Kabbalah for Everyone - Lesson 16: The 101st Time | Why Being Good Is Not the Same as Growing | How the Three Souls Learn to Work Together
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In Lesson 16, Rabbi Yisroel Bernath brings together the ideas of the Animal Soul, Rational Soul, and G-dly Soul and asks one of the most practical questions in Kabbalah: How do we know when we are actually growing?
The Alter Rebbe teaches that there is a profound difference between reviewing something 100 times and reviewing it 101 times. One hundred may already be impressive, but if it has become our normal pattern, it may simply be habit. The 101st time represents the step beyond what comes naturally.
This class explores the Kabbalastic concept of oved, a person who is actively serving, stretching, refining, and becoming. It also introduces tikkun, the process of mending and elevating our nature rather than rejecting it.
We discover that even our best traits, kindness, generosity, discipline, intelligence, spirituality, can become more conscious and more G-dly. The goal is not to hate who we are or force ourselves into someone else’s personality. It is to stop allowing habit to become the ceiling of our growth.
Ultimately, the lesson shows how the three souls can work together: the G-dly soul provides direction, the rational soul translates truth into something we can understand, and the animal soul brings the passion and energy to live it.
The question becomes deeply personal: Where is my 101st time?
Key Points
1. Being good and growing are not always the same thing: A trait can be beautiful and still be automatic. Kabbalah asks us to take what is already good and make it more conscious, refined, and connected to G-d.
2. Oved means someone who is actively serving: The Alter Rebbe emphasizes the present tense. An oved is not someone who has “arrived,” but someone who is still doing the inner work.
3. The 101st time represents going beyond habit: The famous teaching of 100 versus 101 repetitions is not about a magical number. It is about moving one step beyond our established nature.
4. Your 101 is personal: One person’s growth may be giving more. Another person’s may be learning to receive. One may need more discipline; another may need more softness.
5. Going beyond nature does not mean harming yourself: Deep spiritual work is not self-punishment, burnout, or unhealthy deprivation. Growth stretches us without destroying the vessel.
6. Every soul has intellect and emotion: The Animal Soul, Rational Soul, and G-dly Soul each have their own way of thinking and wanting.
7. The Animal Soul has a very intelligent lawyer: Desire often comes first, and then the mind creates sophisticated reasons to justify it. A powerful question is:
Did my reason create the desire, or did my desire hire the reason?
8. Tikkun begins with the Rational Soul: The Animal Soul is immersed in desire. The G-dly Soul already wants Hashem. The Nefesh HaSichlit can understand both sides and translate Divine truth into language the natural self can absorb.
9. Kabbalah educates the translator: Learning, contemplation, and prayer help the mind stop serving every impulse and begin teaching the heart a different way to see reality.
10. Iskafya comes before transformation: Sometimes growth begins simply by saying no to an impulse. Over time, deeper work can refine what we actually enjoy and desire.
11. The G-dly Soul also needs Ratzo and Shov: Spiritual yearning must return to life. The goal is not to escape the physical world, but to bring holiness into relationships, work, food, money, family, and ordinary life.
12. The goal is integration: The dream is not a human being fighting themselves forever. It is a person whose mind, heart, body, personality, and passions increasingly become partners in serving Hashem.
13. Growth begins with the willingness to say “maybe”: Maybe I am wrong. Maybe there is another way. Maybe this pattern is not permanent. Maybe G-d is asking me for my 101st step.
14. Dirah BiTachtonim happens inside us too: G-d does not only want the obviously spiritual parts of us. He wants our habits, emotions, intellect, body, and ordinary life to become His home.
The School for Sensitive Souls
Do you feel everything deeply? Absorb other people’s emotions? Overthink conversations long after they’re over? Struggle with boundaries, burnout, or feeling like you’re simply “too much”? .
Course begins October 15th.
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