If each incident is a word in the language of the world, what would the world be saying?
It seems from minute to minute there is some new disaster making the headlines. We're just recovering from one world-altering, paradigm-shifting event and another follows: Revolutions, earthquakes, tsunamis, animals dying en mass. We listen to the analysts who offer speculations and predictions on what led to these disasters and what future disasters will be caused by these events, but how can we understand what is really happening?
Kabbalists say you can know the seed of something by examining the fruit it bears as it grows. The fruit of an apple tree is the effect of an apple seed. If we stand back and look at the fruits of the recent events, what we uncover is our humanity. After all, isn't it in the wake of catastrophic devastation, when the earth shudders and rips off our masks, that we remember who we really are and see our underlying similarities?
Out of the rubble of destruction we find proof that the human spirit is illuminating our way home in the darkness. I heard a story about a rescue worker in Japan who pulled a woman from a car, and didn't just give her aid, he gave her a hug. That was beyond the call of duty -- heart touching heart.
The purpose of life, as I understand it from the wisdom I study and teach, is that each and everyone of us has within us the Light of God -- no matter our religion, our race, our nationality, our political affiliations, our belief system, our manner of worship. Our responsibility in this incarnation is get to the place in our consciousness where we see and respect that Light and give the person housing it the dignity and space he/she deserves to live freely.
When will we stop cheating and oppressing, hating and incarcerating, discriminating and profiling, slandering and humiliating, exploiting and torturing those who we perceive to be different and less than us?
"Everything that exists in our world has a right to exist. Therefore we need to understand and to take great care that we do not find faults in any part of Creation, declaring this or that to be superfluous or unnecessary, because this amounts to giving a bad name to He Who created it." Rav Ashlag wrote this 1922, in an article entitled "Global Peace." It was the same year he founded The Kabbalah Centre.
I hope his profound message will inspire our daily thoughts, words and actions. Let's not wait for another disaster headline to publicize a story of global humanity.