Yesod Qlifa | יסוד קליפה
The Qlifa of Yesod are laziness and reactivity, depending on whether the passive aspect or the active aspect predominates, both being unbalanced facets of the Moon. When Yesod operates negatively, it can produce a state of passivity, indolence, idleness, lack of spirit and vitality, abandonment to one's own daydreams: a state that is absolutely sterile and creates nothing. We remember that Yesod is the sphere of imagination, which although it can be creative and put to a practical purpose, it can also usurp the role of action. Also reflective Yesod can become unbalanced towards hypersensitivity, which can result in over-reactivity to external stimuli.
Spiritual experience is the Vision of the machinery of the Universe, the understanding of the mechanism of things, for example of causality. Everything is concatenated and everything happens for a reason. Yesod is the framework, the matrix. Everything is reflected in Yesod before being embodied in Malkuth. Connecting with Yesod gives us a broader vision of the deep forces of the Universe, of its cycles, trends, tides, It allows us to develop the intuition of how and why things happen. Yesod teaches us to flow with the tides which is very different from passive abandonment based on laziness and inhibition. To navigate the astral seas is not to drift, a plaything of the winds and currents.
In fact, the virtues or qualities are confidence and independence. Confidence derives from faith in the intelligence and wisdom that underlies the machinery of the universe. Trust that all our experiences are for the best, that our seemingly intractable conflicts have a meaning that we will one day discover. Independence gives us precisely the power to find and follow our own course. Independence in the sense of personal autonomy, with relative self-sufficiency and an ability to put one's own resources into action. Let us note that lazy people often develop great economic, ideological or emotional dependencies. Only by being independent can we build a good, solid personal foundation, not subject to the whims of fortune or the whims of others. And this requires diligent attention, the opposite of neglect and laziness.
Obviously absolute independence cannot be given but, outside of certain limits, an area in which we become overly dependent is an area in which we cannot be ourselves. Our Yesodic foundation does not correspond to our Tiferethic consciousness. Why then do we become dependent? Usually for the sake of a misunderstood security. This security can be material, emotional, mental.
Security constitutes the illusion of Yesod, security, believing that the created foundation is secure. Nothing is secure, neither in ourselves nor in our material circumstances. Certainly our Yesodic foundation needs the stability of Malkuth and our inner world also needs a certain permanence. We are forced to plan our lives and we have to act with foresight. But if for the sake of economic security we build large material foundations which then demand all our time and energy to maintain themselves; if in order not to assume a loneliness or to avoid conflict with others we consolidate relationships that are not enriching for either party, or, on the contrary, if in order to preserve a status or a certain appearance, or because of a refusal to give or share, we do not risk a certain relationship; if we take refuge in the security of certain ideas or a certain conception of the world in order not to assume the risks of a different way of thinking or to justify a situation that we are comfortable maintaining, etc. We may be paying the price of our own Tiferet.
This is the desire of the ego, to become independent in order to control. The "self" knows the complexity of every situation and simply flows with it, without impositions but with a creative attitude, always looking for the point of synthesis and balance that has every pair of opposites facing each other.
The mandate is to go, not to be inactive, to set in motion to achieve goals, accepting the insecurity that this entails, but trusting that it is our self that determines the pattern of our destiny and that in the end it will prevail.
The obligation, and also virtue, is trust. Even if I do not understand what is happening to me, trusting that it is happening to me for a reason. Also to learn to trust others, with discrimination.
The commandment is: "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor" sheds new light on the above. He bears false witness who affirms only the world of appearance against the world of essence, of temporality against eternity, of materiality against spirituality. He bears false witness against the totality of his being who only identifies himself with the ego and the pre-individualized conscious personality. That is to say, he who is not true to himself in his integrity. Therefore, in positive terms, the commandment tells us: "Judge no one but know thyself". If we take into account that the yesodic personality has its conscious and unconscious areas; that we tend to project our dark side onto others; that the yesodic ether is so ideo-plastic that many falsehoods, half-truths or incomplete knowledge take on an air of verisimilitude with little rational justification; and that our perception of the real world (physical plus metaphysical) is fragmented, limited, encompassing only one life, so that the part of the machinery of the universe that we know is the tip of an iceberg; with all that, we would do well to postpone our judgment of others until we know ourselves. Of course, the individual in Tiferet no longer derives benefit from judging others. It is enough for him to judge himself, so that Yesod reflects his true nature, bearing witness to the essentially divine character of his own being and of all reality.
In Yesod the ego is constructed, but its excessive construction can lead us to the dark side, egoism. In Yesod we can create false images of our identity, we can believe we are something we are not, we can believe that our physique or sexual potency defines our identity. We cannot construct our identity simply based on sexual or physical identity because, in reality, this identity implies a connection to animality.
If a person's whole life is reduced to caring for his or her body he or she faces the illusion of eternity and the non-acceptance of the passage of time. In fact, this is the real problem of the darkness of the ego in Yesod, the person believes that he is physically immortal and the only way he can grasp this false image of immortality is by looking at the traces of the passage of time in his own body.
Accepting the limitations of our ego is fundamental for a good construction of our identity. If we believe we are something more than what we are, we generate an imbalance, just as if we believe we are less than what we really are. We should not consider ourselves superior or inferior to our true identity. In order not to feel superior we must work on what we lack, in order not to feel inferior we must recognize what we have.