The Duality of the Heart in the Fire Element & Month of Av
Heart Path 1 - Passion, intimacy, connection, luminosity, radiance, harmony, joy, creativity, and warmth.
Heart Path 2 - Addiction, speed, stimulation, performative, intensity, impulsiveness, recklessness, and anxiety.
Which of these two paths of energy would you rather take a walk with? What if I told you both come from the same source and serve the same purpose? - To Awaken the Heart, a sentiment this Summer Season, Fire Element and Jewish Month of Av that we’re currently in, are all about, according to Kabbalah and Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM).
Where in your body are you holding or feeling out of flow right now?
Literally, before you continue reading here, take a minute to close your eyes, slowly breathe in as much air through your noise as you can and then let it out with as loud of a sigh through your mouth as you feel called to have.
Where in your body did you feel the most release of pressure after doing that? That’s where you’re holding.
Keep that part of your body in your back pocket for now and join me as I take you on a journey through the Tree of Life and TCM’s wisdom teachings of the Summer Season’s heart center.
TISHA B’AV - THE HEART PATH OF DARKNESS & DESTRUCTION
If you’re like me and live anywhere in the Upper Midwest, Great Lakes, and Northeast region of the U.S., you were probably inhaling some really unhealthy air this past week due to the smoke caused by the raging fires in Canada. As I drove around in what some were calling an apocalypse and thought about what I was going to write about this week, I couldn’t help but think that this is probably what it smelled like 2,000+ years ago when the Beit Hamikdash, “The Holy House” in Jerusalem, was first burned down by the Babylonians in 586 BCE. It got rebuilt in 516 BCE and then destroyed by the Romans in yet another fire in 70 CE.
This Thursday, July 23rd, 2026, the 9th day of the Jewish Month of Av, we take the time to mourn the destruction of the first and second Beit Hamikdash, both of which occurred during the same time of the year and approximately 655 years apart. In Kabbalah, instead of the chronological or horizonal perspective of time most of us are attuned to, we learn that we actually live in a vertical vortex of time that allows us to, what some would describe as, time travel.
The vertical perspective helps us understand holidays and anniversaries as times when the spiritual energy of the original occurrence of the event becomes available again. Passover is not just remembering the biblical days and experiences of the original Exodus; it is an opportunity to experience liberation from whatever present day challenges are making us feel enslaved like we were 5,000+ years ago in Egypt.
Tisha B'Av is not only recalling the destruction of the Beit Hamikdash; it is entering into the spiritual significance of how not having our most holy house of worship affects us in the present day. It also reminds us of the work that needs to be done now to rebuild it, not just physically but most importantly, spiritually. The loss of the Beit Hamikdash is not merely a matter of the past; it’s a present day spiritual reality. The spiritual work left unfinished by the destruction of the Beith Hamikdash, remains relevant now. Some of this same work is also understood to be what led to its destruction to begin with.
What exactly is the work left for us to complete? What do we have to rebuild? According to Jewish Sages, the answers can be found in the Jewish holiday of Tu B’Av that comes six days after Tisha B’Av. It is a little different from, yet related to the heart inspired anecdote that TCM also has to offer during this time of the year.
TU B’AV - THE HEART PATH OF LIGHT & RESTORATION
In digging a little deeper into the vertical vortex of time mentioned earlier, it didn’t surprise me to learn that the fires in the Canada that created poor air quality in the U.S. last week, originally stared this past May, around the same time we celebrated the last aligned Jewish holiday and TCM festival of Shavuot and Lixia. Both are connected to the fire element of hot Summer days.
Just as serendipitously, the recent fires became a major cross-border smoke event in the U.S. on the exact same day as the start of the ‘nine days’ this year. The ‘nine days’ refer to an intensified time of mourning leading up to the peak time of mourning that happens on Tisha B’Av. The next Jewish holiday of Tu B’Av and the Chinese Summer festival of Qixi make for another meaningful alignment between both cultures and timing of customs. Both contain a restorative and healing teaching about the power of love.
Tu B’Av occurs on the 15th day of the month of Av, which falls on Wednesday, July 29th this year. It’s most commonly referred to as the Jewish Valentine’s day, but if we tap into the vertical vortex of time and look more closely at the many significant calendar of events that occurred on this day throughout Jewish history, we’ll find an even deeper understanding of what makes it the most joyous day of the Jewish calendar.
For now, let’s just stick with the most highly celebrated origin story Tu B’Av. During the times of the Beit Hamikdash, it was customary for unmarried women to borrow white clothes from one another, a gesture of unity that removes the social division of clothing in order to allow deeper qualities of individual personality to be seen. They would wear their borrowed white garment to dance freely in the fields of Jerusalem, where single men would also flock on this full moonlit night to find a wife. Think of it as an Ancient Matchmaking Event!
Qixi is a traditional Chinese festival celebrated on the seventh day of the seventh month of the Chinese lunar calendar, which falls on August 19th this year. It’s rooted in one of China's most enduring Romeo and Juliet kind of folklore love stories. In this case though, the story’s main characters, Niulang (the Cowherd) and Zhinu (the Weaver Girl), don’t die. While this lovestruck couple also doesn’t get to live ‘happily ever after’ together in marriage, they are allowed to reunite once each year, making it in my opinion, even more romantic (and balanced) than the lovesick story of Shakespeare.
Both cultures’ homage to the characteristics of love in relationships through these stories, customs and peak summer months, help describe the unfinished work of the rebuilding of the Beit Hamikdash. They carry the energies of faithfulness, perseverance, commitment despite hardship, and unity without uniformity. There is a compassion that creates a place where G-d’s presence can dwell, which according to Kabbalah, is the main message and purpose of creation and one I think we can all respect.
The Beit Hamikdash was more than a building. It represented a place where G-d and his creation met. After its destruction, many Jewish thinkers emphasized that every person is being called to embody a kind of Beit Hamikdash within oneself.
The question then becomes, "Can I rebuild the holy sentiments of the Beit Hamikdash within my own heart?”
Although we may have been instructed to build physical structures of worship like the Beit Hamikdash, above anything else in Judaism, we are exclusive in our relationship to one G-d as the source of all power. We are commanded not to worship the actual structures themselves. We are to use them as a channel to tap into the reflection of G-d’s divine image that we were created with and that so eagerly desires to dwell upon us.
During this week’s mourning period, I invite you to hold this vision as a way to transform the shadow of the heart (Path 2) into the light of the heart (Path 1) of the Summer season by asking yourself:
What has become hardened in my heart and my relationship with the divine?
Where have I become disconnected from my own personal mission and the mercy to coexist with others?
What needs to be rebuilt within me and all of humanity to broker an everlasting peace?
In contemplating the answers to these questions we may realize the "unfinished work" is not merely grieving what has been lost and what we dream about reconstructing in a holy Temple. It is participating in the restoration of our own relationship with God, humanity, mother nature, and one another.
If we tap back into the vertical vortex of time, Tisha B'Av becomes not simply a memorial to an ancient fire. It is an annual invitation to examine whether the spiritual flames of the desires symbolized by the fire, still exist today—and, if they do, what can each of us do to heal them? Thanks to the fires in Canada that burned so close to us this year, it becomes an even more tangible time to feel more deeply these sentiments of the heart.
TO LOVE FROM THE HEART
Remember that part of the body we breathed into earlier, before we got into the heart of this post’s matter? Let’s come back to it. Where are you holding now?
To help get you even closer to the heart center, here are two of my favorite anecdotes from two of my favorite teachers of the heart, who come from the two different, yet parallel schools of thought we’ve been talking about:
“Fire without water burns out the body. Water without fire freezes the heart.” - Colin Hudon
“Sometimes G-d breaks our hearts to save our souls.” - Gedale Fenster
While Kabbalah and TCM differ in their prescription on how to appeal to the heart during the most heightened heat of the Summer months, both of them agree that unity happens in the heart space of love, joy and creativity. Judaism gets us there through the remembrance and sentiments of the historical energies and holidays of Tisha B’Av and Tu B’Av, while TCM helps us nurture it through alignment with the elements of nature.
TCM speaks of embracing and balancing the summer season’s cycle of fire filled connection and intimacy, while Judaism speaks of tuning into the energy of a broken heart as the starting point for consolation and the rebuilding of an even greater love. The resemblance is best understood and rooted in a thematic parallel of the power of the heart.
The heart space is the epicenter of both traditions. The place where we can find the solution to the problem - the balance found between TCM’s fire and water elements and Kabbalah’s Tree of Life soul centers. TCM teaches too much passion (fire element energy), can lead to the path of addiction; and that too much wisdom (water element energy), as we’ll learn more about in the winter season, can freeze the heart.
The ultimate balancing point in the Tree of Life as discussed in a previous post here, can be found in the Hebrew mother letter of “Aleph.” It is the middle artery of the three main vertical columns of the Tree of life that sits right above the heart space soul center known as Tiferet (beauty and balance) and in the middle of one of the 32 pathways of light that links the parallel soul centers of Chessed (giving and creation) and Gevurah (receiving and discernment).
Which TCM element and Tree of Life soul center or path are you going to rebuild with this Summer?
In our next post, we’ll explore how we can use the shared TCM and Kabbalah energies of rest and digest that are available to us in the late Summer months, to balance other parts of our spirits and bodies. In the meantime, let’s Remember, Reclaim and Rejoice in our Light, Spirit and Mission with some of my favorite ways to experience every season’s energies even more deeply - Tea Ceremony, Nature Retreats and Meditative Torah. These are tools we can use year round to help us feel #inflow.
Thank you for joining me in the heart space of love.
I’m grateful for you being here.