You Are The King

I was in Madrid last week. The King of Saudia Arabia personally invited me to an interfaith summit that he sponsored for world spiritual leaders.

It was pretty cool for a kid from Queens to be hob-nobbing with world leaders, dialoguing on the ills of the world. I have to say, my ego was stroked - for about a minute. That feeling fades fast, as you know.

It was an honor to meet such esteemed men and women, and I'd like to issue a public thank you to the King, truly a visionary reformer.

The reason I am sharing this with you now is because on the plane ride home I kept thinking one thing. This one thing is what my parents taught me, it's what Rav Brandwein taught my father, it's what every great kabbalist throughout history taught one another: talk is cheap, without action.

Never before have spiritual leaders been so into talking about how to make the world a better place. That's a good thing, I am not downplaying by it.

But I will not fool myself into thinking that Kings, Rabbis, Priest, Monks, Imams and Prime Ministers are going to change the world all by themselves.

At the end of the day, the solution to this mess has got to come from the bottom up, not the top down. Consider what Rav Ashlag, founder of The Kabbalah Centre in 1922, writes in The Gift of the Bible:

...he who fulfills one good deed causes himself and the entire world to tip the scale of merit; and woe to him who commits one transgression, for he causes himself and the entire world to tip the scale of demerit...

The only way - THE ONLY WAY - to reverse the tides of negativity is to realize that those seemingly insignificant actions we do - or don't do - is what matters most.

Individual human behavior is what got us into this mess, individual human behavior is what will get us out.

I challenge every reader to really check-in this week. There's no more time to hide behind just talking. We have each got to own up to the fact that most of the time we operate from a selfish desire. Only when we admit this and fight the enemy within, will the enemies without cease to exist.

If you remember only one thing from this thought piece, let it be this:

Your every action counts.

By taking responsibility for increasing your positive actions this week, you are, as Rav Ashlag writes, tipping the scale of merit. And that's something worth talking about.