The Art of Seeing Light

In this episode, I’m sharing an excerpt from a live workshop I co-hosted with healer and teacher Raizel Devorah Masail called The Art of Seeing Light. We explore why so many women can see the beauty in others but struggle to see it in themselves, and how that disconnect impacts confidence, sensuality, and spiritual connection. This conversation weaves together body image, spirituality, and femininity, and invites you to see the body not as something to fix or bypass, but as the portal to deeper connection and light. 

If this conversation speaks to you, be sure to check out our upcoming collaboration, Reclaiming Femininity, starting January 14th: http://www.rebeccasigalacoaching.com/reclaiming-femininity

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Transcript

Rebecca Sigala: 0:00

Hey, gorgeous radiant souls. Welcome to the Body Image Revolution. Today I have something very, very special for you because last night I hosted an incredible workshop along with Raizel Devorah Masael, and it's called The Art of Seeing Light. It was so powerful. So deep I couldn't not share it with you all. It's all about seeing the light both physically and spiritually in yourself and others. And I know what you might be thinking. You might be thinking, well, I can, I can see the beauty in other people, but it's harder to see it in myself. I my own worst critic. I hold myself to a higher standard. And if you're thinking that it's totally normal and understandable. But it's also blocking you from deeper connections with yourself, deeper connections with others, with your partner, and with God. And this workshop is for you. This isn't the full workshop either, but I just wanted to share a little bit of it with you so that you get the idea of these concepts, which are so deep and powerful and can be totally life changing if you allow it to integrate. And of course, if you wanna go deeper with this work, stay until the end of this episode, because I'm gonna be sharing with you how you can do that in another collaboration that I'm doing with Raizel Devorah. I hope you enjoy. The physical is limited without the spiritual. The spiritual is limited without the physical. Really well said. Thank you. Okay, so let's begin with an overview of the Four Worlds. There's many ways to talk about spirituality. There's many ways to take people deeper into themselves. For this night, I've chosen the four worlds. Now the structure of energy, which is all around us, is bound with numbers, what we call sacred geometry. The number four comes up through the history of mankind in cultures and religions all over the world. From the lens of Judaism, we learn how to relate to mysticism by learning to understand and access the four worlds. And a side note, not everyone studies this intellectually. Not everyone studies this or receives this wisdom from other people. Yet as we walk our path in life, God is constantly guiding us, helping us grow, offering us opportunity to expand in the makeup of our worlds. So whether it's happening in a way we know about it or not. It's being offered to us. And as those who are choosing to grow and do that work, it is happening. So what are these four worlds? We have Asiyah, Asiyah is the Hebrew word for action. So that's the world of action. The next world is Yetzirah. Yetzirah is the Hebrew word for formation. That's the world of formation. The next world is Beri'ah, which means creation. The world of creation and then we come to Atzilut. Now Atzilut can be translated as being Etzel, next to. So it's a world that is next to it can also mean emanation. the world of emanation. So if we combine those two words next to and emanation, it's the brightest emanation of God's light. It's the closest, the nearest to God's light that we can still even tune into, connect to have some relationship with while holding some level of our own individual identity any closer, and we would lose ourselves. What happens in existence is that as God wills something into existence, it rolls down from his highest source. In other words, from being closest to God, and then it goes through Atzilut, the nearest to God. From there it goes to Beri'ah into an actual creation. From there, it goes into Yetzirah. Which means into a state of formation, it's taking form and it can form. And finally, finally, into the world of, Asiyah, the world of action is the world that we know. Asiyah is the most physical, it is what we are most familiar with, and it is also the farthest from God. Our job is to refine ourselves and gain access to higher worlds. To climb from an Asiyah only existence to a Yetzirah existence and onwards to a Beri'ah existence. Great Jewish sages have made it clear that this is not easy, and many do not climb that high during one lifetime. However, at the very same time. They also guide us how to climb, and they teach us that it is possible. So they allow us to hold these kind of like a dichotomy, but these two ideas at the same time of how hard it is, how few people manage to do it, really climb really high while also helping us hold the idea that it's possible and even guiding us and teaching us in how to do it. So today we wanna help you climb and I just wanna shatter this, automatic brain idea that comes to all of us that is climbing higher, that one is lower than the other, and one is higher. It's actually, it's climbing closer. One is farther from God and one is closer to God. And what I mean by that is that God is the only reality. So Asiyah would be the farthest from that reality. It's the hardest for us to hold on to the light of God, the reality of God, the knowing of God. And the higher we climb, meaning the deeper and closer we climb to God, the more we have internalized, the more we're living how real God is. Okay? So today we wanna help you climb. We'll offer you an opportunity to step out of your current level of seeing and into your next level of seeing. And as Rebecca already laid out, we are starting more with the spiritual, with the energy of it all, and then we're gonna bring it into the body. And we're doing this very specifically on purpose. So now reality as we perceive it, is limited. In fact, for the most part. We do not perceive reality. We spend much of our time in the realm of Asiyah. If the truest reality is the reality of our creator, and Asiyah is the farthest, then we're spending most of our time in Asiyah. We're the farthest from reality. So we're in this world of doing this world of action, and what we see is what is physically here is how somebody looks or how somebody dresses. It's the shape of a structure. It's the physical form of the food, the feel of the food. The smell of the food to learn to see is to learn to see from a deeper place within oneself. If climbing higher in the world is climbing deeper within, then learning to see is actually learning to see from a deeper place within oneself. If you want to see deeper, you must learn to see beyond the physical. It means you can't just see the physical manifestation of what something is and beyond the physical takes you to the next world, the world of Yetzirah, the world of formation. here in Yetzirah, you see a person, but you don't just see a physical body. What happens is you begin to see what went into forming this person or this place, or this food. What actually went into forming it. It's entering the realm of the emotions. It's entering the realm of the thinking mind. It's entering and understanding that there's so much more before you than just the physical form. And it's offering a real connection, a deeper connection to the other person or to the place and the food. It's offering a process rather than just a physical manifestation. So already Yetzirah is quite a level to reach, meaning to learn and train oneself to live that way always is a wonderful level to reach. It's a lot to aspire to, and we can go one world deeper. We have the world of Beri'ah, the world of creation. So the world of creation it's where we relate. Seeing deep purpose in every created being. We learn to relate. Seeing deep purpose in everything that's been created, that everything has been infused with higher meaning to all that exist. We interact with this awareness and it changes our state of consciousness, our thoughts, speech, and our actions. Right? So it's, if Yetzirah's a lot to reach and live at Beriah is just, wow. It changes everything. In our course on Reclaiming Femininity, we explore how the flow of the sacred feminine power is directly related to how we are seeing within ourselves. It's this really deep, complex and instinctual relationship between how we see and how this feminine power is flowing within us. We teach in class and we give homework for out of class. On how you can transform your relationship with your sensual self, transcend limitations placed in you by society and elevate your sacred sensual connection with yourself and with your partner. Now when we're talking about seeing deeper. We wanna get deeper into those worlds. we don't want an existence of just Asiyah, of just the physical. We want so much more. There's two components to this art. This art of seeing. One is strengthening, seeing one's own light and one's own beauty. That actually comes first. Strengthening seeing one's own light and one's own beauty is imperative to seeing deeper spiritually. The second is removing the blocks, doing the inner healing and the mind rewiring that it takes to get there. We can all see deeper. We can all feel deeper. We can access so much deeper than we already do, but. We have things in our way. We have things pulling us back or pulling us down. We have thoughts up here in between our own two ears messing with our capacity to be everything that we can be. So Rebecca and I both do a lot of this work from different angles. And when we meet in our course on Reclaiming Femininity, one of the things we explored together is the main blocks to the flow of sensuality. By now, I'm hoping that you've caught on sensuality is way more than just sensuality. And we begin the course with the struggle to remain in one's body. That's the biggest first step. The struggle to be present in one's body, in one's life. And we eventually end with the building up to seeing light and beauty on deeper levels than ever before, particularly within oneself. Now the reason sacred femininity and inner sight are eternally bound, they cannot be separated, is because it is the power of the feminine to sense and articulate the internal realm. This isn't just a Jewish concept, a Jewish wisdom. It's all over the world from ancient times. It is the power of the feminine to sense and articulate the internal realm to see and access higher worlds. We first need to be in excellent touch with our feminine gifts, our sacred life force, and that flows through us and it brings us radiance into our body, into our soul, and into our life. It also brings that radiance to everyone around us. A nice little gift. However, the real teaching we all need to integrate. The first step is that connecting to one's highest radiance is founded in the body. The body is the home to the soul. It's through this that light can flow. The wellbeing of the physical self determines directly determines how well light can enter and how well light can flow, and how well the soul can shine and climb. So here I'm going to hand the floor over to Rebecca and she is going to take everything one step deeper. That's so beautiful. Thank you for sharing that. And I love the way that you talk about the body kind of being the first step or the portal to this spiritual connection. It is really interesting that we're here talking about seeing the beauty and the light in ourselves and in others and how important it is and how it's so connected. The spiritual and the physical. It's the work that I do on a daily basis, but for me it wasn't always that way. So if you're sitting there and you're like, yeah, this sounds nice, or like, I'd love to be more positive, but like I don't really feel that way. Just know that it was not always that way for me. And the deeper truth of that is that it's not just always that way for anybody. This is an ever evolving journey. Seeing is a practice and that's why it's so important to learn these tools. These actual tools that you can use so that you can continue to come back home to yourself again and again and see that light in yourself so that you can show up more fully in this world. To give a little bit of background about myself, I did not grow up with any of these concepts. I didn't have role models that had a positive outlook on bodies, and I don't think most of us did. I'm sure a lot of you can relate to that. The statistics are really, really clear on this, that over 90% of women have at some point, or in general experience, dissatisfaction with their appearance. And this starts really, really young. Unfortunately, there's a lot of studies that show that 40 to 60% of elementary aged girls. Think about their weight or think that they're too fat, like they're concerned about their weight, 40 to 60%. And I know that sounds kind of crazy or even exaggerated, but after doing this work for so long, for over 12 years, I'm honestly surprised it's not higher than that. It's very reflective of experiences that women have shared with me over the years. So I started without that orientation at all, of like seeing the light in myself or others. It wasn't even like a concept. It wasn't a way of being. And now looking back sometimes I see that world as very small, sometimes dark. And in that space growing up, I always wanted something so different for myself. So I actually began more of a spiritual journey in high school and. Then I actually did begin to see the beauty in others more. And that was a really beautiful thing. And what I've always loved about Judaism specifically is that it was never about letting go of all these material things and all the physical pleasures and rejecting them. It wasn't about rejecting the body or the physical pleasures. It was actually about elevating them. That was one of the main things that drew me to Judaism back then and still now. it wasn't that those things were wrong or bad or dirty, it was that they actually had the power and the potential to connect you deeper with God. And when you see and experience those things, your body, your sexuality, the pleasure that we experience, when you see it and you relate to it in a way that really aligns with your soul. That's when you can elevate it and it creates so much light and beauty and expansion in your life and it becomes this natural, sacred part of who you are. So that really started to open my world. Then I began my work as a boudoir photographer about 12 years ago. a little bit more than that. and that's where I began to see the beauty in other women. I grew up with all the same stuff about diet, culture, and beauty standards, and had a very narrow definition of what beauty was. But because this was the work that I wanted to do and I wanted to help women feel beautiful in their body. I created safe spaces for women to be able to be fully themselves. And so I think with that intention of, you know, creating safe spaces, not wanting anyone to ever feel judged, and then going in there with my camera quite literally, and being like, I am going to bring out the beauty in you. I am going to focus on what is beautiful and document it and capture it. And just that without even realizing what I was doing, expanded my definition of beauty tenfold. Like that wasn't even my goal. I wanted other people to feel good. I, I didn't think about expanding my own definition of beauty. but it happened really naturally and really quickly, and I began to see all different types of bodies as beautiful and unique in their own way and created by God and actual art. But this is what happened. I realized I was giving all this love and compassion to other women and seeing all the beauty in them, and I think a lot of you are gonna be able to relate to this. I could see all the beauty in them, but then even as I was doing that and actually helping people on really deep level, when I looked in the mirror, I just could not extend that same compassion to myself. it wasn't that I hated my body. it was like, this is a project. This is something that I need to fix. This is something that I need to perfect, always improve. It's never going to be enough. Didn't matter how much weight I lost, I lose a little bit more tone up tan. The next thing, the next thing, the next thing. It was never enough. And unfortunately, that's a really normal way to be in the world today, but. the contrast between what I wanted for my clients and I had just had little babies at the time, and for my kids and for everybody in my life. That contrast of what I wanted for other people and what I was giving myself, it just became very clear to me that I needed to take the work deeper for myself because it's not actually enough to see the beauty in other people. And I know that sometimes is a little bit of a hard pill to swallow because we say, oh, I think everyone's so beautiful and I have such a positive outlook, and it's not that I'm judging other people, but then you do it to yourself. But what that actually does is it blocks us from divine light from God, from other people, from the beauty that actually exists in every single one of us. When we don't see the beauty in ourselves, it limits the beauty we can see in other people as well. So you might think, oh, I have like a positive kind of perspective, but it's still limited because you have a certain judgment on yourself. When you don't see the beauty in yourself, you're still in the slight comparison mode.'cause you're still comparing yourself to other people. The slight proving energy, we're putting other people, other bodies, other forms of beauty or status or whatever it might be, above or below us constantly. You're in that constant comparison mode when you're judging yourself. And that in itself is not experiencing the inherent unique beauty and light that we were born with, that God gave us. And all of this is so important because. We can't bypass the body in our healing like we are in our bodies. our bodies go with us everywhere we go, everything we do, everything we think, everything we give, everything we love. The way we connect, the way we walk through the world is through our bodies. Even though all the messages in the world have told us that we can't trust our bodies, that we should ignore our hunger cues, that we should work out super hard so that we lose weight, change our bodies, try to control them, try to fit them into the beauty standard. And in doing all of that, we've never, I mean, at least for me and for many women that I've worked with and spoken to, we lose our self trust or we never even cultivated it in the first place. And our body has this deep wisdom. And when we're in tune with it, that's when we can be our full authentic selves and feel confident and sensual and all of the things that we're here tonight to cultivate. And I know all of these things sound exciting and something that you might want, and you might also be thinking, okay, but like how is that even possible? Like, that seems really hard. This has always been the status quo. This is the way I feel about my body. It just feels like the truth or I feel about myself, but I want you to know that this actually is not super hard work. It's necessary work, but it's not difficult in the way that you might think because when you have the right framework. This deep support shifts happen very quickly, and I see this over and over again with my clients. I see it in these workshops. I see it in short conversations I have. It can happen very, very quickly, and it's only ever felt hard or impossible because we never had another option. This has been our reality up until now. This is beautiful. This is not beautiful. This person is sexy. I'll never be the sexy one. It must be nice to love your body, but that's just not in the cards for me. But that's not the truth. That's conditioning. And it's very, very possible to change the way you see and relate to your body and to your sensuality, and to do it in a way that feels like freedom and that you're not always second guessing yourself. And in comparison mode. And in your head and not in your body. So even if you just take one thing from tonight and make one tiny small change that matters so much more than you think because it represents so much that shift is moving out from like this is just how it is. Like this is just the reality into like something completely different. So before we go into the q and a, if you've resonated with any of what we've shared tonight, I want you guys to just stick around for a few more minutes because it's not random that you're here tonight, that you clicked on the signup and came to the Zoom. Every single one of you was meant to be here, and all of you, which I'm excited to connect with you after this, you arrived with your own story and experiences and perspectives, and God willing, every single one of you is gonna take something that is uniquely your own from this experience. But even with all of these differences, what I've learned in my work is that we have so much overlap as women, so many similarities, so much more similarity than we do differences. And I know each and every one of you want more. You wanna take what you learned in this workshop and all the incredible things that you probably already knew before you came here tonight.'cause you're probably on a journey of connecting more deeply with yourself and with God already. And you knew things about confidence and sensuality and self love. This is not new to you. But you don't wanna just know these things anymore you wanna feel it deeply in your body to really experience all of these things that we're talking about and feel more connected to your body and to God. And you're here because even though you're confident in so many ways, and I'm sure you're grateful and living a great life, there's a part of you that doesn't feel fully you and you're tired of trying and pushing, improving. Maybe you're staying small for the comfort of others. Maybe you're dimming your light a just a little bit, just slightly, because you have these voices in the back of your mind that still kind of hold you back. You might be doing the things, but then have this narrative that just keeps looping in your mind and you're trying to love yourself and be kinder to yourself and say affirmations and put yourself first, but you still feel like there's like something that's a little bit missing, and you wanna wake up in the morning and look in the mirror and feel amazing and sensual and beautiful and radiant. And you wanna be able to like fully enjoy everything beautiful that you know you have in your life without guilt and be present, be fully in your body, and experience all those precious moments that are already there. And you wanna take time for yourself without feeling like you have to earn it. That one, I really relate to myself. You wanna have deeper intimacy and even better sex. You want to be more in your body and less in your head. And there's this like gap right between where you are right now and maybe where you wanna be. And I know that gap very well. I have been there and I imagine that it feels pretty close. Especially because you're already on your healing journey. You're here, you've come so far. But the gap that I'm talking about is that one from the mind and the body. That's exactly why Raizel Devorah and I created Reclaiming Femininity because closing that gap is not about trying harder is not about fixing yourself. It is about learning to live in your body, exist fully in your body, unapologetically for you, but not just for you, for your loved ones, for your clients, for the world. Because I always say this and I just believe it so deeply, but the world needs you. Not this like watered down half-assed you, but you more fully in your body and in your power. That's exactly what we're doing inside Reclaiming Femininity. And it's a four week course. It's gonna help you step into your body, your pleasure and your power. Without that, like it's not that the guilt is overwhelming, it's like these remnants of guilt and shame that has been passed down to us, that still live inside of us. And this course isn't the end of every negative thought or every shameful feeling. I think that's really important to name. But it is a beginning, it's a doorway, and it's a very grounded path back to yourself in a way that you've likely never experienced before. It's the blend of what Raizel Devorah and I do together. It's my radical body love and sensuality through a spiritual Torah based lens. Experiencing this pleasure and this sexiness not as like something that's separate from your relationship with God, but as a portal to deepen it. this course is gonna give you a foundation and give you deep shifts in how you see yourself and how you see your body, and actually integrate it into your real life as you're living it. So there's just four classes one time per week. We meet on Wednesday evenings for 90 minutes. So just like tonight, and it's gonna be deeply impactful and interactive. We talking a lot more with each other and we're gonna be guiding you step by step through what's actually blocking you, like you specifically what's blocking you so that you can more fully embody that femininity and that sensuality that you crave. Then between the classes, we're gonna have these simple, nourishing practices that you can use and implement very easily. We're gonna have a WhatsApp group where you can ask questions and receive support from us and walk this path with like-minded women. So just quickly, I'm gonna share with you what these four classes are. number one, return to the body. This is where you're gonna be learning about and experiencing the sacred feminine and cultivating your own personal definition of sexy, redefining what sexy means to you so that it becomes a part of your everyday life. The second class is going to be uncovering sensual blockages. This is gonna be where we lovingly uncover what's really truly blocking you so that sensuality can flow through your body. The third one is connect to your inner child, and this is really powerful, fascinating work. Done by Raizel Devorah, it completely transforms how you relate to yourself. And by this point, the third weekend, you're gonna already be feeling these very real shifts and how you feel in and about your body and how you are already walking through the world. So we're gonna share tools and one more practice that I wanna share with you that Raizel Devorah is gonna be teaching because I just think it's so incredible and I actually haven't even learned it myself yet. but she's teaching a sacred self touch practice that she calls relearning to touch yourself. And it's self pleasure. It combines your own touch with her micro orbit meditation. And for those of you who feel ready, obviously it's an assignment that you do on your own. We teach you how to do it. but it's just a beautiful way to like feel safe and present and connected in your body and allow that sensual energy to really flow. And then the fourth class is to own your desire. Own it. And that's where we learn how to actually create desire, not wait for it. I'm sure a lot of you guys can relate to that. Like, oh, when am I gonna feel sexy? Or when am I gonna be in the mood? Like, how do I create this intimacy? And it's like you want it to just happen, but we're gonna teach you how to actually create that for yourself, and for your partner. And identify what you want and need and be able to use your voice. So this course is not for beginners but it's gonna meet you exactly where you're at and take you to that next level of confidence and feminine embodiment. So I just want you to notice what's happening in your body. Maybe there's excitement, maybe there's nerves. Whatever comes up is totally okay. And if you're feeling the pull. If your body and your soul is saying, this is what I need right now, this is exactly what I need, I want to invite you to join us. Okay. Amazing. All right, ladies, thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you for being here. Have a lovely evening slash day.