What most inspired me in this course was learning the essential building blocks of Kabbalah and beginning to see how they fit together into a coherent picture. I originally started down this path because I wanted to understand what it really means to have free will—something everyone talks about, but few of us really stop to examine.

The idea that has affected me most is deceptively simple: there is only the Creator. The Creator’s nature is bestowal, while the creature’s nature is reception. Yet within us is an imprint of the Creator that allows us to recognize the difference between our nature and His. The Creator is concealed so that we can freely come to desire that equivalence ourselves—not by ceasing to receive, but by changing the intention behind reception from receiving for ourselves to receiving for the sake of the Creator. I have come to understand this choice of intention as the deepest meaning of free will.

I have also learned something about myself. As I study Kabbalah, my own path is becoming clearer and the limited identity I have constructed over a lifetime is beginning to fall into perspective. The material world is still very real, with all its demands, pleasures, disappointments and struggles, but I am beginning to understand its limitations and perhaps even its purpose. Those limitations awaken the desire to look beyond ourselves and gradually shift our intention from serving the ego toward serving the Creator.

Kabbalah teaches that there are two paths toward this correction: the path of suffering and the path of Light. For the first time, I feel that I can consciously participate in choosing the path rather than simply being pushed along it.

My wish for my fellow students is that each of us continues this journey together and discovers these principles through our own experience—not merely as ideas we understand intellectually, but as something we begin to perceive and live. May our connection help each of us move beyond the boundaries of the individual ego and gradually reveal the greater reality that has been concealed from us.

When I’m studying although I don’t understand a thing, at the same time I feel something that I can’t explain, and I cannot apply what I’m learning on my daily life.

What has inspired me is the clarity of how the world works.  Roots and branches, cause and effect.  Nothing is random.   I realized that all the concepts make sense if I listen, read, and learn with my heart,  not my head.
Knowing the Creator created us to receive the light brings so much hope and lightness to everyday life. Even when I do not feel so good or see suffering in the world, I know that even this is given to us by the Creator. I like to think of it as Source, not the Creator, but I do not get too hung up on terms. What counts is the principles. Also, knowing that I don’t have to do it alone is so encouraging. We have books, teachers, and friends who are on the same path.  Correcting even one soul at a time is going to help the whole world eventually correct from only ego’s desire to receive for oneself to desire to bestow.

What inspired me is that I am not alone.