Rabbi Ben & the Kabbalah cont'd.

Rabbi Shimon was one of those teachers who fulfilled the criteria for being a true sage. He could raise the dead, cause it to rain when the sun was shining, and he could redirect the course of a river. Many years later, I heard of these abilities once again from Tacomi, the Tibetan Buddhist master who also came to me in my dreams. He told me of the miraculous feats of many a Himalayan spiritual master. They called themselves spiritual scientists.
Ben looked directly into my eyes and in his deep baritone voice boomed at me: “You are first and foremost a soul evolving upon this planet! Remember this always!” He then emphasized, “The true purpose of life is the correction of the soul. We call this the Tikkune HaNefesh.”

Ben then said, “There is a well-honed method and spiritual technology for developing our soul: the Kabbalah and the Mussar.” He looked very serious as he talked of the Kabbalah and the Mussar.
“Both work together,” he said, “to provide us with a powerful daily practice for fostering the growth of our soul. The Kabbalah provides the understanding on which the Mussar is based. The Kabbalah is the soul and the Mussar is the body.
“The word Mussar,” Ben said, “translates as ethics; it is a set of rules and exercises for ethical conduct. And the Kabbalah gives us the why we are to conduct ourselves as the Mussar directs. The Kabbalah is all about transforming ourselves from living as a being who is selfish into living as a being who shares.”

“Sounds like what Jung found in the practice of alchemy,” I said. “The troublesome and undeveloped areas of our personality are transformed into the gold of a fully developed personality.”

“Yes,” he said. “The Kabbalah is a spiritual alchemy. It teaches us how to transform the darkness of the Evil Inclination within us into the Light of the Creator. Specifically, we seek to transform the desire to receive for the self alone which is the Evil Inclination into the desire to share which is the essence of the Creator. The difference is that the spiritual practices of the Kabbalah are to transform the soul not just the personality.”

“Actually, I believe Jung was trying to use psychological terms and, in fact, he was thinking of the soul,” I said.

• Today, consider how you can make choices that promote the growth and correction of the imbalances in the soul. At this time in human history, we are called to integrate the head with the heart. When I was in Brazil, I was called to embrace the positve masculine power tempered with compassion. This was reflected by a vision of the divine feminine figure of Kwan Yin looking heavenward as she was about to ascend. The image of an Native American brave followed. He was a member of what was referred to as the wolf clan. He was bare-chested as he proudly rode on his horse with one feather in his headband. The message to me was that this brave was me in a past life. Suddenly, I saw a man in a blue uniform who was a soldier in the US Cavalry. The story line was that the cavalry wiped out the wolf clan. I received the message that he was also me at some later tome. I had lived both sies of the conflict. Kwan Yin's call is to transcend the battles and conflicts. This promotes the correction of the soul.