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How do we know/feel we are giving contentment to the Creator?
How do we know/feel we are not giving contentment to the Creator?
First of all, we’re all giving contentment to the Creator, and we’re at the end of correction. What’s missing is that we don’t feel any of that. Therefore, we need to feel and know that we are giving Him contentment. And until that enters my feeling and clear attainment, I can’t say that I’m giving Him contentment.
If I want a criterion by which to know that I’m not giving Him contentment, that’s easier. I’m not giving Him contentment if I’m not relating to Him and the friends as one, and aiming to give Him contentment through this.
Another question, when I enter a meeting with my friends, can I think about ‘spiritual strategies’ that I have read about or heard from, or, should I try to completely empty my mind and just focus on the specific thing that we read or discuss at the meeting?
From There Is None Else Besides Him:
‘The Baal Shem Tov said that he who says that there is another force in the world, namely Klipot [shells], that person is in a state of “serving other gods.” It is not necessarily the thought of heresy that is the transgression, but if he thinks that there is another authority and force apart from the Creator, he is committing a transgression.’
What is the difference between ‘the thought of heresy’ and ‘if he thinks that there is another authority and force apart from the Creator’?
The thought of heresy is from the sensation that there is more than one force governing reality, and there is no one on the spiritual path (let alone people with no connection to this path) who does not – in certain states – feel that there are multiple forces working on him at a time – as it’s written, “there is no Righteous in the land who does good and did not sin.” But the question is what I do with this multiplicity. Do I go with it and think like others do, or do I work to ascribe each and everything to None But Him, the singular Creator.
Wow, Gianni , just watched the ice bath you went in – clip. How did it feel? What did you get from it? Wisdom-wise, gaining more consciousness?
Hi Paul. I got an ordinary corporeal feeling of exhilaration due to the biological processes triggered by the cold. I didn’t gain any wisdom or awareness from it since wisdom and awareness of something above this world can only come as a result of a spiritual action. No corporeal action is more or less than any other corporeal action. Therefore, it’s merely an analogy for our spiritual work that happens in an entirely different arena.
Gianni.
I used to smoke a pipe or a cigar, But this week I felt that for the sake of the Creator I should give up smoking. I stopped on `Tuesday, and haven’t felt like a smoke since. I wonder if it could have been the creator encouraging me to stop? Anyway I am glad stopping has been so easy.
Well, you can stop if you want, but since it’s already something you wanted to do, and in any case, all of society is encouraging people to not smoke and there’s plenty of data to recommend quitting, it is therefore impossible to say that I quit smoking for the Creator. An action for the Creator has to be one that I would not do under normal circumstances, and otherwise is against my desire. The only field available where I can do something I don’t already want to do and the action aligns with the Creator’s will, is in acts of love of friends in the spiritual group, especially since I have no business with them outside of the group. While with all kinds of other actions, it’s all distorted and unclear as to what is actually good, correct, and according to the Creator’s will: we can’t know.
Hello,
I would like to ask about this passage from Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot:
“However, not only does one who lives in Torah and Mitzvot enjoys his own life, but he is even happy to bear children and bequeath them this good life. This is the meaning of “so you may live, you and your descendants,” for he receives additional pleasure in the life of his progeny, of which he was the cause.”
What does progeny mean? And what is it to receive pleasure in the life of his progeny?
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