Bread, Oil and Life Coaching - the Expansion of Abundance

The Shulchan Aruch (Orach Chayim 180) instructs:

Do not remove the tablecloth and bread from the table until you have said Grace After Meals. Those who leave no bread on the table will never see a sign of blessing.

The Mishnah Berurah here notes that blessing cannot rest upon something that is empty, and that we learn this from the story of Elisha and the jar of oil. This is found in Kings II:4:

1. And there cried a certain woman of the wives of the sons of the prophets to Elisha, saying, Your servant my husband is dead; and you know that your servant feared the Lord; and the creditor has come to take to him my two sons to be slaves.

2. And Elisha said to her, What shall I do for you? tell me, what have you in the house? And she said, Your maidservant had not any thing in the house, save a jar of oil.

Elisha tells her to gather many empty utensils, and pour out from her jug into these. She does so, and a miracle occurs, and the jugs keep filling up in abundance, until all the utensils are finished.

Elisha did not create something out of nothing, but rather expanded what was already there. This is a fantastic lesson for us and is consonant with the principles of life coaching. One major difference between life coaching and therapy is that instead of delving deeply into what's wrong and trying to fix it, life coaching looks to what is already there, the strengths and the positive that exist, and begins immediately to increase it incrementally, through action, through positive thinking and affirmations.

Though a prophet - whose job it generally is to aid people to do inner processes of repentance - Elisha here did not to go into why the woman was starving or the spiritual reasons behind it. He stepped in, said "What do you have in the house?" and proceeded from there. Similarly, we don't always have to go into deep therapy to fix what's broken in us; we can make positive change and that in and of itself can heal us and make us whole and full...

As Rebbe Nachman of Breslov says in his well-known Torah "Azamra" (Likutei Moharan 282), we look to gather the good points, from amongst all the negative. And when we gather those good points, true good is created and expanded, and together all the points make up a melody.

P.s. In parshat Toldot, when Isaac wishes to bless Esau, he asks him to bring him tasty food first, so that he can bless him from within the experience of savouring delicious food. I think this fits with the idea developed above, that in order to create expansive blessing, Isaac wished to get himself into a state where he was already fully inside the positive experience, of what there already was, and proceed from there to expand outwards to what hadn't yet manifested.
This principle is something some New Age philosophies emphasize (e.g. Abraham-Hicks) and I think there is great wisdom to it, to start with what there is, from where our souls can bless and thank G-d naturally.

Singing your soul song

The Nadvorna Rebbe (צמח ה' לצבי) points out that it was only when the people of Israel, after the splitting of the Sea, finally at long last

"believed in G-d, and in Moses His prophet," (Exodus 14:31)

that

"Then Moses sang this song" (Exodus 15:1) - which is of course the famous song of praise, Az Yashir.

The Nadvorna takes this in a certain direction (that we should sing even before the miracle occurs).
However I noticed another point that speaks to me: that just before the song, we hear that the people believed in G-d and in Moses.

Moses, who held back so much in following his calling at the beginning; Moses of "the uncircumcized lips", who resisted the call to leadership; who was also uncertain what to do at the Red Sea and had to be firmly instructed by G-d, "Why do you cry to me? Speak to the people of Israel, that they go forward!" (Ex. 14:15). This is the Moses who suddenly sings out without hesitation, with great confidence.

Perhaps it was precisely the people's palpable faith in him that now suddenly granted Moses the ability to sing  this extended, articulate and poetic paean to G-d. Perhaps this even enables the next phase of his spiritual career, as he becomes a fine-tuned instrument of G-d and goes on to receive the Torah on Mt Sinai.

Faith in G-d, is one important lesson of this part of the Exodus narrative; but here we also have a window into the importance of faith in people, especially our leaders.

The famous Torah of R' Nachman, the Azamra Torah (292) that speaks of finding the good points in another person and thus elevating them, continues with the following:

In just the same way you must carry on searching until you find another good point. Even if you feel that this good point is also full of flaws, you must still search for some good in it. And so you must continue finding more and more good points. This is how songs are made.

Now I understand this idea expressed by R' Nachman, which I have read several times in the past, in a more meaningful way. This truly is how songs are made.

Also, we are told they believed in Moses G-d's servant. Thus, our perception of the potential in people and leaders is most empowering to them when we focus on their calling in this life, on how they can be of unique Divine service.

So let us hold a gaze of steady faith in those others we have been given to love and admire - friends, family, leaders - so as to enable them to sing their unique divine soul song, a gift to all who surround them.