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Hello !
Can you define exactly what the Shechina is? Is it comparable to the Holy Spirit in the church?
Thank you !
Frédéric,
All of reality is permeated with the Upper Light, however we don’t feel it.
Imagine that you bring your cat to the opera and you both sit together and you are emotionally moved. At one point your heart is racing at another point tears flow from your eyes from the beauty of the story and the performance. But your cat…she just sits there licking herself and sleeping and is not impressed. She has no vessels for these emotions.
Similarly, although reality is permeated with the Upper Light, we don’t have vessels to feel it.
The kabbalists explain to us that our “self” was given to us only to feel that there is a reality outside of it, in fact 99.999999% of reality is outside of it. Without the self, we would have no awareness of this, we would be as a tiny spark inside the sun with no feeling of our self.
When we connect together using the method that the kabbalists teach us then between us we rebuild, we correct the shattered vessel that can perceive the light. This vessel that we build, is the place where the Creator can dwell. He is called the Shochen (the Dweller) and the place of His dwelling is called the Shechina.
Seth@KabUbecause your self was given to you only so that you would feel you are outside of it. This is essentially what we need to do.
The way I learn is by translating the concepts presented to me. In other words, egoism is a very bad concept for me. To hear that we are all egoistic sounded very sad. I tried to think of times that being egoistic fit me. At first, it was harsh and difficult to believe. However, and please correct me if my concept is wrong, I searched very deep into myself and sort of disassembled myself into pieces. I looked at every aspect of myself from as far as I could remember, maybe six years old up until today at 74 years old. The word egoistic, in my mind, matched people who had everything, boats, planes, etc. I began to break down from the very top (the boats, planes, etc) to the lowest level which could simply be someone who is selfish or in any way egotistic. I questioned my lifestyle. In being egoistic, does that include wanting more pair of shoes, clothes, things like that? I hear “unconditional love.” As a mother, I think I have given my children unconditional love. How do I reconcile that type of being unconditional as a mother with the unconditional love that I need to achieve to begin climbing the steps upwards toward the Creator? I believe the response is simple. I just need to understand it better. I do not have a problem with transitioning from egoism to unconditional love towards the Creator. That is why I am taking this course. I want to know. I want to learn.
Regarding week two, the clip of the baby getting for the first time a hearing aid was very eye opening. In this realization, hearing for the first time is like seeing outside the box of five senses. Seeing their reactions brought tears of happiness. Another great example regarding our adhesion to the Creator was the embryo. As an embryo, all of our needs are being met. We are receiving from our mother unlimited pleasures. Once we are born, we forget and enter the world of egoism as we grow and become adults.
Elisheva,
Everyone who comes to the wisdom of kabbalah has to learn new definitions.
You know when teenagers say that something is “cool” it does not mean that it is a cold temperature.
So you are coming with your definition that you brought to the wisdom. Let’s now try to understand what the kabbalists who attained this wisdom are passing on to us.
They describe to us a reality where the Creator is 100% to bestow, to love and He wants to bestow all of that love so He created a created being upon who He can bestow 100% of His love.
That “thing” that He created is called creation. Everything in creation is a will to receive pleasure from the Creator, from an atom that does what it does to maintain its structure to a plant that opens to the sun to receive its nourishment, to a fish that goes out to eat in the morning to us who have developed brains and all kinds of ways to satisfy ourselves. Some of us enjoy by taking from others and some of us enjoy by giving to others, but we move only to enjoy. This applies to everything in reality, every part of creation is made of one substance called Malchut, called the will to receive the pleasure that the Creator created.We have examples in the world of what it could mean to love, as you said with your children. But we can also see that we feel this way about our children, we do not have the same dedication and feelings towards the neighbor’s children or children on the other side of the planet, we feel this way about our children.
Kabbalists are not talking about morals we are talking about the most fundamental laws of spiritual nature upon which all of the rest of our study will be built.
The Creator is 100% to bestow.
Creation is 100% to receive.
The wisdom of kabbalah literally means the wisdom of reception. It means, how can we receive what He wants to give us, how can we exit the boundaries of our material world and feel something eternal, something whole, some endless love?
Seth@KabU
Hello,
How the barrier between our world and upper worlds is called in Hebrew ?
Thank you very much, I appreciate the lessons of Kabbalah very much !
Thank you, Seth. You are wisdom and I am learning. However, I do not think I expressed myself correctly. I do care and love all children. Living in Puebla City, in my comings and goings, in the late evenings, I would come across a child from six years old to 11 or 12 years old on the steps of a building entrance covered with newspaper because it was a cold evening. I would stop and ask if I could help. The response was always a “yes.” I would take the child home. I would ask the child to take a warm shower. I would have clean clothes for the child and a warm dinner. The child would spend the night on a bed I always had extra. I would wait until breakfast the next morning to ask the child why he had run away from home. He would tell me. It was usually because the father’s, a farmer, crops would fail. He would get drunk with the little money from the crops and would take it out on the child by beating him. I asked that if I could help, would he accept for me to take back home. The answer was always yes. I had a friend who was a doctor. He would give me medicine and vitamins to give to the mother and I would give the mother money. After speaking to the father and assuring him that I would continue helping, he would agree to stop beating the child. All children are precious to me. When I pray, I ask Hashem to protect all the children around the world as well as the mothers. I do care Seth about the neighbor’s children and children all around the world given the world we live in with all the violence. This does not mean that I think I am special. I am not. I exist on the egoistic world. I understand this and this is why I am taking this course. I just did not ask the right question and did not express what I truly wanted to express. However, within your response, I think I a ready, although at an old age, to learn the wisdom of Kabbalah in its entirety. Shalom
I find it interesting that the lessons of mystical schools which are heavily kabbalahistically influenced, all teach the “death of self” but I believe this to mean the not wishing to receive for the sake of ego. The “death of ego” being the beginning of the will to bestow. Also Christ’s teachings of “sell all your possessions and give the money to the poor” seems to be a radical idea until viewed in this light of will to bestow.
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