This is part of a series exploring the seven lower Sephirot (spheres) of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. These spheres are the seven core emotions that drive human interaction.
This week we have been exploring the sephirah of Gevurah, the strength of restraint, boundaries, and restrictions.
restrain your habits
awareness creates a space
pause and choose new path
Who is [Gibor] strong? One who overpowers his inclinations. As is stated (Proverbs 16:32), “Better one who is slow to anger than one with might, one who rules his spirit than the captor of a city.”
Ethics of the Fathers, 4:1
A friend shared with me about a recent episode where, in reaction to something her young kids did, she flew into a tirade at them. The offending act violated clear rules, but perhaps not to the level that warranted my friend’s outburst.
She shared that even when she was in the middle of yelling at her kids, she heard a faint inner voice telling her that she had taken it too far.
But she couldn’t stop.
As she described it, when she erupts into these moments of “disciplining” her kids, she feels as if her body is overtaken by someone else; it’s like she is possessed by a personality that is not her.
In fact, it is everything she has rejected about parenting; everything she doesn’t want to be.
It is her mother.
By the time she sees herself in jt, it feels too late for her to stop it. It’s as if she dove into the deep end, and now she is swimming hard.
You’re already invested; you can’t quit now.
Ah, who doesn’t know this feeling?
Seeing Our Habits
We all have places where we get triggered and we react. Sometimes we see ourselves in it and we feel like we can’t extract even though we want to.
This is the realm of habit: an automatic reaction to a trigger.
This habit she defaults to is the “inclination” referenced in the quote from Ethics of Our Fathers.
The Path to Sovereignty
The fact that my friend can see the habit while she is in it is already a step in the right direction.
Over time, and with continued attention to this, the awareness will move up.
Eventually she will be aware at the moment of the trigger. And she will be able to pause and choose a new way to respond.
This is the path towards Malchut of Gevurah, sovereignty in the realm of Gevurah.
Gevurah is about the strength to hold back our tendencies. This is the strength to create space between the stimulus and response.
Creating Space for Sovereignty
In between the stimulus and the response is a pause. In that pause is our choice and our freedom.
When we can create space in which we see new options available to us, we are no longer a slave to our tendencies, to the forces that overtake us.
We realize in that space that we don’t have to jump into the pool.
This is sovereignty.
Love it? Hate it? What do you think? Don't hold back...