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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
Queli I am so grateful for your post as it described exactly what I have been feeling, After reading and listening to it all I just felt as though I truly don’t see the point of any of it and felt confused and demoralised. I have been sitting with the feeling and Seth s answer did a lot to shift things for me . (Thank you Seth). I just kept sitting in it and after Tony s two videos something shifted again. I realised that I want it enough to keep pushing through, It feels as though I am climbing a very steep mountain, I can’t even see the top. I want to cry about it but I am going to continue. I see my emotions are both ego based and a result of my desire for a ‘quick fix’ and I have to just be through it.
Charlene,
I was writing you a response but I see that the response to Qeli, is very similar to what I would write to you. So read it again.
There is none else besides Him is what the kabbalists attained and wrote to us about. It was first written by Moses in the Torah.
However we don’t feel that everything in our life comes from Him, every breath, every thought, every email, every glance by the driver in the passing car on the highway.
So use your emotions to turn to Him and ask Him for your heart’s desire.And simultaneously live in this world.
A true Kabbalist lives in both worlds and does not neglect this world, otherwise why did the Creator give us this whole world, take the “time” to develop it over 14 billion years and make a place in all the universe where some matter can develop to come to turn to Him.
We are lucky, we are at the center of the whole movie. Let’s feel where we are and the dramatic opportunity we’ve been given.
Good luck to us,
Seth@KabU
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