A Hundred Moments of Appreciation

The one thing the Creator asks

The verse in Ekev asks a simple question: what does the Creator ask of you? Rav Meir answers with a number. One hundred blessings a day, every day, without exception.

Michael Berg says at the outset that the whole lecture is about one secret, with three secrets inside it. And he already knows what will happen to us when we hear it.

The sentence is beautiful until you turn it inside out, which is exactly what he does. If living this removes all lack, then every lack you are living today comes from not living this. It is not a promise, it is a diagnosis.

A hundred people were dying every day

The Talmud tells that in the days of King David a plague took a hundred people a day. David gathered the people and said there was only one way to stop it: each of them would have to awaken a hundred moments of appreciation a day. They did, and the plague ended.

Kabbalistically, we are never reading historical accounts. The story is about one person, and that person is you. Each of us is made of a hundred spiritual parts, and the hundred people dying were the hundred parts of a soul nobody woke up.

Michael Berg describes the day with uncomfortable realism. A person opens their eyes already thinking it is late, that there is this and that to solve. The day fills with disappointment and with a lack of appreciation, and their soul never wakes.

Each moment wakes 1/100 of the soul

Here is the mechanism, and it is quite literal. Each true moment of appreciation wakes one hundredth of your soul. The sooner you reach a hundred, the sooner the soul is alive, and the more hours of the day are left in which to receive.

The body wakes in many ways: the alarm, the coffee, a cold shower. The soul has only one way.

Appreciation comes before the blessing

The first of the three kabbalists is the author of the Sefer HaChinuch, a book from the thirteenth century. And what he opens is the point where almost everyone gets it wrong.

In other words, the hundred moments are not only for what you already have. Half of them are for what you do not yet have and the Creator has already set aside for you. The Essence of the Creator is to give, so everything you lack is already prepared, waiting for a passage.

Appreciation is that passage. Michael Berg calls it the switch, and says it has to be true, complete, real. A word said without consciousness turns nothing on.

Why you have lack

He tells of a conversation from the night before. Someone worried about finding their soulmate. And the question he returns is about certainty, in parts: the Light of the Creator exists, it surrounds me, it desires to do good, and in this case it wants me to find that person. As long as any part of that consciousness is scrambled, nothing manifests.

And then he brings something he heard from a hospice nurse, on a podcast he recorded with Monica Berg. One of the greatest regrets of those leaving this world is missing having a desire for things.

Go back then to the person worried about their soulmate, and the question moves. Do you even appreciate having that desire? It still pulses in you, and one day it will no longer be there.

Blessings are not payment

The second kabbalist is Rav Ashlag, and his secret dismantles an idea almost every student carries: that spiritual work exists to bring blessings. Michael Berg answers that with a single word. Wrong.

He uses deliberately ordinary examples: a steak you enjoy, the money in your account. Pleasure does not exist for its own sake. It exists so you recognise the Source inside it and come closer. That is devekut, unification.

And from there comes the severe part. A blessing used this way grows, because the Creator sees someone drawing near and wants more nearness. A blessing you receive without attaching it to the Source loses its reason to exist, and what has no reason to exist diminishes.

A hundred, ten, one

The third kabbalist is the Recanati, and perhaps the deepest of the three. He starts from ma'aser: a person has a hundred and gives ten to the Levi, the Levi has ten and gives one to the Kohen. A hundred, ten, one. And that ladder is not about money.

It is the map of the three levels of the soul. The hundred moments of appreciation wake the Nefesh. The Nefesh sets aside the ten purest and hands them to the Ruach. The Ruach sets aside the most powerful of all, just one, and hands it to the Neshamah. And only the Neshamah connects directly to the Light of the Creator.

Now the detail that stings. Michael Berg gives the example of someone who had ninety moments today. Ninety is almost everything, and still the chain does not close: the Nefesh half wakes, the Ruach does not receive enough to wake the Neshamah, and the Neshamah does not reach the Endless.

Why you woke up today

Midway through the lecture he stops and asks the room: why did you wake up this morning? The answers come easily. To take care of my family, to make a connection, to reveal Light. And he answers with a flat no.

In this week's portion the Creator leaves no margin. I am asking you only one thing. Nothing we do, physically or spiritually, weighs as much as securing today's hundred moments of appreciation.

And it does not end with you. The Sefer HaChinuch teaches that the only prayer to make for the world is that everyone come to know this secret.

He closes by asking us to watch it again. Not because the lecture is beautiful, but because we do not study this in order to have heard a good class. We study it to change the way we live.