The Secret Is in Today

The Rav's portion

Michael opens by saying that the week marked Rav Berg's birthday and that Re'eh has always held special meaning for his family and the Kabbalah Centre: it is the Rav's portion. This is why he chooses not to survey the whole portion, but to stop at its first verse.

Nothing in the Torah is extra. Michael recalls the Rav's teaching: we are not merely reading a story about Moses and the Israelites. We are receiving Moses' teachings today.

Blessing and curse, in the same verse

The opening verse says: רְאֵה אָנֹכִי נֹתֵן לִפְנֵיכֶם הַיּוֹם בְּרָכָה וּקְלָלָה, “See, this day I set before you blessing and curse” (Devarim 11:26). Michael notices something easy to miss: the word repeated throughout the portion is neither blessing nor curse. It is hayom, today.

The portion asks not only which path you choose, but how an action changes when it is done today instead of merely repeated.

Why the blessings do not arrive

Michael gives voice to a familiar question: I am spiritual, I do the work, I use the tools and I read the Zohar. Why, then, am I not manifesting the limitless blessings the Creator promises?

The answer lies in how the work is done. A practice can be correct and still be asleep. Completing a list of spiritual actions is not the same as living them with the consciousness of hayom.

The teaching is binary

Michael does not present a scale where one person is at level eight and another at level nine. He describes a binary truth: either we live and act in the state of hayom, or our spiritual life remains merely comfortable.

The laziness that impoverishes

Michael brings Rabbi Elazar's explanation of a verse from Kohelet: “through laziness, the roof collapses.” When spiritual work is done without the intensity of hayom, something in our connection grows weak.

He asks us to be precise: the Creator's Endless Light has always existed and always will. What becomes impoverished is our personal experience of that Light. In Michael's words, “your Creator is not my Creator.”

Days that live, days that die

Every action is a creation. Every day is a creation. Days that contain only weak spiritual actions done by habit become, in Michael's description, almost dead.

He connects this idea with a kabbalistic funeral custom: the children do not walk behind the procession. In the explanation he presents from the Zohar, the Ari and the kabbalists, this protects the soul from being followed by the weight of its weakened spiritual creations.

True teshuvah

On that Shabbat, Michael connects the teaching with the blessing of the month of Elul. The kabbalists teach that we can revive our weak days and actions from the past, but this movement begins when we sincerely say: “I can no longer remain in this state.”

This is the beginning of true teshuvah. Weakened actions stop weighing us down and can return as support and great Light. The refusal is not punishment. It is an awakening that also reaches everything we have created.

Living as though it were the first time

Michael's invitation is simple to say and difficult to sustain: to desire to live more and more of our lives in hayom, conscious that the Creator is asking for this action now for the first time.

What would your reading of the Zohar, Shabbat connection, prayers, meditations and acts of sharing be like? Completely different, Michael says. The class ends by joining individual work with a collective purpose.