The Four Worlds

In the five worlds of the Kabbalah the four-worlds concept is easy to understand. The fifth world is generally accepted to be the concealed world of the Spiritual Creation. In the work of life it is good always to remember the four.
1. The physical
2. The mental
3. The emotional
4. The spiritual
Let's consider the work of a personal friend of ours who makes musical instruments--such as harps and dulcimers--from recycled wood.
The physical work, perhaps the reprocessing of, say, a piece of salvaged cedar into the soundboard of a guitar, is obvious.
The mental effort--visualizing the result of measuring, planing, cutting, forming, etc, to get the pieces perfect--is extensive and comes only after long discipline and practice.
Emotion comes in as the pieces go lovingly together and the strings are first tuned. Then some friend takes the instrument and makes it live. At the beautiful sound, the emotion is so heavy that it sometimes reduces Bob to tears.
So where does the spiritual come in?
Bob listens to that inner voice that tells him in the first place to move out of his comfort zone and make a musical instrument. Then he continues on that path, often giving up other pleasant pastimes such as eating, to finish the job. He is driven by his inner spiritual voice.
Yes, we know we're simplifying.
In all the millions of words written on spiritual development, we've found very few that consider the concept of the four aspects of the Work. We Frosts have come to believe that anything undertaken using only one of the four will not lead to a genuinely satisfying end.
Today everyone seems to concentrates on the physical; yet in even such a mundane pursuit as simply beating out a dent in the fender of a car--even this--can call for all the four aspects of the Work your soul/spirit is here to do. If the worker is a trained metal-basher, he has learned to make the physical movements required: to bash the metal not too hard and not too soft to achieve an ideal result. If a recalcitrant dent causes him problems, he will need to maintain an emotional calm. He can achieve such a calm through mental control, just through past knowledge that losing his temper will not lead to a better result. His mental effort may be almost automatic, but it is still there, especially when it comes to, for instance, mixing the color necessary to achieve a perfect match with adjoining undamaged parts.
You may not think there is much of a spiritual aspect in work such as this; but do you not think that when he admires a perfect result he feels a little spiritual uplift?
Now how about circle work?
Casting a complete Church of Wicca triple circle is a chore. Crawling around (often nude) on the floor or in a field is outside the physical comfort zone of many people. It takes mental effort to get the sizes right and the signs aligned. Preparing for the circle with the requisite fasting and celibacy, even making the tools and robes: It all takes mental and physical effort.
As we enter the sacred space of the Circle, emotions run high, especially if there is a neophyte to be initiated. Then they are pushed higher with the sealing of the Circle and perhaps dancing and chanting. At the interlude, everything becomes grounded so that we can move into the spiritual phase of meditation and astral travel. When everything is over and we restore ourselves with a feast, many of us feel empty and washed out. Thus we sleep soundly, knowing that we have operated in all four worlds--and maybe even touched the fifth.
What we are saying here is this: All too often the fact of the four aspects of the Work is overlooked. And very few people seem to teach that, if you want a fulfilling experience, you need to work with all four aspects in everything you do.
The Kabbalah is not the only place where this belief in four aspects appears. An intriguing thought comes through popular crime novels based on beliefs of this continent's First Nations, as made available to us by author Tony Hillerman. He shares with us the idea of a one-legged Sacred Buffalo. That is what life is like today, emphasizing only the physical aspect of activities, especially entertainment, instead of a stable four aspects. A one-legged buffalo--a world that excessively emphasizes one aspect of four--cannot long endure without crashing.
Why don't you try moving out of your comfort zone and entering the four worlds?