Life seems very unfair sometimes, doesn’t it? Good people suffering, bad people having all types of good things. Some people are born rich, some poor; some healthy, some sick; some with good families, some with abusive families; some with intelligence, some not so intelligent. We can keep going on and on with all that seems unfair and unjust.
However, can we really believe that the Creator would allow injustice? Can we say that the Creator is unfair and shows favoritism?
I’m sure every one of us has personal examples of life being unfair. Mine started when I was 12 years old and my grandmother died. That was my first brush with death. All the rabbi could tell me was that we don’t know why God does what He does; we don’t know why God would take my grandmother from me. Can you imagine what I felt about God at that time in my life? It wasn’t very good. Over the next 8 years, I lost all my grandparents, my great aunt, cousin and my mother. It was the death of my mother that finally made me take another look at my beliefs about God and our purpose in this world. Thankfully, I found The Kabbalah Centre. Through the teachings of the Centre, I have been able to find answers that took away my anger and resentment towards the Creator, and brought me closer to his Light.
The real injustice is what religion – all religions – have perpetrated on humanity with the help of the Opponent, the human ego (if you are new to The Kabbalah Centre, please read the book Satan: An Autobiography): To influence us to believe that the Creator, the Light Force, can be unfair and unjust – that the Creator can give and take life randomly or whimsically and can be the source of chaos.
The Creator is the ultimate essence of love, compassion, caring, and all aspects of fulfillment. Therefore, kabbalistically speaking, the Creator cannot be the source of pain, suffering and chaos, for those things do not exist in the Creator. As Rav Berg and Karen Berg always remind us, “Light cannot create darkness; Light can only remove darkness.”
The point of this article is to understand the lesson what the portion of Mishpatim can teach us, and how we can make the most use of the energy of Mishpatim.
The kabbalists teach that the universe runs by cause and effect, without exception. Every action that a person engages in has a corresponding reaction in his or her life. For example, if a person hurts another out of anger, then in the future someone will act angrily towards that person. In both situations, the purpose is to overcome anger and transform the emotional energy of their anger into an action of tolerance, forgiveness, compassion or the like. That is what the kabbalists call tikun, or ‘correction’. If a person doesn’t transform their anger, then similar situations will continue to occur to that person until they learn to transform.
The same process happens with all of a person’s reactive behaviors. In the process of transformation, a person is converting their darkness to Light and their chaos to harmony and order, shining their Light into the world for the benefit of all.
The first sections of Mishpatim in the Zohar on explain reincarnation. This is to help us understand that not all of the effects or consequences of our actions will occur in one lifetime. Sometimes actions will have effects in the next lifetime. This is why there are so many things in life that ‘appear’ unfair or unjust. This also explains why people are born into certain circumstances.
Imagine a person that was mean-spirited in a past life. They might come back into their next life with mean-spirited parents, siblings, friends, teachers, etc. It is important for us to keep in mind that the purpose of those circumstances are to give an opportunity to the person to ‘pay off’ their spiritual debt from their past life actions, and to transform their behavior in this life to one more aligned with the Light.
Without the understanding of reincarnation as a part of the tikun process, then surely our five senses will see much injustice in the world. As we apply the wisdom of Kabbalah, then we see how the universe is perfectly balanced by cause and effect. Even if you can’t see the balance, the harmony of action/reaction, it will help your life to behave in a proactive, sharing manner in response to every situation in your life.
Also very important is to refrain from using this understanding as a means to judge people that are in difficult situations, or to dismiss them with a thought like, “It’s okay, they must deserve that from a past life.” We, the ‘bystanders’, are not to sit idly by watching the negativity in the world and do nothing about it because we believe it’s cause and effect. Each of us has the purpose of awakening from within a greater compassion for other people. We all have the purpose of acting in ways that share our Light, so that others may have a spiritual awakening, and so that by shining more and more Light into the world, we remove all forms of negativity from humanity. Sensitivity to the pain and suffering of other people, and engaging in actions to remove that pain and suffering, are the main attributes of true kabbalists and Kabbalah students. This is the mission of The Kabbalah Centre, to remove death, pain and suffering from the world by the spread of the Zohar and the wisdom of Kabbalah.
The energy of the portion of Mishpatim offers us support to heal our past lives’ mistakes through focusing on being more sharing and more proactive individuals, through each challenge that we face. Mishpatim gives us the power of knowing, with true certainty, that the universe is tilted in our favor, that the Creator is only Light and good, and that no matter how unfair or unjust things seem, everything happens to give us an opportunity to add more Light to our world and the world as a whole.
Mishpatim means ‘judgments’. Let us use this week’s Light to judge ourselves and others not from the illusion of our 5 senses, but as beings of Light in the process of manifesting our perfection.
Shabbat Shalom
Mishpatim is an accounting of the laws of cause and effect that can take place within one lifetime or be carried over from one lifetime to the next. This is one reason that reincarnation is explained in the Zohar portion of Mishpatim.
Judge only on your actions, don’t judge by circumstances. Remember that everything is cause and effect, even when you can’t see it nor understand it. Know that the universe is tilted in your favor and the Creator wants you to have it all; the only one that can enslave you to the illusion is you.
