Beyond a Shadow of a Doubt (KB)

This week’s portion, Beshalach, ends with what is called the “war of Amalek,” in which the children of Esau fight against the Israelites and lose. Kabbalistically, we understand that this war represented a spiritual struggle. When the Israelites originally came into the desert, they were coming to undergo a battle on the spiritual plane: a battle against their own doubts and negativity. You see, every human being, as long as he or she is in human form, will experience doubt and difficulty in accepting the spiritual rules of nature. In other words, doubt isn’t something that is an unusual quality. In the war against Amalek, for example, the Israelites were promised a sure victory (by the Creator Himself!), and yet they still had their doubts. Now, it doesn’t make us any “less spiritual” to have doubts. None of us, as long as we have breath in our lungs, will be immune to doubts. We have all doubted ourselves many times in life: where we are, what we are doing, whether what happens is all for the best. What we have in the cosmic fabric of this week is the ability to go beyond that space where doubts assail us. The ancient writings explain that the people of the generation in the desert were on a much higher level of consciousness than we are today. After all, the Israelites had Moses with them— Moses, who was in direct contact with God! That’s surely more than we have now. But while we don’t have a Moses in our generation to lead us through our spiritual desert, we do have an inborn ability as well as access to spiritual concepts that can bring us to a place of divineness of connection to the Creator. This week, through the use of the 72 Names of God (to learn about them click here http://ow.ly/XiqOY ), through our ability to use the spiritual tools, and through the understanding that we are the only ones who can truly enact change in our own lives, we can create a space of certainty to bring us forward on our way.