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HI, I have got a question about prayer… now ,I understood, that religious prayer is not the same as spiritual prayer. And I understood that in a way we are always in prayer. Does this refer to our corporeal yearning… like when we are yearning for something for ourselves or our friends or hope a burden is taken from us? And while this is natural, it´s not a Kabbalistic prayer. Now, how to deal with those yearnings nontheless? I read in one answer that it´s jst fine to keep it up, to keep praying, just not with the expectation of fulfillment, because that´s not how we draw the light plus the upper force means good to us anyways. However, for me just knowing it changed the process, reduced my desire to even focus on it. Yet, something is jsut missing now, and since i didn´t learn how to ray in terms of kabbalistic prayers, it feels like there is a space to fill. So… I am just wondering what to do with this old way of praying… does it have any effect.. and even if it´s just a psychological trick to calm one´s mind? Or will it just dilute the experience of real prayer? And is there any such thing like a “format” for spiritual prayer? For religious prayer it seems so easy, so trained, because there are all those setups like prayer books, places to go, rituals to do… How is the preparation for a spiritual prayer in relation to that? Is there any at all?
Hi Verena,
We learn that the Creator is the good that does good and only sends us goodness. So if every moment we’re receiving only goodness, then the only prayer we should really be working on is to correct ourselves, so we feel that true state.
Furthermore, we learn that praying for myself in the majority of cases is egoistic. Even if I’m asking for lofty things like bringing the Creator contentment, if it’s focused on myself, then it’s egoistic and actually causes me more harm than good. So we should work on focusing our prayers on others, on helping our Kabbalistic group to advance towards the Creator. As for me, since I’m part of that group, I don’t need to pray for myself, rather, my prayers for the group include me in there as well. It’s like a cell in a body being concerned with the whole body. If the body is balanced and healthy, then the cell will also be balanced and healthy.
As for the preparation to the prayer, the true prayer is the peak of our work. All that we do beforehand is the preparation for that true prayer. For example, we spend a lot of times studying and learning about higher spiritual levels. As a result of that, we typically reveal just how opposite we are from them, how much our egoism is standing in our way. As a result of that, we begin to feel despaired with our own strength and then we feel a true prayer come out for the Creator to help us overcome the ego.
All of this is just scratching the surface of the topic of prayer. We will be learning about all these things in great depth in the more advanced semesters.
Check out these blog posts from Rav Laitman for more details:
https://laitman.com/2011/01/praying-in-order-to-change/
https://laitman.com/2017/03/what-is-prayer/
Albert @ KabU
When I was 40 years old I had a dream of a pyramid although the term “temple” was impressed upon me. Three quarters of it was submerged in still water, (and I felt the immensity of it though I couldn’t see it). What I could see was the top quarter of it above the water shining like diamond and beautiful in the light. There was blurred plant life in the background. I got the impression that the “temple” represented me but I never knew how to correctly interpret this dream. Here I am seven years later listening to this information about the inanimate, vegetative, animate and speaking and feel strongly that this is connected. Can anyone help with this kind of question? Thank you ☺️
Does working through these lessons on this platform = a group of 10? I only have one friend in my local area who is doing these lessons with me.
Hi Kerrie,
We’re not yet studying in groups of ten. We’re still in the fundamentals learning the basics of Kabbalah. Everything we learn here and in the intermediate semester is the necessary foundation for the work in a ten.
And in the advanced semester, everyone will be placed in virtual groups of ten with whom they can put all these things into practice.
Until then, having a friend nearby who is also going through these lessons is great. That’s very rare in our post pandemic world.
It’s also highly recommended to regularly connect to the live zoom sessions and to read through the Q/A forums. These opportunities to connect with other points in the heart and be influenced by their desire for spirituality is similar to the future work that we’ll be doing in tens.
Albert @ KabU
Hi Albert, I just saw you answered a lot of this in a previous threat in that we are never going backwards, and are not in multiple stages at the same time (I just cannot edit my question anymore). So, basically, most is answered already, I am just wondering what this stage of feeling like being drawn back and forth, of sensing the creator and then being pushed back into darkness, of sensing and then losing the sensation of „love thy neighbour as thyself“ on various levels refers to. Is this correction? And then the other question about how correction works on us and the whole remains for me. How often do we have to go through a correction to make it last in us and around us?
Hi Verena,
1. Spiritual advancement happens specifically from the ups AND downs. It’s just like the EKG chart that measures the heart. If there are ups and downs, the heart is beating, the body is alive. If it flatlines, the body dies.
Likewise in our spiritual work, our advancement is composed of many of ups and downs. But if we’re in the same state for a long period of time, then we stop advancing and are spiritually dead.
2. The corrections always remain. What happens after each correction is a new egoistic level is revealed, and then we start working on correcting that new level.
Keep in mind the emergence of a new level of egoism and experiencing those down states is a sign of spiritual advancement. So we should relate to these things positively. It’s just like when a child completes a puzzle, we are happy and reward him with a more challenging puzzle, so he can keep growing and developing.
Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2019/08/spiritual-sine-wave/
Albert @ KabU
Hi, are we passing through the stages of development one after the next, or are we going back and forth, or even experience different stages of spiritual development at the same time depending on our environment or inner states? Like a child sometimes goes through different phases of development step by step (like from turning over, to sit, to crawl, to stand, to walk) versus sometimes seems to be at different stages of maturity at the same time (like a child can be really immature in kindergarden, but reasonable when being with an older sibling or suddenly seeming to mature when being placed in a school environment)? I understand that as we start to grow our point in the heart and start to work on correcting our ego, we might just sometimes loose track, stumble back, and feel surrounded by darkness, and then there is a new revelation coming up. And sometimes it may seem clear and light to „love thy neighbour as thyself“ and then again it seems that doubts are closing this up… is this referring to a specific stage of development, or is it that we are just dropping down to an early stage then? And the same with „corrections“… if you have corrected a specific state / egoistic trait… do you have to go through it multiple times before it lasts? I once read to correct a specific human behaviour you may need up to a 1000 times of practice… (depending on what you want to correct, of course, and on how high the resistance is)… but how lasting are corrections? And actually, do they have to be lasting or is it like lighting a match, that lights a piece of wood, that lights a fire…?
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