My three-year old son Dovi and I were waiting for my wife Sheindy and my 22-month-old son Benny to walk through the arrivals gate at Gatwick Airport. Sheindy had been on a visit to her parents in Israel for five days while I spent some quality time Dovi. As Sheindy and Benny walked through the gate, Dovi ran up to Benny hugged him and held his hand, and they stood still for about a minute gazing into each other’s eyes, whispering each other’s names over and over again. This innocent outpouring of love between two young brothers visibly moved all those who were watching.
The beauty of children is their innocence: they do not have the baggage and ego that grownups often carry around with them. Children are able to show emotion without fear of repercussion, and they are able to relate and connect with people on a soul level. This is one of the traits that make children enchanting. Watching small children interact with each other is humbling. I am constantly in awe of how quickly little children make friends and how adults often find it easier to strike up a conversation with a child than with fellow adults.
As we grow up, we spend time building fences around our childlike self. We receive an education and then find a job. We buy material objects – cars, houses and other luxury goods. We want people to recognise us for what we have accomplished and acquired. In conversation with others, we project our successes and achievements rather than communicating at a soul level. This is often the cause of antipathy and enmity between people. Whereas at soul level each person is pure and unsullied, the corrupted self, the self that has been steeped in materialism and surrounded by artificial barriers set up by the ego, conflicts with other people.
With their deep insight, the Kabbalists tell us that the surest way to avoid senseless hatred of others and to ensure real fellowship and love is by training oneself to see others on a soul level. The strategy of achieving this is twofold: Firstly, there needs to be the recognition that all souls, by virtue of their Divine origins, are intrinsically connected. Secondly, we can train ourselves not to be superficial and to see below the surface. On a peripheral level, each person is an individual, and therefore disconnected from, and at times even opposed to others. On a deeper level, on the plane of the soul, we are all part of one whole, and no person is an island. The teachings of the Kabbalah educate one to perceive the deeper level of existence as being the true reality. Once this has been achieved, relating to others on a soul and almost childlike level becomes second nature.
Relating to others on this level is deeply fulfilling – everyone is on an equal footing. One never feels like a charlatan – nice to others but for ulterior motives. Looking people in the eye when talking to them becomes a pleasure, and hatred, animosity and envy lose their raison d’etre. In our busy and often selfish consumer-driven world, most of our non-familial relationships are based around mutual gain, and finding people who care for each other without an ulterior motive is rare. This fact is often distressing to people, and the question “Why can’t people just like me for who I am?” is a common one. So when others relate to us at soul level it is incredibly gratifying.
So, back to my Dovi and Benny. Common wisdom tells us that we must constantly progress, and in some areas this is correct. Ironically however, there are instances where regression is really progression. We start our life with charming innocence, and as children we have the natural ability to relate to others in the most beautiful way – on a soul level. As we grow up we lose that innocence and relationships get complicated. As grownups, in order to achieve real progress in our relationships with others, we need to learn how to regress to our previous childlike purity.