The Story You Tell

In Elul, there is only one thing to repair

Elul is the most important month of the year, the one that leads to the two most important days of all. The work of this month is called Teshuvah, and we almost always understand it as an inventory: looking back, reviewing what we did and did not do, remembering whom we hurt and whom we should have helped more.

Michael Berg goes straight to the centre and reduces all of it to a single item. Certainty. Walking back through the year and remembering every moment of fear, every moment of doubt, every time we did not trust that what was happening came from the Light of the Creator and was therefore for our benefit.

He immediately admits what that implies. If everything comes from the Light of the Creator, then there should be no fear, no doubt, no worry, and there should be only happiness all the time. And he adds, with the honesty the whole class carries: that was not our experience this year.

The Koach haMedameh, the force that creates stories

To help us with this work, Michael Berg brings a teaching from Menachem Mendel of Breslav, and warns that it fits in a single word, but has to be expanded before it becomes consciousness. The kabbalist starts from a verse in Hoshea, Hosea: in the hands of the prophets I place the power of creativity.

That is one way to translate the phrase Koach haMedameh. And here Michael Berg opens a question he deliberately leaves open: do animals dream? Do animals create stories? Why does each of us carry this capacity, and where does it come from?

The answer comes from Rav Ashlag, and it is the axis of the entire class: any ability we have exists for one purpose only, to bring us closer to the Light of the Creator. If that is so, the verse in Hosea changes meaning. The prophets were the teachers of their generation because their Koach haMedameh was repaired. And this, and nothing else, is what a spiritual teacher is for.

97% of problems are invented stories

Michael Berg speaks as someone who has been answering the phone for decades. There are the 3% of real problems. But 97% of the time that people call him with a problem, the problem is the Koach haMedameh. It is a story that was made up. Why is this person behaving toward me this way? Why am I afraid of this?

The test he offers is simple and disarms almost everything. The person is afraid of flying. Is something happening right now? Of course not. If it were, it would not be fear, it would be reality. Fear is always the story of a future that has not arrived.

And he pushes the test deeper, to where it hurts. Even when there is a real problem right now, that is not what we are suffering from. The problem as it exists today, can you handle it? Yes, I can handle it. What weighs is the story that the problem might get bigger.

Certainty is also a story, the true one

This is the turn of the class. Something difficult happens, a call from a doctor, from a lawyer, from a friend. Michael Berg does not pretend the fact is other than it is: if you look only at what is happening, it is not good. Certainty is not denying that.

Certainty is creating an alternative story. Even without seeing how, this must come from the Light of the Creator, which is pure essence of goodness, and therefore it will ultimately manifest as something good. And he presses on the detail that changes everything: that story is not obvious when you are inside the moment. You have to create it.

He even disagrees with teachers who say one should only look at reality. None of us lives pure reality. We are creating stories every single day of our lives. What Kabbalah asks is not that we stop creating, but that we create the true one, what he calls Emunah HaKedoshah, pure holy certainty.

A zero-sum game, a hundred parts a day

Here is the heart of the teaching, and Michael Berg presents it as arithmetic. You woke up today with about a hundred parts of Koach haMedameh, the force that lets you create a story. Your husband, your wife, your child, a friend says something. And you start creating.

Usually a negative story. Sixty parts on the hurt and the disappointment. Then something else happens, and the anger comes: how dare he. There go the forty that were left. Michael Berg puts it plainly: you used 100% of your story-creating force to create two false stories.

And then the call from the doctor comes. The person is spiritual, maybe they study at the Centre, and they know exactly what they need to do: awaken certainty. They want to, desperately. They will open the Zohar, go to their teacher, call their friends. But the reservoir is gone. The force to create that story has already been spent.

Five parts of a hundred, and the blessings that never arrive

Michael Berg takes the arithmetic to its end, and this is where the class becomes uncomfortable. Why did the Creator give me a hundred parts of Koach haMedameh when I woke up? Not for no reason. It was because, in order for me to reveal the Light I am meant to reveal today, I need 100% of that force to create stories of certainty.

So the arithmetic inverts and starts counting what was lost. I get upset, I create a negative story, I spend five parts out of a hundred.

He says he hopes this is not only fundamental but also frightening. And he does not leave it abstract. Today, he promises, you will have about a hundred opportunities to create a negative story. The instruction is one word: stop. Remind yourself that the reservoir is limited and that you are going to need all of it.

Every story compounds reality

A man wakes up, his wife says something he does not like. It was a two-second interaction. But now the story comes: she does not appreciate me, how could she speak to me like that. Thirty per cent of the day's force, spent. He will be upset for six hours, and Michael Berg says that alone would already be bad enough.

Except that is not the worst of it. The negative story does not stay inside your experience. It encapsulates a reality that is negative too.

And the reverse is equally true, which makes certainty far more than a mental posture. A friend calls to tell you that someone said the worst about you. You stop and say: this is from the Light of the Creator, therefore it is for my benefit. You drew from the same reservoir and created a positive story. Certainty transformed the situation, and anger would have transformed it too, the other way. You compound either the blessing or the curse. Both multiply.

The two false stories about yourself

We live in what the kabbalists call the Alma deShikra, the world of lies, and so much of what we tell ourselves about ourselves is not positive. Michael Berg picks two to work on this month.

The first: I already do enough, I am a spiritual person, everything is fine here. He says one of the funniest things he has seen is someone who thinks they are spiritual, perhaps even teaching spirituality, and it takes two seconds to realise they are not. It is Lavan's answer, the man the Torah shows as a cheat and a liar: who are you? I am Lavan, I am pure white. And the effect of that story is precise: by under-appreciating my true force, I allow myself to live a small life.

The second is the exact opposite, and he names it by the name we use today: impostor syndrome. Someone doing extraordinary things and thinking inside that they should not be there, that they have no right. Both are the Koach haMedameh writing fiction about us.

The Psalm 27, and what is available on this Shabbat

If the entire work of Elul is to repair the Koach haMedameh, then we understand why the kabbalists instituted reading Psalm 27 every day of this month. Michael Berg is emphatic about it, and says the recommendation is not his: the kabbalists have said for thousands of years that whoever reads the Psalm daily has a powerful Elul and a powerful Rosh Hashanah, almost guaranteed.

But he immediately corrects the form. It is not about saying Psalm 27, it is about experiencing Psalm 27, understanding every word. The Creator is my light and my salvation. Once you are connected that way, it does not matter what negative thing comes close, or what I think is coming close. There is no fear.

And then the portion closes the circle. Shoftim carries the whole story of the battle, and when the battle comes, the Creator says, the purpose is a different one.

Michael Berg closes with a teaching from the kabbalist Dibre Emet, and with a warning that disarms any easy enthusiasm. It is not enough to hear a class, walk out inspired and promise that from today you will only create positive stories. That will not happen. The pathways are damaged, and not from one year alone: from previous years and previous incarnations.

This is why, he says, we have to beg on this Shabbat. That is the purpose of reading the Torah portion of Shoftim in the month of Elul: every word we hear is there to repair the Koach haMedameh. And what is on offer is not small. Michael Berg says that once the connection is made, it is possible to lose the ability to create a negative story, ever again. Whether it happens, he adds, depends on each person's own connection.