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So far, week 1 has been full of great experiences and often very emotional.
On the “Attaining the world beyond” page 12 paragraph 4 “… or recognize that our feelings are lacking regarding a particular issue. If the latter is the case, it is a crucial prerequisite for us to move forward spiritually.”
My interpretation is, if there is an issue in our life that we cannot describe how exactly we feel about it, the lack of feeling we have for that issue means we should move forward spiritually and understand those feelings.
Am I interpreting this sentence correctly?
Thank you
Hi Hooman, good question!
This section is speaking about the approach to the study. If there is something that we’re reading in the Kabbalistic books that we don’t yet feel or understand, it’s because we’re not yet spiritually developed enough to understand it. It’s like a 3 year old looking at a gynecology book. The 3 year old is incapable of understanding anything in the book. He first needs to develop further, to grow up a bit, and then he’ll be able to understand the book.
Same with us, if we don’t get something, it’s an indicator that we need to develop further spiritually. And this realization of not being able to grasp something is itself the trigger for our spiritual development. It builds in us a great yearning and desire to grasp these things, which ultimately is what develops us spiritually. In other words, we don’t advance spiritually by our intellectual study, but by the desire and yearning to feel what we’re learning about.
As for applying these things in your everyday life, I don’t recommend doing that just yet. Right now we’re still learning the fundamentals, we’ll learn how to apply these things in the more advanced semesters.
Albert @ KabU
I’m totally new to this so thoroughly enjoyed listening to Tony Kosinec.
What happened in 1995, when it became more accessible?
Does the number; 125, have any particular significance (the steps), that will be dealt with at a later time?
Hi Rebekah, great questions!
1) Although we point to 1995 as to when Kabbalah became revealed, technically the prohibition was lifted much earlier, from the time of the Ari. He was the one to make a very special correction within the entire spiritual system, after which its not only possible, but a must to openly disseminate the wisdom of Kabbalah in order to help the whole world reach its correction.
Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details on the Ari: https://laitman.com/2010/08/the-ari-rav-isaac-luria-the-godly-man/
So why do we say 1995? Let’s put a few things into perspective:
Kabbalah is the method of correction of our egoistic nature, thereby revealing the Creator, the general force of love and bestowal. Why was it necessary to conceal such a wisdom? Because egoism was still not yet fully developed. For example: if you compare Kabbalah to a medicine that can cure a rare disease, obviously you can’t take the medicine before you’re diagnosed with the disease, but once the disease actually manifests, you can take the medicine and be cured of it.
It’s just like the 5 stages development of a disease within a person. First a person is healthy. Then he is sick, but he does not feel it. Then the disease spreads to the point that he starts to feel pain and symptoms of the disease. This then pushes him to go to a doctor to get diagnosed and find the cure, and etc.
2000 years ago, egoism was still on a very low level, there was no need to correct it. Starting from the days of the Ari, egoism already grew to a certain extent (and technically the prohibition on Kabbalah ended there), but humanity still didn’t feel sick, on the contrary the ego was the main driving force of all of our development. Then from around 1995 egoism peaked and began to show itself as bad, like a cancer that begins to kill the host body. This is the peak at which there was a true need for the cure. Which in essence is what the Kabbalists have been waiting for all these years, for the desire, for egoism to fully ripen.
2) The number 125 comes from the structure of the upper worlds. This structure is just a division of the spiritual desire that we need to correct into sefirot, partzufim, and worlds.
The most basic division of the desire is 1 Sefira. 5 Sefirot compose 1 partzuf. 5 Partzufim compose 1 world. There are 5 worlds in total. So 5 worlds each with 5 partzufim each with 5 sefirot equals 125 (5x5x5) steps on the spiritual ladder, or in other words corrections that need to be performed on the desire.
In the book Kabbalah for the Student, there’s an article called Foreword to the Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah (http://www.kabbalah.info/eng/content/view/full/64187) which lists these 125 steps in the language of sefirot/partzufim/olamot(worlds). For now, these are just technical terms for us, but in the future lessons we’ll dive deeper into these things and learn how to feel and experience them.
In simpler words, the 125 steps represents the difference between us and the Creator. The Creator is a desire to bestow and we are the desire to receive. Adapting our desire to receive to work in order to bestow takes 125 steps. So to the extent that we correct our nature, make it similar to the Creator’s nature, to that extent we’re “climbing” this ladder.
In other words, ascending or descending this ladder is not a physical action, but rather depends on how much we’re similar to the Creator’s quality of bestowal (ascending) or less similar to it and more egoistic (descending).
All of this operates according to the law of equivalence of form. Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details:
https://laitman.com/2013/04/everything-is-attained-by-the-equivalence-of-form/
Albert @ KabU
If I understood it correctly, Kabbalah was comprehensible during the time of Abraham and it wasn’t hidden.
What REALLY happened 2,000 years ago that people failed to understand Kabbalah prompting it to be hidden?
Hi Ruth, great question!
Essentially a new level of egoism was revealed which led to the concealment of Kabbalah. But this concealment was not a bad thing, but a necessary step towards further advancement. Let’s put a few things into perspective to understand that:
Kabbalah is the method by which we correct our egoistic nature and as a result become similar to and reveal the Creator, the general force of love and bestowal.
The process of correction works according to the rule of “from light to heavy”. Meaning first the lighter, less egoistic souls reach their correction. They become as the pioneers that start this whole process. And only later on we focus on the heavier, coarser, more egoistic desires.
The people in the days of Abraham were less egoistic and therefore started this whole process. After they corrected the egoism on their level, it opened the door for the rest of the world, the carriers of the heavier, more egoistic desires, to reach their correction.
But the rest of the world was not yet ready for this correction. For this reason Kabbalah had to be temporarily concealed and the people who previously succeeded in this method needed to be scattered throughout the whole world. Then in the process of them integrating with the rest of the world, they sped up the development of the rest of the world to this final state of correction.
So we can see from this whole process that the concealment was not something bad, rather it was the necessary next step for the development of the world towards its correction.
Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2014/12/true-kabbalah-without-mysticism-or-myths-part-1/
Albert @ KabU
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