Spiritual Routine 2023 - Weekly Energy Boost

A spiritual routine can provide structure and purpose to one's life, help foster a sense of connection to a higher power and provide a greater sense of meaning and purpose. Use this New Year to engage in inner growth and self-awareness by incorporating kabbalistic tools for spiritual fulfillment, helping us to live a more deeply meaningful, and fulfilling life. Original airdate: 1/2/23

Transcript

Good morning everyone,

Good evening,

Good afternoon,

Wherever you are and welcome to this week's Weekly Energy Boost.

My name is Elie Sheva and I'm here this first Monday of 2023 with David and we are really excited to share with you some insider tricks and tools to setting yourself up for the best year possible.

We're talking today about creating a spiritual routine for 2023.

The Weekly Energy Boost is a seven day spiritual weather forecast where David and I and sometimes our guests share the most practical and powerful tools to help you navigate the coming week.

We do that by harvesting nuggets from the wisdom of Kabbalah and breaking down those tools and that wisdom in such a way that you can not only grow and transform from it during the coming week but basically any day of the week,

Any week of the year,

Any year of your life.

And so this week we are taking advantage of the fact that this is the beginning of a calendar year.

The wisdom of Kabbalah teaches that when there is a critical mass of people putting energy towards something it has an energetic impact.

Most of the things that we talk about,

The influence,

The energetic influence that we point out in our podcast is based on fabric that was or I should say threads that were woven into the fabric of creation and have existed since time began.

There are also some situations that we encounter where human activity creates an imprint and the new year is exactly that.

The Kabbalistic calendar is the way we measure energy.

The Gregorian calendar is the way we mark the passage of time and strategize and plan and pay taxes and whatnot.

But because most of the world is now looking at yesterday and today and all this month is a new beginning,

Setting goals and creating a plan for doing things better,

That energetic imprint affects everyone where possible.

Even if you were rolling your eyes and you went to bed in your pajamas on Saturday night at 9 p.

M.

We're still affected by the fact that there is this push forward to create a new beginning right now.

So we want to use this energetic imprint as well as the energy.

One of the things about the month of Capricorn and if you're a Capricorn I'm sure that this will resonate with you if you know Capricorns you'll see this very vividly,

Is that Capricorns really thrive on routine.

It is the more structure they can implement the more rigidity.

I don't want to sound like I'm putting anybody down but that framework.

They are great at creating and keeping frameworks.

So we're also going to borrow from that energy of this month to create that structure and to create a framework in which we can thrive spiritually.

So get out your pen and paper or open up a new note in your phone and let's get into what are the components of a really successful strategy,

A successful routine,

Why those things are successful and how to tweak them when they may not be doing what we intend them to do.

We don't like to just use our time together to talk about behavior modification and optimization.

You can get a lot of that in so many different formats but we like to talk about the spirituality behind the concepts.

So everyone can agree that having a routine is positive and productive and I know there's a universal energy that pushes a person into that.

I think there's more people than ever that I spoke to who didn't do anything for New Year's,

Who actually went to bed at like nine o'clock and was more looking forward to how they were going to start the new year and implementing some type of what we call routine.

Spiritually speaking,

The reason why it's powerful is because,

And we learned this in the first class of Kabbalah 1,

That our feelings have caused us our entire lives to be reactive because we feel something and those feelings are usually based on some kind of reactive impulse to something that happened to us in the past or something that we're afraid is going to happen in the future.

So they paralyze us and they control us and they get us to do things that are against our soul's nature or what we call to be aligned with the light of the Creator,

Which is the only miraculous path that exists.

And when we talk about this in Kabbalah 1,

We basically say you have to observe your five senses and then you have to put them aside because your five senses are not seeing the whole picture and as a result you are making decisions in your life based on a very limited scope and you're not being given all the data.

So whatever decision you make based on your five senses is not going to work and therefore that is called reactive behavior.

And reactive behavior is the opposite of the qualities of the Creator and that's why we disconnect from the light of the Creator when we are reactive or just following our five senses.

So for example,

I hear something that I don't like or I see something that I disapprove of or I don't like.

I start to get afraid.

Maybe you see a friend doing something that worries you or you hear something that someone maybe is saying about you or maybe you prove that they are saying it about you.

You think it's true and you think it's happening and so you react to it and the moment you do you're disconnected from the light.

However there's another world,

There's another reality that we call the tree of life.

Also we call it the world of the light of the Creator or we call it the 99% of the different names that we give it.

And in this world it's like a current,

A miraculous current that takes us.

It's not us trying to fix things.

And we've always said that the greatest things that have ever happened in our lives happened to us,

Not because of us.

They happened by the way.

They happened from the back,

Not from the front.

We weren't paying attention and they came and now they've been in our lives for a long time and it's beautiful.

So what routine does is it negates your five senses.

You wake up in the morning,

The greatest athletes talk about this on all these podcasts and all these YouTube shorts.

They basically say,

I don't care if I'm sick,

I don't care if I'm tired,

I don't care if I'm in the mood or not in the mood.

I will wake up and I will practice.

I will go to the gym,

I will eat a certain way.

That is my routine.

We've learned that routine rises above what we call the 1% world because we only see 1% in this physical world.

So do not make your decisions anymore based on feelings or the five senses because it's only 1%.

That is the power,

Spiritual power of a routine to negate the very part of us that's actually been holding us back our entire lives,

Our need for instant gratification and being controlled by our feelings.

What does that look like on a day-to-day basis?

What that looks,

That's a question that so many people ask and it's so simple that I think a lot of us don't do it.

And I have to constantly remind myself that the Kabbalists have created structure.

Many religions have actually created these structures knowing that people are very bad at having structure.

So when we hear about all the time,

What is the first 20,

30 minutes of your day like?

Are you reactive?

Are you just following your feelings and emotions or are you saying regardless of how I feel,

Good,

Bad,

Uplifting mood,

Down mood,

Stress,

Tired,

I'm going to sit.

For me it would be sit on my bed and just talk to the creator.

Talk like I'm talking to a friend,

Even if you don't know what to say,

You don't even know what's going to come out of your mouth,

You just start the process.

I think a lot of what we know about the miraculous world is you don't know what it's going to be like,

You just have to move towards it.

That's how you know it's the miraculous world.

It's the world that you cannot see.

If you could see it,

It means it's at your level,

Which is not the miraculous world.

The miraculous world is the unknown world.

And so sit on the bed one minute,

Five minutes,

10 minutes,

Whatever,

But you know at least a minute you're devoting to nothing but talking to the light of the creator.

And then it could be some form of exercise that you know is good for you.

And the whole process of going against your body conscious,

This is a very spiritual thing.

The body generally wants to be in a state of rest.

The body does not want to move.

The body does not want to exert itself.

And even if it does want to exert itself,

It only wants to exert itself to a certain point.

Usually when we hit that point,

We throw in the towel.

A good trainer takes us past that point.

So that could be another part of your routine.

I would say that everyone should have a spiritual and physical routine every morning that they stick to no matter what.

No matter what.

And you have a minimum of how much you do and maybe a maximum.

You should never go below that minimum.

Do you think that that routine or that procedure varies between men and women?

I think when you get into the nuances,

The spiritual nuances of what men and women can do from a Kabbalistic point of view,

Yes.

But I think also people overthink this whole thing and they try to create the perfect routine and so they do no routine.

Got to just start.

That's very deep,

David.

You got to just start.

I think,

I think you got to just start doing something.

I started doing it immediately.

Like when it comes to anything that is of the need to break your nature,

I noticed something about myself just a couple weeks ago is that,

And I talked about this,

How I only noticed it after I talked about it and then I realized I'm actually doing the same thing,

Which is avoiding,

Maybe avoiding certain tasks just because I don't think they're that important or I'll just get to another time.

But I justify it by saying I'm busy anyways.

And I realized I actually want to reverse that because I think there's something very spiritual there.

I'm going to do all the tasks that I think are so not important first and actually put the important stuff off for later because the important stuff you'll always have the strength and energy to do.

The things that you think are unimportant or the people that you think are unimportant,

You'll always delay doing them.

So they'll actually never get done.

So I knew I needed to break that and it's still a work in progress.

But as soon as I see something I don't want to do,

I'm like,

Okay,

I'm just going to do that first and not do the thing that I want to do,

As important as it may be.

And then people say,

Well,

What about this?

And what if it's that?

Don't think too much.

You got to just break the nature to reveal the wisdom.

Break the nature so you can reveal the wisdom.

The wisdom will then tell you what to do next.

Don't try to think 35 steps ahead.

This is not chess.

When people play life like they play chess,

That's reactive.

A good chess player already sees the board 100 moves ahead.

That is not how you should play life.

Playing life,

You should see nothing besides what's in front of you that you need to do at that moment in the now.

Well,

That's something that I learned on a very technical level that if you're looking to implement something new to your routine,

You want to create a new habit,

You should attach it to an old habit.

So for example,

David's saying,

The first thing he does when he wakes up in the morning is he sits on his bed and he talks to the creator,

Which full disclosure,

That's not my routine.

I'm not saying his is better or mine is better,

But I think part of this conversation requires us to look at the uniqueness of every individual.

And in order to break the body consciousness,

There's going to be a different recipe.

And there's certain components of every routine,

Meaning every person needs to make sure that they have certain components,

But how it really looks is up to them.

So let's say for example,

The first thing you do when you wake up in the morning is you go to the bathroom and you brush your teeth,

Let's say.

So if you want to bring a more spiritual dimension to your routine,

You give yourself something spiritual to do before you go brush your teeth or after you go brush your teeth.

That way it becomes associated with the,

It's so natural and ingrained in you that it becomes just like brushing your teeth.

And I can say that that guidance that was given to me a million years ago really helped me in many moments of my life to put my spiritual connection before taking care of anything else.

And I remember,

It's so funny that I thought about this this morning as I remember a few years ago,

It may have been two or three years ago,

Doing an episode and me talking about how someone wakes me up every morning.

So I don't even get the chance to inject consciousness or anything like that.

I have small kids at home,

But I'm here.

I'm proud to tell you that today I actually set my alarm to wake up before my kids.

You too can do this for those of you that relate to my situation.

I set my alarm for 20 to 30 minutes before I know they're going to wake up so that I can have moments of peace and mindfulness before I have to hit the ground running.

And it used to be that I would hit the ground running,

Take care of everything I needed to and then I would have my moment of calm and connection and intention setting and all that.

And I find that even though I don't have to do my whole spiritual routine in those 20 to 30 minutes,

At least I take the time to pause,

To ask myself and the Creator a few questions to put intention into the things that I want to accomplish during the day.

And I think most importantly,

It allows me to not start my day reactive.

This is to David's point that so much of what we do is in response to a stimuli outside of us.

Some days it happens that it's 5 o'clock and you don't even know where the day went because you were so busy putting out fires or responding to customers or taking care of other people that you just didn't even have a unique thought or an independent action.

You just were busy doing.

And part of what the Kabbalists teach is that we'll be led where our desires are at,

Meaning the universe,

And this is something you hear across all spiritual wisdoms,

Is that the universe or God or the Creator,

Whatever you want to call it,

Will conspire to meet us where we're at.

So that if our desire,

You wake up in the morning and you think,

Oh my God,

I just want to get through this day.

You're just going to get through it.

You're not going to be happy,

Inspired,

Creative,

Kind,

Any of those things.

You're just going to.

And I encourage everybody to commit in 2023 to eliminate the word just from your vocabulary,

From your lexicon,

That that just invites limitation,

Invites suffering,

Invites just eking by,

Right,

There's that word again.

We want,

If this year is going to be the year that we've expressed the most,

The greatest of our potential,

We can't be just.

We can't be existing.

We have to be living.

Yes,

That sounds very cliche,

But it really does start with our desire.

And if our desire is to,

You know,

The Kabbalists say that the ultimate desire is to be in alignment with the desire of the Creator,

That I will see through the Creator's eyes,

That I will desire for me what the Creator desires for me,

Which is the expression of my fullest potential,

The revelation of all of my light.

And then watch how the universe,

This is the irony,

The paradox,

That you may have this grandiose elevated intention,

And then you find yourself sitting in traffic,

Or you find yourself surrounded by people who don't understand you,

Or you find yourself,

Your patience is being tested,

Or the check bounces,

Or all these other things happen to upset the apple cart,

Not realizing that you asked the Creator to let you express your highest self,

So you're being given all these opportunities not to be reactive,

But instead to express your highest self.

And to me,

That's the,

One of the things,

You know,

We can talk about prayer,

We can talk about meditation,

We've done tons of episodes about them.

I might even digress and say we won't talk about prayer and meditation,

So that you can go back and listen to those episodes and implement what you hear there.

I think the real value in rethinking our spiritual routine right now is to get ourselves in the habit of being more regularly the person that we know we can be,

But we feel far from it.

What do I mean by that?

It sounds like we're talking about New Year's resolutions now,

But just as an example,

And then I want to hear what David thinks about what I've said,

Is that one of the purposes each one of us has,

Regardless of where we are,

Where we live,

How old we are,

What stage we are in our spiritual journey,

One of the purposes that we share is to become kinder.

It's universal.

It has nothing to do with gender or race or religion or financial bracket.

We are all here to grow into more kind people.

Now you may hear this and be like,

I am so kind,

I need to learn to say no.

If you need to learn to say no,

You're not kind.

You just don't have boundaries.

You're a people pleaser and you're doing things.

We've talked often about the idea that people who can't say no are really just worried about what people think or feel about them and they're not actually being kind.

The idea that we start every day or we built into our day a moment to ask the universe to send us opportunities to be kinder,

To be more compassionate,

To be more caring for others,

That's the kind of spiritual routine we need for 2023.

Less about the rigidity and I know I started talking about it because my thinking is if we can use the intrinsic structure that the month of Capricorn brings to bring more structure to our mindfulness about things like being kind,

That's going to create dramatic changes not only in our lives individually,

But as a whole.

And the fact is that being kinder first benefits me before it benefits the people I'm kind to so that you may think,

Well,

This person isn't nice.

They don't deserve my kindness or I'm late to a meeting.

I don't have time to help this person out or to hold the elevator door,

All the other things that could qualify as kindness when in fact the reason you're late to the meeting is so that you can seek an opportunity to be kind and that's actually going to influence your meeting more than you being late or you being on time.

To you,

David.

It sounds like a news report.

And now back to David.

The other thing that I wanted to add to that is the only time a person is,

Let me rephrase that,

The way we will be rewarded with results is when we take the past and the future out of the equation of how we make our decisions.

And people have a hard time with this and say,

Well,

You tell me not to plan.

What we're saying is if you're going to plan,

Even if you're going to plan for the future,

You're going to make a decision to sit down now to plan for the future.

So that's not going into the future.

That is being in the present.

Because the access to the 99%,

To the world of miracles only exists through the door that is called the present.

And what the opponent,

The negative side,

Tries to do is to pull our attention and energy to the past and to the future.

And as a result,

We don't enter through the door that's called the present.

And so if you notice,

All of spirituality just kind of focuses on one thing.

How do you become more narrow?

How do you become more simple?

How do you consolidate your thoughts,

Your ideas,

Your intentions,

Your desires?

All of us,

In some way,

Are surface scratchers,

Serial surface scratchers.

And so we are addicted to scratching surfaces and then moving on.

People are very afraid to go deep with anything.

They're afraid to go deep in their relationships.

They're afraid to go deep in their work.

They're afraid to go deep into themselves,

Into personal work.

They're afraid to dig up stuff from their past.

And so we live in a society where being in denial of the depth and staying in the shallow is what feels good.

And because it feels good,

And we go back to feelings,

And we just do things because it feels good.

So part of what this year,

The energy of this year and the miracles that exist are going to be for the ones who are niche,

Narrow,

Deep.

And the only way to do it is to forget about how it feels to go deep.

Do not use that as your guiding light or your northern star,

Whether it's right or wrong.

Going deep always works.

It's like a root canal is not fun,

But if it's only half done,

It will have to be done again.

Any kind of surgery,

If it's half done,

You're going to have to have it again.

And so each one of us should kind of think practically in our lives.

I have 25 things I'm working on.

Probably 23 of them should be shelved and tossed,

At least put it for the future.

Maybe you don't have to throw it away,

But people are afraid to do that.

Because I'd rather scratch the surface of 25 things than go deep with two of them.

And look at how busy I am.

I think that's a lot of the distraction that takes place from going that deep is the value that society places on being overworked,

Doing too much,

Being a jack of all trades and master of none.

And part of the requirement to go deep is that you free up your resources to go deep.

The metaphor is that if you have one can of water,

You have to decide which plants to water for them to survive.

If you're going to give a drop of water to all the plants,

They're all going to suffer.

One of my giveaways,

I'll do a giveaway here of when I look to hire somebody and one of the first things,

And maybe I ask them,

Okay,

What's your plan for the first three months?

Should you have this position?

And if any part of their plan is I'm going to be building a team,

I'm going to hire this person that's better than this person.

So we know this is a surface scratcher and it's a red flag.

It's not even a yellow flag.

It's a red flag.

Because when you hire someone who then wants to hire 10 more people,

What you're dealing with is someone who for whatever reason,

Maybe they're at this stage in their life where they don't feel they need to,

Or they're not good at it,

Or they just avoid rolling up their sleeves and going deep.

And actually we see that the economy is punishing this kind of mentality.

This kind of manager is the person who just wants to delegate immediately and not go deep themselves.

And yes,

We've had sessions where we've said people's major correction,

Spiritual correction,

Or tikkun as we call it,

Sometimes they don't delegate and they try to do everything themselves as well.

But both of those are forms of escape.

The person who overhires is escaping and the person who never hires because they don't think anybody can do it better than them is also escaping.

Both are living in their comfort zone.

Both are reacting from a place of fear.

The idea is to ask myself,

What is my fear?

What is my comfort zone?

And let me experiment with constantly being outside of it so that I can become comfortable with my uncomfortable zone.

And the muscle that I know I ache to develop and our spiritual community has helped enforce this is as soon as I feel uncomfortable,

This is not a bad thing.

This is not something that needs to immediately be manipulated or fixed or soothed.

We are not little children that need to suck our thumb as soon as we feel anxiety.

We do not need to run to something.

Even for a moment,

Even if you know you're going to run to something,

Give it five minutes and say for five minutes I will be okay with not being okay.

And so you will see that you go deep.

You will see in pain,

All pain is just to have us go deeper.

I shared this once,

The very powerful Q&A that we once had with Michael Berg and his wife Monica and somebody asked about relationships.

I forgot what the question was,

But I remember the answer was good.

It really applies to everything.

So when you start to have disagreements or fights with someone you love,

Most people think it's spiritual to actually not fight or not argue or not even discuss it,

But just to say yes,

It's all good.

It's all from maybe it's all from the Creator and let's not be angry.

But actually a disagreement is a sign you need to have a conversation and go deeper and talk about things that you don't want to talk about.

Actually to sit and do that.

So really every answer always points to the depth,

Going into the depth.

I want to end by talking about something really important and I think it's a question on many people's minds as they listen to what we're talking about today is many of us already have a spiritual routine.

Maybe we were raised in a certain way and the idea of waking up in the morning and praying or meditating or maybe there's a combination of exercise.

Many of us are in that groove already and depend on that routine and that structure to set ourselves up for the best possible outcome in the day,

In the next 18 hours.

What is your suggestion,

David,

For people who want to create or optimize,

To use your words,

Optimize their spiritual routine,

They already have one.

How do we know what's working for us and what isn't?

Sometimes being in that routine for too long actually depletes it of its power.

So what can we give our listeners who are already in constant spiritual routine?

How can you make it better,

Fix it,

Upgrade it,

Optimize it?

I took off my headset as a sign.

That usually means do not send it back to me.

It's too late.

I've been sitting on this question all morning.

She sent it back to me and it's the first time ever I had to put it back on my headset.

One practical answer to that is,

And this is great advice I got from actually a tenured Danny about 12 years ago and he was talking about someone else whose business was growing but then stopped growing.

He said in a business,

And I'm going to relate it to what you said,

In a business every day you have to really believe.

It's kind of like the paranoid survive.

Someone who's paranoid is always looking to do things better,

Always looking to improve and is not resting on the results,

Successes of yesterday.

So you have to always be iterating,

Always be looking into the future.

We know people who do this,

They're always at the forefront,

They survive,

They excel and they succeed and the ones who just wait to be pushed,

They're the ones who get the rug pulled from under them.

So when it comes to something I do practically,

Which I've seen that it works very well,

Is I'm always,

Always asking people I know and random people,

What do they do?

And I always get inspired.

And I will talk to,

I'll be sitting at a,

I do this a lot on the plane actually.

I used to love not talking to anybody on the plane.

Now I take a message that the person sitting next to me has,

So I'll be like,

Oh,

What do you do?

And I'll ask them,

What's your routine to,

If I notice something positive about them,

I did this once at a party,

I walked up to a guy that I thought he was in great shape and I said,

You don't know me,

Don't take this the wrong way,

But what do you do?

What do you do to stay in good shape?

I love that.

And you know what?

He said,

Well,

I'm going to send you to someone.

And that actually,

That,

And this was a random,

I never met this guy.

And that actually started me on a journey of taking care of myself in a way that I'd never done before.

Only because I walked up to a random party and I saw this guy,

He was probably in his late forties,

But he looked like he was 30.

So I said,

Well,

He's doing something for the arbitrage of age here.

And he was so excited to tell me all about it.

He told me so many powerful things and I said,

Well,

I'm going to learn more about that.

And then I saw his doctor and that was the end of that.

So you,

I got to just ask people all the time,

What do you do?

What do you do?

What do you do?

How'd you do that?

How'd you do that?

How'd you do that?

And then you will realize that whatever you're doing is already stale.

Yep.

I,

There was a reason you had to put your headset back on.

That was brilliant.

I think that's,

That's an assignment that all of us can take to heart this week is to ask other people,

Ask your teacher,

Ask your friends,

Ask people that you admire.

What is your spiritual routine?

What do you do that keeps you inspired,

Motivated,

Driven,

Kind,

Compassionate,

Right?

Look at the people who inspire you and check in with them about their,

How do they do it?

Just as David said,

And even if you end up being like,

Heck no,

I'm not going to do that.

What you're really doing is you are stepping outside of what David called earlier in the episode,

The realm of the five senses,

The 1% reality to shed some light on what's no longer serving you and how you can upgrade your connection for the coming year.

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