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Hello! Can someone please share some advice for how to attend the virtual retreat? My situation is that the retreat occurs through the night (i live in NZ and the retreat is held in the Netherlands) and the dates coincide with the beginning of my university’s exam period. There are very compelling reasons for why to a) attend and b) to not, and i feel torn. I can imagine a situation where i force a circadian rhythm flip and somehow manage to keep my health in order to do well in the exams AND be present at the retreat, if only for half of it, but it will be extremely difficult. What would you do if you were me?
This is your calculation. I need to attend the retreat and I need to ensure that I ace my exams. Maybe you can attend some.
Sometimes I feel a sensation in my body that is followed by a thought that says “this is the friend”, like it came from outside of me. What is the correct way to interpret this? At what level is there truth in such occurrences? What is the important part to focus on here? How can i know for sure, and how do it test this?
As an aside: If there is any detail that can be described by the study of the worlds and the ten sephirot that is relevant to my question please can you include this or flag terms i can investigate because I want to learn more about this system and how to apply it. Thank you!
That’s not a phenomenon that I recognize. In any event, the best is to always move forward – away from the desire to receive, more toward connection – and not to pay much attention to any phenomenon, even seemingly highly spiritual phenomena.
Concerning the love of friends| The inner work
In the corporeal world, we give importance to those we consider valuable in society. And what makes them important? I think it is because of the excess amount of money they have. That gives them importance.
In spirituality, I need to see my friends as more important to me than to myself.
1- What is that specific thing that makes them (my friends) important? Because in corporeality, one of the specific things that makes people important is money.
2- What does the word important mean in the context of Kabbalists?
Thank you.
What makes them important is that the Creator chose them from all the people. How do I know He chose them? If they’re engaged in the wisdom of Kabbalah they needed to have a special awakening that drew them specifically to a wisdom about overcoming the only thing there is in our reality, which is the Will to Receive. For this, one has to be specially guided on the inside.
Concerning connection and love of friends
Should we also be thinking if our friends love us/me or we should just focus on loving the friends?
I need to think that only I need to love the friends, and not that they should love me. How they relate to each other and to me, I need to see as prompts for me to pray for my own inner change in everything in which I see a flaw in the love of friends.
If my friends are my other vessels, and if I see a flaw amongst my friends, for example, He speaks for too long or maybe he think he knows too much, are these flaws? Where do I place the correction? Or my friends are just like a mirror to attaining adhesion with the Creator?
I don’t know if i formulate the question well.
Whenever I am filled with joy I see my friends all fall away from me, and they avoid joining in our activities. When I am facing a mountain of obstacles and I force myself to connect I see they are in joy. Why is there such an imbalance, and is there something I can do to not be in an opposite state from my friends?
Lately I am overflowing inside with joy, but my friends who are feeling no taste or pleasure are desperate to feel joy. I can’t pass any of my joy onto my friends.
Is the Creator waiting for my next fall to bring them joy?
Hi Patricia,
No, we shouldn’t make such calculations. First of all, I can’t really tell what my friends’ states are. Do I already know what spiritual attainment looks like on the outside? You can’t tell. But, as I wrote to the friend above, however the friends appear to me I can nevertheless use as the fulcrum for prayer that I will see them in a perfect, connected state. Their state, in short, is exactly what I need to ask for, and to think about my spiritual state as little as possible, almost not at all.
From Shamati 25:
“As long as he has no power to sentence the world to the side of merit, they subdue him, he mingles with their desires, and he is led like sheep to the slaughter.”
What is sentencing the world to the side of merit, and how to (keep) do(ing) this?
He has to think of everyone as in a corrected state, but “They have eyes and do not see.” And yet he has to live with them in the state that they appear to him. If he can include everyone in this end state, the corrected state, then he is qualitatively more influential than all the people and thoughts in the world.
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