Free Yourself From Patterns - Weekly Energy Boost

How can we break free from patterns that no longer serve us? Kabbalah offers the principle of Tikkun, or "repair." Bringing awareness to our thoughts and actions in the present moment helps us break free of limiting patterns and as a result, heal ourselves and the world. This week, we will learn to how to see the shells that conceal our true nature and detach from behaviors that keep us trapped in these ultimately unfulfilling patterns. Original airdate: 1/16/23

Transcript

Good morning,

Everyone.

Good evening,

Good afternoon,

Wherever you are,

And welcome to this week's weekly energy boost.

My name is Ali Shaba.

And I am here this lovely Monday morning with David.

And we are talking this morning about how to free yourself from patterns.

Weekly energy boost is a seven day spiritual weather forecast where David and I and sometimes our guests share with our listeners,

The most powerful and practical tools that we've found,

Both from the wisdom of Kabbalah and from our experience and working with people over the years.

To help create for you a roadmap for how to navigate the coming seven days.

And inevitably,

We end up sharing powerful lessons,

Experiences and anecdotes that help you do just that.

So this is a really interesting period that we're in now.

We spoke about it last week where the universe is sharing with us,

Perhaps things that we thought were complete,

Or we put behind us,

Or they're no longer our issue.

And suddenly they seem to be coming up again.

And I can tell you myself,

The meetings that I had since the last episode with different students were very reflective of just that the feeling that something is wrong or not working.

Why is this happening again?

And this week we're focusing on that important word again.

Why do we seem to be attracting the same scenarios,

The same relationships,

The same people?

Just as a very common example,

I had a conversation with someone this week and she was talking about how she's changing jobs.

And we talked about how the reason that she wanted to change was because there's a certain dynamic she has with her coworkers that she's looking to get out of.

And the idea,

The Kabbalistic principle that the patterns or the situations that I experience are created for me.

So I can change the actors and the set design,

But that won't change the catalyst or the script writer,

Which is really me.

So that's why we can get out of one relationship and find somebody who seems completely perfect,

Ticks off all the boxes,

Is everything we ever wanted and more.

And yet we find ourselves in the same pattern with them.

A new job,

The same pattern at the new job.

People move cities and countries and find themselves living in the same loop.

So today we're going to talk a little bit about why that is,

How to identify those patterns and quite obviously how to break free from them.

We've spoken about this before that Kabbalah means to receive.

And so it has to do with the vessel.

And there's only two forces in this world.

There's light and there's vessel.

So light represents everything that is fulfilling to us and all the pleasures that we hope to receive.

And the vessel represents our desire and our capacity to hold that light.

And so everything in this world can be broken up into these two forces and pain and punishment that we all go through,

We all go through some form of suffering,

Has to do with the vessel's inability to properly connect with that pleasure.

So it has to do with the vessel because if I gave someone who desires something,

If I gave them everything that they wanted in every category of their lives,

They might feel good for the moment.

But eventually,

They would revert back to feeling the same feelings of loneliness and emptiness and sadness even if they received everything that they wanted.

Why is it that way?

Because they think that as long as they get what I want,

I'm going to feel fulfilled.

But they don't realize that as soon as they get what they want,

It's still entering into the same vessel.

And so the vessel consumes it.

So let's say we give the vessel a color.

Say you have a purple vessel.

So it doesn't matter what you consume.

Everything you consume becomes purple.

So if it's a vessel of sadness,

Everything you consume becomes sad.

So even if you met someone great in a relationship or you broke through something in your career and you were making more money and you were more financially free,

You're still consuming this financial freedom in the old vessel.

And so everything deteriorates as soon as you receive it.

This is why Kabbalah is so powerful because Kabbalah helps us shift focus away from the energy that we all want and the energy that's there and available that we're trying to grab at and focus on how to clean and purify the vessel so that—cleaning and purifying the vessel does two things.

Number one is it makes it possible to receive.

So sometimes the Creator is protecting us by making us not receive what we want.

So there's protection there.

So by working on myself and purifying myself,

As we learn in our podcast,

We learn in Kabbalah 1 the different actions and steps to purify ourselves.

We speed up the process of receiving what's meant for us.

But number two,

We also allow ourselves to be able to enjoy and hold on to this pleasure for eternity.

This is the second benefit and probably the more important benefit of the spiritual work as Kabbalah describes it.

Just to make it practical and not so ideological,

What is the spiritual work?

So the spiritual work is really broken down into two parts.

Number one—it's one theme broken down into two parts.

The theme is becoming like the Creator,

Having affinity,

A form with the qualities of the Creator.

So what are the qualities of the Creator?

There's mainly two.

There is transforming from a reactive force to a proactive force.

So reactive by definition is any thought,

Word,

Or action that I do from a place of fear to connect with instant gratification.

So we do reactive things all day long.

We're responding all day long,

Reactively to stuff.

Your lover or your friend does something you disagree with and you react.

You get upset,

You say something,

Or you shut down,

You judge them,

You judge yourself,

You go into a spiral of negativity.

This is all reactive behavior.

Having doubts about your future,

Having doubts about your kids,

Having doubts about your career,

Having doubts about the world or the economy,

All of this is reactive behavior.

So you disconnect from the light.

And the second quality of—the second aspect of having affinity or form with the Creator,

The quality of the Creator is being a giving force.

And being a giving force means that my mind is geared towards how I can add value and how can I share and be a channel of energy for other people.

And that has many layers to it.

And we learned this in Kabbalah Part 2 and 3,

Which is,

Well,

How do I even become a greater giver?

Because I see a lot of people giving and people end up resenting them or they're giving in the wrong way.

The analogy of you're helping the old lady cross the street when she was waiting for the bus.

So people think they're giving,

But they're missing the mark.

People think that they're fulfilling their partner,

But I just gave a class recently to a group of guys,

Newlyweds,

Almost within five years,

And we were talking about marriage.

And one of the common themes that comes up is that both sides give according to the love language that they desire.

So the woman desires words of affection,

So she's always saying nice words to the man.

But the man told me,

Look,

All I want is for her to make me things,

Make me things.

I like when she makes this and she makes that,

Food and cuts up fruit.

So it's acts of service.

And you say,

But she always tells me how great I am,

But I'm not looking for that.

So just because we're handing something over or saying something positive doesn't mean we're giving.

So Kabbalah then goes deeper and helps us understand how to be a channel.

Like if I'm looking at Elisheva,

I shouldn't give to her in a way that I want to give.

I need to have some kind of divine intuition about what her vessel needs.

Kabbalah teaches us how to have that divine intuition so that you're a channel and you're not just selfishly giving.

I think it's also important to mention in the conversation that this is all based on the principle that everything that happens in our lives happens to create an awakening within us.

I'm not sure that everybody agrees or acknowledges that.

David acknowledges it with his musical stylings there.

The hoodie and the blowfish came in.

So what that really means is that as each one of us comes to the world,

There is a whole orchestration.

Many of you of a certain age have probably saw The Truman Show.

At some point Jim Carrey realizes that his whole life is orchestrated.

It's like a movie production,

Literally.

He realizes that it's all fake.

To be honest with you,

That's what Kabbalah teaches.

Kabbalah teaches that even though I'm sitting here in a studio with a camera and a microphone and a few human beings in the room with me,

All of this is happening from my perspective to create an awakening within me to either shed some aspect of myself,

My behaviors,

My thought processes,

My even emotional self so that I can be more elevated and then to David's point,

Be more of a channel.

Shine more of my light in the world.

I think it's also worth mentioning that it's like every time we come to the world and Kabbalah does talk about reincarnation,

We put on another costume,

Another body that comes with it.

I don't know what you want to call it.

A character.

There's a character that comes with it.

Character,

Behaviors,

Thought processes,

Again,

Even gifts.

Maybe you came into this world as a very talented musician or you're a gifted writer or you're a good networker.

You have a great sense of humor.

You know how to cook.

There's so many different millions of talents people have in the world and sometimes I'm watching a movie or I read a book and I think,

Oh,

My God,

What a brilliant mind to put this together or to orchestrate this.

We were watching a movie last night and it was just so phenomenal.

We were like,

What genius.

This is only God.

God put this software in these people because this is truly a divine experience.

Every single one of us has that.

And at the same time,

We have this costume that with it came the obstacles through which those gifts are revealed.

So many times those patterns are there so that we can do something different and through doing that different,

Breaking that old programming,

Breaking that pattern,

We will uncover a gift within us.

And being an observer of so many people's processes,

It's easy for David and I to say,

Here's a great example.

And I'll give you a great example that maybe doesn't look.

I think it's very powerful to learn through other people's experiences,

Although it's definitely more powerful to do it for yourself.

Sometimes just by hearing what someone else went through,

You can create a shift for yourself.

I have a dear student who when we started to work together maybe 15 years ago,

She was being canceled on all the time.

I don't mean canceled like canceled culture the way we have it now.

15 years ago literally meant people canceled on you.

So she provides a – I don't want to give her away.

So she provides a certain service.

She has certain degrees.

She helps people.

And she found that her clients kept canceling on her with no notice.

And even though on paper she had a policy of if you don't cancel within 24 hours,

You're going to be charged for your session,

She felt bad upholding that.

It was a sort of – for me as the observer,

I could see that she wasn't really in touch with the value that she provided.

She didn't see the divine gift that she had.

And even though she loved helping people,

She was very concerned about what they thought about her,

What they felt about her,

Being very nice,

Being very accommodating,

Being very flexible.

All the while staying in that pattern of bending over backwards to accommodate people,

She was developing resentment and frustration and starting to dread even showing up to work.

So we then focused on the idea that when she's having those boundaries,

Having those yes,

I'm going to charge you if you don't show up on time.

There were different other ways where people didn't give her pay on time and she would just continue to see them even though they hadn't closed out their previous bill.

It was a very – in my opinion,

A very messy situation,

But from her perspective because that was the costume she wore,

She wears,

It was hard for her to own her own value and her own power.

And we worked on it ridiculously,

Really understanding that whatever gifts that she has,

It's not even hers to be humble or proud about.

It's really the unique way that the light force of the creator expresses itself through her.

Any help that she gives,

It's through that partnership with the creator.

Her connection to her soul was really where her confidence needs to come from,

Not I have so many degrees and I'm so qualified and I have so many years of experience,

But rather this is a unique gift and I am fulfilling my life's purpose by expressing this gift.

That means valuing her time,

Valuing her opinion,

Valuing her service enough to put those boundaries there so that when she starts to value her gifts more,

People don't cancel.

People pay.

People even bring her more referrals and things like that because she's starting to connect with that intrinsic value.

First of all,

Everybody has it,

But everybody also has their own inabilities to connect with it that show up in different ways.

And to me,

One of the most powerful things about Kabbalah is that that wisdom and those tools are there to help people not shift out of the pattern because they're tired of it.

And if you're honest with yourself,

There are patterns that you're thinking about.

You want to transform this week or this month or this in 2023 because you're tired of them.

That's a very low level of desire.

I'm tired of it.

I want to get rid of it.

Imagine if getting rid of it,

If being free,

I want to use the word free because it's in the title of the episode,

If being free from these patterns allowed you to fulfill your purpose,

If being free from these patterns allowed you to hear the guidance and advice that broadcasts from your soul every day.

Imagine if you could,

Because you've shed those patterns,

You no longer are busy in your head with the calculations and the what if and what if they don't like me and what if I upset them.

Imagine truly being your unique and authentic self without these patterns,

Which is really being in that affinity with the light and with your soul.

That's the goal Kabbalistically of being freed of those patterns.

It's not just to have a little bit of relief or a little bit of breathing room.

It's really to express the greatness of your unique soul.

So on one hand,

It seems very practical and we're going to go – we usually go on Weak Energy Boost between the theoretical and the practical.

It seems very practical.

The suggestions are going to get today,

But in the macro,

It really is at the heart of why we're on the planet.

If you don't know what you want,

You're not going to get there and what we want to focus on wanting is the ability to be a divine channel when we're talking to people and when we're making decisions.

And I'm trying to think of a practical – I know many times when if I walk into a meeting or it can just be an interaction with my wife or it can be an interaction with kids or interaction with your friends,

Interaction with students.

If you're walking in there thinking you know what you want us to talk about and you have an agenda and you have a plan,

You're already disconnected from the upper world.

And why?

The thing about why I promote,

Because you're coming in with what your logic has surmised in your education,

Which is very limited,

Even if you're a very educated person,

Still very limited and there's still no way to really know what they need to hear,

Even if you have something interesting to say.

And so what I've seen is – I'm not saying this happens all the time,

But the times where you're almost like you're floating,

You're totally detached from needing to say something or not saying something.

You're just open.

You see very great athletes,

Great people who are very good at what they do,

They enter this flow,

This energy where they're not thinking anymore and something is coming through them.

And we want to achieve that in our conversations with people and in making decisions in our lives.

Because what a pattern is that we need to break is just us – it's the negative side has forced us to live a certain way that's comfortable in lieu of being a channel.

And this is why breaking pattern is so important.

So when an opportunity comes up,

I notice this opportunity comes up to do something positive or go somewhere like a spiritual retreat.

We have all these spiritual retreats all the time and it's very inconvenient to travel and spend the money and take time away from this,

That and the other thing.

But I've learned whenever I just go and I just do it,

You're breaking a pattern because we're pretty comfortable here.

We're in Los Angeles.

It's nice.

We built a comfortable life.

You don't want to spend time away from your family.

You don't want to spend time away from your routine.

You're traveling and staying in a hotel and the pillow is a different pillow.

You know what I'm talking about?

She doesn't know what I'm talking about.

I started to take the pillow with me because when you sleep,

It takes a couple of nights just to adjust to the bed.

So these are – I'm trying to get a laugh out of her but she's not giving me anything.

I'm trying to pee.

I'm doing weekly energy boost.

So the point is just making these decisions to get up and go and do something that is outside of the box but you know is positive.

Something awakens because the body consciousness shuts down.

So the light starts to flow through you.

And athletes do it very well and amazing musicians do it very well.

Something flows through them.

But we don't really often see this when it comes to conversations with people or making business decisions.

I mean great business leaders,

The fact that they're always coming out on top.

They're always – even if they fail,

They still come out on top.

It's because they enter that flow.

They may not have it in their love life.

They may not have it with their kids.

They may be awkward in other situations but let's say in business,

They found a way to get into that visionary flow.

So I want us to want that.

We should all want that.

We should enter into a conversation,

Into a meeting,

Into any situation and say,

I want to be a channel and what that feels like is you're not attached to anything that's happening.

You're not emotional.

You don't have an agenda.

You don't have some kind of knowledge or cliff notes of how you're going to approach this.

You're just entering the situation,

Open to receiving a message.

I'm just going to clarify.

Someone sent me a message while David was talking that what I said before wasn't very – even though they know what I was trying to say,

I wasn't very clear.

So I want to elaborate just a little bit upon it.

When we talk about freedom,

Kabbalistically speaking,

We're not talking about relief,

Right?

That was my main point is that we perceive – when we have this conversation with people,

What do you wish to be free of or what does freedom look like to you?

It's usually about pressure,

Stress,

Fear,

Anxiety,

People's perceptions of me.

When we talk about freedom,

Kabbalistically speaking,

We're talking about having – not having the bonds of the body and the ego that comes with it be an interference.

The patterns that we experience in our life are the result of that quest for relief.

That's really important to remember.

The patterns that we experience in our life accumulate.

They become a pattern once we try to run from them.

Then we need them to come back again,

Right?

You want to avoid confrontation,

You're going to see people lining up to confront you.

If you want to avoid dealing with health issues or self-care issues,

You're going to see suddenly the – maybe not even suddenly.

Over time,

There's an accumulation of issues so that at some point,

You can't run anymore,

Right?

The truth of the matter is if you could leave behind the fear of confrontation or the self-care challenges or any of those feeling jealous in relationships,

Even if you could be freed of those things,

You wouldn't necessarily feel relief or feel freedom because the bondage that's created by the soul being in the body,

That's the nature of it,

That we feel confined,

That we feel limited because we are.

As long as we're in this physical body and our soul can't fully be expressed,

We're going to feel some sort of limitation.

Most of us even came to study spirituality because we were seeking relief from something,

From pain,

From anxiety,

From the monotony of life,

From materialism.

There are so many reasons people come to study spirituality,

But kabbalistically,

Being truly free has nothing to do with relief or no longer having that opposition or no longer being oppressed.

It's completely about separating the desires of the body from the desires of the soul.

Really being able to say,

Okay,

You know what?

Right now,

My desire for my pillow,

Right?

I don't want to sleep in a strange hotel,

To use David's example.

It's my body limiting the potential of my soul,

Which is the real me.

The body is temporary.

The soul is forever,

Right?

So our body is also the part of us that wants the acknowledgement,

The recognition,

The part of us that's competitive,

The part of us that just wants to be left alone.

Our bodies are the part of us that keeps score,

That remember,

That hold on to the pain or the betrayal or the injustice.

So real freedom means being able to make decisions in my life without the interference of those calculations or those short-term desires or that need for relief.

So whenever we're able to have those moments of freedom,

And I'm going to say we have moments where we experience sparks of freedom,

Where I'm not limited by my ego or my body or my desire for comfort or recognition or all those things,

That's when the true me is expressed.

My gifts,

My divine inspiration,

My ability to channel my intuition,

My insight,

My even being able,

Like David said before,

To feel what will speak to that person,

How to reach them,

Not to reach them the way I like to be reached,

But to reach them on the level and by the means,

With the means,

By which they can be reached.

So if you think for a moment about the different patterns that you wish to be freed from,

And I invite everybody to literally think about it this week,

If not to put pen to paper to think of those patterns,

They're all patterns that are perpetuated by the ego.

Nobody is sitting here saying,

Oh,

I wish I didn't meditate every day,

Or I guess that's true.

I have had people that say to me that they have dreams or that they have visions and they wish they didn't.

Very few people.

I'm going to say it's just a handful of people that I've spoken to over the years that the things that they're looking to have freedom from are metaphysical things.

Most of the things that we want freedom from are the things that separate us from our soul,

The things that separate us from the light force of the creator.

So instead of imagining yourself simply free of that pattern,

This is where the imagination word comes in,

Instead of imagining your life free of that pattern,

Imagine what your life looks like completely in tune with your soul.

Your soul is not capable of jealousy or judgment.

Your soul is not capable of low self-esteem or anxiety or vindictiveness or revenge.

Your soul isn't even worried about how you look or how you sound.

I'm sitting here thinking,

I wonder how I sound right now.

Is everybody getting what I'm saying?

My soul doesn't care.

That's my body that's worried about it.

My mind is worried about it.

Our soul is completely and entirely focused on us completing our mission in the world,

Which is to radiate the goodness and uniqueness of our soul 24-7,

Seven days a week.

So the real question when you notice a negative pattern coming up is actually,

How can I express my unique soul in this moment?

How,

Instead of being afraid or anxious or keeping score,

My competitive nature is awakened.

How can I express my soul?

What's the opposite of vindictive,

Competitive,

Fearful,

Anxious,

All those things?

Love,

Compassion,

Seeing the bigger picture,

Forgiveness.

It's everything that's the opposite of what keeps us stuck in those patterns.

So this week I encourage everybody to look at life rather than looking at life through the lens of what you want to shed or what you want to remove or what you want to be freed from.

Look at it through the lens of if it were replaced by love and light and the goodness of my soul,

How would I respond?

If I could operate without the fear and the anxiety and the jealousy,

How would I respond?

And from that place you will be able to see.

In the case of the student I mentioned before,

If I knew,

Even if I can't feel my intrinsic value right now,

Let's say I did,

If I did feel it right now,

How would I respond?

And that's how you break patterns.

We'll wrap with this last thing I'll share,

Which is you talked about forgiveness,

You talked about sharing,

And people grapple with that because sometimes they feel like the other person doesn't deserve to be forgiven.

And what's just interesting is we've got to go back to the first thing we said in the podcast,

Which is I need to do what I need to do to keep my vessel clean and pure so that I can receive.

All these actions,

Being a spiritual person,

Has nothing to do with the other person.

It has to do with what I need to do to keep my system clean so that it has the capacity not just to receive in a timely manner but to hold on to what I receive and to enjoy what I receive.

Because if you are upset with someone,

It doesn't matter what you receive,

You will destroy what you've received.

And it can be an unrelated part of your life.

If you're upset with your mom,

You could get a promotion in your career and destroy that and not enjoy that because your vessel is still limited because of the hatred or the hurt that you feel in a totally different area of your life.

So these actions that we need to do and the messages that we need to hear to transform who we are and the fears that we need to break is really just for us because there is nothing besides us in the light of the Creator.

It's us and the Creator.

And everybody else in this world is just their avatars that are there to help me clean myself.

It's very hard to remember that all the time,

But I think just by saying it all the time,

It will stay with us.

And it makes things so much simpler because that's the only decision you need to make is what do I need to do to increase my vibration,

Stay in a higher level of being proactive,

Not reactive,

Being a giving force,

Wanting to be with the Creator,

Desiring the Creator,

Asking for the light of the Creator,

And then you receive.

You receive in life.

I have a very short thing to share before we close today,

But I'm listening to you,

David,

And I'm thinking,

Wow,

There's probably people who are listening that are like,

David,

You don't understand,

But David,

You don't have to deal with what I'm dealing with right now.

The truth is,

Going back to the first idea,

Your life,

Your own movie is your Truman Show.

It's orchestrated for you.

If that's what you're thinking for you to feel like,

Nobody understands you or nobody's got it as bad as you.

And because that's the pattern,

Your whole life is going to conspire to support that belief.

So that's why,

For those of you who are thinking,

But David,

You don't understand.

What if David did understand and he was speaking to you and you did suddenly see clearly how it's perfect for you and you're going to grow out of that perception simply by thinking,

How can I raise my vibration?

How can I see this from a higher perspective?

How can I be proactive here and not perpetuate that pattern?

I'm going to end really quickly with reading an article on Kabbalah.

Com that Karen Berg published in 2017.

It's quite appropriately titled Finding the Pattern.

It is within the patterns of our life that we find our purpose.

There's a popular movie from the early 90s called Groundhog's Day.

It's a comedy about a man who becomes stuck in a loop where the same day repeats itself.

By the way,

If you haven't seen the movie,

You absolutely should.

Each morning,

Phil awakens and it's February 2nd all over again.

No matter what he does,

He cannot seem to progress to the following day.

At first,

He sees this as carte blanche to do whatever he pleases.

However,

It's not long before Phil becomes disillusioned with the state of his repetitive life and attempts to end it all.

He still inevitably wakes up on the morning of February 2nd.

It is in Phil's exhaustion and hopelessness that he begins to contemplate his place and purpose in the loop.

He understands that he can use the repetition the universe has provided him to make himself and the world better.

He learns to speak French,

Play the piano,

And after witnessing the death of a homeless man,

Creates a plan to avert this and other disasters from happening.

It is only then that the cycle is broken.

It's a funny and clever film,

But perhaps the greatest reason it has become such a classic is because it speaks truth to our soul.

Once we recognize that moments that repeatedly pop up in our own movies,

We can seize them for the gifts that they truly afford us.

Each one of us has our own Groundhog's Day,

An unpleasant situation that continuously repeats.

Maybe we leave one job to get away from our tyrant of a boss,

Only to arrive at a new one,

Where the boss is an even greater nightmare.

Many people divorce their spouse only to end up marrying the same kind of person with similar shortcomings years later.

What is this phenomenon that sees the universe placing recurring patterns before us?

And more to the point,

How do we break the cycle?

The Kabbalists have a name for this pattern,

Tikkun,

Indicating that we have come back to correct.

Each lifetime may afford us several chances to accomplish our Tikkun,

To learn the lesson and make inner changes necessary for our spirit to progress along its journey.

Once we recognize the moments that repeatedly pop up in our own movies,

We can seize them for the gifts that they truly afford us.

For instance,

Maybe the reason one is faced with a tyrannical boss is to find the areas where they themselves lack kindness and mercy with others.

Or perhaps it is to learn to stand up to an authority figure if that has been a persistent problem throughout one's life.

If someone finds themselves dating or married to the same kind of person each time and time again,

It could be to learn how to accept someone's shortcomings and love unconditionally,

Or it could be to simply start looking outside the box.

This is a deeply personal spiritual work.

Only you can recognize the patterns and only you can decipher what they are meant to teach you.

The unique energy of this week is one that can assist us in discovering our own cycles,

Empowering us to make a genuine start toward inner transformation.

It is so easy to fall to the trap of asking,

Why do these things keep happening to me?

Yet in the movie Groundhog's Day,

It was only when Phil used his misfortune to make himself and the world better that the curse was broken.

Of course,

Well,

That's another movie.

The article could be longer.

I'm going to shorten it there.

The truth is there is a pattern to our hardships and that pattern is called opportunity.

Have a fabulous one and we'll see you next time on the Weekly Energy Boost.

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