Avatar, Sephirot, and Spiritual Dualisms

A representation of Sephirot, the mystical, kabbalistic concepts representing ten emanations of G-d in Hasidic tradition.

Recently my partner and I re-watched the cult-classic children’s anime series, Avatar the Last Airbender. Widely hailed as one of the greatest animated kid’s series of all time, the show follows Aang, a 12-year old endowed with telekinetic abilities to manipulate the main four elements on earth (Water, Earth, Fire, Air) tasked with saving the world in the midst of global war.

The most powerful of Aang’s abilities are unlocked which he enters the “Avatar state,” During this state, his tattoos and eyes glow and he slips out of consciousness, his physical being becoming the vessel for the knowledge and wisdom of the dozens of previous Avatars who have been reincarnated over centuries.

There is something breathtaking about every scene in the show where Aang enters the Avatar State. Each time he displays extraordinary feats of bending, employing techniques he’s never learned, but live within him from his past lives. Most often, Aang enters the Avatar stare in response to profoundly distressing moments of fear, rage, and desire for survival.

In Season two, Aang seeks out a guru who claims to be able to teach him to enter the Avatar state consciously and at will. The Guru’s teachings involve unlocking the 7 chakras (conceptually drawn from traditional Hinduism), each associated with a particular emotion or experience (e.g survival, pleasure, willpower, love etc.) and blocked by a particular challenging emotion (e.g fear, guilt, shame, grief, etc.)

I’m struck by the dualisms; both that the Avatar’s greatest power and entrance to a spiritual collective conscious is paired with profoundly upsetting experiences and emotions, and, that to gain control over the Avatar state, he must face challenging emotions head on and move towards them, in so doing unlocking the necessary chakras.

Within my spiritual practice of Judaism, one of my biggest struggles has always been around engaging with davening, liturgy, or text study when I’m not feeling in the spirit of these activities. Much of davening (Jewish prayer) is rooted in chanting words of praise, awe, gratitude, and humility in the face of hashem (G-d). So often, however, I find myself unable to access these sentiments when trying to, instead feeling anxious, tired, irritable, or even bored. In these moments, engaging spiritually can feel about as appealing as sitting down for dinner on a completely full stomach.

The framework of twin, opposing and connected concepts, is also found within Judaism, however. For instance, “Yirah” is the Hebrew word for both “Fear” and “Awe.” Sephirot, the mystical, kabbalistic concepts representing ten emanations of G-d in Hasidic tradition, are often represented as a tree. Some rabbis interpret the left side of the tree as characterized by fear and the right side characterized by love.

What a relieving concept it is to understand painful emotions as things to look at, move towards, even embrace, rather than escape, subvert, or simply transcend? It certainly feels more accessible to me than some kind of spiritual enlightenment that calls for bypassing the unpleasant parts of being alive. Especially within organizing spaces, I’ve found there can be a pressure to suppress this kind of exploration in favor of a hamster wheel of fighting the next fight. Over time this has left me feeling hollow and depleted, at times puppeteering myself to go through the motions, lacking the embodied sense of why I want to participate in a particular meeting, campaign, or movement. Counter-intuitively, the more space I’ve made to explore the frustration, shame, and guilt that form the shadow of a lack of motivation, the easier it has been to be in touch with the inspiration, awe, and love that ultimately animate my desire to participate further.

While I’ve been exploring embracing these dualisms in personal practice, I think there is room for them to be integrated into social movement and communal spaces as well. How might fear serve as a block to love within a group? An organization? A community? And what might it take to collectively move towards that fear, in order to move through it?