The Three Conditions

3 Assumptions about Life that Can Change Your Life

“Shattered Dreams,” co-created with Dalle.

Question:

I’m no stranger to personal growth and trying to be a better person. The thing is, I keep finding myself right where I began…

I have all these dreams about what I want to do with my life but it feels like every time I take a step forward something will happen and then, I’ll find myself two steps back.

It just feels sometimes like life is rigged against me.

Advice from The Sages:

Let me start off by saying – you’re not alone. We’ve all been there! This common experience of feeling stuck sits with more people than you can imagine.

Here’s the good news:

Life isn’t rigged against you — it’s actually rigged in your favor.

The problem is that even if we can buy into this conceptually, the question becomes: how do we begin to tap into and actually feel this in our own lives?

The Talmud says, “Every person should say, ‘the world was created for me.’” How can I actually live with this mindset?

Rabbi Yisrael Meir Kagan, who is more famously known as “the Chofetz Chaim” or “the Lover of Life,” describes a classic custom performed on the eve of the Jewish New Year. With many different fruits and vegetables on the table, every person picks one up and makes a positive wordplay on the food in the form of a prayer.

There are 10 or so of these punny prayers that are traditionally used, but I once heard a single friend of mine make up his own, which is perfectly in the spirit of the widespread custom. He picked up a date and said, “It should be the will of The Almighty that I merit to date the right person this year!”

Although it’s a seemingly innocent custom, a few years ago, I suddenly realized the profundity of what it was pointing to, and I was blown away. This custom is not merely about making plays on words. It is about creating the fertile ground for deep spiritual experience. It is a training ground for how we can see everything that enters our life in a positive light. It uses food as the metaphor for that which is shortly going to become the energy we live off of — it helps us realize that we truly are what we eat — physically and spiritually.

By using the food as a reminder of what we truly desire, we are doing three things:

• Firstly, we are turning the most ordinary and everyday experience of eating into a prayer for something deeper.

• Second of all, by making these word plays on the food, we are training ourselves to use whatever shows up in front of us as an opportunity to see something positive and desirable deeper than just the surface appearance of the situation before us. We are looking beyond it, while staying aligned with our deeper desires and the higher values of goodness and positivity.

• Lastly, we are infusing the moment and the food itself with meaning and intention by speaking out these dreams and visions into existence.

There is a wide world of personal growth, affirmations and prayer, which it sounds like you’re familiar with. I’ve been where you are and I’ve done the vision-boarding, the goal-setting, and affirmations. For me, though, things didn’t “take off” until I realized the following:

Not only do we need to focus on being a better person and giving more attention to our goals, there is something deeper that changes the entire experience of our life — Rabbi Kagan continues his brief description of this Rosh Hashanah custom by explaining that there are three conditions to supercharging it:

Intention, Joy, and Certainty.

When I first read these words, my whole world lit up.

This is the secret:

1. INTENTION: Intention is the choice to live and experience the Truth of who you are. Choose your authentic self. It means giving up needing to people-please, act as a perfectionist, and perform. Recognizing your innate goodness and being okay with who you are in this moment. Not needing anything from the outside to validate your life.

2. CERTAINTY: Certainty is the knowing that the Universe is always directing and assisting you in experiencing the Truth of who you are. Know that you are always being led. It means to surrender your version of how you think things are supposed to be and accept things as they are. Not being certain about the outcomes, but about the process itself — that everything is assisting you in your own personal evolution.

3. JOY: Joy is the feeling of happiness, peace, and love that acts as the barometer of how aligned you are with intention and certainty. Emotions don’t lie about what you’re thinking and believing. Feeling good about who you are and what life is, is ultimately what it means to feel God. This is actually our natural state when we aren’t wishing we were different or that life were different. When we fully and deeply accept ourselves and let go of life needing to be any different than it is in this moment, we experience joy. It doesn’t mean we don’t take inspired action to changing life’s situations. Rather, it means we accept things are the way they are and take action wherever necessary at ease with life.

For years prior to my own personal breakthroughs, I had been under the impression that all I had to do was change the way I thought about things — that changing my thoughts would, in fact, immediately change my life and produce powerful results.

It’s true that changing your thinking will change your life, but it does so slowly and over time. What is truly life-changing is when your thoughts are charged with the electricity of the three conditions (intention, joy, and certainty). This is a quantum leap from just thinking positive thoughts.

Thinking positively is a great tool and can often act like a band-aid, covering up negative thoughts and making you feel good for a bit. However, unlocking these three conditions can make your good thoughts both sustainable and energetically powerful. Instead of just thinking the thoughts, you will know the truth of them. With intention, certainty and joy, they feel different. They feel alive. They feel real.

Ultimately, these three conditions lay at the foundation of all the growth, synchronicities, and the miracles in life. This is the starting place for those looking to take the next step in their spiritual journey. Namely, letting go of any thoughts that keep you disconnected from what’s already good and beautiful in your life and recognizing this truth by the joy you feel in this moment. Intention, joy, and certainty can afford you true inner freedom, a lifetime of success, and the experience of fulfillment.

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Rabbi Moshe Gersht is a Spiritual Teacher and Wall Street Journal Bestselling Author of It’s All The Same To Me and The Three Conditions.

Free download of a book excerpt, articles, videos and online course on Torah-based Manifestation available at www.moshegersht.com

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