Because of the true nature of the pursuit of success (the bondage of "ego"), several additional behavioral patterns come with it:

• Constant comparison between ourselves and others around us (jealousy or resentment).

• Competition/the desire to be more (something) than the rest.

• Depression when the picture doesn't look good enough.

• Anxiety when we fear the results of the "game."

• Even when we win - worry that everything will be taken away from us tomorrow.

Spirituality is not a set of beliefs, opinions, and theories about life and the world, not sweet New Age ideas full of love and optimism, and it has nothing to do with anything like: channeling, cards, numerology, or practical Kabbalah. It is not about searching for and trying to find "tricks" that will help us manipulate the world (and its creator) in order to realize our desires, fulfill our dreams, and gain protection from troubles, illnesses, or pain. Spirituality is only related to a type of state of consciousness, in which we are aware of a dimension of life that goes beyond the material and practical aspects. This dimension cannot be defined in words and concepts. In this dimension we do not make use of the world, or even try to accumulate experiences in it or knowledge about it. In this dimension there is no purpose, nor desires or expectations, there is no order in it, and there is no reason or cause in it. We are hardly allowed to talk about it with others - it is so personal and private and unique. It is impossible to give it meaning and purpose, but it gives meaning and purpose to all the rest of life.

We have a very strong pattern of creating drama and resisting what is happening/crying/and self-pity built into us.
These reinforce within us the sense of self-identity and in a "fake" way, because of experiences that usually originate in our childhood, we think that this will achieve something for us.

When speaking of the heart, the value of things is internal, and is not judged by how they are valued by the world.

We perceive our thinking as a voluntary activity that we initiate and carry out. However, in reality, thinking is not done by us but happens to us – like breathing and digestion.

Once we begin to view our suffering as something we create, rather than the world outside of us, it immediately diminishes or even ceases.

When we detect hustle, restlessness, or tension within ourselves, we are called to look within ourselves, and examine what it is that is throwing us off balance. This is part of our compass mechanism that directs us to action and right direction.

Love has no reasons. All the factors that seem to us to underlie and be behind it are not really the reasons for love. This is true of love between humans as well as of all other types of love.

The value of things is determined only by the happiness and peace they inspire in us. Every experience in this dimension is unique and cannot be measured or compared to other experiences.

Many of us who experience difficulties in our lives develop an expectation that the world will magically bring abundance into our lives, without taking any responsibility for creating abundance ourselves.
In doing so, we forget our duty to build a "world" for ourselves, diligently and persistently, in which there will be love and abundance (in order to receive, one must give!)

Everything that happens in the world is the result of an infinite chain of causes and events, and therefore nothing could have happened differently than it did. One of the practices with the greatest power to contribute to our lives is the practice of "accepting reality," what we call "going with life." We all recognize the wisdom in this way of behaving, but we don't necessarily recognize that it is something that can be practiced and become a habit.

The Spirit asks us to live less out of a search for achievements and the control of our will over reality and more out of attentiveness, acceptance, and flow with what is happening. It is advisable not to give in to the urge to know as much as possible all the time. There is value in not knowing and remaining in question and wonder. Attaching labels of "good" and "bad" to everything in the world that happens in our lives is the original sin of eating from the tree of knowledge, because of which we were expelled from the Garden of Eden. The insight in this myth is that this habit leads to the loss of our animals, flattens our world and makes it barren.

Most of our stress and anxiety stem from several distortions:

• The exaggeration of the importance of things that are perceived as being capable of being taken from us.

• Overestimating our ability to achieve our goals – just because we want to.

• And sometimes a lack of faith in the little ability we do have.

Our ego is a messenger on behalf of our desires and passions, and it is developed as a means to realize them: by striving to obtain the resources and abilities required to satisfy them, and to ensure our existence. But the golem has risen up against its creator! Instead of it "working" for us, we find ourselves "working" for it. Instead of constantly acting from our desire (to achieve and acquire things), we would be better off if we acted from our heart (according to what we love), and from what we feel we are called to do. We tend to take what happens to us "personally". The people around us usually do nothing "for" us! They just do!

We have a distortion in our urge to blame people and in our refusal to forgive them when they hurt us. The result: we are trapped in our pain and in our sense of victimhood. The source of all "crimes" is unconsciousness, so there is no room for blame and anger. Everything that is done "against us" is done out of unconsciousness.

You can never (truly) learn anything from people and certainly not from books. Learning can only be done through our own experiences in life. ("The Heralds of God's Grasp")

True recognition usually begins after great disappointment with "the world" and what it offers, and with the formation of dissatisfaction with it.

 

Perhaps the most important insight for our lives is this: that we have a choice in how we experience life! We have very little choice in our life circumstances: our skills, our appearance, our health, and even our character and temperament. But we have infinite and absolute choice in how we respond to what life brings to our doorstep.
Most of us resist this idea and even rebel against it and get angry when it is suggested to us to adopt this insight. But it is very true – those who feel poor and miserable choose to feel this way – but they can always choose differently! It can sometimes be very difficult to change such choices and habits, and require prolonged practice and enormous effort – but it is our choice.

The ego loves to feel "more" and "special." Therefore, it creates an uncontrollable urge for competitiveness, and also constantly finds "enemies," complains about the whole world and finds fault with it.

"There is nothing more whole than a broken heart..." – When the heart is broken – when everything is taken from us – the mind stops and then sometimes we are allowed, despite the pain, to connect with beauty/love/and joy – for the experience of which we do not require strength and achievements.

One of the main sources of our suffering is the disconnection from our source, which is what gives us our life, and our wisdom of the heart, beauty and high awareness. When we acquire the ability to live "like a tree planted by streams of water", and feel our life, joy and love return to us. First, the "situations" themselves come to us, when they are neutral (neither bad nor good) and then we add comments to them and label them as "good" / "bad" / "great" / "terrible" / or "unbearable"... After that, we see only the compound we have created (situation and interpretation) and lose the ability to separate the two.

From the perspective of "the spirit," no choice we make or path we take is a mistake. In every path we learn something, and it builds who we become. We may be moving away from the goal we think we are supposed to reach. But what do we understand?!

How can we recognize the insights within us that come from the spiritual world? From the wisdom of the Universe?
These insights always come with calm and certainty, without fuss and drama, and without speculation and soul-searching. They always relate to the immediate present and have an element of a call to action addressed to us, in love. These insights are never accompanied by negative emotions (such as anger, resentment, jealousy, or anxiety).

When we are connected to the truth, and we are authentic in our positions, we never have any need to convince anyone of their validity or truth.

Deep within our nature is a longing to find love, beauty, and truth, and a longing for something we once had and lost. In this longing lies the power to direct us to the place that is right for us. However, most of us are not in touch with this longing, and instead of responding to this call, we prefer to seek entertainment/ excitement / and distraction.

 

Loss of property/partner/or honor can feel like death because these things are a source of our identity. It is completely normal and adaptive to want to satisfy our needs and to be angry and attack those who threaten our existence. But there is no use and place for negative emotions with great intensity against the sources of the "threat" to us, because usually the great intensity is not created in response to a real threat - but only in response to a threat to the ego.

We are advised to always see the glass as half full and not half empty. But those who are truly able to concentrate on what is there and not what is not there do not see the glass as half full, but as a whole glass.

Real relationships with people around us are always based on curiosity, attention, wonder and caring. We have no intention of using these people, and getting something out of them, not even to make us feel better about ourselves. Treating people as objects to fulfill our needs will almost always produce anger or disappointment. When we treat others as objects, we ourselves become objects. When we stop seeing their soul, we also lose the ability to feel our own soul.
When "negative" or problematic things happen to us, at first we only experience the anger and suffering they arouse in us, and it seems to us that everything about these things is "bad." From a distance, we can almost always, if we develop the habit of doing so, see a kernel of "good" hidden there. If we persist in this, the habit of quickly defining things as good or bad will weaken within us, and instead we will suspend judgment until their nature and place in our lives are revealed and deciphered more deeply. As a result, we may develop an awareness of the possibility of the existence of a "higher order" in reality.

The true joy of life, the joy that a dog has that wags its tail and a bird that chirps that jumps from branch to branch, cannot come from anything external: a possession, an achievement, an event, or a person in our lives. It stems only from consciousness itself.

Loss, illness and death are inevitable, as are physical pain, restlessness, stress and fear, but they are only responsible for pain and not suffering. Suffering is produced by the mind, through the story in our head and our war with reality.

It is a very common mistake to think that we even know what is good for us. We only know what we want! And that is not necessarily what is good for us. We see the truth of this over and over again, but it is very difficult for us to internalize it.

It is important to learn to recognize within our lives the guidance that life provides us through the inner voice within us, and through images and insights that arise within us spontaneously, without invitation, without desire on our part, and without any effort (as opposed to directing ourselves through planning and practical analytical thought).

We have great resistance and difficulty accepting the fact of our dependence on others. Instead of accepting and believing in the goodness of the people we depend on, loving them, acknowledging their gratitude, and developing generosity toward others, many of us prefer to grumble about it, get angry, and become frustrated and narrow-minded about it.
Many of us prefer to develop greed, envy, and helplessness, and feel humiliated by this dependence.