Restoring the World to Wholeness

From Joel & Michelle Levey’s books:
Luminous Mind: Meditation & Mind Fitness

When we seek for connection, we restore the world to wholeness.

Our seemingly separate lives become meaningful

as we discover how truly necessary

we are to each other.

Margaret Wheatley

As the wish for balance, not just for ourselves but for all beings, awakens in our hearts, we participate in a profound teaching from the Kabala on restoring wholeness to the world. This is called tikkun ha-olam in Hebrew, which means, “repairing the world.” Tikkun means to mend or repair. Outwardly, tikkun is associated with social action that has the goal of improving the world. But inwardly, in the esoteric traditions, tikkun is the sacred innerwork of mending a broken world and restoring it to wholeness through spiritually developing the love that carries us beyond our separate self. Tikkun is regarded as the highest, most profound purpose of our life.

This activity to restore balance and harmony in our world is closely akin to the Buddhist notion of bodhichitta, “the spirit of awakening,” which holds that at the heart-core of every living being is a universal impulse to fully awaken to the wholeness of its potential and to serve others in their awakening. This is the universal yearning to reduce suffering, cultivate harmonious relations, and find dynamic balance.

The work of awakening and repairing is an inside-out job. It is said that every tiny bit of restoration of wholeness within ourselves directly contributes to the restoration and awakening of all beings and of the whole world. The impulse of every movement toward healing, every moment of mindfulness, every act of kindness we generate within ourselves, is directly shared or transmitted to support the emergence of that potential within each and every living being.

The more deeply and completely we are balanced within ourselves, the better equipped we are and the more natural it is for us to reach out and nurture the emergence of greater harmony in our world. As our awareness and sensitivity increase, we recognize that certain situations in our life or world are intolerably unproductive, toxic, or destructive. This helps to strengthen our resolve to get healthier; resolve conflicts; put a stop to abusive violence in our relationships; and become an advocate, activist, or celebrant of noble causes that expand the sphere of balance and harmony to our world and to the lives of others.

The following image can help you bring this idea more alive. Imagine that you are standing on a mountaintop on a still, clear, dark night. In the sky around you are an infinite number of jewels linked together in a subtle network of light. Imagine now, as you light a little candle, that instantly its light and warmth is reflected in each and every one of the jewels surrounding you. Not only that, but each of the jewels is also illumined by the light that is reflected in it from all the illuminating jewels. It is a fantastic and inspiring sight. Now imagine that as you light up a moment of mindfulness within you, the light of that mindfulness “lights up” all living beings. Likewise, if within yourself you awaken or light up a moment of love, gratitude, wonder, joy, forgiveness, that impulse immediately lights up within all others. The transmission is effortless, immediate, heart to heart. Each of the jewels in the net is lighting up all the other jewels, giving rise to waves of excitement, waves of sympathy, waves of gratitude, love, or blessings.

In each moment we are awake, we can feel what is reverberating within ourselves and respond in a way that lights up the world in either a weird or a wonderful way. Mindful moment to mindful moment, from the very core of our being we contribute to the balancing and rebuilding of the world in wholeness, or contribute to fear and confusion. In moments of distraction, when mindlessness sets in and we lose our balance, the momentum of habit and countless impinging forces propels us. In moments of self-remembering, when we awaken to mindfulness, we at least have a choice.

As we learn to recognize and repair the rifts and imbalances in our own life we reestablish wholeness within ourselves. As our internal repair work deepens, we are better able to reach out–inwardly and outwardly– to repair the world around us. As we focus the flow of our dynamic being more into balance, and dissolve the rigid boundaries that separate us from our wholeness, we restore the world to balance. These aren’t just nice ideas but a description of the way things are. Our journey of awakening in one of learning to bring more our natural, clear lucid, loving, radiant, presence into our world. This is very deep tikkun.