Making Bad Times Good - Weekly Energy Boost

We can do much more with lemons than just make lemonade. What we call "bad" can actually be good if you know what to do with them. This week's episode will provide you with the spiritual ingredients and recipes for squeezing the most out of every seemingly dark situation you may face in life. Original airdate: 5/16/22

Transcript

Good morning,

Everyone.

Good evening,

Good afternoon,

Wherever you are,

And welcome to this week's Weekly Energy Boost.

My name is Ellie Sheva,

And I'm here this lovely Monday morning with David.

And we have been preparing ourselves to share with you perhaps one of the most essential concepts in the wisdom of Kabbalah.

Every week on the Weekly Energy Boost,

David and I,

And sometimes our guests,

Strive to share the most powerful and practical tools and wisdom to help our listeners navigate the rocky terrain of 2022,

Or whatever year it is.

This week,

We are focusing on shifting our perspective.

If you've been listening the past few weeks,

You know that we've been talking about this particular period that we're in,

That in Kabbalah,

We call the Omer.

One of the signature qualities of this time period is that there is a lot of false evidence appearing real.

And we've been hearing from our listeners,

We also hear from our colleagues and our students that we meet,

That there are situations that seem terrible.

I mean,

I know people that have lost loved ones,

Which is obviously a terrible and painful thing.

I know people that are needing to leave their homes because of rodent infestation.

It seems very real and very scary in some cases,

Very painful in other cases.

A lot of us are feeling like we have to take action or else we might miss something,

We might lose something.

And everybody that I speak with,

I don't know about you,

Everybody that I've spoken with in the last few weeks has some bad situation that they're looking at.

So this week's topic of making bad times good couldn't come at a better time.

Obviously,

As we share almost every week,

Whatever we're talking about is informed by the Kabbalistic calendar.

We know,

We can predict,

You could give us a date in five years and we could tell you the energy of the week for that date because this is a tried and true system.

It doesn't fail.

There are certain influences that might combine together to create a particularly unique opportunity.

But in general,

This week,

Every week,

Every time it appears and every year that it appears will give us an amplified opportunity to see beyond the illusion that things are bad,

That things are going wrong,

That we're going to lose something,

That we're going to miss something,

That an opportunity is going to pass us by if we don't jump on it right now,

When really we understand from the writings of the Kabbalists that there is this temptation to take action now.

But by taking action now,

We may feel relief in the short term,

But we are setting up ourselves for long-term stress,

Worry,

And chaos.

And I think it's important for our listeners to know we're not just riffing here from our own feelings and emotions and thoughts.

Or experience.

Yeah,

We're not just like,

Oh,

I experience something and only talk about it.

We are extracting,

We're taking the deepest writings of the Kabbalists that are endless and timeless and are sourced from all the great texts that are utilized and celebrated by all religions all around the world.

So the Kabbalah basically means the secrets,

The deeper layer of the Bible,

Which is not a man-made text.

It's a divine text.

And the Kabbalah breaks it down to its practicality.

So what we're trying to do on the show,

And Eisheva always opens with this,

I just want to reiterate it,

Is we're taking that and we're trying to break it down in a digestible way for our audience.

So what you were saying,

I was reading from,

I think it's good sometimes to talk about these texts,

Even though many people aren't familiar with them,

From the writings of the RE,

Is a great Kabbalist that lived some 500 years ago,

And considered to be the soul and reincarnation of two other great souls,

Rosh HaMabar Yochai and then Moses,

If you know who he is.

And what that really means is that his soul is a vessel to receive wisdom and divine energy in ways that some souls cannot receive it.

So everyone's soul is a vessel to receive something.

If you or you know someone is able to receive something easily,

Almost effortlessly,

It's like this is how they were born,

It's like that gate is open for them,

It means that their soul is a vessel for that particular energy,

And probably blocked in other areas,

But in that area it's open for them.

So the RE shares about this time of the Omer that there's something happening on a soul level,

That our soul is being built,

Almost like a new soul is being built,

Brick by brick,

Piece by piece,

Over 49 days,

And there's two ways to build anything in the spiritual world.

I'm going to use the terminology because I think the terminology has energy,

Even if many of you don't understand the Hebrew language.

The terminology he uses is called the Givurot,

Which means the judgments,

And the Chasadim,

Which means mercies.

So practically what does that mean?

It means a person grows by two forces,

Judgment and mercy.

Judgment actually grows a person faster and better than mercy does.

For example,

When you go through a hard time,

Which is time of judgment,

You learn,

You change faster,

More effectively,

Than if it was a time of mercy,

A time of things are easy,

Things are good,

People are treating you nicely.

It's all green lights.

We're not growing as much.

We're actually in a mode of receiving.

So it says in the time of the Omer there's a strong force of the Givurot,

Of the judgments that are coming down to build us.

However,

What do we need to do?

If the universe's energy is that,

What do we need to do?

We need to balance it out with the Chasadim,

We need to balance it out with the mercies.

And there's many things that create that light of mercy that we can do,

But the biggest one is certainty.

Certainty when a person has certainty,

Sweetening the judgments in their lives.

And that's why the Kabbalists say to invest in the consciousness of certainty,

To have certainty beyond your logical mind,

To pray and to ask for the consciousness of certainty.

We drove here separately.

We normally drive here together.

We drove here separately right now.

And in the car I was listening to actually music,

But usually I'm listening to content that we can glean from.

But I was listening to music and I was talking to the Creator and I was saying,

Help me have more certainty,

More,

Like whatever more is,

Greater level of certainty.

Just praying and asking in the car on the way over here.

Because I know that this time for me,

I think for you Elisheva and for our audience,

There's a lot of judgments flying around,

A lot of difficulties,

Pressure that's pushing us to grow and we have to balance that out with Chasadim,

With mercy.

That's the first thing I wanted to say.

And there's a second aspect of how to create that mercy,

But I want to pause right there and just pass it to you and see if you have any comment or anything you want to add to that.

Well,

To David's point,

We drove separately and if we ever get to discuss what we're going to talk about,

It's for 30 seconds in between meetings or phone calls.

It's more authentic.

It's more authentic that way.

For sure.

I share that now because I didn't tell David what I was thinking and David didn't tell me what he was thinking,

So hopefully you'll see the synchronicity when I share my version of what David just said.

I was preparing a class that I have to give tomorrow night and the focus is on exactly that concept,

That our mindset actually shifts the reality and the reality does not determine or what I perceive as reality isn't fixed.

And I think that that's one of the biggest,

Looking at this idea of how to make bad times good,

How to make bad things good,

It starts with that mentality,

That consciousness.

And I was reading from a different text,

The writings of.

.

.

It's also actually the Ari and Ravashlak's commentary about it and there is this idea that everything that we experience in the physical reality,

Everything that we experience in our day-to-day lives also exists in the upper worlds,

In the spiritual realm.

So whatever love,

Health,

Happiness,

Success,

Wisdom,

Inspiration I experience there,

Here in my day-to-day life,

It actually began in metaphysical form in a realm where there is no physicality.

So let's say for example,

Money,

Right?

This is a big thing for people.

I think especially now,

Seems like everything money related is in a way collapsing or at least morphing right now into something different.

And there's a lot of people I know,

You and I know,

That have been very successful and then lost that success or lost that security and either are trying to find it again or stuck in that place of,

I was once successful,

The good old days were so great,

Now everything is bad.

So what the Kabbalists would say about that,

What Ravashlak explains is that because that success exists in the spiritual realm and there's no disappearance in the spiritual realm,

It's still there.

It's always been there.

It's always going to be there.

Our physical reality is the only place where there's any here today,

Gone tomorrow.

Or I had it,

Now I don't have it or I didn't have it and now I do have it and therefore it's real because I have it now.

The Kabbalists say that you cannot lose anything,

Which is a really hard concept to wrap your mind around when one day a person is here and the next day they're gone.

One day the money is in the bank,

The next day it's gone.

One day the house is there,

The next day it's in foreclosure.

There's a lot of very real,

That's why I started with the false evidence appearing real.

There's a lot of evidence that appears very real and the Kabbalists come and say,

The moment that you feel something is bad,

Something is lost,

Something is going to be lost and if you think about it,

All reactive behavior is rooted in potential loss.

I'm not going to be respected.

I'm not going to be happy.

I'm not going to have a FOMO.

Certainly if we go to the root of every negative reaction that we have,

It's all rooted in a fear of loss or a threat of loss or wanting to keep things the way they are,

Worrying that they're not going to stay the way they are.

The Kabbalists say that the moment that you experience that false evidence of losing or that false evidence that something is bad,

To immediately go back to what David was saying before,

To know that nothing is ever lost.

Because it exists infinitely and forever in the spiritual realm,

It means that in that moment I have the ability to reconnect with that essence,

That energy and the moment that I don't feed the reality that something is being lost,

Then I have the chance to get it back or to recreate it in a better,

More long-lasting way.

Our problem is that the moment we decide it's gone or it's going or it's bad or it's not going to work out,

We start to build that reality into fruition.

So we want to be especially mindful.

That's one of the reasons,

By the way,

Especially in this time,

I tell my students not to do any medical tests.

Because without fail,

And I have decades of experience of watching people not listen to the advice,

Do it anyway and walk straight into a medical drama fit for primetime TV,

Where they get a test done,

The results come out terrible,

They need further testing,

And then the further testing reveals nothing.

Oh,

So you're saying,

Wait,

Maybe I missed that.

Are you saying you're against?

You're saying you're against that spiritually?

I think that one of the dangers of this time is that because we're being given those opportunities to transcend the false evidence appearing real,

It's better not to do any exploratory medical things because it's going to turn out upside down.

There's going to be a lot of unnecessary stress and fear and worry and thinking this is bad.

And then the further investigation reveals that nothing is actually wrong.

So a person lives through weeks of handling their affairs,

Thinking of something terrible,

And then in the end,

Nothing actually really happened.

You're saying that there's a.

.

.

Okay,

So how do you answer this?

Some people will say you're in denial,

But I know what you're saying,

Which is lending to strengthen the consciousness of certainty.

And I spoke with a guy yesterday,

Went to a dinner,

And we're just talking about the body and health.

And he told me since he was young and early 20s,

He would do an MRI every year on his body.

So head to toe,

MRI,

Blood test,

Whether something feels right or wrong doesn't matter.

That's just what he does.

I mean,

Nobody does that.

Who's doing that?

And so I asked him why he does that.

And he said,

Just you can't really grow what you don't measure.

So for him,

You got to measure where he's at and then adapt accordingly.

And then also that's how he tests the different diets that he does or biohacking that he does.

He's measuring its efficacy by that MRI.

So now I hear what you're saying because a guy like that has.

.

.

I would just tell him not to do the MRI during the open.

Oh,

During the open.

Okay,

You're just saying.

.

.

I don't mean ever.

I mean,

That's an example for me of how strong the illusion is.

I'm not saying don't.

.

.

Please do not.

.

.

That wasn't clear to me.

I'm not giving anybody permission to not do medical tests.

I'm just saying if you're thinking of doing a medical test this way,

Put it off another couple of weeks and you'll actually have a clear result,

An accurate result versus an inaccurate result because the universe is telling you,

You need to strengthen your certainty.

Use this time not to give energy to the reality you don't want.

It's a waste of imagination to live in the reality you don't want even though it's not happened yet.

That's really what.

.

.

When somebody goes through a bad time,

The energy,

The thoughts,

The words,

The investment that they make in how horrible what they're going through is actually makes that which they're going through more horrible.

It is what you believe it is.

So what David brought up before about the idea of growing your certainty,

Knowing that the situation is there not so that I will be punished or suffer or lose the progress I've made in my spiritual growth,

The opposite.

It's there so that I can lean into that certainty,

Grow in my certainty and know there's no.

.

.

No one is immune to this.

Everybody is experiencing it in their own unique way.

The gift of it is if you can strengthen your certainty in this time,

It will be much stronger for the long haul.

The Kabbalists would always say that the way the great souls like the Moses of the world and all the great chariots that lived before and after,

The way they responded to pain and confusion because it would come,

It would come to.

.

.

And it doesn't matter what level you are spiritually,

The confusion comes to your level.

It comes to your level because there is a process of building of the soul that must happen where you're engulfed in darkness because the darkness becomes the vessel for the light.

All our classes talk about this.

So the darkness must be there,

You must feel confused.

Feeling confusion means that there's imminent revelation.

Feeling confusion means that there's imminent revelation.

However,

What do you do,

What is certainty?

The Kabbalists,

It says they would simplify their lives.

Oftentimes when we're in confusion,

We complicate our lives.

We start to ask more people what to do.

We start to second guess ourselves,

Second guess our actions,

Second guess the basics,

The foundations.

We know that in everything,

Whether it's Kabbalistic teachings,

Whether it's investing,

Whether it's building a business,

Whether it's building a relationship,

Whether it's taking care of your body,

Everyone,

The successful people are the ones who go back to the basic foundations of how you build something.

That's just the bottom line.

That's just the bottom line.

I mean,

Right now financially we're in a tumultuous time,

But the winners are the ones who didn't fall for the shiny objects but focused on building the basic foundational Warren Buffett type business approach or whatever,

However you want to say it.

My point is when someone asks me,

What do I do,

What do I do,

I say,

Do you remember when you took Kabbalah 1?

All you have to do is apply that because it says what Moses would do.

It says that he would close his eyes,

He would cover his ears,

And he would just move forward in a simple path.

Why you close your eyes,

It's metaphoric,

Close your eyes means it doesn't matter what you see,

Close your ears means it doesn't matter what anybody is saying.

All you have to do is move forward and apply the basic foundational concepts we've learned in Kabbalah 1.

First one is pause.

The second one we talk about is,

No particular word,

But accepting the situation,

Accepting the process.

I know you wrote the curriculum,

I embellished upon it.

By the way,

Elisheva has written the global curriculum,

God bless her,

And I'm known to deviate from the curriculum.

Yes,

But at the same time,

Watch us,

We could literally do the class with no notes in front of us off the cuff and teach the same thing in our own different ways.

That is correct.

That is correct.

Then there's embracing the process.

We learn a massive focus on certainty.

By the way,

That's what we're talking about this week,

Is the problem when something comes up that's bad,

We don't embrace it.

We fight it.

We try to kill it.

We bring out the AK-47s and try to destroy the situation rather than embracing it,

Allowing it to come through.

I think I used this phrase a couple of weeks ago.

Then when you get on the other side of the process,

You realize it wasn't real.

It was just a test to see,

Am I willing to go through something that might be scary,

Something that might be painful,

Something that might be humiliating?

You get to the other side and it was nothing.

You could say,

Okay,

Elisheva,

Hindsight is 20-20.

What we're talking about is hacking the process.

That's right.

That's right.

That's right.

Not losing the opportunity to build that very vessel that is your soul that's going to be holding all the divine pleasures and beauty and success that's going to come after you passing this test.

Those are the three things.

There's more.

There's branches of that.

It's pausing,

Not reacting,

Not looking for the instant gratification,

Embracing the process.

Even if you have to fake it,

It's fine.

Then investing in the consciousness of certainty,

Which is really simplicity,

Closing your eyes,

Closing your ears and moving forward.

I want to add one more element to the certainty part,

Which I think a lot of our,

Especially our students who've been around with us for a while will appreciate.

The things that reveal the light of mercy the most,

Which is going to sweeten any difficult time you're in,

Are actions where any kind of action where we are not expecting a result,

When we are letting go of the result,

When we are okay with allowing the result to come in an endless way,

Not in the way I want,

Our expectations and our results actually create more judgment and not mercy.

You could do a sharing action.

Let's say you do something for someone,

Small or big,

It's positive.

That creates mercy.

This is very good.

This sweetens judgment.

If you go into a tough time and you share with someone,

This creates mercy.

Very good.

However,

If at the minute you share,

You have an expectation either from the person or from the creator or from life in the universe,

You say,

Well,

I did X,

Y,

And Z.

Where is my mercy?

Where is my result?

Can I interrupt you for one second?

What David is saying is actually,

If you've ever said to yourself,

But I'm such a good person,

Why is this happening to me?

Another example of expectation.

Even though you may not be expecting a dollar amount or a thank you letter or a gala in your honor,

If you're expecting your life to be good because you behave,

Because you're a nice person,

I think that's probably one of the number one expectations people have on this planet.

That's right.

That's right.

Your pleasure should be that you did the action.

If you can reach this level where the time is shortened from your pleasure,

Because oftentimes we do something and then we're waiting for the payment of that thing.

The pleasure doesn't happen until the payment comes.

The capitalist gives an example of a person who is an employee versus the person who owns the business.

The employee works very hard and it's a struggle and it's a pain and the reward comes at the end of the month as a paycheck.

It's like,

Okay,

I got the reward.

The person who owns the business struggles also,

But the reward is there.

At the moment.

It's not about the paycheck for the person who owns the business.

He's enjoying every part of it because he knows he's building something.

This is the example.

Are you an employee or are you the employer?

Are you the person that just does things and suffers and I'm always suffering and it's so hard,

But I know I'm going to get this thing at some point?

This is not the consciousness of the light of the creator or you're the person who's building the business.

You're not thinking about when am I going to get?

Of course you have a P&L.

Of course you have a business plan.

Of course,

I'm not saying you put your head in the sand,

But you're enjoying the building of it.

You're not just suffering for some expectation of a reward.

When there's an expectation of a reward and you're not enjoying the process,

You're creating more judgment.

Let's spend the last few minutes of today's episode sharing either practical tools or even mantras,

Consciousness to inject as right now whoever's listening,

I'm sure at least one person out there is going through something bad,

Going through something difficult.

What are some of the ways they can turn it around first as we're saying in your mind and then?

To keep it simple,

Let's each give a mantra before we close out the session.

I would say the mantra is that I would tell myself,

I do not want,

I do not need a result.

All I want is the light of the creator.

That's what came to me.

You can finesse that.

You can tweak that.

The mantra is addressing two parts here.

One is my basic animalistic need for a result,

Whatever that may be.

So I'm neutralizing them by saying I do not need a result.

I'm not in need of a result.

And then the second aspect of the mantra is establishing what I do want,

What I do want to build the vessel for,

Which is all I want is the light of the creator,

Which means that's endless.

It doesn't have a time.

It doesn't have a place.

It doesn't have an object.

It's whatever the light wants to give,

Whenever the light wants to give it.

That's what I want to subscribe to.

I like that.

You?

I think for me,

When I encounter a personal situation in my own life where things don't look sparkly,

Shiny,

I don't see the light at the end of the tunnel necessarily.

I remember,

And this is something actually I'm taking it directly out of Kabbalah 1,

So this is a bit of a teaser.

When we enter the conversation about certainty,

Which is a superhuman ability to be able to look at a dark situation and say,

Even though I'm going to shorten it,

Don't worry,

But what we're really saying is even though I don't see the light,

I know that the light is there,

Not because I read it in a book,

But because the entire universe is propelled by the purpose.

The entire world exists for the revelation of light.

How do we do that?

By transforming our selfishness,

By becoming more generous and agenda-less,

By being a beacon of light for others.

There are so many ways that we reveal that light,

That goodness,

But that's really why we're here.

The only reason a dark situation would come to us is so that we can grow in our ability to reveal that light.

In those moments where I see a challenge,

And for me personally,

Sometimes the agenda or the attachment is I want to know the outcome already.

I'm not even looking for a specific outcome.

I'm just looking for the security of knowing what's going to be,

Which is a huge agenda as well.

It means that I'd like to control the situation.

I want to be in control of the timing,

The calendar,

Who's involved,

How's it going to look on the other side.

In those moments,

I remember that in times of darkness,

There is greater light.

In times of darkness,

There is greater light,

And it inspires me to pick myself up by my bootstraps and look for where the revelation is.

Sometimes like David said,

It's in the letting go,

It's in the detaching.

Sometimes it's in looking for maybe there's a person or somehow I can change the way I'm influencing or affecting others.

There's infinite possibilities.

But in the moment that I'm able to pause and remember,

The fact that I feel or experience darkness right now,

It's actually an illusion,

It actually means that there is greater light to be revealed.

This goes back to actually the first thing we spoke about,

Is that when things are light,

There's less.

You're in the state of receiving.

There's no revelation there.

Meaning you're no longer in control of how much light.

You're already in the experience of it.

In those dark moments,

That's actually what the Kabbalists teach.

That's how we create those light moments,

The moments of being in the flow,

Of feeling all good,

Of everything coming effortlessly.

We earn those moments through the process.

So remembering that in times of darkness there is greater light is a huge,

I want to say it's like a secret weapon,

And it really helps to shift everything.

Have a fabulous week,

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