| Kabbalah
and Education A Kabbalistic Approach to Spiritual Growth |
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| Kabbalah and Jewish Meditation |
Part
57 The task of setting priorities carries with it an additional requirement and that is the need for maximum patience. The teacher must first restrain his enthusiasm to remold the student's personality all at once by introducing instead a step by step plan of priorities; then, after accepting the limitation of a single goal, he must extend his patience still further and temper his expectations for the student’s progress. Thus the two dictums that should guide the teacher as he begins to actually transmit his guidance are: One step at a time and slowly! A
teacher who lacks a realistic sense of pace and pushes his students beyond
their capacity to integrate change will ultimately defeat his purpose. People
can only change and grow if they first accept themselves as they are. Only
then can they chart a true course toward the desired end. The student will
never learn the skill of measuring himself or herself truly and
compassionately if the teacher cannot do so and instead impatiently expects
more than the student is capable of. Conversely, when the teacher feels and
expresses maximum patience and realistic expectations, he calms the student
and creates a peaceful and nurturing environment for growth. The
classic example of one who employed realistic expectations and maximum
patience in the task of "fixing" souls is Joseph when dealing with
his brothers who had sold him into slavery. Unbeknown to his brothers,
Joseph had overcome his slave-status in Egypt and through a set of
remarkable circumstances had become the grand vizier, second in power only
to Pharaoh. When, twenty years after their initial betrayal of him, the
brothers found themselves in Egypt to buy food during the famine, Joseph
recognized them, but revealed nothing. Instead, he devised a strategy to
bring about their repentance and to heal their souls of the damage that was
caused in their initial actions. The strategy required of Joseph enormous
patience, as the process took two years. But, like a master chess player who
takes deliberate steps and builds toward a desired end, Joseph showed
awesome self‑control throughout. He first held back in revealing his
identity and then in a slow calculated progression of events, while
consciously orchestrating each detail, he brought about the desired end of
healing his family from the effects of their sin. Patience
is a prerequisite to effective education not just because it is important
from the standpoint of ethics or abstract good. Rather, it is the only way
to accommodate the reality that psychological change moves slowly. It is
similar to the patience required of a farmer. No matter what he does, fruits
and vegetables require a growing season to reach maturity. Should the farmer
try to hurry the process by over-fertilizing or the like, he will poison the
plant entirely, or make it tough and less tasty in the end. Still, by
studying botany and horticulture, the farmer can more precisely cater to the
needs of each plant and thereby derive maximum yield from the harvest. So it
is in education and guidance. By studying the mechanics of will and human
psychology, the educator can begin to discern the underlying basis for why
integration must proceed slowly
and one step at a time. In so doing, the educator learns to adapt this
principle to the particular needs of each student.
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