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Hi Marguerite Marie,
I’m not sure I understand the question. In what context are you asking it?
By the way, we offer Kabbalah courses in other languages as well. Check out Kab.info for details.
Albert @ KabU
I posted this in week 1 but it was meant for here:
Can regular everyday people connect with the upper worlds without the Torah?
For example: a caveman fulfills his lower desires, for food, shelter, family…he then picks up a stick and carves a flute. he creates songs on it. Later he picks up some plants and creates dies, and draws what he sees in nature, animals, plants, everything in his visual field. There’s a kind of satisfaction of a higher desire, a feeling of connections with the creator. There is no social expectation for him to do these, things, so it seems that this is an exercise of free will.
The second example has to do with intuition. A flight is fully booked but only a quarter of the people who bought tickets arrive. The plane crashes and everyone who took it dies. Through some inexplicable force, the people who didn’t take the flights describe a gut feeling guiding them not to take it. Some are sure the creator was communicating with them, so they acted on their desire to be closer to the creator by abandoning their plans. Are they exercising free will?
Hi Dana,
When we talk about freedom in Kabbalah, we’re talking about freedom from our egoistic nature. Whatever we do within our egoistic nature, there is no freedom there whatsoever. We’re simply like machines carrying out their inner programming.
See my reply below to Giuseppina for more details.
As for the Torah, Torah comes from the Hebrew word Ohr, meaning light. So when Kabbalists refer to the need for the Torah, they are not referring to the book but rather to the light. We need the force of the light to correct our egoistic nature. Then, according to the law of equivalence of form, we will become similar to spirituality and attain it in practice.
Check out these blog posts from Rav Laitman for more details:
https://laitman.com/2010/12/know-what-you-want-precisely/
https://laitman.com/2013/04/everything-is-attained-by-the-equivalence-of-form/
Albert @ KabU
What does bestow to the Creator exactly mean ? If we say that the Creator is a giving force, so how does it that the Creator accepts us to bestow to him ? and practically speaking how does one bestow to the Creator ?
Hi Milo,
The Creator is the pure quality of love and bestowal. As such, He does not lack anything. Meaning He does not need us to bestow anything to Him. The only ones benefiting from this whole process is us.
Although we sometimes use the words that we perform a certain action in order to bestow to the Creator or to bring Him contentment, but in truth it’s just a game to help us to develop. Just like with kids, when we spoon feed them, they see the example from us and want to pick up a spoon and feed us back. Do we really need them to feed us? Of course not. But we still accept this from them, smile, show them how happy they made us by feeding us etc, since we know that through this game, they grow and develop. So ultimately the Creator is not lacking anything. And all of our attempts to bestow to Him are nothing more than a type of game for our own development.
Furthermore, the Creator is concealed. So we cannot even play this type of game directly with Him. Instead we need to use what is revealed, which are other people. Meaning that if we want to “bestow” to Him in practice, we do so by bestowing to other people. This is called going “from the love of the created beings, to the love of the Creator”.
Keep in mind that the foundation of this type of work is done in a small Kabbalistic group. And once we build a certain foundation there, we can add more and more layers on top of that, until we can include the whole world in that connection.
In the advanced semester everyone will receive their own virtual Kabbalah group and learn how to do these things in practice. In the meantime, check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2024/01/communicate-directly-with-the-creator/
Albert @ KabU
Question?
instinct /animal force is predetermined
is Intuition / spiritual force also predetermined?
thank you
Hi Giuseppina,
All of our thoughts and actions are driven by our egoistic nature, by the desire to receive. As such, on the level of our world, which is driven by this desire, there is no freedom. We’re simply carrying out our internal programming, like animals. This is why there are people out there that can very accurately predict the future (not that I’m recommending going to them, but this is just an example).
Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2010/10/what-no-fortune-teller-knows/
Freedom begins when we rise above our egoistic nature through the help of the spiritual environment. Baal HaSulam talks about this in the article, the Freedom. He writes: “Harut (carved) on the tables”; do not pronounce it Harut (carved), but rather Herut (freedom), to show that they are liberated from the angel of death.
Throughout the article he explains how our current egoistic nature is that angel of death. Meaning although we are technically alive and surviving, relative to spirituality, our life is considered death. True life is within a completely different nature, that of bestowal. In order to reach freedom from our current nature, we need to choose and build a spiritual environment for ourselves which will influence us with the importance of acquiring the quality of bestowal.
For this reason, the Kabbalists equate our main freedom in life in choosing to be influenced by a spiritual environment. Not just any environment, but specifically a spiritual environment, since only through the spiritual environment can we get the importance of coming out of our egoistic nature and only through that environment can we draw the light that can help us to actualize this.
Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2012/10/bestowal-should-become-fashionable/
Albert @ KabU
Hi Albert,
I wanted to know what exactly an “intention” is. Is it a desire? It would have to be wouldnt it? Or is it the desire behind the desire? the end goal of the desire? I know that all of my desires are selfish in nature, even if I’m not cognizant of them, because I can see that I’m bound by the chains of pain and pleasure, and the best I’ve been able to do is try to ignore this selfish aspect, but I always know its there, weather I ignore it or not, because I can see it if I start to think about it.
Alan watts had this saying that: “Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.”
I was cleaning coffee cups today…
And so at times I just try to ignore my thoughts and try lose myself in whatever I’m doing, not focusing on anything but the task at hand, and there is a certain peace of mind behind that because I’m so focused on my task that everything else melts away. For a moment; but I always worry that underneath it all there is always a selfish intention, weather I can see it or not, and sure enough every time I look, there it is, and so always I’m always a prisoner to myself in this way.
If the goal would be to enter a state of complete bestowal, where I’m not concerned anymore with what I get but only on how I can be useful to the world around me (I think, I only assume this because I want to achieve equivalence of form), but I wouldn’t be able to move towards that state unless I perceived some sense of pleasure out of it, even in a future sense or a sense of personal satisfaction, in being morally right, or more knowledgeable, or more spiritual, or even the pleasure in being able to clearly perceive the mind of the creator, which I would consider the pleasure above all others, because I know God only gives and I want to receive exactly what he wants to give me in trusting that he knows what I want better than I ever could. I’ve thought about this very much and have determined for my self (through guidance from what I’ve learned through Kabbalah and a certain amount of self analysis) that its actually not possible.
The problem I have basically, is that I feel like even if I ignore something doesn’t change the fact of the why behind what I’m doing something for, and that god is putting questions in my mind and feelings in my heart for a reason, and that I was meant to understand or else why would I have such a strong desire to?
and the frustration arises through that I feel like the sole means I have (my desire) of moving towards the goal (to do something without personal gain) is simultaneously pushing me away from it, since its impossible for me to be anything else.
I suppose I only have the hope that something good will come out of my selfish aspirations, since that’s the only thing I have to work with, like I’m a selfish little seedling, consuming the soil and water and sunlight, but that one day I will produce a type of fruit that will nurture the world around me.
Hi Oliver,
The intention is the direction of the desire. For whose sake am I activating a certain desire? For myself or to bestow to the Creator?
The more we analyze our intentions, the more we’ll see that we don’t have a true intention to bestow. That our nature is completely opposed to it. Bestowal is the Creator’s nature. While our nature is that of pure reception. So it’s impossible for us to truly bestow. At best we can perform more and more covert actions of reception.
For example, I go to the store and I give them my money, but obviously I want something in return. It’s the same with all of our actions of bestowal in corporeality. Either I do it to receive pleasure directly or indirectly from fame, honor, money, or even the pride of knowing that no one knows about this action, or even avoiding pain or guilt is also part of this same calculation.
So real bestowal, above any calculations for receiving for oneself, does not exist in our world. Real bestowal is purely the Creator’s quality. If we want to acquire such a quality, we first need to correct our nature. This is done by the force of the light we evoke through the Kabbalistic studies. This light begins to work on us, even if we don’t have the true desire to bestow. Even if we’re just like little kids, pretending to be spiritual grown ups. It takes this aspiration of ours and corrects it little by little, building in us a true desire for spirituality, for the spiritual qualities of love and bestowal.
Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: http://laitman.com/2013/02/sunbathing-in-the-rays-of-the-reforming-light/
Albert @ KabU
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