Seven Kabbalistic Steps to Achieving Your Goals and Resolutions this New Year

We all have dreams and desires we would like to manifest - new cars, soul mates, fit and trim bodies, perfect health, rewarding jobs, increased wealth, abundant free time to pursue our interests, but we don't always do what it takes to create these things in our lives. On December 31st or January 1, we may come up with New Year's resolutions and goals, but most of us rarely follow through with them. Indeed, it's not uncommon for our good intentions to fade after only a few weeks or days and for December 31st to roll around without even one resolution carried out or one goal achieved.

In large part, accomplishment of New Year's goals and resolutions depends not only upon our intention but upon how determined we are to manifest what we want in our lives. And our level of determination depends upon how much we really want what we say we want. If we do truly desire what we say we want to create, then our determination level rises.

At this point, all we need is a good process for manifestation that we can use to help us create what we desire. If we couple this process with our determination and intention, we will take action towards our goals and resolutions. We will use the process on a regular basis. This combination cannot help but leads us towards manifestation of our dreams and desires and achievement of our goals and resolutions.

Many manifestation processes exist; all of them work if they are used on a regular basis. Most recently, many people have chosen to use the process called the Law of Attraction described in the bestselling book The Secret by Rhonda Byrne. Interestingly, Kabbalah, the Jewish mystical tradition, offers a process for creating what we want in our lives that that parallels the Law of Attraction. To know how to use this "technology," which comes out of the Jewish mystical story of, we must first understand this creation story.

According to the Kabbalists, or Jewish mystics, in the beginning God was all there was and everywhere. Then God began to feel the desire to create something besides Itself, but, because God was everywhere and without end, there was no space for anything other than God to exist. So, God had to pull back, or contract, to create space for something other than Itself to exist. In other words, God created a void within Itself. Into this void God then sent a beam of Divine energy, or light. This energy then went through four phases of creation, called worlds, that resulted in the physical realm as we know it. By following this process of creation through these same four phases, or worlds, we can consciously create in our own lives in a similar fashion.

Step #1: Clear a space in your mind.

Even practiced meditators know that it is hard to rid our mind of thoughts, but we can visualize creating a space - a void - in our mind.

Step #2: Visualize a beam of energy or light entering the space in your mind and beginning to move through the four worlds.

Our beam of Divine energy takes the form of the desire or inspiration to create something. The beam represents our desire or what we want to manifest.

Step #3: Get clear about what it is you want to create.

Our desire enters the world of Atzilut, or the world of Being, where we are connected to the Divine and begins to stir and to come into focus. This is the place meditators are always trying to reach -a place where they are connected to Source and to their spiritual core. In this world inspiration and desire are born. This is where we feel the desire to have or create something new. This is where we feel the stirring of change. We begin at this stage to know or to feel like we want to create something.

Step #4: Put your desire to create something into words that form clear thoughts upon which you can focus.

Our desire moves into the second world, Briah, which is the world of thought. Here, the desire for something new manifesting as thought. Our desire for change or for something new, turns into a focused thought - words that express what we want. We get very clear about what we want and we express it in words. We focus upon these thoughts, which have a creative energy, to begin the manifestation process.

Step #5: Combine the thought of what you want with the feeling of having it by focusing upon it as if it were already manifest.

Now, our thoughts enter the world of Yetzirah, or the world of feeling. Just as the Divine energy moved into this world and combined the thought of something new with the feeling of something new, here we combine the thought of what we want with the positive feelings of having what we want. We also begin to get a sense of what we need to do to help manifest our desire; we see a vision of the next right step for us or of the inspired action required to bring our desire into physical reality.

Step #6: Take action to help create your desire.

Lastly, our creation enters the physical world of Action, called Assiyah. In this fourth world, God's desire for something other than Itself manifested as the world as we know it - the physical plane in which we exist. In this world, we lend physical energy to the energy of thought and feeling. We take action to aide manifestation. This is where we actually take that inspired action or that next right or best step that we sensed in Yetzirah. Now we see clearly what we must do, and we do it. As we take action, we move towards our goals, we help bring our dreams into physical reality, we start achieving our resolutions.

Step #7: Create what you want with a desire to give to others, to allow yourself to pursue a spiritual path and to draw closer to God.

The Kabbalists caution, however, that Kabbalah in general should not be used for our own practical purposes. The ultimate goal of all Kabbalah revolves around connecting with God. That said, some Jewish mystics taught that we should ask for what we want and need - if it allows us to share what we receive with others and to pursue a path of spiritual development. Amazingly, when we approach what we want from a place of wanting to receive our desires, achieve our goals or follow through on our resolutions so we can give to others, pursue a spiritual path and get closer to God, the things we want seem to manifest more easily and quickly. We remove any blocks we might have to actually receiving what we want and open ourselves to the Divine flow of goodness. We synchronize ourselves with the original energy of creation - and what better time to try and use that energy than at the beginning of a brand new year.