Kabbalistic Insights
by Thiago Moshe
What Kabbalah adds
to Louise Hay's affirmation
An affirmation by Louise Hay has circulated for decades, and it comes close to the secret Michael Berg opens in the portion of Ekev. Close enough that it is worth looking at where the two meet, and where one completes the other.
Shalem and Shalom come from the same root. In Hebrew, peace is not the absence of conflict but the state of being whole. That is why the affirmation and the portion speak of the same thing by different roads: when you know yourself whole in the eyes of the Light of the Creator, the inner war around what is missing simply stops.
"In the infinity of life where I am, all is perfect, whole and complete." The opening of the affirmation is kabbalistically correct, and more literal than it sounds.
At the level of the Light of the Creator there is no lack. Its Essence is to give, so the fulfilment of everything you need already exists and has already been set aside. Michael Berg says this plainly in the portion of Ekev: the Creator is waiting, waiting, waiting to hand it over.
So the sentence is not optimism. It is a description of the Source.
The affirmation goes on: I no longer choose to believe in old limitations and lack. And this is where Kabbalah asks for care.
Lack is not a false belief to be erased. Lack is the vessel. It is what makes you want, and without wanting there is no way to receive. A glass only fills because it is empty.
If you erase the lack, you erase the vessel with it, and then the Light has nowhere to enter. The work is not to stop feeling. It is to stop reading the lack as proof that nothing was prepared for you.
"I choose to see myself as the Universe sees me." That is the most beautiful line of the affirmation, and the Sefer HaChinuch says exactly what the Light of the Creator sees when it looks at you.
It sees someone for whom everything has already been set aside. Nothing is missing on that side. What is missing is the passage, and the passage is your work, not its work.
This is the practical difference, and it decides everything. A repeated affirmation is a sentence. Michael Berg is firm on this point: a word without consciousness turns nothing on.
Appreciation is something else. It has to be true, complete, real, and the body answers when it is. It is a hundred moments a day, half for what has arrived and half for what is still on its way.
Tape the affirmation on the mirror if it helps you. Just do not confuse reading the sentence with waking the soul. The first takes five seconds, and the second takes the whole day.
I stop believing in lack, because lack is an old limitation I carry without needing to.
I feel the lack and keep it, because it is the vessel. What I let go of is the reading that it proves nothing was prepared for me.
The affirmation is by Louise Hay (1926 to 2017), author of You Can Heal Your Life, and has circulated on cards and social media for decades. We quote only short excerpts; the rest is paraphrased.
The kabbalistic teaching comes from Michael Berg, Shabbat Ekev, 16 August 2025, The Kabbalah Centre, Los Angeles, from the part devoted to the Sefer HaChinuch.
The reading that brings the two together, the root of shalem and shalom and the image of the empty glass are a synthesis by Thiago Moshe · Kabbalistic Insights. Michael Berg never mentions Louise Hay.