Kabbalah: Upside Down? Inside Out?

Have you ever looked at your life and just simply wondered? What is this all about? Why am I here? What should I be doing? Why do I feel so badly so much of the time? Why does getting hired feel good and getting released feel awful? Why is the birth of a baby a joy to be celebrated and the death of a loved one deeply grieved?

These very questions are the same ones that have been asked throughout the ages. Every religion and philosophy has attempted to answer these very basic questions. The answers are logical. They make sense. And yet, something is missing. The individual receiving the answer is not able to sense it. And there lies the problem.

The ancient wisdom of Kabbalah not only answers these very profound questions, but also offers the promise of sensing the reality of our existence in a very different manner. What if all the perceptions we are experiencing are simply not what we think they are? What in the world does that mean?

In our lives there are many examples of misperceptions. We evaluate our world by our five senses. Based on the perception of those senses, we calculate whether something is good or bad. That calculation is decided by the individualized perception of the perceiver. An example is that one individual loves the taste of vanilla ice cream. A different individual cannot even eat vanilla ice cream and loves chocolate ice cream.

The flavors of vanilla and chocolate remain the same. The calculation is assessed by the sense of taste of the perceiver. Seeing how perception calculates the sensation, what happens if one's perception is off? What if the perceiver is not perceiving reality in the correct form?

So now let us go back to these questions. Most of the world believes that we are here on this planet to be teachers, doctors, or stockbrokers. Our goal is to be a good wife or father. We are born, educated, work and die. That is our life here on earth.

Or, is it? What if the reality is that our life here is for a specific reason? Maybe our life here is to experience something we have not yet realized. Most of us have experienced a yearning for something we cannot quite grasp. It is as though no matter what we have, there is still something missing.

When that feeling occurs, the basic questions in the first paragraph of this article take on a life of their own. The questions become a living, breathing entity and one feels the importance of getting these questions answered. In fact, the feeling becomes more and more powerful. It becomes a driving force in one's life. In some people, it eventually becomes the reason for one's life.

According to Kabbalah, the only way to answer these questions is through the use of a sense we were not born with. We can call it a "sixth sense." It is what allows us to sense reality "right side up."

Until one feels the need to answer these life questions, he or she is not motivated to seek the missing sense. It would be like asking if you miss a sixth finger. Since we never had one, it is not missed. However, surely one would miss of their present five.

There is so much in our reality we are not sensing when we use only our five senses. And, that is how we are living our lives. We taste, smell, see, hear and touch. Those calculations form our reality. That is why our world seems at times to be upside down and inside out. Just notice in your daily life, how many times one of your perceptions is wrong.

The ancient wisdom of Kabbalah is comparable to a map that can change the way we live our lives. Changing one's perception can change one's life. This sentence sounds so simple. Changing the perception is much more challenging!