Unhooking Yourself from the Flashy Lures of Life

Common Irritations You Can Use for Your Liberation

There are innumerable variations of the things that hook us. Some are indirect attacks and others are direct attacks on our shining self-image. Below are some common hooks that lead you to get stuck staring at the image in the pool. To be free, we must give up the need to impress others with a shining self-image.

• Someone says or does something that you disagree with and
think is wrong hooking your need to be right.

• Someone makes a mistake hooking your need to correct
others and impress them with how much you know.

• Someone says or does something you think is stupid or wrong hooking your need to criticize others.

• Someone is late hooking your tendency to get impatient.

• People are talking in a group hooking your need to brag.

• Feeling unimportant, a nobody, starts hooking a desire to be
famous as if having your name known makes you important.

• Feeling poor and not feeling respected by others hooking
a desire to be wealthy so that you will be respected.

• Your loved one is not behaving as you think he or she should
hooking a need to control them so they’ll do it your way.

• Your loved one is talking to an attractive person hooking
feelings of jealousy, anger, insecurity, and possessiveness.

• Being criticized hooking an urge toward fight-or-flight.

• Being outdone by someone else hooking an urge to compete.

• Being laughed at or made fun of when you do something
hooking a desire for revenge.

• Being rejected for a job or date hooking a self-critical urge.

• Being told directly or indirectly you are wrong hooking an
urge to yell and tell the person off!

How can we use these common irritations—hooks—to achieve our liberation? The clue is in the word question; it has the word quest in it. When we question, we initiate the inner quest for our freedom. If we don’t question, we live like a fish at the mercy of all those fishermen. We stop getting hooked when we stop taking the bait, and start seeing the hooks hidden in the flashy lures of life.
Try questioning your automatic reactions with acceptance, compassion, and empathy. At the same time, you must be sure to refrain from any outer actions. You are engaging in an inner quest to find your freedom and not an outer quest for approval. Below are some common hooks that we get free of by questioning them.

• Someone is wrong. Do I really need to point this out? Or am
I trying to impress others? Do I really need to impress them?

• Someone is making us wait. Do I really need to say anything?

• Someone mispronounces a word. Do I really need to correct
him? Is it really necessary? Or am I just showing off?

• You feel inferior since you can’t afford expensive things that
others can: car, clothes, and so on. You think, “If I had moremoney then people would respect me!” Would they respect me or the money? Wouldn’t I do better to confront the issue of how I deserve to be treated with respect just because of who I am as a person and not because of what I have?


There is a difference in having wealth and fame without being attached or hooked by them. The difference is in being able to remain loving and spiritual while having fame and wealth. It is realizing they do not grant happiness and peace. Surely, it is easier to be spiritual in a sanctuary far from the narcissistic temptations that confront us daily. Of course, we must beware of spiritual narcissism. Imagine two people sipping green tea and discussing spirituality. Both are smiling and smugly thinking, “I’m more spiritually advanced than you! I’m at a higher level!”

• Today, practice unhooking yourself by engaging in the inner quest with a question when youfeel hooked.

Dying as Narcissus & Finding Freedom

The spiritual traditions suggest that we need to rid ourselves of our ego-based motivations or, as I prefer to call them, the narcissistic demands of our idealized self-image. The goal is to die as Narcissus and be reborn as a person living from the empty, non-grasping heart. We can then love freely without sticky fingers.

Unlike these traditions, I believe we can harness our narcissistic motivation. In short term psychotherapy, we call this paradoxical intervention or prescribing the symptom. Rather than trying to counter hate, we harness its energy and shift it back to love. We use the acronym face. We need to feel instead of repressing and denying our negative emotions and the underlying issues associated with them. And we do this with acceptance, compassion, and empathy for these emotions and issues. As we empathize with our lower nature, the reptile and the hurt child in us, we transform ourselves and realize our higher loving nature.

Pema Chödrön presents a formula for freedom that she calls “the four R’s”: recognize, refrain, relax, and resolve. First, we need to recognize that we are feeling hooked. I would say, we must first notice that we feel irritated and stressed. Next, we must refrain from acting on the impulse, the urge. She uses the analogy of scratching. We must “refrain from scratching.”

Then we relax and face the urge. She calls this step “relaxing into the underlying urge to scratch.” To me, it’s important that we breathe deeply so that we can relax and feel with acceptance, compassion, and empathy what the urge is telling us.

We give the urge space. If we can relax and feel the urge as it is without trying to change it, fight it or flee from it, then we can redeem the reptile in us. By refraining from fight-or-flight and relaxing, we have a chance to gain freedom and insight.

By relaxing and feeling our irritation, we encourage the underlying issue to emerge so that we can heal it. Finally, we then resolve to keep interrupting “our habitual patterns.” These patterns interfere with our freedom, peace, and happiness. On the one hand, they are ways that we seek to maintain an idealized image and gain love and approval. On the other hand, the patterns are developed in childhood to avoid our parents’ anger, disapproval, rejection and abandonment. The early origin of our patterns makes them difficult but not impossible to eliminate and replace.

• Today, experiment with the four Rs: 1.) recognize you are stressed in an interaction with another at home or work; 2.) refrain from your habitual reactions (raising your voice in argument, defending your actions, verbally attacking the other's point of view, etc.); 3. ) relax your body and mind with a few slow, deep breaths (from this relaxed you can choose what you will say or do rather than react blindly to the other's comments; 4.) resolve to keep breaking your patterns so that you can achieve inner freedom and relief from stress.

When Devils Are Angels

So the way he [Meister Eckhart] sees it, if you're frightened of dying and you’re holding on, you'll see devils tearing your life away. But if you've made your peace then the devils are really angels freeing you from the earth.
It’s . . . how you look at it.
—Louis (from Jacob’s Ladder)

How can we find freedom, peace, and happiness when stress irritates and bedevils us? We can see ourselves as ascending the ladder of love leading to freedom, peace, and happiness only to keep getting hung up in our ascent. When stress strikes us in daily life, we get irritated. In our irritation, it is as if the Narcissus in us feels attacked. We suddenly fixate our focus on preserving our idealized self-image. The paradox is that we must let go of our image by diving down into the depths of our heart so that we can resume our ascent to love.

We find our liberation in our heart as we lovingly accept the irritating flaws in ourselves and others with compassion and empathy. Irritation can then lead us to liberation.

Buddhists use the term attachment to convey how we get hung up. In the March, 2003 edition of Shambhala Sun magazine, I found an article that clarifies the concept of attachment. The article was by Pema Chödrön and was entitled: How We Get Hooked and How We Get Unhooked. The article introduced the Tibetan word shenpa which is usually translated as attachment but is better described as “hooked.” Feeling hooked is experienced as a “sticky feeling.” You could say, getting unhooked involves detaching from the outer world and attaching to the empty non-grasping Holy Grail of our heart that we become free.

• Today, notice when something someone says or does hooks you and you become angry, hurt, sad, or depressed. Take a deep breath and just consider how feeling hooked is an opportunity to use irritations for our liberation. We'll go into this in upcoming posts.

Creator Consciousness & The Alphabet Universe

Ben then told me, “The Kabbalah uses the 72 names of God. These names are really attributes of God we want to connect with in our life. They are sequences of three Hebrew letters. These sequences are found encoded in the Bible in the book of Exodus chapter 14 verses 19, 20, 21.” He stopped for a moment to take a drink of water out of baked-clay cup. It looked like a clay version of the Holy Grail. He offered me a sip. I took one. I felt as if I was taking communion, even though communion was Christian and not part of Ben’s tradition.

Picking up where he left off, he said, “These verses tell the story of Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt and saving them by parting the Red Sea. I will show you a chart of all the names. By simply scanning the letters without even being able to read them, you will be seeding creation consciousness within your soul. You will be activating these dormant qualities of the Creator in whose image you are made. This is something to do daily.”

At that point, Ben reached into a large wooden chest and pulled out a sheet of parchment with sequences of three Hebrew letters.

Ben then said, “We live in an alphabetic universe. The twenty-two Hebrew letters are energy forces with distinct vibrational frequencies that are the building blocks of our material universe. Letters form words.

“Words form sentences. Sentences form paragraphs and so forth. Likewise all matter making up our universe is composed of molecules and atoms as well as electrically-charged subatomic particles such as protons, electrons, and neutrons.”

I was captivated by his comments. “Rabbi Ben, recently, I have been haunted by the practical everyday implications of the words from the Gospel of Saint John: ‘In the beginning was the Word’ followed by ‘And the Word became flesh,’ thirteen verses later. Rabbi Ben, what you say ties in with this. In the beginning of anything we do are the words we think and then these words become fleshed out in action within the material world.”

Ben listened intently. I then said, “At the beginning of any project we state what we will do and then we translate our words into action.”

“Yes. Precisely!” he affirmed my extension of the biblical reference beyond its religious meaning.
Then he said, “But even more than this, the Creator, blessed be He, created the universe this way. Therefore, it can be said that we are behaving in the image of the Creator when we apply this principle of how our words become flesh.”

Ben and the cave began to fade. Our meeting was over. Sometimes there was a sense of transitioning back to sleep. At other times I wouldn’t remember our meeting ending; I would just wake up the next morning feeling refreshed and inspired.

Following tonight’s meeting, I fell fast asleep only to be awakened by a flash of lightning followed by a crack of thunder. It was as if someone flipped on the light in my room and crashed together cymbals over my head.

The flash of lightning paralleled the flash of insights that lingered in my mind from my first meeting with Ben just a few hours earlier. I lay there contemplating Ben’s teachings. Eventually, as the thunder and lightning subsided, I fell back to sleep.

• Today, think of yourself as a creator made in the image of the Creator and not a reactor. Remember that in the beginning is your word and your word in the form of words and images or pictures become the flesh of your life. Set your intention to focus on desired outcomes and not on feared outcomes. Focus on what you would love to have happen and notice how smoothly your day goes.

Yur Thoughts Mark Your Soul Rabbi Ben cont'd.

Ben first talked about the Mussar. “The goal of the spiritual practice of the Mussar is to live an ethical life. This involves more than actions in the outer world. It includes our thoughts and our speech. Not only is it what we say to others, it’s also what we silently say to ourselves.”

“So it involves our inner life as well,” I said. “Reminds me of the training I received at the Institute of Living. As a psychiatric hospital, it was considered one of the last bastions of long-term in-depth psychotherapy. In my training there, I learned that to do analysis or therapy, we need to monitor our own thoughts, fantasies, and feelings as they arise in reaction to what the patient says and does in the session.”
“Yes, your analytic discipline is similar to the Mussar and to the Kabbalah,” he said. “The difference is that the purpose of spiritual discipline is to develop the soul by connecting with the Light of the Creator.”

Ben paused and then said, “What I am about to say is very important so listen very carefully. What we say or do leaves its mark on our soul. That includes what we say silently about others as well as what we say out loud to others. And it also includes what we say and do to ourselves. Self-condemning or self-indulging words and actions affect our very soul as well.”

“So you might say,” I began slowly, carefully choosing my words, “our soul is like a garden where we plant soul seeds.”
“That’s good,” he said. “Please go on.”

“So when we think, speak, and act in ethical, that is, in loving and kind ways then beautiful flowers bloom. And when we act harmfully and unethically in harsh, unkind ways, we allow the garden of our soul to become overgrown with weeds. The weeds choke off the flowers.” I surprised myself with the idea of seeing the soul as a garden.

“Excellent,” Ben said. “Where did you come up with that?”
“It just came to me as you spoke about the Kabbalah,” I said. “Now thinking out loud, I suppose it springs from my experience in working with people in therapy.”
“How so?” he asked.

“Often at the beginning of my work with a patient, the state of a patient’s soul is depicted in dream images. I can recall patients who presented dreams of a vacant lot overgrown with weeds situated in a rundown area of a city. I also remember dreams set in a barren wasteland with no growth. No vegetation. Nothing.”
“Interesting,” he said. “Please continue.”

“In some cases, by the time therapy was completed, I can remember the dream images of lush gardens, green forests or vast fields of colorful wild flowers. I suppose you could say the soul of the patients with these dream images had grown, couldn’t you?”

“Absolutely,” Ben affirmed. “Everything we say and do affects our very soul. The Mussar and Kabbalah tell us that scratches or marks are made on the soul by what we say and do.”

Ben then spelled out the practices a little more specifically. “First, you are to learn to become more aware of what you are thinking, feeling, saying and doing. The Mussar recommends that you list the soul-traits you want to work on developing. They suggest such soul-traits as: honest speech, humility, trust in God, compassion, loving-kindness, dignity, courage, surrender of the ego, fear (or in today’s language, awe) of God, moderation, concentration, passion or zeal, and equanimity. He conveyed this information with a grave solemnity in his voice: this was a very serious practice.

Ben continued: “You do this by keeping a journal of your inner and outer life each day. At the end of the day, you review how you did in living up to the soul-traits you are working on.”

• Today, every so often, monitor your motivation. Check in to see where you are coming from when you say something. Ask yourself, "o I really need to say that? Does it really add anything to the conversation? Am I trying to impress? Am I putting down someone to elevate myself? Remember, the words of the Indian saint, Swami Rama, "Only one who remains unaffected by honor or insult, can keep the divine flame alive."

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.

Rabbi Ben & the Kabbalah

That night I had the first of what was to be many strange dreams. I came to call them journeys through dreamland in honor of the many-volume set entitled Journeys Through Bookland. My grandfather bought the first two volumes when they were hot off the press in 1922. Thirty years later when I was five years old, my mother or father would read to me at bedtime. I would lie there mesmerized. Etched in gold and framing the title Journeys Through Bookland on the cover of each volume were the words: imagination, wisdom, character, truth and beauty.

The books had such beautiful illustrations—they possessed an otherworldly grandeur. There were timeless tales from all over the world. My eyes grew wide with wonder at such stories as: The Snow Queen, with her magic sleigh and Tom, The Water Baby, with his underwater adventures. I cringed at the bloodthirsty cruelty of Bluebeard with his secret room for the bones of his former wives. As a child, I never imagined how the words of this story might in some symbolic sense become the flesh of my adult love life.

Tonight, during this my first journey through dreamland, I found myself transported to some cave near ancient Jerusalem. It was in this cave that I met Rabbi Ben. When I first saw him, I was spellbound by his powerful presence. He was dressed in a brownish-maroon robe trimmed in gold. Around the waist of the robe there was a gold rope-like tie. He was tall with thick and curly dark hair that nearly matched his robe. His hair reminded me of the rich color of cordovan shoe polish. He looked at me in such a knowing and loving way. His round face and ebony eyes reminded me of the face of the classic snowman with chunks of shiny coal for eyes.

His countenance catapulted me back in time to my childhood when my friends and I made snowmen. There was nothing like a snow-day when you would awaken to learn there was no school. That thrill has never left me. Something about Rabbi Ben lifted me to a timeless place of carefree reprieve from the worries and toil of the everyday world.

In our first meeting, Ben deepened my appreciation of the Hebrew language. As an aside, silently in my mind, I thought of him as Ben but when I spoke to him I always maintained the proper decorum and addressed him as Rabbi Ben.

Being in the presence of such a holy sage as Ben, I was grateful to have been introduced to the strange shapes that comprised the Hebrew letters—strange to me because they in no way resembled the English alphabet.

Ben schooled me in the teachings of the Kabbalah. He took much of what he taught me directly from the Zohar, the twenty-two volumes that present the core teachings of the Kabbalah. He told me that it would not be until a few years after the beginning of the new millennium that the Zohar would be made public and translated into English. He told me that according to the sages of old, humankind would not be ready to receive its wisdom until then.

All of our meetings were in this well-lit cave before a fire. The light of the fire and numerous candles flickered against the backdrop of ancient stone walls. The cave was a perfect place for us to meet.
After all, Ben told me that the Zohar was the product of the thirteen years Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai lived in a cave circa 130 a.d. It was in this cave that Moses and the prophet Elijah came to him in spirit and dictated the teachings of the Zohar to him. He was forced to seek refuge from the Romans who wanted to execute him for spreading the teachings of the Torah also known as the Five Books of Moses. Later on, I would learn from Ben that the Hebrew word Torah meant Truth with a capital “T”—God’s Truth.

More on Rabbi Ben and the Kabbalah when I erun from Brazil on the 22nd of September.