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Hi. These beginner’s courses are perfect for me. Thank you for creating and offering them. Three questions…
1. If the Creator only wants to give to me, and as I receive, I will only want to be like the Creator and give back to Him, what is it that I can give to Him? After all, is He not the will to bestow? How can He receive anything from me if He is not a will to receive? Could it be that giving back to the Creator is to bestow upon the object of His bestowal – the Creature?
2. As we make corrections, i.e., the more we progress, am I to understand the more the ego grows? If so, this seems like a very painful process, because egoistic intentions have resulted in much pain in this corporeal world (as I have experienced it). Can you address the pain and suffering aspect of progressing in spiritual development?
3. Is this an infinite exercise or does attainment of a final degree become realized and our work of correction ends? I believe the answer is that we will come to an end of correction. However, I bet that is not the end of spiritual development. Or is it?
Hi Scott, great questions!
1. Yes, you can say that by loving others, we bestow to the Creator. It’s like a mother who loves her children dearly. If you relate nicely to her children, by that you make her happy.
2. We learned in this lesson the importance of the spiritual environment. This is our source of fuel to continue on the spiritual path. If we’re experiencing any pain or difficulty on the path, it’s a sign that we are not properly connected to the spiritual environment. It’s like with the example of going to the gym and lifting weights. Lifting weights is naturally extremely painful and unpleasant. But when we’re under the influence of a good gym environment, have friends that value such things, read lots of articles about staying healthy etc, we begin to enjoy these things. And what was previously a painful activity turns into something pleasurable. It all depends on the influence of the environment.
Here too you need to build for yourself a strong spiritual environment that will give you the support you need. And when you place yourself under the influence of the spiritual environment, you wont feel the path as painful, but as a fun challenge.
Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2012/10/bestowal-should-become-fashionable/
3. There is an end point, the final correction (gmar tikkun). We’re currently unable to properly measure what happens afterwards, but Kabbalists do hint that there are further degrees of development.
Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2010/10/what-happens-after-the-final-correction/
Albert @ KabU
Every day I have this chore that I have to do and I don’t do it, but today I comply. I find more pleasure in avoiding the job than fulfilling it. Is there a difference between free choice and conscious choice?
Hi Namron,
Freedom of choice is not between choosing between a chore and rest. Freedom of choice means that we are free from our egoistic nature.
See my reply 302804 to Luis below for more details:
Albert @ KabU
For those of us who are stuck at the fourth factor by showing great resistance to choose the environment that they sense it is the right soil but hit a wall (meaning joining the ten); Is this a problem with the seed (the individual not having Equivalence of Form) or the environment being too strict (requiring to join a ten on order to find the purpose of life)?
I find it a lot easier to join the whole Bina Baruch group, but feel choked to connect to just 10 people in it. What is the source of this tremendous resistance? Is the Creator asking me to let go as I do not fit? Or is He asking me to stay and develop this way? Honestly, I do not expect an answer to this part, I am just airing frustration with the Creator to answer my prayers to either fish or cut bait.
Hi Jack,
We learn that “there is no coercion in spirituality”. Meaning that we cannot force anyone to do spiritual work. So no one will force you to join a ten if you’re not ready for it.
But if you do go through the KabU courses, you will be gradually taught these things, about the shattering in the system of Adam HaRishon and how our entire work is to repair that shattered connection. Meaning that eventually we’ll come to connect with the whole world. But we don’t go directly to working with the whole world.
It’s just like a bodybuilder that wants to lift 1000 pounds. The bodybuilder does not start lifting 1000 pounds right away, rather he starts with something smaller and builds his strength gradually until he can handle the 1000 pounds. So working in a ten is like starting with a small weight. When we master that, we can expand that connection to include more and more tens until we include the whole world in that connection.
Keep in mind that we’re still in the fundamentals of Kabbalah, so the work in the ten is not so important for us at this stage. At this stage, it’s more important for us to properly absorb the fundamentals. The most important thing you can do for your spiritual advancement now, is to set aside some time to regularly return to the Kabbalistic sources, weekly lessons, videos, books, etc. Such a habit of regularly returning to the source of the light will help you throughout your entire spiritual development.
Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2013/02/sunbathing-in-the-rays-of-the-reforming-light/
Albert @ KabU
it is very interesting and I’m still learning freedom of choice or get to choose we don’t have that I’m trying to get it
Hi Luis,
Freedom means rising above our egoistic nature. As we learned in this week’s lesson, we do this by building for ourselves a strong 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
I battle food addiction. If impulses seeking pleasure, ie to eat pizza, and my thoughts are already programmed by the Creator, to what do I attribute my resistance to eating pizza?
Hi Matanah,
Our inner work is to attribute EVERYTHING to the Creator. This is called “there is none else besides Him”. Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2017/12/there-is-none-else-besides-him/
Just keep in mind that our battle with food has nothing to do with spirituality. Spirituality means acquiring the Creator’s qualities of love and bestowal. Love and bestowal is measured not towards food but towards other people. We do this work first of all with those closest to me spiritually, meaning those with awakened points in the hearts that are with me on the spiritual path. Later on, once we build a certain nucleus of connection with these awakened points in the heart, we can expand our work towards the rest of humanity.
We’ll learn about these things in detail in the more advanced semesters in KabU.
Albert @ KabU
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