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I’m alone, my immediate family is not interested in spirituality. My friends are in other states or countries and not interested in Kabbalah. How can I choose my environment and friends if I feel in exile?
Hi Lily,
The chances of getting an active point in the heart are like the chances of getting struck by lightning, meaning that it’s very rare. Even more rare that there is someone in your immediate circle of friends and family that will also have an active point in the heart. In other words, your situation is not unique to you, we’re all in the same boat.
The solution is that our spiritual environment is not made up of our immediate circle of friends and family, but rather it’s made up of other points in the heart that are on the path with us in KabU. At times these people can be close to you physically, but these days it’s more common that we connect to a virtual environment.
In the advanced semesters of KabU, everyone will be grouped up into small virtual Kabbalistic groups with whom you can start connecting and building your spiritual environment.
Albert @ KabU
I didn’t really understand here, can you clarify please. Does this mean a human can only achieve free will that fosters spiritual growth? is free will only applicable in the spiritual area? what about in the physical area? for example someone select to live very far away from the environment where he grew up, pick a different career he never thought about before? or for example in the example of Elon Musk he grew up in South Africa, and he strive and work on achieving his goal in an environment which was different from where he grew up and different ambitions from his parents, wouldn’t we consider it as free will? can you clarify, I am a little lost here. Isn’t there free will in the physical realm?
Hi Jul,
No matter what choices we make in our corporeal lives, we will continue to remain within our egoistic nature. The only way of reaching freedom from our egoistic nature is by choosing to be influenced by the spiritual environment.
See my reply #423419 to Mitch below for more details.
Albert @ KabU
It seems to me in this world money is freedom, and total lack is akin to slavery, what does the kabbalistic definition of freedom teach in this regard?
Hi Anthony,
Regardless of how much money a person has, they are still enslaved to their egoistic nature. This is why Kabbalists equate freedom with coming out of our egoistic nature.
See my reply 423419 to Mitch below for more details.
Albert @ KabU
Are these four states explaining reincarnation in relation to the states of the soul? Can you please help check if my understanding comes close to the topic we are trying to understand:
1. first factor explains that the soul is unchanging no matter what garbs it takes on its outer form
2. second factor explains the ‘programs’ of that creates the desire to take garbs or outer forms for the sake of creation, but already has its own unique pattern
3. the third factor explains how the unique pattern of the soul responds to the outside factors (environment) that is still part of creation, touching the desires that make up the unique pattern
4. the fourth factor explains about the environment that keeps the soul in the cycle
I am probably coming at this from the point of view of karma (the law of cause and effect), and in my mind as I was listening to the video is that these are what keeps our desires entangled in the cycle, and that the environment is created specifically for the maturing of desires thus in the corporeal world there is really no free will because we (our desires) choose to be in the specific environment that bestows realization for the desires, which also means that the true free will is to switch to an alternate (albeit altruistic) desire that is to realize the unchanging soul (as in the first factor).
This is still too confusing for my mind. Please help enlighten my understanding. Thank you.
Hi Charles,
We can look at the four states from different points of view, including the development of the soul. But for now, we need to focus on the main takeaway, which is relative to reaching freedom. That if we want to reach freedom from our egoistic nature, we can do so through the influence of the spiritual environment.
See my reply 423419 to Mitch below for more details.
Albert @ KabU
If a person, say a high level Kabbalist who has attained bestowal, looks at the world, does he/she see only goodness? Or do they have to wait for the rest of humanity to attain bestowal before all the bad things we endure no longer exist? Or does the Kabbalist see the same things we see, violence, illness, suffering, but sees it all differently, sees that, although painful, it’s necessary for our growth.
Hi Chris,
I cannot give a blanket answer here, because as we change, our perception of the world changes as well. These changes can go from one extreme to another and can happen even from second to second. For example, people that appear to us as sickly and poor will appear to us as healthy and rich, or vice-versa (we’ll learn about this in depth in lesson 4 of this semester).
There are also different levels of correction, ranging from one’s one personal final correction up to the final correction of the whole world. Likewise our perception changes depending on where we are in the process.
Ultimately, the main takeaway from studying the perception of reality is that the whole world is found inside of us. As we grow and develop, our perception of the world will change as well. It’s like I have these dirty glasses through which I see a dirty world in front of me. But the world is not actually dirty, it’s simply a reflection of my own state. So when I clean my own glasses, I’ll look at the same world, but now it’s clean and perfect.
Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2014/04/in-neutral-gear/
Albert @ KabU
Hi Mitch,
In Kabbalah, we look at everything from the perspective of our desires. Freedom on the level of our desires means rising above our egoistic nature. As we learned in this week’s lesson, we do this by building for ourselves a strong spiritual environment.
Baal HaSulam talks about this in the article, the Freedom. He writes: “Harut (carved) on the tables”; do not pronounce it Harut (carved), but rather Herut (freedom), to show that they are liberated from the angel of death.
Throughout the article he explains how our current egoistic nature is that angel of death. Meaning although we are technically alive and surviving, relative to spirituality, our life is considered death. True life is within a completely different nature, that of bestowal. In order to reach freedom from our current nature, we need to choose and build a spiritual environment for ourselves which will influence us with the importance of acquiring the quality of bestowal.
For this reason, the Kabbalists equate our main freedom in life in choosing to be influenced by a spiritual environment. Not just any environment, but specifically a spiritual environment, since only through the spiritual environment can we get the importance of coming out of our egoistic nature and only through that environment can we draw the light that can help us to actualize this.
Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2012/10/bestowal-should-become-fashionable/
Albert @ KabU
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