Deep spiritual instructions come sometimes from the most mundane things around us. “Mind the Gap” from the underground trains is one of them. We are called to mind the gap in so many ways in life and especially once we are on the spiritual path.

Gaps are everywhere. There are gaps between different levels of reality, for instance. Many of us often ignore these gaps and by that create suffering for ourselves and others.

One of those gaps is the big gap between the level of archetypes and the level of this material reality.

Archetypes are rich by nature. They are not lean like a traffic sign that has to stand for a narrow meaning. Archetypes are full, rich in meaning, and multifaceted, yet, they represent a pure essence. This reality, on the other hand, is complex and totally not pure. The gap between the pure essence and complex reality is one that needs our attention.

Let us talk for example about the gap between the masculine lover archetype and a real man, or between a feminine lover archetype and a real woman.

A real woman is all kinds of things … a bit feminine and a bit masculine, she has the lover in her but at the same time her inner (wounded?) child is present too. A man is not by any means a simple embodiment of a masculine archetype. He has his inner feminine in him and this inner (wounded?) child is as well there, all the time together with many other aspects …

We, humans, are beautifully complex beings. We are not angels. Angels and fairies are archetypes. We are not. We are humans.

I have seen a lot of confusion and suffering caused by people who do not mind this gap. They try to fit themselves and others into a box. They demand from themselves or from their partners to fit into a specific archetype, and it just never can work. Your man is not “the superior man” from David Deida’s book nor is he a Greek god. Your woman is not a goddess. She is a female human, full of mess and order, wisdom and ignorance, beauty and banal.

Demanding us to fit into an archetypal box involves cutting the “extra” and artificially filling up the gaps.

But I wanna say — please mind the Gap! Go deep into it. Fall into the Gap and spiral down to the core of being human.

Mind the Gap between theory and practice too! So many people think “they got it” but all they got is the theory. The practice is a whole different thing…

You can not learn how to swim online. You have to get wet. There is an important gap between theory and practice, which many do not pay attention to and go teach something when they just got it in theory and haven’t yet gained years of experience.

In Kabbala, this is the secret of the Hebrew letter Hei ה. The upper line represents Thought. The long vertical line on the right represents Speech, and the short vertical line on the left represents Doing.

Speech is connected to thought, but there is a gap one needs to mind and leap over once we go from thinking about it and talking about it to actually doing it.

Mind the Gap.

And have a safe inner journey.

Ohad Pele / January, 2020

South Africa