| Kabbalah
and Education A Kabbalistic Approach to Spiritual Growth |
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| Kabbalah and Jewish Meditation |
Part
56 Having completed the process of knowing the student, the teacher must now identify the top priority in educating the student and begin from there. The existential reality of change is that it can only proceed one step at a time. Attempting too much at once guarantees failure on all fronts. Thus the educator must identify the appropriate starting point--a subjective determination, based on his intuitive sense of the student’s needs and abilities at that moment. He has to decide:
There
are no objective criteria here. Rather, the teacher's ability to choose
sensitively and accurately reflects the degree of his own rectification. In
this sixth skill, the channel of influence flowing from the teacher to the
student can be visualized as a pipeline that can only transfer one morsel of
advice at a time. Keeping this image in mind forces the educator to order
his priorities for bringing about the growth he envisions. A successful
educator is one who has internalized the limitation imposed by the pipeline
and never tries to do too much at any one time. Any attempt to the contrary
is a strong indication that his own channels are unrectified and
undisciplined. This
skill is distinguished from the previous skills in that it calls upon an
inner, almost unconscious sensitivity of the teacher and
demands a high degree of subjectivity. The information gathered in
preceding stages was dictated by objective reality--the nature of the
student, his or her temperament, character traits, etc. The subsequent
analysis required sensitivity to be sure, but of a type attuned to objective
truths. Now, with all the data before him, the teacher must rely upon his
intuition to make the decision of where to begin and how to proceed. There
are no formulas or rules of thumb. His approach will necessarily vary from
student to student and his reliability mirrors his own state of
rectification. A personality cleared of ego, selfishness, and other negative
characteristics will be a more transparent channel for intuition. Otherwise,
the teacher’s insights will be distorted and the message he attempts to
convey to the student will be compromised in its integrity. The
level of intuitive sensitivity called upon here is similar to that mentioned
in the Talmud in relation to those exceptional court cases which cannot be
resolved on the basis of objective evidence. An example is a situation where
two people are claiming to be the same person mentioned in a contract, and
the facts of the case do not favor one over the other. In such an instance
the judge is required to decide according to his intuitive sense of truth,
even though there is no objective evidence to support his choice. In the
realm of teaching, the decision of where to begin comes from this same place
of inner sensitivity. Yet
there is one guideline, one principle from the Talmud, which should
influence this decision. The sages explain that "something dangerous is
more grievous than something forbidden."
In other words, the danger to the body takes priority over a possible
danger to the soul. This is not a self‑evident truth. We could argue
that since the soul is more important than the body, perhaps death in this
world is preferable to death in the spiritual world. The sages don’t
agree. They maintain that in this world our lives and our survival are
God’s overriding concern, and when there arises a question of choosing
between something that will damage the body over something which will injure
the soul, we are required to worry first about the body, because the
soul’s purpose for existing is to serve God in this world. To accomplish
this, the soul must reside in a body. Therefore, since spiritual damage can
be removed through repentance, while physical death is irreparable, the
sages give priority to the body's survival, as long as the soul has need of
it. In
terms of education, this might apply, for example, to a student with two
negative character traits: an explosive temper and a propensity to lie.
Since the problem of an explosive temper is potentially dangerous, both to
himself and others, its rectification must be the teacher's priority as it
is the more urgent problem. The propensity to lie, while not as
urgent, may in fact be more serious in terms of ultimate implications, since
chronic lying may generate more problems than anger in the realm of
interpersonal relations, but it still has less priority than the anger
problem.
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