drew down energy and light.

Not that the energy was bad,

And not that he was bad,

But it was before his vessel was prepared to receive it.

So we have this concept in Kabbalah that's called bread of shame,

Which is every time we draw light and energy,

Before we've earned it physically and spiritually,

That energy will short circuit us.

Same way if I throw a thousand watts of energy into a 60-watt bulb,

This is going to create a short circuit.

So we do this on a daily basis.

We draw energy at the wrong time,

In the wrong way,

And our vessel can't handle it,

So there's a short circuit.

And it says that was the sin of Adam.

And as a result,

All of humanity extends from Adam,

Has the same correction,

Which is we might be doing the right thing,

But at the wrong time,

Or the wrong thing,

You know,

At the wrong time,

But we're drawing energy in ways that causes our vessel to feel good for a moment,

And then that light leaves us.

All right,

It's called,

In Kabbalah it's called tzim tzum,

It's a contraction of the light.

But what's interesting is that there are two sins.

It says that the second sin Adam did was even worse than the first sin.

What was the second sin?

That he felt so bad,

And had shame,

Essentially.

He was so ashamed that that's actually what disconnected them completely.

Completely,

Exactly.

It says that the first short circuit was actually because his intentions were good,

You know,

He wanted to do something that was positive,

He just did it at the wrong time,

That that was okay,

There was protection there.

But the second sin was he was so ashamed that he disappointed the Creator.

Because I think there's a lot of people who feel they disappoint the Creator.

That's I think one of the most important points today,

Is because everything that Karen is sharing really,

What's the word,

Amplifies and explains on a very practical level how in a way we're just recreating that scenario over and over and over again.

So Kabbalistically we learn that every lifetime that we come into we pick certain folds,

To borrow Karen's language,

Right,

Those folds are something that we choose to work on and transform in this lifetime.

When we're born we don't realize it,

So we fold.

And the work of transformation,

Of revealing light in this world,

Is the unfolding that Karen was talking about.

Life will force you to do it in a way,

As Karen explained,

But the idea of proactively choosing it.

That's,

You know,

When we teach in Kabbalah 1,

Pause,

What a pleasure,

We're taking the active role of transformation rather than letting the chaos that surrounds us force us to change.

Yeah,

And I want to complete that thought because this concept that I'm sharing with everybody is a concept that the teachers were studying yesterday.

We spent about an hour and a half diving into this study Sunday morning and the idea was that that second sin was the shame Adam felt and the eagerness to fix his problem,

Reactively fix the problem.

It says that that was a sin.

So what essentially was the main problem,

Was the main short circuit that he did,

That he didn't believe that he was perfect.

So it was an interesting study,

The idea that even after we make a mistake,

The Kabbalists say you should believe and have certainty that you are still perfect despite the fact that a mistake was just made because when you're saying that you're broken or you're deficient or you made a mistake that now you should feel bad about,

When you're saying that and internalizing that,

You're basically saying that you don't believe in the light of the Creator and you don't believe that the light is there,

That the light is perfect,

That the light is everywhere.

And it's very subtle but this feeling that we have that,

Oh,

I made a mistake,

That I now need to go fix that mistake,

This mentality,

This way of approaching spiritual work is in itself very toxic according to what the Kabbalists say.

And I want to segue to another point which I was watching Karen's example of the folding of the napkin,

How we fold and we become tighter and tighter because different traumas cause us to do that.

The whole idea of reincarnation and how one soul,

So let's say a soul leaves this world having not fixed,

You know,

Let's say 10 things,

What happens is that soul breaks up into many other souls.

And this is why we have more and more souls in this world,

More and more people in this world,

Should I say.

The same amount of souls exist according to Kabbalah.

It's just that these souls fragment.

And as Karen was saying it,

I realized that the reason why that fragmentation happens is kind of like the universe's way of unfolding the napkin so that we can come into the next life with a more cleaner slate or not to have.

.

.

Smoother napkin.

Smoother napkin,

Right?

Because if one person couldn't fix the 10 corrections they had,

Well now we'll have 10 people each taking one of those corrections.

That's how it works Kabbalistically.

And then those 10 people come into the world in different bodies and different surroundings and different whatever.

And those 10 people might even meet each other at some point.

And these are soul connections,

These are soul mates,

These are soul friendships,

These are soul business relationships.

And it's very beautiful when you kind of look at how all of this fits together and all this works.

Before we turn it back over to Karen,

I want to clarify something about what David shared about the biblical story and whatnot.

In Kabbalah,

The concept of sin,

We don't even call it a sin.

And the idea that there is something that you can do for which there is no repentance or there is no coming back from doesn't exist in Kabbalah.

What it is,

Is there are poor choices and better choices or the whole idea of even having free will or that Adam could make a choice,

I'm going to do this now,

I don't want to wait,

I am going to wait.

I have the ability even to choose how I feel about the situation.

It's really a matter of the universe providing us with these infinite possibilities and we're deciding in that moment,

Am I going to go to the more elevated one?

Am I going to go to a higher level or a lower level?

And so when we even talk about mistakes,

There is no such thing as mistakes if we really look at it.

It's really a matter of,

I made a choice,

I made the best choice I could at that moment with the information that I had,

With the resources I had,

With the level that I was at.

I mean,

Everybody can look back at their past and say,

Wow,

I should have known what I was getting into,

But you didn't.

And that doesn't make it a mistake.

It was a choice and you get to choose now how to define that choice.

So deciding to say it was a mistake is actually in a way one of those folds.

It wasn't a mistake.

It can be the most beautiful,

I mean,

We've all been in relationships that didn't work out,

Right?

Whether it was a friendship or a romantic relationship,

We get to decide if it was a mistake or not.

So really in a way,

From the creator's point of view,

There are no mistakes.

There are just left turns and right turns and you get to decide which way you go next.

And I think it's important because that whole concept of shame,

I should have known better.

That perception is so flawed,

I'll say.

It doesn't help.

And many times I'm on the phone or I'm talking to a student and I'll say,

Okay,

How does that help?

How does that thought help you?

How can you think differently about that thought or that situation because according to what Karen is saying also,

We lock ourselves into these patterns and we don't even realize it.

And that's why I want to go back and I know a lot of people are asking questions about depression and sadness.

I think that that's something that I've been seeing reading articles and things that the mental health situation now is obviously for a lot of people,

Not only because of lack of affection,

People are out of jobs,

They're not able to live the lives they thought were fulfilling them before.

Help us with this,

Karen.

What can people do?

And also like healthcare workers and therapists,

They are trying to gut it through or wait for it to end.

That's in their DNA in a way.

And so they're not really taking care of themselves.

And so they're imploding.

So I think I did write an article on this because I think it's so important is that we're all kind of grieving.

We're all grieving in one way or another.

We're grieving.

We're grieving the life that we lived before.

We're grieving people we lost in the pandemic,

Whether it was from COVID or from something else and we couldn't even go to their funeral and see them in person and hug and hold each other.

Right?

People are really,

Really struggling and what they're experiencing is grief.

And then,

Just with Karen's birch passing,

The whole Kabbalah community is really grieving.

And what grief does is it brings up other grief.

And the way I look at it is one of the most transformative tools we can use.

Because if you can work with your grief,

You can clear all those held griefs that you,

Your sadnesses and losses that you've maybe stuffed.

Let's say you lost your parents when you were young and you didn't really grieve it.

I mean,

We don't live in a culture that is expression,

That there's a lot of taboos around expression.

Right?

So,

You know,

If someone dies,

You can,

You have eight days or whatever to grieve and then you need to move on.

You know,

There's a job you have to get to.

Right?

But in a healthy culture,

You wail when you lose someone from the heart,

You feel your heart and you wail and you wail and you wail until you can't wail anymore and then you get back up there and do it again when you need to.

We like block that in this culture.

So people are dealing with unprocessed grief.

And there's all kinds of phases that you need to go through.

And so if we can kind of address our grief,

Because that's really I think right now what that sadness and emptiness and all those feelings are about,

It's grief,

Like name it and really do what you have to do to work it through.

I want to finish your thought Karen.

I have a personal question I want to ask.

When I work with people with grief,

It's one of my favorite things to work with because it's so powerful is,

You know,

I'll have people close their eyes and see that person and feel it in their body.

It's almost always right in the heart.

There's like a,

You know,

A bowling ball in their heart or anxiety up here,

Whatever.

And I really have them reach to that person and anyone can do that.

You know,

This is not like a dangerous thing.

You know,

Feel your feet before you do anything and really reach and you want to talk to that person and let yourself really cry and say,

I have them say what they love and miss about them.

I have them say what they don't miss about them.

And I have them go slow and feel everything and check in with the body after each one.

Usually there's a lot of crying and wailing.

And then I have them say,

I love you forever and goodbye.

And that elicits a lot of emotions around the feet,

Let them feel it.

And what you'll,

What you'll see is,

And don't ever be scared if this happens to you,

But it's your whole body sort of shaking.

And that is the cells of your body opening and discharging the grief.

And what you do is I call it circling the grief for you.

You know,

A loss happens and we go around like we have that process.

Right.

And then we,

Each time we circle that,

Like when my mother passed,

I had to keep circling that grief.

Right.

And I would say that again,

I feel sad,

But then I kept doing it.

But what was happening is that there was space between that,

The loss and how I felt.

And you never lose the sadness completely,

But you're able to sort of get on with your life.

And what's left,

I know someone has,

Has,

Has completed their grief when what starts to come out of their mouth is appreciation.

That's when I know they've,

They're done.

And I know that happened for me is,

You know,

I use my mother as sort of an example,

But all I can experience right now is appreciation for her life and the positives.

And you start to just naturally hear that coming.

And then you know that it's kind of cleared and everybody needs to kind of grieve and really fully grieve and feel their body and feel the aliveness of what it brings them when they have grieved.

And that is in itself completely transformative.

So I wanted to ask a personal question.

So I think,

I don't know if I shared it on the show before,

Either.

Whoever knows.

So my wife,

For example,

She,

When she was young,

And probably early teens,

So her father,

Her father suddenly passed away from a heart condition.

And then several years later,

Her 17 and her,

Her best,

One of her best friends was murdered in high school.

And then I think a couple months after that,

Her 17 year old brother suddenly passed away in his sleep from a heart condition.

And we talk about this,

Obviously this created tremendous back to back traumas.

And then right after that,

Her mom got two brain tumors.

And then right after that,

She got two tumors.

It was a back to back of just trauma,

Trauma,

Trauma,

Trauma,

Trauma.

And then some more stuff,

Then financial trauma hit because all the,

So we talk about this a lot today.

She tells me that she has a constant sense of impending doom.

That something bad is going to happen.

The other shoe is going to drop.

Right.

And it's funny because we have two children and we have a pool cover and she's like,

All right,

Now we need to get a gate around the pool cover.

And then there's like a gate around the gate.

So we talk about these different things.

And I realized it's all coming from the overabundance of caution.

And I'm curious as to what you think about that impending doom concept.

And she just could really benefit from grief work from the body and really going through each loss and really expressing and experiencing her body when she's,

When she's speaking to each person.

And there might be anger,

You know,

The thing that I,

You know,

When my mother was sick,

Had moments of a catastrophic illness throughout periods of my life.

Right.

And what I didn't allow myself to do is express my anger because it didn't seem fair.

But when I was allowed to experience and express my anger without judgment,

It freed me.

How do you express anger without judgment?

Because I know she did tremendous amounts of work early on with this stuff,

But I'm curious looking now 10,

15 years later,

What do you do with that?

Well,

What I mean is without judging yourself.

So when you're,

When you're expressing anger,

There's probably a lot of judgment in there,

But it's like,

It's okay.

It's yours.

And you know,

I have people who tried to tell me the other side of the story.

I said,

I don't need the other side of the story.

This is your,

How you feel.

I'm not judging.

You could even say it in gibberish.

I don't even need to hear the story.

It's the emotion that needs to move.

And so that's what,

You know,

The whole thing is the motion needs to move so that you can go from being constricted to open and flexible,

Right?

You want to be con create resiliency with this sort of internal vessel that we have.

That's flexible.

That's resilient.

That's like this so that when life happens,

You don't break,

Right?

Like a tight rubber band because you've stored up all these blockages that you have all this movement inside.

So when something happens,

Yeah,

You're affected and you move,

But it doesn't break you.

It doesn't send you into a deep depression on medication.

You know,

You can,

You can,

You can stand in it.

This is an important message for people who are like myself,

Who are around people who have gone through trauma.

It's important even if it happens again and again and again,

Because I think sometimes if you're around someone who's been trauma and they bring it up again and again and again,

Or they have emotions again and again,

A person at some point,

You know,

Loses their tolerance or would say,

You know,

Kind of in their mind,

They're thinking,

All right,

We've got to get over this already.

But you're saying it's positive to allow the people around you to go through those emotions,

Releasing it,

Even if it feels like it's repetitive.

Well,

Yeah,

The problem with,

Yes,

Because they're circling the grief.

If you give them that,

Then they're,

Then they've taken a lap around.

And they may need to take hundreds of laps.

Yeah.

So it took me a lot of laps for me,

But it got somewhere.

My clients do it all the time.

It really works.

I have a thousand more questions,

By the way.

Yeah.

According,

I mean,

The audience is asking for another episode with Karen and I think we need it as well.

For those of you that cannot wait for a second episode with Karen,

You can go to her website,

Which is Healing from the Inside Out.

She,

You can read more about self-acceptance training.

Karen has few articles.

Karen also does seminars,

Which I have seen.

I mean,

Karen has collaborated with Kabbalah Center teachers for seminars.

Her work is amazing.

And I think that the best,

You know,

Not everybody is in a position to combine the wisdom of Kabbalah and their professional wisdom.

And Karen does it so beautifully and so seamlessly,

You don't even realize it's happening.

So thank you so much,

Karen,

For being with us.

I also want to say that people should know that when we bring people on the show,

You know,

These aren't paid engagements.

These aren't advertisements.

This is when we believe someone can add value to you.

And even the products they recommend or classes,

There's no financial benefits for us.

I want to really make that clear.

We'll share with you that which we believe our audience will benefit from.

So I really want to make that clear.

And David,

Once again,

Has left me speechless.

If you are just tuning in,

Or maybe you want to share the show with someone who's having trouble,

We're all having trouble processing emotions right now.

Let's be fair.

Let's be honest.

It's that time of the year.

Our next few shows are going to give you even more tools and more perspective for doing the work of this month.

Karen,

Thank you.

David,

Thank you.

Thank you,

Everybody,

For listening and watching.

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And anywhere podcasts can be found.

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Have a fabulous week,

And we'll see you next time on the Weekly Energy Boost.