CHAPTER 1
Keter — The Crown
We are fortunate enough to live in a world that off ers infinite possibilities for exploring not just the realm of "what is" but the realm of "what could be."
— Liane Gabora and Scott Barry Kaufman
To arrive at knowledge slowly, by one's own experience, is better than to learn by rote, in a hurry, facts that other people know, and then, be glutted with words, to lose one's own free, observant and inquisitive ability to study.
— Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (1746–1827)
Keter, the first Sephirah, is associated with the head, leadership, or a crown. The crown of your head sits atop the thoughts and ideas that lead you into action. Keter is where you feel empowered, just as our creator felt empowered when "in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth" (Genesis 1:1 NIV). Keter is known by the divine name Ehyeh, which means "I shall be."
"I shall be in Elizabeth's life," or so I believed. I maintained that belief despite the fact that she came by my dorm room on Monday, April 17, and said, "We need to talk. My feelings for you have changed." Over the next four years, Elizabeth and I stayed in touch with each other. Every now and then, she would respond to me romantically, but most of the time that was not the case. When my romantic gestures were not reciprocated, I felt deeply pained, but I never tried to distract myself from or desensitize myself to those painful feelings. I needed to understand why I felt the way I did, and I thought that those painful feelings would teach me what I needed to know. As it turned out, what I needed to know was how to change my way of thinking.
Making Changes to How We Think
Being rejected repeatedly by Elizabeth didn't feel good. According to Buddhist philosophy, my attachment to Elizabeth resulted in suffering. Fortunately, I don't suffer that way anymore. So how did things change?
Changing the way you think can make a big difference in how you feel. You don't ordinarily think about how you think — you just do it. You don't think about each breath either. You just breathe. But there's a lot going on behind every thought that reaches your consciousness.
For every conscious thought, neuroscientists have estimated that you have a million times more activity in those areas of the brain that are involved in subconscious thought — a million times! Sometimes with insight and effort you can figure out what's going on in your subconscious, thereby, some subconscious thoughts get transformed into conscious ones.
As an example of this kind of insight, imagine the subconscious activity that happens while you're getting dressed for work: What if I don't shave or wear matching shoes? What if I leave late for work or my car looks messy? What if my colleagues notice that I'm late or that my car needs to be washed? What if a colleague is critical of me because they noticed my shoes, my beard, my tardiness, my car, or what I said or didn't say when I greeted them? What if getting a promotion or being laid off depends on what I wear, how I smell, what I drive, and whether people relate to me in a positive way? Will others' view of me affect whether I get promoted or fired? Will it affect whether coworkers include me in their after-work activities? If I am fired, what if I can't find another job? If I don't have a job, how will I feed myself and my family? Who would want to hang around a loser like me?
As you decided which pair of shoes to wear to work, your subconscious mind used that minor decision to form all these seemingly logical connections. With a million times more activity going on in your subconscious than in your conscious thoughts, this example represents only the tip of the iceberg. Subconscious activity influences markedly why some people don't care much about their appearance, whereas others dress immaculately. Your subconscious remembers how you were cuddled as a child and a myriad of interactions with your peers, family members, romantic partners, and authority figures through the years. There is too much subconscious activity going on for you to be fully aware of all the factors that influence your conscious thoughts. But there are some major themes to your thought patterns that will allow you to get a handle on how you think and — more importantly — perceive the world.
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein, Time magazine's choice as the most important person of the twentieth century, changed how we perceive the world. Not an immaculate dresser, he preferred a casual, Bohemian appearance. However, he was meticulous when it came to evolving theories regarding physics, energy, and the origins of the universe.
Einstein's childhood and adolescent precociousness extended beyond the sciences to social matters as well. In 1895, at age sixteen, he had already had enough of Germany. Einstein found his first high school so highly regimented and German culture so militaristic that he renounced his German citizenship. He then transferred to a high school in Aarau, Switzerland, where the teaching methods of Johann Pestalozzi were practiced. (See quotation at the beginning of this chapter.) The Pestalozzi method incorporates the Buddha's approach to getting at the truth, which is to seek knowledge and insight through experience, the senses, and reason. At Einstein's new school, teachers encouraged students to learn through active participation rather than rote learning. Einstein's critical thinking was then able to soar even higher.
Pestalozzi's teaching methods were first championed in the United States by the educator Edward Austin Sheldon, who was born on 10/4/1823. It's fascinating how the numbers 10, 4, 18, and 23 — all found in Sheldon's birthday — match the Ten Commandments from Moses, the Four Noble Truths from Buddha, the number 18 for the eternal chai found in Jesus, and the twenty-three years of revelations from Muhammad.
Numbers can reveal the connection of ideas and beliefs across multiple cultures. Furthermore, when those ideas and beliefs come together, as they do in the four bases of the Golden Rule, profound insights will follow and you'll start to understand that the forces of attraction (pleasure) and repulsion (pain) have been influencing your day-to-day living, often without your conscious awareness. You will also begin to appreciate that the forces of attraction and repulsion derive their initial energy, as do all forces, from the big bang that formed the universe.
Perhaps the most practical insight is not how the various forms of energy led to the formation of the universe, but how they can form a conscience that knows right from wrong and has compassion for all people. This compassion can free your mind from all the things you think you need to feel worthy and validated. You are freed because your conscience assures you that just by being human, you already have all the value you'll ever need.
When you stop worrying about what you think others are thinking about you, more of your conscious brain is available to focus on other things. With this enhanced focus and awareness, you increase dramatically your ability to acquire knowledge through your senses, experience, logic, and reason. The Golden Rule can change the way you view the world, just as it did for Einstein. With a social conscience so highly developed at an early age, Einstein's view of reality was closer to the truth than anything that had come before.
Einstein is most remembered for the equation E = mc2, which translates as energy equals mass times the squared speed of light, but his most profound statement actually came in the form of a question.
When asked, "If you could come back five hundred years from now, what question would you like answered?" Einstein responded with four words: "Is the universe friendly?" Applied to our personal lives, this question has great significance. After we receive information about other people, will we perceive them as being friendly? In chapter 6, I'll explain why your answer to this question might be the single most important factor in your health and well-being.
Bob Dylan's opening line to "Positively 4th Street" addresses the question raised by Einstein: "You got a lotta nerve to say you are my friend." Is Dylan singing about a specific person or the universe itself?
The Speed of Light Defined Mystically
According to physics, 3 × 108 meters/second is the speed of light in a vacuum. Let the number 3 represent the love found in Christianity's Holy Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. From kabbalah, the numbers 10 and 8 form chai ("life" in Hebrew), as I explained in the introduction. When we reexamine the numerical expression for the speed of light, 3 × 108, does it mean that Christian love (3) combined with a Jewish Life (108) moves us at light speed? You do the math. Jesus did.
Reception and Perception of Divine Energy
Einstein's vision removed the blinders that just about everyone else wore when it came to the laws of physics. He realized that the three dimensions of space (height, length, and depth) are intertwined with time in a four-dimensional time-space continuum. He also realized that our frame of reference affects our reality. According to Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity, as an object approaches movement at the speed of light, time slows down and the object's mass enlarges without limit, such that the object can never travel faster than the speed of light. If you moved at light speed, time would halt and the past, present, and future would be occurring simultaneously. Your mass would become infinite and be equal to the mass of the entire universe.
Jehovah (JHVH)
As outlined in Einstein's theory of special relativity, humans can travel at the speed of light only in our imaginations. We can also imagine surpassing the speed of light using "warp drive," as depicted in Star Trek, but obviously this is not reality. In a mystical sense, however, we can surpass the speed of light if we think of imagination as a form of enlightenment. Was not Einstein enlightened, and was not Star Trek a most imaginative TV series set in the twenty-third century? According to Einstein's principles of special relativity, when any mass — human or nonhuman — reaches the speed of light, time comes to a complete stop and that mass becomes equivalent to the mass of the entire universe. In this sense of enlightenment, we truly do become one with everything.
Most of us can't imagine this ultimate timeless reality. Even more difficult is trying to imagine its creator, which is precisely why God is thought of as all parts of time rolled into one — past, present, and future. As "the one who was, is, and will be," God is expressed by the Hebrew letters Yod, He, Waw, and He — or YHWH when transliterated into Latin letters. These four letters are not an actual word but rather the Tetragrammaton — four letters that represent God's all-encompassing nature. We hear it as Yahweh or more commonly Jehovah (JHVH), from the German in which J = Y and V = W, as in Jehovah's Witness.
One with Everything
Standing with his pushcart in front of the United Nations building, a hot-dog vendor asked the Dalai Lama what he would like. Handing the vendor a twenty-dollar bill, the Dalai Lama said, "Make me one with everything." When he got his hot dog with ketchup, mustard, relish, and sauerkraut, the Dalai Lama asked, "Where's my change?"
"Ah," said the vendor, "don't you know? Change comes from within."
Einstein's change came from within when his visionary thinking removed the blinders worn by other scientists and he saw the bigger picture. What about you? Can you go through life without blinders and see the bigger picture? Unfortunately most of us suffer from confirmation bias, which means that we see only what we want to see. We look for information that confirms what we already believe to be true, and discard or devalue other ideas or points of view. We often tell people what we think they want to hear, rather than feeling confident that the truth or our own ideas deserve to be heard. In some situations, we are downright afraid to express what we're truly thinking.
Politicians are famous for telling people what they want to hear while keeping their real intentions hidden. It's not uncommon to hear a politician declare that our nation's Founding Fathers knew best. The TV show Father Knows Best typified the period of the 1950s when the questioning of authority was not in the mainstream. In contrast, the 1960s were far more turbulent owing in part to the widespread questioning of authority by a large segment of baby boomers. These baby boomers were critical of what they perceived to be the hidden intentions of people in positions of power and authority. Those who didn't agree with these baby boomers, similarly, were critical of what they saw as the hidden intentions of people challenging the status quo.
We tend to be critical of people who don't agree with us. Conservatives are uptight, liberals lack a backbone, and hippies are lazy. I like John's clean-cut looks but not George's biker tattoos. Real men don't eat quiche. We use criticism to raise the status of the group or "pack" with which we identify and to raise our own status within that group. We want others to love us and our values because that means that our status in the pecking order is rising. But if we aren't loved, then we want others to be afraid of us and of what we can do to them if we're displeased.
It is natural to use criticism to elevate your status, but if your criticisms are wrought with prejudice, then you're no longer following the Golden Rule. Prejudicial thoughts turn you into a spin doctor, much like the highly critical political pundits in the media. Unlike Sean Hannity or Rachel Maddow, however, your spinning is done below the radar in your subconscious.
Using values to elevate our standing is an example of one of the ways in which we compete. Competition is instinctual and puts the blinders on. It narrows your field of vision quicker than you can say "Jackie Robinson."
Much of the time people don't realize that they are competing. Competition, in a large way, underlies the formation of your identity based on family, community, religion, philosophy, profession, political persuasion, nation, race, marital status, sexual orientation, and gender. Schoolmates, coworkers, friends, sports teams, fashion, music, and almost any interest can become a part of your identity, which determines the group, pack, clique, or tribe within which you function.
Like a wolf within a pack of wolves, your subconscious mind thinks that your group or tribe is more deserving of valuable "hunting grounds" than other groups and that you should be prepared to do whatever it takes to maintain this position of superiority. Furthermore, you want to be sure that your position in your group's pecking order is high enough so that there will be enough meat left on the carcass when it is your turn to eat. However, all of this activity is happening primarily within your subconscious thoughts.
People choose values, often subconsciously, on the basis of what is acceptable to authorities who could raise or lower their position in the pecking order. Also, we often modify our values to appear attractive to those people to whom we are attracted. We typically advocate for values that could enhance our holdings, generate positive attention, or increase our access to fun and pleasure. However, our values often contain prejudices, biases, and inequities. For example, the clothes worn by a defendant in the courtroom might subconsciously influence whether they are found innocent or guilty, even though we consciously know that clothing shouldn't have any bearing whatsoever. Show up in court dressed one way and you're innocent, but another way — guilty. Any four-year-old would know that this isn't right.
