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About this episode

In many relationships, there's an ongoing struggle to balance personal growth with relational harmony, often leaving couples feeling stuck and disconnected. The issue at hand is not just about communication or compatibility—it's about understanding and nurturing the deeper psycho-spiritual connection that binds two individuals.

In this episode, we dive into the essential pillars that can positively transform your relationship from a psycho-spiritual perspective. We'll explore how being responsible for your own happiness sets the stage for healthier dynamics, the importance of viewing friction as an opportunity for growth, and how prioritizing your relationship can foster a secure, joyful bond. Moreover, by examining the potential for purpose both individually and as a partnership, this discussion offers tangible insights and spiritual practices to help you create a more meaningful and fulfilling connection with your partner.

Rachel Glik is a licensed professional counselor with 30+ years as a couples and individual therapist in private practice. Since 2014, she has been a regular feature on the Fox 2 AM show in St. Louis as a relationship and mental health expert. She is the author of A Soulful Marriage: Healing Your Relationship With Responsibility, Growth, Priority, and Purpose.

Episode Highlights

03:40 Embracing personal growth and the role of spiritual guidance.

08:03 The four pillars framework: A path to self-relationship and personal responsibility.

12:18 Scientific meets spiritual: Harmonizing psychology and Kabbalah in relationships.

16:47 Unlocking personal power through vulnerability and self-awareness.

20:05 Exploring purpose and positive impact as a couple.

27:55 Spiritual practices and the journey towards Kabbalah.

30:39 Balancing personal growth with relational dynamics.

32:55 Creating a relational sanctuary: The art of sacred connection.

37:20 Transition from romance to synergy in long-term relationships.

39:21 Navigating threats and traumas by trust in relationships.

42:28 Destined growth and mutual support in spiritual partnerships.

Your Check List of Actions to Take

• Start by focusing on your own happiness and well-being as the foundation of a healthy relationship.
• Use conflicts and friction in your relationship as opportunities for personal and relational growth.
• Make your partner feel like the most important person in your life by consistently showing appreciation and creating a nurturing environment.
• Explore spiritual practices or beliefs that resonate with both you and your partner to deepen your connection.
• Recognize and respect that each partner may connect with spirituality or self-improvement differently, and that's okay.
• Work together to consciously build a space where love, understanding, and deep connection can thrive.
• Discuss how, as a couple, you can contribute positively to the world around you and set intentions to act on it.
• Consider using broader spiritual frameworks to help navigate and give meaning to challenges in your relationship.

Mentioned

A Soulful Marriage (*Amazon Affiliate link) (book)

Evolve in Love (program)

Connect with Dr. Rachel Glik

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Email: [email protected]

If you have a topic you would like it to be discussed, please contact us by clicking on the “Ask Dr. Jessica Higgins” button here. 

Thank you so much for your interest in improving your relationship. 

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Thank you!  

*With Amazon Affiliate Links, I may earn a few cents from Amazon, if you purchase the book from this link.

Episode Transcript

Rachel, thank you for joining us. I'm really looking forward to our conversation.

Me too. Thank you so much for having me.

Yeah. As we were talking just before getting started here, it seems like we share some similar philosophy and just this very conscious, intimate relating. You've written a book, and I think I was sharing with you just so much of what you're offering in the book just seems so helpful, both in principle and in making it really digestible in the sense of having visuals and prompts for people to work with. So I know we're going to dive into that today.

So for people who are just getting to know you here, where would you like to start about how you came to focus on relationship and intimate couples?

A lot of it came from my own journey that I didn't even realize was building toward this, for many, many years of my own marriage. I've been married for 36 years, and I got my doctorate in counseling, and I didn't even expect to specialize in couples. But I just was finding that they were reaching out to me. So I feel like it was like I was called to do so. Then once I got started, and I also had initially been trained pretty classically and humanistically, existentially kind of, and then I found the wisdom of Kabbalah in particular, but had started studying spirituality, and then I ventured to see how the two could combine. That's when I knew I was onto something. I started seeing how much the spiritual ideas are so very practical, and how much they blend well with how we can grow individually and grow closer together.

So then I just started experiencing powerful shifts and powerful experiences that I couldn't even put my finger on in sessions. Then it became this angst, or this pain, for lack of a better word, and longing, like I want more people to have access to what just happened. So that hung on me for a long time, for probably about 10 years. I would pick it up and put it down and pick up the idea of putting it together. It's very difficult to distill something that's so multivariate, multi-quantum in a way, and put it into something as linear as a book. So for my brain, that's not easy to do.

Well, and to do it well, to do it to the level of what you're wanting to convey and to do the transformational process justice. It is hard to capture all the multifaceted layers. So for people who maybe aren't as acquainted with the principles of Kabbalah, is there anything you want to say for people who aren't as familiar?

Oh, sure. So Kabbalah is a universal spiritual wisdom. It's thought of often as Jewish mysticism, but it's because many of the Kabbalists or most were Jewish. But Christian Kabbalists existed, and it's really literally universal ideas of how we can understand mostly that there's a perfect system of cause-effect in the world, which means it's to understand where our source comes from. That includes for our own individual growth, seeing how we contribute to creating our reality with our consciousness, with our actions, with our words, and how much control we therefore have on creating our reality. That includes also how we would raise our children, which we can get to perhaps, how you blend children in with a relationship. But that also comes from the principles of cause and effect, that we are the cause of the children, so you want to make sure you nurture the cause, which is your relationship. So that idea weaves through all the teachings. It's a very logical way of understanding things that are beyond the five senses, but that are more considered a reality that's the true reality.

I can absolutely speak to how this fits, as you mentioned the blend, or how it might intersect with psychology. Do you want to speak for what you were focusing on how this fits so beautifully for the psychological process?

Yes. So I find that even, there's an idea that I string through the whole book, which my husband and I learned in studying Kabbalah, which is that we mirror each other. 

Not that there isn't something that also needs to be addressed in the relationship, but there's something of an opportunity for you to see yourself more clearly, so that you can remove the barriers to your own connection with your soul. Psychologically speaking, Freud coined that projection, where you don't want to see certain things in yourself, so you will naturally put it on somebody else.

But what takes it to a different level with spirituality, is that it has a higher purpose to it. It's not only about survival that we do it. We do do it for survival to protect ourselves, but it has a deeper explanation and a deeper purpose. Therefore, I don't know, I just find that it gives me more inspiration and more energy to make the transformations when I understand it from that bigger picture of my own soul's purpose, is to come and work on that very trait that my husband pushes the button on.

Well, I'm just resonating with what you're describing. One of the things that beared in my research, I did a meta-analysis, it was a qualitative meta-analysis, and one of the themes that came out of that was relationship as a teacher. So it's very much this concept. On the podcast, we talk about that what gets activated is curriculum for developing. So I so appreciate what you're describing. Even in the language of psychology, if we look at the Emotionally Focused Therapy principles, the things that get activated that might feel very triggering, that that might be an invitation to understand. Maybe these are old attachment injuries or relational traumas or things that we've not felt secure in, and make perfect sense, and yet perhaps we haven't had the safety to really turn towards them and metabolize it or heal it. So both from a trauma and EFT, there's ways in which this is supporting the integration and the developing.

The last thing I'll say is, I was working with a couple yesterday, and he was getting in touch with a part of him that he both wants to feel connected with his wife around and seen around, but also has a lot of shame around because of the pain and the wounding from earlier years. It's this thing of like, these are the parts of me that I don't feel are lovable. So one of the things that I appreciate about perhaps the spiritual perspective here is that it is purpose, it is a calling into wholeness. That many times when people feel this sense of wound or inadequacy or pain, his language was like, I'm broken. So I love that there can be this bigger, wider scope that you're referring to that can hold this, and in a different frame. Am I hearing you?

Oh, a hundred percent, absolutely. The adding of the two souls coming together, I find it for my husband and I in particular, I'll just speak for myself, and I see this with clients when they start understanding and seeing their themes and their patterns, that they came together to bring to the surface this very thing that needs healing. Like, the teacher relationship is healer, not that your partner is going to heal it for you like we sometimes think they should. It does help though, when we're having a corrective emotional experience in our relationship. At the same time, it can be very exciting and empowering to embrace: Oh, I've had this consciousness since before I was born. I came in with this consciousness. My family life helped corroborate this consciousness, that I'm too small, or I'm not important, or I'm invisible, whatever those messages are.

So when we really can own those, that that's mine to work on and heal and transform, then it takes a lot of the heaviness out of when we get mired together in our unmet needs or our triggers. Then I feel a responsibility, I find in a healthy way, that I want to help my husband with his, not fix it for him either, but it makes me more sensitive to: Oh, he's exactly right for me for what my issues are, and there's like a destined thing. It was a gift that we found one another, even in the things, and especially in the things that we bump up against each other. Then it helps me think about him in a way of how can I, over a long runway, gradually support him in what he came to do in this world? I view this from my Kabbalah studies, is that when you commit to someone, you become one soul. So we have our own individuation, our own differentiation, of course.

You're like, don't get me wrong.

Yeah, exactly. That can be kind of a slippery slope. But it's still a very thoughtful kind of caring of not seeing yourselves as separate in a certain kind, in a spiritual way, that then awakens in me or inspires me or invites me to be more mindful of how I approach a conflict, to see how can I help him with also what he came in the world for. You kind of take on each other's karma, we call it tikkun in Kabbalah. You take on each other's life lessons, that you are here to help each other with them. Sometimes it's to challenge each other to say: I know you're better than this, I know you're capable of more than this. Other times, it's to give grace.

I want to ask a follow-up question around that. I also want to just acknowledge and validate what I'm hearing you say, in that one of the ways I've heard this phrased is that, you love me enough to play the part for me to really work with this. It's not an easy thing to confront or feel, but the pain or the difficulty can be that knock on the door, or sometimes a lot bigger of a knock, depending. But that sometimes that's a difficult role to play if we want to talk about in a spiritual perspective, and that it's a real growth. And the matching that we somehow have this unconscious picker or the destiny around it, that we'll choose someone that's perfectly matched for us to grow with.

Yes, I like that. It is a deeper level of commitment, unconditional commitment, that it's not just what have you done for me lately. It's that we've got very important work to do together, learning how to love and learning how to see our wholeness. It's a commitment you make to each other. That's, I think, where it goes deeper, when you're committing to the essence of each person.

So talk to us a little bit, if you will, about this commitment, and that also was one of the things that came out. My dissertation was many, many years ago, so I keep referencing it. But it was a sense of the container, the commitment, that there's an opportunity to go deeper in the practice of growth, both individually and relationally, but there's the container that holds the space. You're referencing something I would love for you to just share a little bit more about, around this one soul or purpose, and that we also still have our individual purpose and soul path. How do those work together, if you're willing to share?

Sure, that's a wonderful juicy topic. 

So that is something, when you create a whole entity, seeing what it is that you have as each of you coming together as separate. You have three people in the relationship: A and B, and then you have the sanctuary.

This comes from a book, I'm thinking of my father who recently passed away, and he was Cuban. So he found this in a Spanish book. Spanish books have so much deep wisdom. But an old novel, and he showed me that. I was just thinking about that age-old idea that there's really three in a relationship, that one is the entity of itself. So that's what you're nurturing, and that's what each person is responsible for, creating a place where love can dwell and where growth can happen. A safe space, a challenging space, an inspired space, an intentional space, and an I Thou. Like Martin Buber's I Thou Holiness, where you see the holiness in each other. The kind of dialogues you have are not just treating each other as an I It. So that's the wholeness, the oneness, the one soul component.

Then the individuality is, you want to be facing out in the world. This is how one of my Kabbalah teachers, Karen Berg, put it, where you're walking, facing out in the world, hands holding. But not facing just toward each other, you're facing out in the world. So we still each have our own individual purpose and individual calling and individual authentic personality and desires and needs and expression of our light. So in our sanctuary, the idea is to support each person to launch, be encouraged. Even if it means that you go in somewhat different directions, and you have to just work on navigating how you stay connected through that. So in a really healthy sanctuary, you actually should be even more supported in your individuality.

Of course you maintain the connection, because you have to have both. You have to have the sanctuary to really go as far as you're capable of going individually and vice versa.

Yes, I'm mapping on a couple of things here. I so appreciate you just helping unpack that, especially with all the things in culture, and perhaps in media, around finding the one and this happily ever-after. I think that's definitely changed in the popular culture, I think people are much more informed. It seems like that's the trend, and yet it still, I think, is a part of, and we're in the US talking about more of the western culture here. But I think it's still a part of the consciousness around that a relationship has a life of its own, and what you're really speaking about is the caretaking of that sanctuary, like the intentionality and the purpose around what is getting co-created. Then, what you're talking about, what I'm mapping onto this is just the developmental stages of intimacy, that we have that first stage that's romance and then power struggle. Then what I understand, that fifth stage, I know people have different language for different stages, but what I understand is that fifth stage is really this synergy. It's this ability of one plus one does not equal two, that there's a way in which both people are being supported in this more secure, functioning place. But also are able to, together, be in the world, and have such a powerful impact that's this generative cycle.

So cool. I'm just soaring with what you're saying, I'm feeling it viscerally. We start to get carried by the energy of the universe—the friendly, positive, loving, good force of the universe. I think there's a section in the book, I mention a lot about effort, you can call it pain, you can call it discomfort, whatever. But this was a principle in Kabbalah, it's just universal. Kabbalah doesn't own these ideas, it's a name for these truths that have been passed down for thousands of years. But the story of creation, according to Kabbalah, is we came here in order to be a creator. So we don't really, truly, on a soul level want anything for free. We want the feeling of being an active giver, an active sharer, an empowerer, a manifester, somebody who bestows. 

That's bringing back to the synergy that you were talking about. Like, you start to dance with the energy, with the source of all that is, and you get support. Sometimes it comes in hard ways, but when you start to really trust it and lean into it, then you're just always part of this joint dance. Then even when you do have friction or conflict, which I still find, after 38 years being together, we still will have. About six weeks ago, we had a Sunday that took us till 2:00 PM to really sit down and talk. Because I needed time. I was so upset, or I was so out of my groundedness. So we still have those, but less of the relationship is focusing on just trying to dodge bullets and navigating our differences.

Even the frame that you were referring to earlier, that oftentimes, when we're in that threat response and we're trying to orient around what's happening, this is my person and what's getting presented, it's like, how do I make sense of this? This is where the belief, and perhaps even things that are unconscious or deeper that we're not even fully aware of, start to emerge, or traumas. So we don't necessarily have a guiding light or maybe a Northstar, as you would refer to, that when these things get activated and we don't have a process or a path to really lean into or trust or even the felt experience that it will be okay on the other side of this, that we can claw at our coping or our protective strategies. That, to your point, works conversely. It almost is creating more disconnection, more distress.

Sorry, I want to ask a question, but I'm also so curious personally. So my question, and then I'll ask my side question. My question is, how do you help people, or when do you start to introduce this sense of purpose for the couple, purpose for the individual, this life force kind of energy, if you will, that can be a different experience around trusting the process, what's at play, the bigger perspective that you're referring to? How do you help people orient towards that, begin to experiment with it? I know the trust is really going to be, to your point, earned through repetition and them getting into practice. But that's where I want to go. But my side question, we can put a pin in that if you can track me.

Yeah, absolutely. If not, I can ask again.

Okay, yeah. Did you and your husband approach Kabbalah practice and your study, I don't know if you call it faith, but did you encounter that together, or did one of you engage first? How did that work?

That's a wonderful question. So when I married my husband, I just really had the illusionary belief that everything was going to be good in my life. He's such a good man, and I was so clear about him. So there was a big crash, maybe a year and a half or two years in. I started feeling this emptiness and this disconnection and uninspired, and it was the beginning. It was a crash, but it was the biggest gift, and that was really what began the soul-searching for me. I switched from my industrial organizational psych, started trying to figure out how does life work, what makes a person happy, how do relationships work? I really came into my own that I had been avoiding, but it was really my essence.

So from there, we really went on probably a 15-year journey of trying to find something together. This is why pillar one is pillar one. Because I was under the belief too much that he was responsible for my happiness, and he grew up thinking he was responsible for the woman's happiness in his family. So we were really cooking up a soup that made us sick to our stomachs eventually. So when I started working on myself, seeing that I think this is calling me to grow, it took me a while to realize that. Then from there, I wanted to see if we could find something together that we could connect with to go deeper. Because all the trimmings were there. But it was like, I happened to be a deep person, so I think I was looking for more meaning and thought that the things that we had initially were going to take me all the way. It's just, they weren't. We needed to grow closer. We needed to grow, period. To get more real. We weren't so real.

So then from there, for about 15 years, we were both born Jewish, but we were open to anything though. We studied Buddhism and Hinduism and went to all different kinds of people at Omega Institute and mind-body spirit kind of things. Everything was influencing us, but nothing clicked until we found Kabbalah. I felt like, and we both feel, that we did a lot of work on our relationship in the meantime with therapy and other things, and had children and really enjoyed that together.

But then I felt like we were being prepared for Kabbalah. So when it came into our life, we just knew we wanted to do it together. Whatever we did spiritually, we wanted to find something that we both could connect with. That was one of our goals. So a friend of ours saw some of our books on our shelves, and he had been studying Kabbalah in another city, and he gave us two books from the Kabbalah Center. I mean, I saw like a Xanadu when I started, I just fell in love instantly by page two. But I wasn't sure if my husband would be able to connect with it. So I remember sitting in our bedroom, I handed him the book and I waited about 10 minutes, and he closed the book and he said, now this I can do! I was like, thank God. He said, this is grounded. Some of the other things were just like an individual person's ideas, but this, it just resonates with the soul. It either does or it doesn't.

So that's really how we got started. There was no Kabbalah center in our city, so we just started meeting with teachers from a distance and starting a group in St. Louis, and we travel. We travel a lot to go to Kabbalah centers.

That's beautiful.

Yeah. So we're each in different place with it, and that's okay. I am more passionate about it than he is, and that's been a lot of my growth is to really embrace exactly where he is. But thankfully, there's enough overlap that we are able to share a common language, especially when we deal with conflict, whether it's with us or we each go through something, we're always there to support us with these concepts that really help you see it from a bigger picture. That map you described, like you're just not flailing with just the pain of something, you at least can begin to walk on like a guide at the top of the labyrinth, getting you through the maze.

Yes. I want to say it was like 2000, or maybe not even 2000. Or maybe just 2000. It was like late 1990s or early 2000s. I had a friend in school in undergrad who gave me a book, I wish I remember. I can see it visually. It was white with a gold tree, and it was the mysticism Kabbalah. I remember reading it and I remember being like, how could anyone argue with any of these points. To your point, they're so universal. So thank you for sharing.

Yes. One of the things that I love about the wisdom of Kabbalah, at its essence, is that it's about bringing all religions together. It's never about trying to separate. It's literally in the design, as its goal.

Beautiful. I keep referencing my dissertation, but it was interesting, that when couples or partners in relationship are committed to this more conscious and intimate paradigm and practice in their relationship, one of the questions or what came out thematically was, sometimes it wasn't always them starting together. Sometimes it was one person seeking, and then the other person followed. So it was interesting, that's part of why I was curious too. For people listening that have the desire and are seeking, and perhaps their partner doesn't appear to be as interested, that can feel difficult or like a conflict.

Definitely, it's probably more the norm that there is a disparity. Often it is the woman, but sometimes it's the man who feels more connected, and there's really good tips for that. A lot of people come toward it when they see you transforming in a way. It's indirect. It's not direct, like, I want you to do this. It's more like, it starts to become appealing and they start to feel safer to go toward. You want to make sure that you're still recognizable. I made some mistakes, like with my kids. I'm a very intense person, so I went pretty all in really quickly. I think they're okay, but I think it was a little overwhelming for them to see so much change. 

Yeah. Well, even as I'm hearing you speak about the current phase of things, that there's an acceptance, I don't know if I heard that correctly, with your husband, and perhaps his practice looks slightly different than maybe yours, or his enthusiasm or how it manifests or is expressed might be a little different. That when there can be real acceptance for different paths or different ways of being in the spiritual practice, that can usually create a lot more safety as well.

Definitely. I know I wouldn't want somebody pressuring me, it's a horrible feeling.

Oh, you're not doing it right.

Yeah, oh my gosh! So I try to remember, how would I want to be treated myself? I think I had to overcome some fears that I wouldn't be okay unless we were the same in it, and it's just not true. The more, paradoxically, because this is how the system works of the universe, as I have found more peace inside and okay with wherever he is, which is still a good place, it just wasn't in my idea, is I let go of control or I've overcome some of my own. That's where it's perfect, because it's helping me with my work, and patience is a huge growth area for me. So then I notice, I get surprised by it, he is guiding me sometimes. I'm like: Oh okay, this works. Just be busy with working on yourself and your own connection to the creator or whatever, get a source of energy you like to connect with, or however you call it, and you support that synergy. That synergy, that synchrony, it's a magic really.

It is. This is the beauty of the intertwined both individual development and also the relational, allowing what gets activated, but also coming back to self and what is there to learn and grow in. It just sounds like it's such a life-giving process. Not always easy. I can raise my hand with you that there's times where my husband seems like, on the outside, very resistant to something or isn't seemingly cooperating. Then when I can slow down and really look at what's in it for me, I'm like: Oh, that's such an important lesson.

So the other one, which was like, I presumed you were asking, I took it as like, how do you introduce it with your clients? I get started right away. Because I have four pillars in the book. The first one is your relationship with yourself, that we're each responsible for our own happiness and wellbeing. That's pillar one. Each one is a consciousness. There's four consciousnesses, but it was a little hard to say four consciousnesses, so there's four pillars. The second one is where we use our friction to grow individually and closer together. So most couples are coming with a huge pillar two issue. They don't know how to deal with the disconnection or the fighting or how to navigate their differences and their needs not being met. So because we're so heavy in pillar two, I start immediately. I let them know that I'm not telling them to think this way. Just coming to me, this is the paradigm, this is the lens I see it through, which is that it's all about growth.

Growth mindset is a little more approachable. Then I get a feel, as I get to know them, where they're at and what language works for them. Then I let them know where I get this from, because I invite to source. They don't need to study Kabbalah, but I learnt ancient wisdom, and I like to give credibility to it because I think it also holds more weight that way. I tell them, I'm not that smart, I just have access to wisdom that I've applied and it really works. So then I introduce that I know this is going to be difficult, and it doesn't mean that your partner doesn't also truly have to work on what your grievance is about. It's sort of counterintuitive and illogical, but it's more effective just to pause and slow down and look inward first.

Yes. I think one of the things that I'm imagining is a resource, is that with the universalness of what you're bringing, people can feel it inside themselves, in whatever language they might feel more comfortable with or use. Also, to your point, initially, this does spare out in the research psychologically, when we can really look at the deeper core emotion, the attachment longings, or what is in this for me, and share the vulnerability, that is a direct path towards more understanding and intimacy, rather than just being in that reactive, protective coping.

Yeah, exactly. So what's so beautiful about it is, the truth is truth, the physical world and the spiritual world. I mean, we're in the physical branch of the supernal world according to Kabbalah, so it's the same. It's the same ideas, there's no contradiction. I'm doing a seminar in about a week for psychotherapists here in St. Louis, and it's a psycho-spiritual approach to couples counseling. It's one of my favorite things to do, I can tell that is with you too, because I really like science and I really love research. But I love bringing in the two. There's this spiritual idea that makes it resonate, but then also, it's very well-backed, and science is really catching up to the spiritual wisdom. That's what's really happening. But there's a small difference in the invitation to be in touch with one's vulnerability and how much that helps, opens our hearts and creates more movement when there's conflict and more breakthroughs. I think what I find with the spiritual infusion and introduction of that, especially Kabbalah, is it's like a no-victim approach, and it's a little bit more awakening the power we have.

Thank you for acknowledging this.

It was kind of intuitive, but I tried to put words to it, and I think that's the word that comes. I am someone who's extremely sensitive. I test on everything that you could test—Myers Briggs, Enneagram, astrology, everything—my body, everything is sensitive. So emotions are so big. I have big emotions. So I just didn't really appreciate the power I have with my consciousness until I started studying Kabbalah, and the power that I have to really overcome things that I didn't think I could, or manifest things that I didn't think I could. So I find that it awakens. It can take you further and deeper if people are open to it. It doesn't matter, because it's science anyway. That's what's so neat, is you can find a language that reaches anyone with these ideas.

The only challenge is people who really are missing the desire to grow, who are unfortunate enough to not have that, or insight. Lacking insight is just really hard to work with that. But other than those, if those two are present—insight and a willingness at least to grow, a desire, hopefully—then there isn't any paradigm or framework that they're in that these ideas can't apply. But when people can really embrace it right on, directly, it seems to be even more exponential for growth.

Thank you. So for people listening, when you talk about the infusion or being able to hold the spiritual in this process of redirecting focus to one's process or experience, can you say a little bit more about the victim you mentioned, that helps people get out of that victim? Would you be willing to speak to that a little bit?

Sure. So there's different levels of the soul in Kabbalah. There's the nefesh, which is the body level, and that's more like things are happening to me. Then there's the ruach, which is things are happening for me. So that starts to already anti-victim it, so to speak. That we're being loved actually, that things are happening for our benefit, even the things that feel unpleasant. Of course that doesn't mean we should have terrible, terrible suffering. It's not saying that. But it's just generally speaking, that's a whole different conversation. Then the higher level is the neshema, and that's when things are happening through me.

Literally, I was just in New York, and peeked my ear into an updated version of the Kabbalah one course, the level one course at the Kabbalah Center in New York. That is how they are starting to teach right at the beginning. So that's really how we're evolving our consciousness. We get to know that we have this inner opponent that wants to keep us at nefesh, that things are happening to me. So the idea is, the more we recognize that, or you could call it the ego or the protective mechanisms or whatever you want to call it, it's an essential part of who we are. The more we have, the bigger we have one, the more we transform, and the more elevation we can experience.

But the journey of studying the wisdom of Kabbalah, in my experience, is to go from: it's happening to me, it's happening for me, to it's happening through me. That I'm really nothing. I'm really just only existing in this moment because the light of the creator is infusing energy into me. The more I open myself up to that and ask for it to come in and to guide me, then actually, it's a paradox. Because we let go of who we are, but we find who we are truly, how powerful we really are. So it's not an anti-victim meaning that you should blame yourself either. That was the best way I would describe it, is through those different levels of one's soul.

Even just being able to have a different, they talk about this in some of the trauma-informed therapeutic modalities, whether or not it's parts work. But to be able to relate to the pain from a different perspective. I think, in IFS, they talk about is it higher self.

I think they usually use core self.

Yeah. So I think that this is giving a little bit helping mobilize, when we're so perhaps overly identified with the pain or the discomfort. So to be able to have a little bit more access that gives real space for growth here and development, and also, what is possible.

Yeah. And you bringing up parts, which I love, I've been doing this in what we called inner child work, where you have different parts and you get to know them and you integrate them.

I was doing, is it psycho-synthesis? I don't know if you've heard of it. It's very similar.

I just love how it sounds, but I don't think I've studied that, or maybe I have and just don't know the name of it. But anyway, I think I find that there's something called spiritual bypass, which you probably have heard. So I'm also looking to be careful about when it's time to pull out these ideas—there's a bigger picture, and it's happened as it needed to, and you're capable of healing it, and it is part of your purpose—with really taking care of those parts. I kind of do it with the internal work, like we have to go internal. I don't find that victimizing at all. I think that's also empowering. We're in a physical body. So we went through something, and so you really need to take care of it, and the nervous system and the healing of the belief systems and the love. 

That can really accelerate it. But it's a constant finesse or a both and.

Rachel, I know I'm looking at time, and I'm like, how long have we been talking? I feel like we've entered in a total portal of joy.

This has been so much fun.

It has. I know it might feel like, for people listening, that we're scratching the surface. But the fact that you had said you were originally studying the industrial organizational track in your graduate work, I was like: Oh, that makes so much sense. Because I commented on your grasp and your visuals and your charts.

That's so funny, I think you're right.

Yes, and the way you said this is part of how I organize and understand, and it really helps. But I think for people that, again, want to make this a bit more actionable or just have it, it's a really beautiful complement. You use story as well to help people relate to the human relational parts, as well as just being able to conceptualize this in a way of getting orientation and some support around the map and the path. So I am so grateful. I do think it's very rich and is such a resource for people to really work with and do some extremely deep work. So tell us the name of the book.

Yes, so it's called A Soulful Marriage. That's soulful meaning all the different ways that we can connect more deeply soul-to-soul and hence support each other at a soul level, and how much joy there is to get to know your soul and to connect more that way. It's also kind of thoughtful. It could be a thoughtful marriage, which soulful also means being very thoughtful and intentional. It's organized in four pillars, and that's kind of a map in many ways, in and of itself. When you are working through, they're gradual, they're iterative. As you work through the pillars, you create a sanctuary, you create a soulful relationship more and more. So I mentioned the first two, which is one is responsibility, and pillar two is growth, when the friction comes in and the growth.

Then the third is a priority, and that's my husband's pillar. That's where you really make each other the most important other person in your life, meaning other than your relationship with yourself or your creator, in a way that you really know it. Like, you've just got this knowing that you're so special and you're so valued and you're cherished, and that's a really important element. Then the fourth one is, I would say the least talked about. I can't remember many or ever a couple coming and saying they're having issues in this area, but it's one that I think is missing, and a lot of people don't even know that it's missing. That is, purpose, where you don't think small. You actually see yourselves as a force for the world. Both in your healing of your growth together individually and as a couple already has purpose, and then also, how you impact your family and showing up and really becoming more and more generous-hearted and spirited. Then ultimately, to see yourselves as one with the world and expand yourself, and how you can come together and really brainstorm little simple ways or big ways that you might be able to use your time and your talent and your treasure, and then to share it and make the world better, and then you end up benefiting. I see your eyes, and I'm so touched.

I know, I'm so moved by what you're saying. Because I don't think, to your point, it's not encouraged enough. We don't have as many reminders around what is possible and how we can really be in connection with what is possible, and the purpose and the power of that. I'm very moved by that. So I'm so grateful, thank you.

My pleasure.

Is there anything else you want to mention that you want us to put on the show notes? You've been doing a lot, and I know you had mentioned maybe other things that you want to mention. But do you have a website?

Yes. You can find lots of different places to buy the book, and other places in media that I've been talking about the book, on my website, and that is DrRachelGlik.com. So if you want to buy the book, it's on Amazon or Barnes and Noble or places like that. But you can also see some other choices there under book. And whoever's listening, I just wish you to be growing in love and joy in ways that are beyond what you ever really imagined. It's possible.

Awesome, wonderful!

Thank you so much, Jessica.

Yeah, thank you too.

Yeah, it's been a treat. We'll have to talk more.

Yes.