Exercising Our Spiritual Muscles
A few days a week I can be found at my local gym. My work-out includes walking laps and using various specialized machines to stretch and strengthen muscles, increase endurance, promote flexibility and improve my sense of well-being. As any exercise begins to feel easier, weights and repetitions are increased, gradually building my body’s resilience, strength and vigor.
These actions are for the benefit of my physical body. Another body exists, however, my inner self or body and what goes on there. So, it seems essential to create a robust inner exercise routine, a spiritual space in which to grow my soul. My inner spirit resides in the wisdom of Kabbalah — the science of the correct perception of true reality: what it is and how it is manifested.
Of high importance is daily “walking,” engaging in the study and being steadfast as we realize that the path is long and narrow. It can be boring at times and is frequently exhausting. It takes determination to remain walking the pathway as long as it takes to reach the final resting place — Gmar Tikkun.
The study is lofty and has an elegance to it, but it is also an eccentric one compared to say religion or philosophy. It requires that we take in new ideas and unfamiliar proclamations of truth, then we swallow and digest them and add them to our general knowledge and daily practice.
As these newly learned truths are absorbed inside our very souls, we are strengthened and fortified, eagerly seeking constant input of more such concepts, so as to enhance our spiritual robustness. We become spiritual weight-lifters.
Strength without flexibility is inadequate, so we need to be malleable in accepting the ways in which the study comes to us, through attending lessons, conventions, special events and so on. Most friends in groups all over the world participate in these things virtually, so we need a working understanding of computers and of how to navigate within the enormous system of the internet for our own good.
We add weight to our program by regular reading of articles and blogs, participating in dissemination, and welcoming and orienting new members. All of these things are done constantly, over and over again, so information can sink in and be absorbed and practices can be perfected. As we engage in such repetition, our understanding of materials improves.
We create a society that becomes a place of training for existing in mutual bestowal. It is called a Minyan (a quorum of ten) that becomes a gymnasium, so to speak, where we “work out” to discover our perfect, corrected selves. Each person merges with other group members and with the Creator so that the Kli and the upper Light become one. We experience resilience and vigor in the work and become pure, as we meet, study and pray together.
We need an inner container to hold all these things, a vessel that receives it all and holds it there. This is the ten. We live and breathe there. It is the place where we neutralize the ego and radiate the truth to the world. Coexisting in that precious space we learn what it means to integrate. We enter the system that is empowered to present the Creator to us, the place where we receive nourishment, and from where the Lights and changes come to us.
There is an enormous power here that can only be experienced, not imagined. It must be entered into with faith and purpose. The exciting thing about this is that anyone who knows where to find the entrance to the path can walk it joyously. Anyone who feels drawn to walk this path can find it here.