by Miykael Qorbanyahu
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Let me be a seal upon your heart, like the seal upon your hand. For love is fierce as death, passion is mighty as Sheol; its darts are darts of fire, a blazing flame. Vast floods cannot quench love,
nor rivers drown it. If a man offered all his wealth for love, he would be laughed to scorn.
Song of Songs 8.6-7
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Confession.
Up until sometime in 2017, I thought I loved myself.
To contextualize this, my years of delusion started in 1993 right after my high school graduation. I explained this in depth in the preface of my book The Pattern of Adam Revealed. But in short, it was then that I lost my virginity to a classmate with who I had a casual sexual experience. I also began smoking weed and loved it, or so I thought. From that point forward, the rest just went downhill from there. You could say morally, I crashed out. So by the time I got to college, I was primed for all the wrong things. And though I met my girlfriend of nearly three years my first night on campus as an incoming freshman on full scholarship for the UMaine Blackbear football team, I realized that “bringing sand to the beach” was less than convenient for the agenda that I ended up pursuing; weed and women. So with countless intoxicated nights and my fair share of females, the love that I thought that I had for myself came to a screeching halt one night after an episode of cannibis, intimacy and a panic attack. That night initiated my journey into consciousness.
Thinking that in 1997 when I experienced my rebirth, the course would get it easier for me, while in actuality, the residue of those early years have reverberated down to this very day, as I still find myself dealing with the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh and the pride of life. And though I now know how to pivot and ensure that I’m not bringing any unnecessary entanglements into my marital bed, the desires of the flesh still persist. Coupled with childhood trauma and exposure to pornography, the challenge of restoring my nature to innocence is more than an uphill trek. Reflecting back, however, I thought that saying what I felt, doing what I felt, asserting my “freedom,” and following my pleasure was evidence of self-love. But in truth, I was abusing myself—quietly and steadily—through fornication, drunkenness, and a deep disconnection from image and likeness of Elohim within me. What I called love was really lust. What I claimed as liberation was actually bondage dressed in ego’s best Easter suit. Talk about grand delusion. And what I once accepted as normal was nothing short of generational dysfunction passed down like a cursed inheritance.
But then came the revelation: Love transforms. It doesn’t simply make us feel good—it entirely and completely renews and recreates us.
The Two Greatest Commands: The Foundation of Transformation
In Deuteronomy 6:5, the Shema cries out:
“And you shall love YHWH your Elohim with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might.”
And in Leviticus 19:18, we are commanded:
“You shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am YHWH.”
These commandments are not just mere moral suggestions or spiritual sentiments—they are transformational technologies of the soul. When asked which commandment was greatest, Messiah Yeshua responded by quoting both of these (Matthew 22:37–40), saying that all the Torah and the Prophets hang on these two. Why? Because love is the bridge which connects Heaven with Earth.
This is because these commandments are intimately interconnected. You cannot love YHWH fully and live in hatred, isolation, or envy. Neither can you love your neighbor rightly if you are estranged from the image of Elohim within yourself. And herein lies the sacred key: love is the link between what is and what ought to be; it is the definitive expression of life.
The Messianic Fulfillment of Love
Yeshua didn’t just teach love—He embodied it.
In John 15:13, He declares:
“Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for his friends.”
And in John 3:16, the very heartbeat of the Good News pulses:
“For Elohim so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
Let’s take a selah moment here and go deeper.
Inhale.
Exhale.
Ready.
Let’s dive in.
The Hebrew root word for “love” (ahav/אָהַב) contains the letters aleph (1, the Divine), hey (5, revelation), and bet (2, house). Adding the value of these letters together, we arrive at the number 8. According to Rabbi Dr. Hillel ben David, 8 is a number that represents departure from the natural world and entry into the supernatural world. This typifies the nature of love. For love is the revelation of Elohim in the house—in us. John 3:16 reveals the kabbalistic principle of receiving in order to give, the highest form of spiritual interaction. Elohim gave—not to manipulate, not to guilt us, not for selfish reasons—but to invite us into reciprocity. That’s the essence of love: a continuous circuit of receiving from the Source in order to give to the whole. The true nature of the supernatural.
Self-Love is Not Self-Indulgence
Now, circle back with me to my confession for a moment. My so-called “self-love” was really self-indulgence. And my indulgence of self led me to be consumed by guilt, and guilt into shame, and shame into silence and silence into hiding. I drank to numb it, I smoked to numb it, I fornicated to numb it, and smiled to hide it.
But true love—transformative love—doesn’t cover the wound, it heals it.
For me, I can admit that loving has been a great challenge of mine. I mean to genuinely love someone to the degree where I’m connected, selfless and truly concerned for the well-being of another. When I recently married my wife on 6/4/23, that moment reinitiated my journey into love as for the first time since losing my virginity, I truly fell in love with a woman’s soul and not just her body or what she could do for me. And now that I have initiated my 90-day sublimation journey (detailed in Part II), I know more intimately that practicing love is not a feeling, but a discipline. In this light, I have the motivation and discipline to now restrain impulses and to withhold temporary pleasure for eternal purpose. This is love in motion. And it qualitiatively transforming my mind, my heart, and my will.
The Science and Spirit of Love: Receiving to Give
Kabbalah teaches that there are two kinds of vessels:
- Those that receive only for themselves
- And those that receive in order to give
The former breaks the circuit by being overloaded and unable, rather unwilling, to distribute the intake. The latter becomes a conduit for the Divine and has more than enough to share for the sake of the whole. Sublimation, in this framework, is about purifying our vessel—spirit, soul and body—so that what we receive (power, insight, energy) is used for the sake of others.
So now, in my moments of temptation, I remind myself: This isn’t just about me. This is about becoming who others need me to be. Love, after all, is not just personal—it’s communal, it’s committment, it’s devotion, it’s selfless.
The Anatomy of Love: 1 Corinthians 13
Let’s bring it down to street level. What does this love look like?
“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered,
it keeps no record of wrongs,
does not rejoice over the unrighteousness, but rejoices in the truth,
it covers all, believes all, expects all, endures all.
Love never fails…” (1 Corinthians 13:4–8a)
When considering these verses, we must come to the realizatin that these words aren’t just abstract virtues—they’re daily decisions, active engagements that transforms our trials, tribulations and temptations into victory; submlimation. In marriage. In friendship. In community. And yes, love takes a hit sometimes. But love doesn’t clap back in kind, every time. Love sees the best in others and refuses to weaponize the past. Love is true strength, and true strength is vulnerable. Love allows for us to be just that, strong and vulnerable; supernatural.
This is because love is altruism, not cynicism.
Cynicism says, “Why bother? They’ll never change.”
Love says, “I’ll be the change even if no one else does.”
Love transforms.
Generational Patterns and the Power to Repent
To love requires courage. It also is something that we must learn. Too many us, however, have never learned how to love and are froze in fear because of our lack of lessons about love we never received from those who were in place to nourish, nurture and show us the nature of love. But because we never experienced what love was or is, we know not the transformative power of love and find ourselves proctecting ourselves from ourselves and others. This creates cycles of dysfunction and sin. And when sin is not acknowledged, well, we see the result in society.
In the words of the late comedian Robin Harris, the sins we refuse to confront don’t die—they multiply. I know, funny not funny. But in all seriousness though, sin is a matter that we have taken too lightly in the past few generations. And now that we have become absolutely tolerant of the presence of sin in our lives, it has come to consume us and control our lives. And we wonder why the world is so dark and cold. But the words of our Master sheds light on this present dismal condition that we face: Because of the increase of lawlessness, love will wax cold (Matthew 24.12). So now, as we pretend our actions are isolated and inconsequential, we ignore the conditions, programs and systems that shaped us: absentee fathers and mothers, trauma in the home, abusive relationships, community dysfunction, cultural programming. The more we continue to ignore and disregard these maldies, the more our condition worsens.
But repentance (teshuvah) is the heavnely disruptor to these earthly disorders. It’s not just saying sorry—it’s turning toward our higher selves. Through repentance, we break the contracts with the past and sign new covenants for the future.
We rewire our minds and take back our lives from being hijacked by a world that seeks to enslave us and convince us that we are sinners saved by grace.
But now, we must boldly proclaim, like Israel did upon making exodus from Egypt:
I am no longer a slave to lust. I am a son of Elohim in training.
I am no longer stuck in shame. I am in transfiguration.
And that shift? That’s love. Real love. Love that builds altars and tears down idols.
The Call to Action: From Transgression to Transfiguration
If Part I (The Transfiguration Movement) called us to awaken,
and Part II (The Art and Science of Sublimation) trained us to ascend,
then this installment calls us to embody. To walk in love. To become vessels of light.
Love is not weak—it’s the most powerful force in the universe.
It doesn’t avoid the dark—it transforms it.
It doesn’t escape the fire—it becomes the flame.
You are loved.
You are able to love.
You were created to become love.
So join me. Join us.
Let’s unite in this sacred uprising of transfigured souls.
Let’s heal ourselves and our communities—not just with knowledge, but with love.
The Transformative Power of Love.
Welcome to the next level of the Transfiguration Movement:
Selah…
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