Back Before the Beginning
Perspective, Process, and the Question of Authority
Over the past few days, I’ve been sitting with a question that feels bigger than any single tradition, method, or belief system.
It emerged quietly—through conversation, through listening, through watching others struggle honestly with very real emotional and spiritual challenges, and, somewhat unexpectedly, while watching a few very corny but deeply sincere Christmas movies.
For many years, I pulled away from the commercialization of Christmas. And as my studies in Jewish wisdom deepened, I found myself even less inclined to “buy into” the season at face value. And yet… something softened this year.
What struck me wasn’t the theology.
It was the orientation.
I found myself asking:
What is it that a Christian understands about reality?
What is the story—the Binah—that organizes their experience?
And alongside that: What is the Binah story for the Jew?
And what about the Muslim, the Hindu, the Buddhist, the agnostic, the atheist?
Is there a common denominator beneath all of these perspectives?
This question feels urgent right now—not because we need agreement, but because so many of us are suffering at the level of meaning, not just emotion.
Perspective Shapes Process
One insight that has stayed with me for years is simple, but profound:
Perspective determines process.
Or said another way:
The stage from which you perceive reality determines what you sense, what you value, and how you act.
In Kabbalistic language, this lives in Binah—the realm of understanding, story, and interpretation. Binah is not raw insight, and it’s not emotion. It’s the narrative frame through which life is understood.
Right now, many strong, sincere, intelligent people are deeply anchored in their version of “the Truth.” And yet, despite that certainty, we see widespread confusion, emotional overwhelm, and a sense of being trapped.
Which raises a deeper question.
The Question Beneath All Questions: Authority
As I sat with all of this, another inquiry emerged—one that may quietly unify far more than doctrine ever could:
Who—or what—is your authority?
Not who should be.
Not who you were taught ought to be.
But who or what actually governs your decisions, your reactions, your sense of safety, and your sense of self.
Is your authority:
- moral rules?
- religious leadership?
- scripture?
- Christ?
- Hashem?
- what feels right in the moment?
- success?
- productivity?
- social approval?
- survival?
- fear?
- predictability?
We all have an authority structure, whether we’ve named it or not.
And here’s the key insight I’m sitting with:
Much of our suffering does not come from emotion itself,
but from being unconsciously governed by an authority we’ve never examined.
Returning Before Repair
In Jewish wisdom, Teshuvah is often translated as repentance. But a deeper translation is return—specifically, a return to an original state before distortion entered the system.
This is sometimes described symbolically as “returning the final Hei to the first Hei”—not fixing outcomes, but correcting the story that generates them.
That idea has been living very personally in my own body.
As someone who has lived with diabetes for decades, I’ve learned that healing is not about fighting the symptom. If healing were possible, it would require returning the system to a state before the damage occurred—not managing the result, but addressing the origin.
The same is true emotionally.
The same is true spiritually.
The same is true culturally.
We keep trying to regulate outcomes that were shaped by a story we never paused to question.
Process Over Outcome
In a recent conversation, I spoke about something that has guided me for years:
Focus on mastering the process, not controlling the outcome.
Outcomes live in the final Hei—in results, manifestations, and consequences.
But process lives upstream, in understanding, orientation, and meaning.
When we fixate on outcomes, we become anxious, reactive, and brittle.
When we return to process, something unexpected happens:
- nervous systems soften
- emotions move without overwhelming us
- clarity emerges without force
- choice returns
Not because life becomes predictable—but because we are no longer governed by fear of unpredictability.
A Gentle Inquiry
I don’t have answers to offer here—only an invitation.
What if freedom doesn’t come from fixing yourself, healing faster, or choosing the “right” belief system?
What if it begins by asking:
- What story am I living inside of?
- Who or what holds authority in my inner world?
- What would it feel like to return to a place before shame, before fear, before self-observation from the outside?
This is not about becoming Christian, Jewish, spiritual, healed, or enlightened.
It’s about reorienting—returning to a deeper point of origin where truth is not enforced, but recognized.
Perhaps that is the common denominator we’ve been looking for.
I’m still sitting with these questions myself.
If they resonate, you’re welcome to sit with them too.
Sometimes the most meaningful shift happens
not when we move forward…
but when we return back before the beginning.