Understanding the Soul: Dimensions and Spiritual Growth

Kabbalah offers a soul's x-ray, revealing five dimensions—biological, emotional, intellectual, transcendent, and essential—for deeper self-understanding.

### Understanding the Soul: A Journey Through Dimensions and Spiritual Growth
* 🌍 "Everything begins with the **soul**," highlighting the foundational aspect of spiritual understanding in Jewish mysticism.
* 🧘 The body is secondary to the soul, as our initial experiences are often **sensory**, focusing on **physical needs** rather than **spiritual awareness**.
* 🔍 Exploring the inner self requires shutting down external stimuli, allowing for a **deeper connection to one's true essence**, which is essential for **personal relationships and spiritual practices** like Shabbat.
* 🧠 The human body, while known to some extent, still holds mysteries, especially regarding the **brain**, whereas our understanding of the **soul** remains significantly less developed.
* 📖 Kabbalah serves as a study of the soul, akin to medical imaging for the body, revealing the **deeper dynamics and components that define our spiritual essence**.
* ✨ The soul comprises five dimensions, starting from **biological life (nefesh)** to **emotional and intellectual experiences**, ultimately reaching **transcendent states** that connect us to our **Divine source**.
* 💑 In relationships, compatibility spans beyond physical attraction to **emotional, intellectual, and spiritual dimensions**, emphasizing the importance of a **shared vision for life**.
* 🌱 Nourishing the soul through Study, Prayer, and Action (SPA) is essential for holistic well-being, suggesting a **need for a revolution in understanding and nurturing our spiritual essence** from a young age.

Each one of you sitting in this room, each one of us on this Earth, everybody, everything begins with the soul. When you learn—when you learn Jewish mysticism, you learn about the spiritual, about the esoteric; that's the first thing you know: everything begins with

the soul. The body comes second. We don't think that way. You wake up in the morning; first you feel your body before you feel your soul. You feel you're hungry, tired—other human experiences, material experiences—then you focus and you say, 'Okay, God, return my soul to me,'

because we're essentially, on the sensible level, we're sensory human beings who are consumed with our senses: what we see, what we hear, what we taste, touch, and smell, to the point that if I said to you right now, as an exercise, 'Close your eyes and ears and taste, touch,

and smell,'—keep your ears open a bit because you won't hear me if you don't do that—what do you think would happen to you? So initially we think, 'I'll just disappear.' No, you wouldn't disappear. You discover the real you, the you that's not

stimulated by your senses, because you don't need eyes to see yourself; you don't need ears to hear yourself; you don't need smell, taste, and touch to experience yourself. That's a bridge that connects us together, and we need it; it's necessary for

relationships in many ways. You can even say Shabbat is really an exercise of a journey within, where we try to shut down that stimulation as much as possible, as much as humanly possible, because we, at the end of the day, are still in bodies and

Try to experience that voice from within every meditation, every exercise. You find today's mindfulness; all those are all trying to do that, create a focus to travel inward. So when you know that that's your real core, then ask yourself, how much do you know about

it? Even the human body, the human body which is just 5'6" tall, approximately 150 pounds—we won't go higher than that, sometimes a little more—how much do we know about this body? So we know a lot more than we used to

know, but there's still mysteries. Ask any expert, any doctor, any scientist: the brain, the size of the palm of our hand, how much do we know about this brain? And that's the physical brain. When you talk about the soul, we know far, far less, and we spend most of our lives, if

at all, studying science, studying the body, studying the physical world, studying the science of the physical world. But how much time have we spent understanding the dynamics and the components that make up your soul, which is the real you, the essence of you? So, in a way, you can say

Kabbalah, and which is essentially contemporary Kabbalah, is the study of the soul. It's like you go to a doctor, you get a CAT scan or an x-ray or other types of scans of the body, so we can see what makes us tick and if

there's a problem, we can discover it, identify it. There's also a thing called an x-ray of the soul. So I want to go through that x-ray in a little more detail. Obviously, to cover it exhaustively would be difficult in this short time, but enough that hopefully it'll be

Intriguing enough for you to want to explore this further? Many of you may have studied some of this and may know it quite well, so it's not going to be just basic ABCs, but actually really digging into what you are comprised of—

the building blocks of your very being; hence, the DNA of your soul. And there is a real DNA; it's just not physical. Just like we say that the world is made up of many different objects, and they are in turn made up of elements, which in turn are made up of

molecules, which are comprised of atoms and subatomic particles, and sub-subatomic...you can keep going down the rabbit hole, and we don't even know how far it goes. The same is with the soul: there's the outer expression of it, and as you travel inward, you can go into the

molecular level, into the atomic level, and the subatomic level. People who are really on a spiritual journey have mastered, to some extent, that ability to go deeper within. The truth is, prayer—real prayer—is a journey of the soul. It's not just lip service; it's not just

words and just asking and beseeching God for your needs. It's a journey into those deeper dimensions. That's why it's not a surprise that I witnessed—not so often, but I have seen—Chassidic Jews, rabbis, sitting under a tallit on Shabbat for six

hours, davening. Now, it takes a lot less than six hours to read all those words; you see, you just go to any usual minyan. But because they weren't just saying words, they were going on a journey into these deeper places and deeper states of consciousness. So I'm

Going to break it down into a few parts here. First of all, the dimensions of the soul. There are dimensions, and you begin from the outer and you travel inward, literally exactly like I just defined, from the subatomic through the molecular to the atomic molecular

all the way to the elemental level. The same thing is true of the soul; that there are generally five dimensions, and you may have heard of them. I'll spell them out in Hebrew; they're called...

The Medis puts it this way: that this soul has five names, but it really means five levels, five dimensions. So, on the external, on the surface level, they sound synonymous, but when you understand what they are, they're not at all synonymous; they're different dimensions, and I'll explain it in more detail. So let's start from the bottom up,

or from the outer in, would be the better way to put it. There's the level of soul... when someone says, "What does it mean to be alive?" So any layperson, and definitely a biologist or a doctor or a scientist, will tell you it means life is defined

by—you're breathing, the primary organs are functioning—the heart, the mind—and um, and that defines life. Now that doesn't tell you the quality of life; it just tells you that you're physically alive. A person, God forbid, can be a vegetable in the

hospital and also be alive. So that we would call biological life; that would be the first level, *nefesh*: that you're simply existing and living; you're a living organism. Then there's the next level: that you're not just a zombie, but you also have an emotional life, feelings...

Feel things, you know. Some people walk around and say, "Yeah, I'm physically alive, but I feel dead, half-dead. I feel like a zombie." Like I said, what does that mean? No sensations, there's no feeling. So the next level is your emotional life; the third is intellectual life.

Which is that your mind is working, your mind is stimulated, your mind is active. Sometimes we feel emotions, we feel... but you feel your mind is blocked. Those are the first three; those are what we'll call the conscious dimensions of the soul, conscious expression of the soul. Then come two more,

and we'll call this the superconscious. This is called the transcendent forces at work that are not quite tangible in the sense where you can say, "Okay, it's expressing through intellectual activity or emotional," or as I said, biological; but rather, they're

dealing now with something more transcendent. Like, 'X' would be, 'What's the meaning of your life?', as I discussed earlier. And finally, 'Y' would be the level that is the place where you're closest to the very core essence of who you are, like being at peace with yourself in

that deepest place. It's the most intimate part of the soul and its connection with its Divine source, and it's not really experienced in any conscious way, but it's there. To access that is obviously far more difficult than the first levels. So those are part

of the map, the map of the general structure of a human soul. So when it says in the Bible, the Torah, it says that God took a clump of earth and imbued it—He breathed into it Divine energy—which is the Divine energy.

of divine breath, he actually imbued it with everything I described earlier. So let's go back to the analogy of the composer: you'll see two different musicians playing a brilliant piece of music, and one sounds unbelievable, the other one sounds not bad—same music. So that same

music can be played with different levels of soul, with different levels of what we may call *kavvanah*—intention. That's an example. So you could go through the emotions, but you're not really living up to your entire potential. So simply put, we go through our days, our lives,

in a way that it will teach us that you don't just eat a meal; when you're eating a meal, all five levels of your soul should be interacting. Which means you're not just eating to survive and keep your body healthy; you're also here to allow

it to feed your emotional side of your being, and your intellectual side, and ultimately your transcendent side. So in other words, it infuses everything we do with a whole different dimension. So just by stating that, that already changes a person's attitude to life; it creates excitement; everything

you do is brimming, is filled with this potent energy of your soul. When people ask the question about what you saw, for example—I sat at the feet of the Rebbe for many years, as you may know; that was my job—to remember the

Rebbe's talks on Shabbat and holidays, retain it, and then repeat it, then publish it. So what did you experience? You experience a soul on fire! When you see people that we say they have the sparkle in the

I see a certain passion; it's not just a passion about big things, every little detail comes alive. You know, when you love somebody, even a slight touch is electric because it's filled with...

But our lives—I go back to my initial joke—our lives are somewhat often lethargic.

We may go through the motions, but how much of the energy, how much you have within you, is being expressed? So when you think of it, these five dimensions are really there for us to access. And when you see a person who's really fully in touch with their

innermost self—so all those levels of soul are there in everything that they do, in every moment and every action. Now that doesn't mean we all can reach that level in a moment, but when you know that's the potential, it can change things. So then you can ask yourself the

question: So where do I stand? Am I on the 'ne' level, on the 'r' level, on the '...' level, on the '...' level? Just to give an example, let's talk about love relationships. So generally speaking, they talk about three levels of compatibility that will define two

people being attracted to each other.  First, since it's the 15th, I guess an appropriate example...one is physical attraction, sexual magnetism; something that draws two people together. That's the 'neish' level. The next is an emotional connection. You can fall

in love with an image of a model in a magazine, and then you meet that person and there's no—nothing there, nothing clicks, there's no feeling. So the next is an emotional compatibility. You know, there's a feeling, something reciprocal, care, sensitivity, empathy; then...

There's intellectual compatibility: two people who share ideas, respect each other's opinions and perspectives. They can have conversations, have good arguments. Now, in most cases, you tell people, "What do you think about that?" They say, "If I had one out of the three, I'd be"

happy." I hope nobody here would say that, but many people say that two out of the three is a dream; three out of three is not even realistic. You know, that's just the first three levels. So imagine a relationship that's not just a

physical connection. There are some people who connect very much physically, but it also has emotional and intellectual dimensions. That's a pretty good relationship. However, we're just touching the surface of a relationship. Then comes the fourth, what I would call spiritual compatibility. What does that

mean? That two people share a vision for life: what kind of home they want to build, what kind of children they want to bring into this world, what kind of vibe they want when someone comes into their home, what mark they want to make in the universe. Why is it different than

the first three? Because the first three are subject to change; the fourth is already a transcendent element. It's not so much about "I like what you look like," or "I connect with you emotionally," or "I bond with you intellectually." But this is where both—that's why we have a

canopy at a wedding, because the canopy is above the bride and groom. It's transcendent; it's a connection to the third partner. What is the purpose of life, and how are we going to contribute to that purpose? And why is it really reserved for the most

Intimate connection where two people become like one; it means oneness, total oneness. In the words of the Bible, in the Torah, where man and woman become one flesh, physically, but also spiritually—like what we call a soulmate. So when you think of it that

way, you can develop a whole series of workshops, and I have done that to some extent, of teaching people how to enhance their relationship by first identifying—is it a… is it… is it? And in each of them, you always have room for improvement and growth on a collective

level. That would be the general relationship we have with God. And what is that relationship? So every day of the year, we pray three times a day. You know why three corresponds to the NE, because we, on a regular Monday and weekday, can connect to the three conscious levels:

the biological, emotional, and intellectual. On Shabbat and holidays, we add a fourth prayer; it's called Musaf. We introduce the Transcendent. That doesn't mean you can't have it at all on weekdays, except it's not as prominent. And once a year, when do we

pray five prayers? Yom Kippur! The fifth prayer. And what do we say in that prayer? That all the gates are open; there are no boundaries; complete, unified connection with the essence of the Divine and the essence of your soul. Now,

that doesn't mean it's not beating inside your chest right now; however, it's less… harder to access. You could access it; all five levels are accessible, but it's a question of how easy and how many layers you have to deal with to get to that place. And I'm not even

Addressing now all the blockages, inhibitions, and obstacles—the styles, fears, and insecurities that even trap us from getting to the first level of Nefesh. So, if you really want to do this thoroughly, you have to also look

at: Are you even being soulful? I was discussing someone who's already come to understand that their soul is more important than their body. And then you continue on that journey. Most of us are challenged with: one minute I have bodily needs, I have

other needs, I have other things to address. I have to satisfy people's expectations and demands and their perceptions, and so on. How many of us are struggling with demons, real or imagined, in our lives? How what we think others think of us, and all that comes with

that. I just wanted to qualify, but on the other hand, a person who is on a soulful journey is struggling in a good way—how to climb this ladder, these five steps. And each one of them is a whole story of its own, a whole volume

of its own. I'm just laying out the basic building blocks, but I want to go one further step: So what does each one look like when you dig down deeper? I mentioned before: molecular, atomic, subatomic. What are the

so-called particles that define each of these five levels? So, just to broaden it: in Kabbalistic and mystical thought, it teaches that everything is a microcosm and macrocosm. Whatever exists within ourselves also exists on the cosmic level, meaning in the worlds around us.

That's why you find the concept, I'm sure you're familiar with, of the three, four, and five worlds. Namely, going from bottom up: the world of *'Assiah'*, which corresponds to *Nefesh* (the world of action); the world of *'Yetzirah'*, which corresponds to the emotional;

the world of *'Briah'*, creation, which corresponds to the intellectual; and higher than that is the world of *'Atziluth'*, which is Keter (the Transcendent). Higher than that is sometimes called the infinite reality, which corresponds to... So you have that, as I said, on the

microcosm and on the macrocosm. And then, of course, everybody's familiar—or I assume you're familiar—with the ten *sefirot*. How does that fit into this? So the ten *sefirot* are also broken into five categories. You have what's called—those are acronyms for the

ten faculties or parts that every soul is made up of: three intellectual ones; three emotional ones, which are love, reverence, and compassion; and then come the last four, which are the behavioral ones, which correspond to *Nefesh*, to the

more biological side. Indeed, a human body without a soul—I don't want to sound morbid—but that's a corpse. When a person's alive, you have these levels of soul beating inside them, and they're all made up of parts. So, just as a body

needs nourishment—we need food, drink, hygiene, rest, exercise—a soul also needs exercise; our soul also needs nourishment. And when you understand the parts that the soul is made of, then you can understand how you nourish it. How do you nourish the behavioral? By behaving

in a way that's aligned with your soul. So I recently came up with an idea called immersing yourself in your spiritual SPA. SPA is an acronym for Study, Prayer, Action. And those that are more familiar with the texts will know that that is

the three pillars upon which the world stands.  It says, 'On three pillars the world stands.' And the world here means both the cosmic world and the microcosmic world, which is every human being. And what are the three pillars? Study, prayer, which is service of the

heart and doing good deeds, kindness, actions. And what are they? There you have it: cognitive conditioning, emotional conditioning, and behavioral conditioning. And we can look at ourselves, just as I said before, going to a doctor; there's also a soul doctor, and

what does that teach you? That let's look at which part of your life needs some immersion in the SPA. So then: SPA – Study, Prayer, Action. Some of us need enhancement in our behavioral; some in our emotional; some in our cognitive. The truth is we

all need all of them, but you want to focus… I don't know if any of you are familiar with the book I did. It's a different time of the year, called *The Spiritual Guide to Counting the OM*. So, 49 days between Passover and… we talk about the refinement of

your character and what it talks about…  *to Mal*… of *malus*. So I wrote a book that defines, literally, the X-ray of our emotional structure, the spectrum of our emotions. So, for example, many people know… are… are very loving. They're very loving. So evaluate your love. Love can be

Very beautiful, but also, if you don't know when to stop... some people don't know how to stop. Restraint is the key; that's why our love can spoil somebody, our love could also suffocate someone because it's like... it's untempered. So when you go through the 49

days, you actually have an opportunity to exercise, to evaluate, and then... and then take the spiritual vitamins necessary that nourish and enhance each part of that... part of your spiritual makeup. So you see, from this, that this is an elaborate process; this is literally something that can take

over your whole life in a beautiful way—both the five dimensions and how they're comprised in the makeup of all the different... all different steps that I spoke about. So really, the point that I want to lead to is that this is all

happening right now inside of you. Most of us are probably not aware, but inside of you are voices and forces that are waiting for you to feed them. And when you suddenly feel, experience some type of, let's say, anxiety or fear or insecurity, it's always a symptom of your

soul telling you you need to do something about it. Just like pain—we don't like pain, but pain is a red flag; it's a signal; it's telling you to do something about it. The soul can't speak to us in physical terms, so it speaks to

us in emotional terms and in psychological terms. Every anxiety is your soul crying out, 'Help me!' Not necessarily a distress call, depending on the level of anxiety, but definitely a call that's telling you, 'I need to be fed.' Sadly, we live in a world where we were

I wasn't taught most of what I just said. So, besides the fact that we don't even understand our own voices, we don't even know how to feed them. So what do you do when a person is in that state? Well, this has been essentially the essence of

my whole life.  I grew up with this. Once I began to appreciate, and I continued to learn to appreciate, this whole inner system, I try my best to help people figure out, firstly, where do you stand, and then what you can do and make

the recommendations of the different soul vitamins, soul exercises, soul spa, and the different terminology to nourish and feed and nurture our very essence of who makes us tick. So yes, we know there's a world of therapy; we know it's probably a trillion-dollar industry. No one even knows

especially if you include the pharmaceutical side of it, medicine, and how people medicate themselves. You include all the addictions and all the other things that people struggle with to somewhat relieve their existential angst and pain and loneliness, and um, then I mean it's

essentially really so much of what life is defined by. When, if a person was able to access and feed that part of their soul, how much would be preempted? How much would be prevented? So what we really need is a revolution, to be very honest, a

real revolution that doesn't begin when we're adults. Frederick Douglass said, "It's infinitely easier to bring up a healthy child than to fix a broken adult." If we could create a generation of children and teach them about their souls and their natural...

They're natural souls because children, by nature, are much more driven by imagination, by idealism, by dreams. It's *we* who knock it out of them by saying that's not practical. You know, we turn them into mathematicians, into technicians, figuring out how to maneuver and make money in

this world. I'm not taking away from the value of that, but we basically turn them from souls into bodies instead of fueling their fertile souls and their fertile imaginations. But imagine we can create a generation that understands themselves in this way, so the preemptive

avenue of medicine that would create... who knows the value of that? But when we do face a challenge, you have resources; you have a way of analyzing and saying, 'One second, is this a *neish* thing? Is it a Ru thing? Is it emotional? Is it cognitive? Is

it a transcendent issue? Is it a combination of some of them?' And then specifically drilling down into... I gave some examples, obviously a lot more, and all of them will give you a snapshot of what you're like. One of my big dreams—I might as well share

it—is to... they're mapping the human genome, right? How about mapping the spiritual genome? Like, really creating a comprehensive map that will give us the DNA of every individual soul, so you can look at it and say, ask certain pointed questions and say, 'Okay, here are my

strengths, here are my weaknesses, here are things that need enhancement, here's what needs to be harnessed.' How that can create a literally paradigm shift in the way we see ourselves—really a new psychological model which can utilize everything that exists out there that's good, but

Nevertheless, add this dimension, which is the gift that God gave us: the blueprint I mentioned before.  A blueprint of the Torah, a blueprint of your soul, a blueprint of your psyche—what makes you tick. And when you understand it well, it literally transforms your life.

Just like when you get an x-ray of your lungs—I mean, no one should ever have to need that—but if you get an x-ray of your lungs, the doctor will put the x-ray on the screen and, near it, an x-ray of healthy lungs so...

you can juxtapose and say, "Ah, here there's a bit of blockage here; there's a problem here." So it's critical to have a picture of the so-called, um, quintessential archetype of what a healthy spiritual genome looks like, and

then you could say, "Okay, now how—where do I stand in regard to that?" And grow toward that to create a far better and healthier human being. If you like this video, hit the Subscribe button and notification bell below for hours of the best Jewish content online.

MIND BLOWING: What your soul is made of

Rabbi Simon Jacobson at Meaningful Life Center

The Primacy of the Soul and Sensory Experience

Everything begins with the soul, not the body.

We prioritize physical sensations over spiritual awareness.

Sensory deprivation reveals the true self.

Sensory experience is crucial for relationships.

Limited knowledge of the human body and brain.

Exploring the building blocks of the soul.

Dimensions of the soul, from outer to inner.

Five levels: Nefesh, Ruach, Neshama, Chaya, Yechida.

Chaya and Yechida: Transcendent levels, connection to the Divine.

Divine energy imbues all levels of the soul.

The importance of intention (*kavvanah*) in actions.

Engaging all five soul levels in daily activities.

Infusing actions with the energy of the soul.

Soulful Relationships and Spiritual Growth

Levels of compatibility in relationships: physical, emotional, intellectual, spiritual.

Spiritual compatibility: shared vision for life.

Improving relationships through self-awareness.

Daily prayers and their connection to soul levels.

Microcosm and macrocosm: the soul's connection to the cosmos.

The four worlds and their correspondence to soul levels.

The ten Sefirot and their categorization.

Nourishing the soul through Study, Prayer, Action (SPA).

SPA as the three pillars upon which the world stands.

Addressing imbalances in cognitive, emotional, and behavioral aspects.