Ask Anything

[Gil]

Ask, connect, inspire.

[Helen]

Hi Gianni

is it important to understand certain terms in order to advance? for example we have been learning about Hanukkah and it’s meaning, but I get very confused about the difference between Hanukkah and Machsom, how are they different and how are they related. if you can help to explain, that would be great, but I wonder how important it is for me to understand those terms thoroughly, or just some basic understanding is good enough?

thanks

Helen

[Gianni – KabU Instructor]

It will take time to feel these terms inside you. In the meantime, try to understand. The Light works a bit, you feel a bit. You try to understand, the Light works, you feel a bit more. This way, you build the vessels.

There isn’t a strong connection between Machsom and Hanukkah. Hanukkah is after the Machsom.

[Helen]

Thank you, Gianni, what you wrote is very encouraging and calming for me.

I feel a strong yearning for a state where I only want to bestow, where bestowal feels so essential that without it life has no meaning. I had thought this kind of necessity might be Machsom, which is where my confusion came from I suppose.

Recently, both through corporeal situations and through time with my Ten, I often catch myself thinking: if I could forget about myself and truly care only about others, how liberating that would be. Ego doesn’t feel enjoyable to me. it feels painful, like wearing a garment with sharp spikes inward, hurting me with every movement. At the same time, I clearly see that I have no power to remove this garment; I feel enslaved by it. so is my yearning right now an egoistic yearning?

I sense that perhaps the beginning of the journey is simply recognizing this truth.  but I don’t yet understand how to relate correctly to this recognition in the work.

My question is: how should I use this state practically? Is it something to deepen, to hold, to turn into a request to the Creator, or simply to continue the regular work and let the Light arrange it over time?

thank you

Helen

• This reply was modified 1 month, 1 week ago by Helen.

[Gianni – KabU Instructor]

If the ego is a garment with spikes inward, then jump above it, and live inside the friends. To the extent I am unwilling to exit the friends is the extent that these spikes really hurt me. Then, it’s either that the Pharoah doesn’t let us go out, or we don’t want to go out, but from either state, we need to ask the Creator for what’s next. Ask, ask, ask. It’s only that we get tired of asking, and so we stop asking. So, our spiritual work is delayed.

[Helen]

what does it mean to live inside the friends?

[Gianni – KabU Instructor]

“Where one’s thoughts are, there the whole of him is.” – Baal Shem Tov

[Helen]

Hi Gianni

Rabash teaches us to work on loving the friends and seeing their greatness. I understand that through this work we eventually discover our inability to truly bestow, and that this lack becomes the vessel for the Creator’s help. Intellectually this makes sense to me. My question is about the ongoing fuel for the work: since my body only moves when it expects some benefit, and since I also understand that I must eventually discover failures, how does the method provide enough motivation(in addition to wanting to achieve the goal of  creation/correction) to work sincerely over time without collapsing into either despair or mechanical action?

thanks

Helen

[Gianni – KabU Instructor]

You sometimes collapse into despair or mechanical action. That is, giving up or treating Kabbalah like a religion, in the meantime. But if in both cases you stay inside our system, there are certainly enough forces to continue until the Light works on the person. You’re also in a system of Arvut with your friends, more or less consciously. But it works. But one has to get used to depending not on oneself but the forces in the system to which I belong. It’s a transition that needs to happen. I don’t like it because I had hoped to attain spirituality on my own forces, so it’s hard to accept.

[Ed]

In our Ten, we were discussing ascents and descents. Do we consider a descent something that is corporally happening to us, such as a tree fell on my car, my dog ran off with my neighbor’s cat, or Grandma got run over by a reindeer? Or is a descent a spiritual feeling, such as doubting the sages, lack of taste in the work, and frustration with our advancement? Or is it both?

[Gianni – KabU Instructor]

The Creator has the whole reality to talk to you with. Some can respond to more inner language. Some only respond to external language.

[Kima]

What should we do as a group of ten if a friend decides not to attend the meeting because he cannot understand what prayer truly means? But he says he is still with us on a spiritual level.

What should we do so that we don’t push him further away, but instead bring him closer? Should we simply acknowledge his position?

• This reply was modified 1 month, 2 weeks ago by Kima.

[Gianni – KabU Instructor]

No, this is just one of the myriad ways that the ego uses to distance a friend closer to the door, until he is all the way out the door. There’s no such thing that I’m with the ten on a spiritual level, but would not realize my chance to be with them on a corporeal level. If I’m in love, would I choose to only exchange letters, or think about her, when I could talk to her on the phone, or be only on the phone when I could be physically with her? No. Therefore, to love the friends is to be with them, supporting them in everything, as much as I can. Whatever I withhold, so from me, spirituality will be withheld.

But if the friend is stepping away, we should gently hold onto him as much as we can. But no, there’s no such thing as a slight distancing from the ten that is spiritually healthy.

[Kima]

What should we do to hold him as much as we can? Is there any writings of Baal HaSulam about what we can do precisely? If yes, Please, provide the link so that we can read it. Thank you.

[Gianni – KabU Instructor]

If you did what you could, that’s it. It’s like a drowning person. You swim to them and try to help them. If they don’t try to swim at all, you let them go. Otherwise, you’ll drown together.

We can only be a support system for the willing.

[Verena]

When digging a bit deeper into the options of working in this frame we are taught, it seems like a little bee hive… many options to choose from…many possible obligations to choose from…however, it’s impossible to turn towards everything simultanesusly. So, how do you know where to to turn to? How do you know what needs to be in the center of each effort?

[Gianni – KabU Instructor]

I always need to aim at the heartfelt connection in the ten that gives the Creator the opportunity to be revealed. It’s only different in each state, how I scrutinize that I have nothing else to look for, because in each state the Creator confuses me in novel ways, so that I think there’s something other than this to do.

[Verena]

Hi Gianni, what is the difference between  „ten“ and a group of people that study the sources together? In other words… what makes a ten a ten?

 

[Gianni – KabU Instructor]

Throughout the world you have people who study sources together. A ten knows they are a ten, agrees on what their gathering should yield (love of friends, revelation of the Creator in their connection, the goal of Creation), and asks for this goal from the Upper Light.

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