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If it was easy to change one self, one would initiate the corrective actions. Is Kabbalah alluding to the fact that all I have to do to change is to have the true intention to change and therefore the Creator would assist in that change?
‘after reading the summary for week 3 and watching this video, my spiritual journey cannot be more clear then it is right now. This summary helped make it to be very clear for me. Thank you 🙏🏾Brenda,
You’re on the right track.Now the next inner examination is if I’m created as a will to receive, then how can I find a true intention to do something that is not for myself, if all I feel is myself?
Think about it, let’s go through this exercise together, write here your response and I’ll work on it with you.
Seth@KabUBrenda,
You’re on the right track.Now the next inner examination is if I’m created as a will to receive, then how can I find a true intention to do something that is not for myself, if all I feel is myself?
Think about it, let’s go through this exercise together, write here your response and I’ll work on it with you.
Seth@KabUThank you Seth (love you name by the way).
I can not think of ANYTHING that I can do that is not for my self. I am a mother of two and even what I do for them, it’s actually kind of selfish, because making them happy and protecting them, makes me happy and makes ME feel some kind of peace, so in the end it’s really a self serving act.
The only thing I can think of that is really not just for me is learning Kabbalah, because I believe that if I learn this teaching and change my self, I am actually doing something to help the collective soul.
I also think that I need to understand what pure intention is.
I hope I am on the right track.Brenda,
You’re on the right track.
On the one hand, if we were in adhesion with the Creator, we would disappear in Him. I mean, let’s think of a simple, simple example, someone comes to your door and says, you inherited 500 million dollars, its all yours, but you need to do a few things today. You’d drop everything immediately, there would be no control, the “greatness” is too big (of course you’d find good care for your kids first). So imagine that the pleasure of the Creator is a few million times more than that…if we felt it, we wouldn’t have any control, we’d follow Him completely and our sense of self would be erased.And on the other hand … that’s where we are. We are completely controlled by our will to receive.
So now that that is clear, with what can we perceive the infinite Creator, beyond time and space? With what tongue can we taste, with what hand can we touch, with what ear can we hear that which is beyond all time and space? Of course, its impossible, there is no ear to hear or hand to touch something without form, not bound by time and space.
But the tool that we do have is our will to receive. If you remember the old scales, you put the flour or the herbs or whatever on one side of the scale and that side goes down and the other side goes up. To find the weight of what you added, you start adding weights to the opposite side until they balance.
So precisely by getting to know the extent of our will to receive. At first a little and then more and more and more, to that extent we can measure what the Creator – who is opposite the will to receive – what He might be, what love, bestowal might be.
Think about it.
I look forward to hearing good things from you,
Seth@KabU
I just watched “Defining The Goal” that rounded out my perspective on bestowal and reception. The idea that to achieve Lishma one has to be all in, means that one has to enter and remain in a state of bestowal to the exclusion of reception.
Of course, that goes contrary to our nature which is to get what we want (…or need). Sometimes we don’t even get what we need and that becomes a big challenge to Lishma. Just ask Job.
But it reforming our very material nature to a spiritual nature implies becoming like the Creator and that requires developing the intention of giving at all times. Reception comes at a time and in a form we won’t perceive until it arrives.
This summary of the video is actually a question…
Eugenio,
If only there was a button to push or a lever to pull and then we could bestow. Just show me which button to push and I’ll do it, right! The Creator just needs to convince us to push the bestowal button and we’ll do it.
But it’s not like that. There is no button, we cannot squint our eyes real tight and hope real hard and then we’ll be able to bestow/reach lishma.
Our success depends on two things. As it says from lo lishma we come to lishma. So we need to plant ourselves in a spiritual environment that constantly advertises to me the importance of spirituality, so that envy, lust and honor work on me correctly. Instead of lusting after corporeal things, and honoring wealth and other things, I start to be envious in a good way of those who are attaining around me, I want that too and that gives me fuel. And also we connect to the sources, the books of Baal HaSulam, Rabash, the Zohar, etc and we draw the light more and more that brings us drop by drop a new nature.
Keep the passion and be patient,
Seth@KabU
Exactly how does one focus intention to perceive the Creator at all times, in spite destabilizing bad conditions that arise– and they sure do arise?
As I absorbed the lessons in this course, I deliberately began perceiving and accepting every adversity as coming from the Creator as nothing but just more bestowal coming from the Creator. I just paid my tax bill the other day (it was a bummer, but now way around it), I stare down my expiring client engagements wondering when the next contract is coming (while the clock is ticking in the background), I’m navigating thorny family issues that arose out of nowhere (I do my part but it’s not entirely in my hands), I hold my breath waiting for an important asset transaction to materialize (stressful on several fronts) and that’s not all. I’m sure everyone can relate.
Through all these, now I just smile and thank the Creator for giving me everything and set my intention for everything to resolve for his sake (“serve it up, I’ll eat since it clearly makes You happy, otherwise you wouldn’t have sent it to me). I refuse to allow myself to think I don’t deserve any of this or that I even like adversity (any more than I like my wife’s lasagna). I just have to keep the right intention and eat what I have to eat. That’s it. Come what may– lasagna and all. That New York strip may come or maybe something better. Either way, I’m eating.
Is that it? Man, I hope I’m doing this right. 😄
I used to call this “maintaining equanimity” and it is, but now with a much stronger focus on the knowledge the 1) Creator is all there is, 2) that I am one soul with the collective and 3) the collective unites with the Creator. So, that means the “I” that needs all these great things to happen, doesn’t actually exist anywhere but between 6-inches from ear-to-ear.
Kabbalah teaches that the Creator’s very nature, defined as total bestowal (to the Creature) is constant and unchanging. Religions, on the other hand, operate under the idea the Creator can stop bestowing for many and unknown reasons (e.g., punishment, for more offerings, etc.). The latter feels illogical. A Creator with mood swings.
If the Creature perceives a negative event, the implication, for those with a religious practice is that the Creator is withholding bestow, which can mean the Creature did or failed to do something. Religion offers special prayers, pleas, sacrifices, rituals and amends to persuade the Creator to bestow again.
However, Kabbalah teaches that if the Creator is total bestowal at all times, and one’s focus should be being open to interpreting positive and negative conditions as coming from the Creator, as both only benefit the Creature. The idea is to change one’s perception of negative events so that they are instead perceived as bestowal in another form. That way, adversity is carried with certainty that everything (adversity too) comes from bestowal, while keeping one’s intention focused on Devekut.
Eugenio,
First of all the wisdom of kabbalah is a science and to be a kabbalist one needs to be a craftsman, an artist.
There is no psychological trick one can perform, that I’m losing money and I have a lot of bills but I remember that all of this is good.
We can’t say it’s good. It feels bad, that is true.
Of course, from the side of the Creator, its all good and only good comes from Him. He is also beyond time, space and motion, so what, you are now eternal, floating in space? Your soul is, but your body is not. and in the meantime we are barely in touch with our soul.
So let’s get this straight, a kabbalist lives in two worlds. That’s how it is. Even a kabbalist who reaches the highest degrees, if there is still a person who is in this world, then the kabbalist still feels this dimension to through his incorporation with all of reality.It goes like this, at the beginning of the day you need to go out and face the day is if you don’t do it, then nothing will happen, that everything is in your hand to do, as it says, everything that is in your hands to do, do.
And then when you return home at the end of the day, you can say, there is none else besides Him and even if I sat all day on the couch, I would have exactly same result.Later all of this will come into focus as one picture, but that is not now and not later, it is much later.
Seth@KabU
It is lonely. In some ways I feel that I stepped back in terms of my connection with Creator. It is quite painful.
Yelena,
You may be an expert in other spiritual methods or may have a lot of experience in life in many things.
Here, let’s act simple. Let’s keep the yearning that you have, that is the fuel, let’s try to act like we are born new to this wisdom, let’s try to hear what it says without covering it with a lot of old stories. What you feel is what you feel. Sometimes open, sometimes closed. You can write this down in a notebook, but these feelings will keep changing, just like the weather changes. In fact if you write these things down for enough days, you will see patterns and you don’t need to identify so much with the ups and down, you feel them, and they move you, but you understand what is happening, a mountain climber is not in anxiety over the steep climb, she prepared for it, she is invigorated by it. Someone who is dropped down on the mountain and isn’t oriented to where she is and what is happening could be scared or overwhelmed by the steep incline and the rocky path.
Everything is OK, the is a long and well worn path to reach a sublime spiritual goal. Everything happens slowly and practically.
Go step by step and stabilize yourself in this world so that you are not knocked over all the time and everything is going to work out.
Good luck with everything and hope to hear about your progress,Seth@KabU
How exactly do we bestow on the Creator? If He created us to receive joy, pleasure, and abundance, would it be pleasing to Him to know that we appreciate even the so-called hardships, knowing that there is always the Upper Light that is given to us? Bestowing on others does not mean we deny ourselves. Once I always keep in mind the intention of my thoughts and actions, I can see whether I act from pure ego and receive only for myself, or whether it is also good for others. Am I understanding it right? As I read the texts and listen to the lessons, my heart and soul feel the light, but my head wants to understand.
And it is said that our environment is what we can choose; everything else is predestined by the Creator. So, what can we do if we are in an environment that is not at all interested in spiritual advancement? For example, my family. I cannot just abandon them because it’s not the right environment. And at the same time, I know that even my family is exactly what I need to have the desire for spirituality.
Tiiu,
Your spiritual environment that will grow your point in the heart is right here, you are part of a huge international group of people who found this wisdom and are on the path to attainment.
Of course you are a mom and a wife and daughter, maybe a sister, etc. So be the best you can be. One thing does not erase the other at all, to the opposite, each thing should make the other better.
If you are a mom, can’t you also leave the house and do something meaningful in the world, or even take care of a mundane thing in the world like putting gas in the car or buying some fruits. Those things do not separate you from your children. To the contrary, your children always live in your heart.
Similarly you live in this world with your family, with your work, and you keep a connection to the Creator in your heart and slowly between these two seemingly opposite worlds, a new perception of reality will reveal for you.
This is how all of our senses operate by measuring between sensations, hot and cold, up and down, in and out, before and after.
From these two, we will reveal the Creator.
Seth@KabU
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