Sad, but true.

Some people never even try.

But those of us who do – and I assume that you are in that group – often experience great frustration and disappointment as we encounter same limitations over and over again.

Life can start to seem downright repetitive.

CREATING SOMETHING FROM NOTHING

Why is it that in most cases your life keeps looking like some variation of whatever you’ve experienced before?

The answer is: because you are creating something from something. You’re attempting to create a new and different future based on limitations of your past.

Imagine that you are a potter and you have a piece of clay. You can study your craft and make pots that are smoother, sturdier, or more beautiful than before. But when all is said and done, they’re still just clay pots.

Who says you have to be a potter? And who says you can only make things out of clay?

G-D CREATES SOMETHING FROM NOTHING

There is a fundamental kabbalistic principle of Creation known as ‘yesh m’ayin’ – something from nothing.

This principle explains that G-d is bringing entire world, including you, into existence from absolute nothingness at every moment.

G-d didn’t create this world once and withdraw back into Heaven, where He supervises from a distance and intervenes when appropriate. Rather, He is actively and intentionally speaking world into existence from nothing in present moment, again and again and again. In fact, if G-d would stop creating this world – with all of its myriad details – at any moment, world and everything in it would disappear as if it had never been.

Based on this, two things are clear:

1.The world has no existence outside of G-d. Everything we experience in life is part of G-d and His intention and purpose for Creation. 2.G-d desires world – and you – with an intense and personal desire. Everything you do has great meaning and significance to Him. That’s why He keeps on creating you.

Remember those old commercials where a little kid said something like: “I must be good because G-d made me, and G-d doesn’t make junk”?

Actually, truth is much more powerful than that. G-d doesn’t make anything or anyone without a profound purpose. He passionately desires you and just as passionately wants you to desire Him. And He is waiting - with bated breath - for you to embrace Divine purpose for which you have been created. To make your life, your relationships and your circumstances a “dwelling place” for Divine.

WHAT’S NOTHINGNESS?

G-d creates from Nothing because Nothingness, ayin, actually means absolute, infinite possibility. No limitations. No restrictions. None at all.

When you don’t need to be any particular something, you’re free to be anything. Kabbalah calls this infinite potential nothingness – not because there’s nothing there, but because there are absolutely no limitations that define or restrict this infinite possibility in any way.

YOU’RE ALREADY CREATING SOMETHING FROM NOTHING

As a human beings created in image of G-d, you are also empowered to create something from nothing. And you do, all time.

Unfortunately, most of time what we create from nothing are stories about what we can’t do, aren’t capable of, will never have – together with all reasons why.

Do you long for love?

Most of us do. The intimate touch of another soul is most powerful antidote for all-too-human experience of aloneness. It may be most compelling and pleasurable experience there is.

So why do we spend so much of our time and energy avoiding intimacy by defending ourselves, being angry, critical, closed and judgmental – in short, blocking experience that we most deeply want?

DEFENDING THE EGO GETS IN THE WAY OF LOVE.

The answer is that we are wired to constantly reinforce our limited ego-based identity, our sense of who we are.

This ego-based identity plays a very important role in human life, but it does not have power to love. Ego is all about self. It can and does experience need, and need is often easy to mistake for love. And it can certainly love how another person makes it feel.

But these things aren’t true love. True love and intimacy doesn’t come from ego. In order to experience power of true love you have to get in touch with a different part of yourself – part that lies beyond ego.

THE TRUE NATURE OF EGO.

This process is easier when you understand true nature of your ego-based identity: It doesn’t really exist.

Although it functions as if it’s most real thing about you, in actual fact your ‘identity’ is only a perspective. It’s kept alive solely through stories you tell yourself about life, others and yourself.

You could literally say that your ego is all talk – an incessant monologue whose sole purpose is to reinforce your sense of self – who you are and who you aren’t.

Most of time it goes something like this: “I’m better than he is, uglier than she is, smarter than him, richer than her, worse than I should be. I can do this, I could never do this, I shouldn’t have done that, they shouldn’t be that way. Life is good, life is hard, he’s right, she’s wrong, I’m great, I’m no good, it’s my fault, it’s their fault…” and on, and on, and on...

Just as a whale identifies its location through bouncing sound waves off nearby objects, your ego pinpoints its own presence – defines itself - by relating to people, ideas, and objects around it.

This process is continuous. Your identity must be continuously reinforced or you will quite literally lose sense of who you are.

That’s why it can be so very threatening to have something or somebody confronting your ego – your beliefs about yourself, others or world. Since ego is actually made out of these beliefs, perspectives and opinions, and you identify ego as ‘you’, when your beliefs are threatened it can feel just like a threat to your very survival.

Quite simply, more you get to be ‘right’ about things, more real and solid you feel, and more you have to be ‘wrong’, more threatened and diminished.

WHO ARE YOU REALLY?

This would be really bad news if not for fact that there is another part of you. This part – your core essence, your authentic self – has an intrinsic reality. Unlike your ego-based identity, its existence is not dependent upon outside circumstances or stories. And unlike your ego, it’s not threatened by someone else’s success, or enhanced by their failure. In fact, opposite is true.

You could visualize your ego/identity as like surface of ocean; changeable, vulnerable, reflecting sun, sky, and clouds, affected by every wind. Your core is vast, calm, still, deep water beneath. Those deep mysterious waters teem with every kind of life and potential, but this life is invisible from surface.

All transformation involves a process of seeing beneath changeable surface and connecting with vast deep life-giving waters beneath. This process usually involves a level of discomfort as your identity is shaken out of its placid solid form and made to expand and reflect a deeper level of reality.

But it’s worth it.

MY LITTLE WAKE-UP CALL

Last year I had a very typical experience from which I learned an uncommon lesson.

I was upstairs in my bedroom. My husband was late getting home and had failed to call me to let me know. I wasn’t really worried about him, but I still began to get more and more agitated by fact that he hadn’t come home when he said he would.