The Three Secrets of Prayer

The verse we have never tested in ourselves

The portion begins with Moshe praying, and the intensity of his prayer already points to what this Shabbat comes to reveal: the power of prayer. Later, we come to the verse.

Michael Berg asks an uncomfortable question of those who have studied at the Kabbalah Centre for years. Have you ever stopped before this verse and asked whether it is true for you? Can you say that you have reached this level, that whenever you call, the Creator is close and your prayer is answered?

He answers for all of us without embarrassment: no, that is not our state. Yet Moshe and the Creator are telling us on this Shabbat that this is the state we must reach. It is the ultimate purpose of all spiritual work.

Prayer is not reciting words

Here is the shift that holds everything else together, and it is radical enough to reorganize the spiritual life of anyone who takes it seriously.

Prayer is a state of being. It is not the text you read, how many times a day you read it, or the effort of repetition. It is a state of consciousness in which you are so close to the Light that when you call, you feel the closeness and assistance of the Creator's Light.

That is why the question in the previous insight is not an accusation. It is a diagnosis. If we have prayed three times a day for years and the verse still does not describe our lives, what we have done until now was not, technically, prayer.

The sages' guarantee and what it seems to be missing

The Midrash brings a teaching from the kabbalists about three things that must be done immediately after one another. Michael Berg focuses on the third: תֵּכֶף לִגְאֻלָּה תְּפִלָּה, connecting the section of redemption directly to the Amidah, the silent prayer, with nothing between them.

The promise is categorical: anyone who does this is guaranteed that their prayer will be received.

Yet anyone who prays every day knows that this is not our experience. There must be something deeper. The kabbalists are not saying that the order of the words guarantees the result. They are pointing to a state those words should produce. That is the state described by the three secrets.

First secret: only the Light exists

The state of prayer, the kabbalists teach, begins when a person experiences that everything is only the Creator's Light. The phrase is מְלֹא כׇל־הָאָרֶץ כְּבוֹדוֹ, the whole earth is filled with His glory.

Michael Berg gives the counterexample, which is exactly what almost all of us do. Someone has a problem and goes to pray. What does the structure of that consciousness say? This problem exists, this dark matter exists, and the Light exists, and I want to draw Light into the darkness. There are three participants: me, the Light, and the problem.

The true state of prayer has only one participant. When a person reaches the consciousness that everything that exists is the Creator's Light, that there is only the Light and me, that there is no darkness, no problem, no one creating a problem for me, and not even a self creating a problem, then that person stands before the Infinite. What stands before the Infinite cannot remain in lack.

The hour before prayer

If prayer is this state, almost everything we call prayer is poor preparation. Michael Berg tells us that the kabbalists would meditate for a full hour beforehand before they even thought about beginning to pray.

One hour in מְלֹא כׇל־הָאָרֶץ כְּבוֹדוֹ. Not to know the phrase, but to let the phrase awaken the experience: I am completely surrounded by the Creator's Light, and nothing exists beyond it.

Then, he says, the prayer itself can take one second. You are already with the Infinite, and before the Infinite, darkness has nowhere to exist.

He is honest about the distance: almost none of us is there. Yet he is also clear about the scale. It is not all or nothing. If you arrive today with seven percent more of this consciousness, or ten percent more, your prayer becomes more powerful by precisely that measure.

Second secret: come to be changed

The second secret answers a question we rarely ask: what is prayer for? Removing problems and drawing blessings are benefits, but they are secondary. Prayer has one purpose.

The intention with which we arrive must be that I be transformed by this prayer. I do not experience lack because of the Creator. The Light wants to give everything, all the time. I experience lack because I am living in a state separated from the Creator's Light.

You do not arrive saying, "there is one problem here and another there." You arrive saying: I recognize that I experience this lack because there is a disconnection, and my only desire now is to be changed by this connection. I want all the ego, selfishness, and foolishness that disconnect me to dissolve.

The Creator is closer to a person than an intimate friend. When this is the request, the Light embraces the person immediately, because this is exactly what the Light wants. Then, as a secondary effect, the lacks fall away. That is not why we came.

Third secret: come as an embryo

There is a verse in Psalms: גָּלְמִי רָאוּ עֵינֶיךָ, "Your eyes saw my unformed state." It is usually translated as an interesting detail: the Creator saw me when I was an embryo. So what?

The kabbalists read it as an instruction. This is the consciousness with which we must approach prayer. You need to see yourself again in your embryonic state.

How do most of us arrive? "I am who I am. I have good qualities, some less so, I have problems, and I have things that need to be filled." Yet if the purpose of life is to grow continuously in our connection with the Light, compare the state you are in with the state you are meant to reach. You are not a lesser version. You are not a child. You are an embryo.

Michael Berg shows why this works, and it sounds almost obvious when he says it. You may or may not help an upset man on the sidewalk. You are more likely to help a child. When a baby cries in the first second of life, almost every human being feels moved to help. Something written into Creation makes the newest life awaken help in everyone.

This is how the Creator's Light responds. Arrive as a soul in an embryonic state, and the Light comes immediately.

The Zohar: the soul that still has no room

Michael Berg closes with the Zohar on the portion of Miketz, beginning in Section 88, on the verse יֹצֵר רוּחַ אָדָם בְּקִרְבּוֹ, the Creator forms the human spirit within a person.

The Zohar says that when we are born, and birth here means not only the day we entered the world but every morning, because חֲדָשִׁים לַבְּקָרִים, we are born anew each day, the fullness of the soul still finds no room within us to expand. What we experience of our own soul is a tiny fraction, sitting to one side. An embryo.

This is the work of the three secrets. They are not three more demands added to a routine. They are three movements that make room for the soul within our lives. Then the verse of the portion ceases to be a distant promise and begins to describe an ordinary day: the Light close whenever we call.