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So I know this may be a little outside week 4s lesson but here’s a question,
1) I have been trying to give to the creator while I eat, I wish to eat heathy since we are one soul so when I choose something healthy am I giving as long as I am choosing this with intent to give the creator pleasure ?
2) If my 5 senses are sensors for this body that I live in. Does it reason that this body that I am inhabiting is one of the creators infinite senses, and that even though this body is a sensor it is not completely programed until correction leads to breakthrough of the barrier ??
Hi Paul,
1. We learn that “necessities are neither praised nor condemned”. So whatever we need to do to maintain our normal necessities in life is not considered giving or receiving.
Furthermore, there are times when we do similar exercises to what you wrote, but unless these exercises are explicitly recommended in the lessons, I would not recommend it. Otherwise we risk distracting ourselves from the real spiritual work, which is not inside any one of us, but rather, it’s in the connection between us. As we learned in the lesson on the shattering of the common soul of Adam HaRishon, the only thing broken in the entire system of creation are the proper connections between people. So our entire spiritual work is in fixing those connections. And if we’re focusing on ourselves instead, then we’re not even looking in the direction of where our real spiritual work begins.
Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2014/05/puzzle-adam-harishon/
2. I cannot answer from the Creator’s point of view because that is not something that we attain. Kabbalah divides our research of the Creator into two parts:
The first is His essence (atzmuto in Hebrew). This is He Himself, His point of view, the Creator as an entity separate from the Created beings. We’re incapable of researching this part of the Creator because our research tools are not built in such a way that we can grasp such things. Perhaps after we finish the process of correction, we’ll discover additional research tools through which we’ll be able to research these things, but until then we limit ourselves and don’t talk about this part of the Creator because we cannot properly research it.
The other part of the Creator is called Bo-Re (Hebrew for Come (Bo) and See (Re)). This is the part of the Creator that we can research and reveal. How do we research this? Through the desire. When we take a part of our desire to receive and correct it in the direction of bestowal, in that corrected desire, we reveal a certain phenomenon, we call this phenomenon the Creator. This is why there are many names for the Creator (in Hebrew), since every time we correct a different part of the desire, we reveal a different aspect of this thing called the Creator.
So all of our understanding of this thing called the Creator (and any spiritual phenomena) is based on what we reveal within the corrected desire. But whatever exists outside of the corrected desire, whatever we don’t grasp, perceive or attain within the desire, whatever is beyond our tools of research, we don’t talk about. We need to keep these limits in mind in order to stay within the realm of science and not venture off into religion or philosophy.
Check out these blog posts from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2017/11/the-concept-of-god-in-kabbalah/
Albert @ KabU
My question is about environment. I am very much looking forward to becoming part of a group. This all makes so much sense. Here is my question. I am married. My wife loves God as she understands him. Before meeting my wife i was in a period of deep connection with God as I understood him. I felt the creators leading deeply. Believing I was being led to do so I married my wife. She loves others like no one I ever knew. Helping the homeless on her own as well as working at a not for profit. She Has PTSD from her childhood, I wonder now about her intentions ( maybe to calm her own anxiety )I did not know how deeply the PTSD from her traumatic childhood would effect our relationship or my faith in God that began hanging by a thread. Somedays i feel like I’m under attack emotionally, and that all the anxiety she carries is being put on me while she puts on a wonderful face for the world to see. I love her. And don’t want to see her go through this alone. Is it possible to be successful in Kabbalah still living in this situation if I am part of a small group.
Hi Paul,
I cannot comment on your personal situation, we can only talk about these things in general.
1. In general, everyone has a certain set of issues that they are dealing with in life. Some have issues with money, some with health, some with family, etc. Everyone.
2. Kabbalah is not a magical pill to get rid of all of our problems. Such a thing does not exist. This is because we’re egoists and avoiding pain is one of the major motivating forces for us. If we were to get rid of that force, then we would have no drive to continue our development.
So what good is studying Kabbalah then? It’s in order to correct our egoism. Once we correct it, we will no longer need problems and suffering in order to push us to develop because we ourselves will generate the force for our development.
Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2011/06/how-can-we-justify-the-creator/
3. How do we deal with these issues in the meantime? We must take care of all of them in the normal way that is customary in our society. If I’m sick, I go to a doctor and follow the doctor’s advice. If I lose my job, I write a resume and go job hunting. If someone is hurting me, I stop them, call the police, etc. We must continue to resolve all of our problems in the normal way. That’s our external work.
4. Internally, we must ascribe everything that we’re going through to the Creator, to “none else besides Him”. But this is our internal work. It does not cancel out any of the normal actions that we need to do in life in order to deal with our problems in the regular way.
Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2010/10/dont-ask-for-the-death-to-the-wicked/
Albert @ KabU
Yes, it’s possible. I’ve seen this method implemented successfully even among inmates in prison. It all depends on the influence of the spiritual environment. If a person works on making the spiritual environment important in their eyes, then the spiritual environment will influence that person stronger than their corporeal environment.
We’ll learn about this in the more advanced semesters.
Albert @ KabU
During this course, there are times I feel the conflict between what we are being taught and where I want to be or believe that I am spiritually. I want to experience the creator on a deeper level. I miss the touch of the creator that I had before I lost faith in him and ceased to believe. when I came across the Kabballa I was excited because I saw the truth of its teaching. but the more I study the more confused I feel
Hi Stephen,
I agree, the method can be confusing at times, especially since we’re used to learning intellectually whereas experiencing the Creator is an emotional process. We need to keep in mind that the Kabbalistic studies don’t work in a typical way in which we learn to accumulate knowledge. In Kabbalah we’re concerned with reaching spirituality in practice, feeling it. And for that purpose, “it’s not the wise that learns”. Meaning we’re not learning this material simply to acquire knowledge, to store it in some box in our brains. After all, If knowledge was the path to spirituality, then a supercomputer loaded with all of the Kabbalistic texts would be the most spiritual being in the world. Obviously this is not the case.
So why do we spend so much time studying if not to gain knowledge? Because through the study, we draw the force of the light. This force is what makes all the internal changes, clarifications, corrections that need to be made. After we extract enough light and correct ourselves to a certain degree, then we won’t just intellectually philosophize about spirituality or the Creator, but we will begin to feel Him in practice. And only out of that feeling will we begin to truly understand these things.
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
Albert, Thank you, I think I have been worried about getting the answers right instead of allowing the course flow over me. My desire is to experience the Creator emotionally. The course can only point the way, and i must leave the creator fulfil that desire and make the corrections needed. So that my desire and the light will increase.
In this lesson we read about concealment and that brings to mind a recent conversation I had with a friend about this topic, in which the friend had said there’s no such thing as concealment, and this made me reflect to myself, that once we have seen and felt God, we’re even more astutely aware of His concealment, and we are left wanting to reach out, pray and plead, and desire ever more for His presence and to cleave on to Him. And we know that to be with Him is the ultimate pleasure, and ask how we can return to this state, and are left to wonder; Why have we been placed in a realm (a world/ a dimension) so far from Him!!?
Hi Andreanne,
We were indeed created in the state of perfection, in complete adhesion with the Creator. (Baal HaSulam describes this in the article Introduction to the book of Zohar). But this was an unconscious state, like a baby in its mother’s womb. So we necessarily had to come to the complete opposite state, to lose that state of perfection, in order to once again reach it, but this time consciously.
And the fact that we had to lose this state is not something bad, but it’s a necessary part of our development. It’s just like with kids. We don’t just give them a completed jigsaw puzzle. On the contrary we take it and break it down into many pieces. Then in the process of them putting it together, they grow and develop. Same with us, this process of losing that state is a necessary part of our further growth and development.
This process also adds to us a certain level of freedom, without which, we would be no different than machines, or robots, that were programmed to act a certain way and they just carry out this inner script. Instead, we were programmed one way, and we rise above this inner programming, become independent of it, and then develop our own desire to advance towards this goal.
Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2014/01/from-perfection-to-perfection/
Albert @ KabU
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