Spiritual Growth Through Faith and Group Work

Spiritual reality can only be perceived and activated within the ecology of a study group. Reading or studying alone is insufficient — like sperm and ovum that require first a petri dish and then a womb to divide and take on human form, the wills, desires, and understandings we carry must be inserted into that ecology in order to be modified, reformed, or shattered. Everything we bring into this environment is raw material requiring transformation; the group is the condition that makes that transformation possible, and the work itself is where these inner states can be sorted out rather than escaped.

The work involves holding an impossible tension: knowing that one does not have the freedom or permission to resign from the work, while simultaneously being unable to complete it. This is the condition of the small "he" — not the Creator, but the created. True Kabbalah, meaning true reception, is receiving this condition as it is — that we are partners, and our permission is to stay with it. When the will to receive for oneself grows into a monster and the impulse is to run, that is precisely the moment to activate the unseen power within, rooted in faith. If something has been revealed in me, it is the power behind that revelation that wishes me to evolve and reform it. My part is not to complete the work but to stay within it and not resign. This creates, step by step, the presence of oneself within the work.

In the beginning of creation there is as yet no sense of a "who" — no concealed part within the created. He and His Name are one. At the end of formation, the created and He are also one: the created becomes the vessel able to perceive the One and allow its presence. Faith above reason is the constant tool that draws one nearer to this quality, always moving above limitation and revealing the unseen. Working above the screen permits the growth of the spirit as return light, which then becomes a presence. Without growth of the spirit there is no faith, no image, and no face — we are after our faces, and this is the small he, the small who.