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hi sir may i ask too – what is in the screen that it is only through it that the creature can experience true delight? in our corporeal life, so it means that when someone wants to bestow to us, we have to receive it not because we totally want it, but because part of us wants to delight the giver too? is pacman a good analogy? like if one just takes everything out of greediness. there really is no lasting fulfillment versus when what i receive is really given with love from somebody else? thank you
Elizabeth,
Take any of our corporeal senses, our physical senses, such as the eyes. We do not receive all of the light coming from the sun. There is a screen (a masach) that reflects back most of the light and a small amount enters inside and from that we project in our brain a depiction of the outside world.
Also our ears. There are sounds 1000 kilometers away, if we had different ears, we would hear them. There are sounds in this room now that if our ears were stronger, we would hear them. So there are many waves and some of them, depending on the nature of the screen, those vibrations hit the screen and from that we perceive sound.
From these examples you can imagine a spiritual screen that works with spiritual light.
Seth@KabU
if the vessel is meant to receive in order to bestow tothe creator, why did the phases not end in bechina gimel? and does this mean that our next level in returning should be bechina gimel?
for example, a married couple. the husband receives fr the creator and bestows to the wife because this is what the creator is and wants? what if the wife receives but does not bestow back to the husband or maybe does not even receive what the husband wants to bestow. what should the husband do?
on a different angle, if i receive an idea for a project, how can the 4 phases work on this?
thanks
Elizabeth,
It’s very good to see how you are thinking of this.
We are learning about the system, we are visiting a factory where they for example process wheat.
So the wheat is harvested (of course before that it is planted and there are many steps there), and then gathered and brought to the factory where it is sorted, cleaned and processed to make flour and later it will become bread and cakes and many things.
So we are looking in the window and we are seeing one part of the process.
Let’s imagine for now that we are not applying this all to our lives. It is good to think about how it all fits, but in truth we can’t solve all of this yet because we are just looking at one part of the process we didn’t get to the part where our world is created and then our soul is created and shattered and then finally we come into the picture.
So far, in these four phases, there is no created being yet.
We are observing, studying the process.
The purpose of creation is to create a creature and fill it with fulfillment.
In order to do that we need a vessel that can hold all of the abundance, that is called malchut, the fourth phase.
Until then the vessel does not reach it’s completeness.
Let’s leave the husband and wife example aside for a minute since there are many many discernments in your example.
But simply if you have an idea, first the idea appears from the air, then you draw it, make some plans, then you collect materials and then you build. The final material goal is contained in that initial thought.
Seth@KabU
Is this right or am I way off?
So, in turn every action we do, as far as giving goes, is for the benefit of the way it will make us feel when you do it. It may make us feel good that we gave to charity or it may make us feel good that we bought a person a meal. So by us giving we are receiving a fulfillment. We are still receiving, which still inturn makes it a selfish act.
The intention is where are thoughts need to be. The intention needs to be, not to receive pleasure but to progress someone else in spiritual growth. To give in order to spread spiritual growth.
Mark,
In theory you are right. In practice, not yet.
Everything you said we can agree to, however, there is no such thing as good or bad about it.
Q: What did the Creator make? What is the only creation in all of reality?
A: The will to receive, which develops according to 4 phases, inanimate, vegetative, animate and speaking.So that there is a calculation running in me that I don’t do anything unless there is some benefit for me, in that I am no different than a molecule of water or a banana or an orangutan. We all are running the same software, just at differing degrees of complexity.
So if I give food to a starving person, and you tell me I did it just to make myself feel better, well it’s true, but someone else was concerned with getting home to feed her child didn’t notice the starving person and the soccer player who was playing soccer all day didn’t see the starving person, so we are in a very large and intricate web of forces. It is good to think about it, but we have no use to waste time calling this or that selfish, it is a law of nature, just like rain and sunshine.
All of the inanimate, vegetative and animate desires in us are running this software without our permission, they just do.
According to our society we decide what is called “good” or “bad” and that can change from society to society and from generation to generation.Now, here, we are discovering where is the human part, the spiritual part, the part where we can be free and fulfilled. In spirituality, “good” is called that I have an intention to bestow and “bad” is called that I have an intention to receive for myself. However we already said that in the previous 3 degrees that is my natural software running, so it’s not considered bad spiritually, that is how nature, the Creator made me. So now I need to find where is the spiritual action?
This takes time, that is what we will be working on as we progress together, where is that place where I can have the intention, what is that intention, how to I build it, upon what do I build it?
Seth@KabU
I’m very confused about Phase 4. Here it says the creature decides to receive all the pleasure from the Creator and realizes this is what was intended from the beginning. But then on the next page it says this realization in Phase 4 leads to an unfathomably unpleasant, all-pleasure-cancelling kill-switch called “spiritual shame”. How does the realization of the nature of one’s true nature to receive lead to such shame? I thought this is what the final goal, is it not?
And why is the restriction created? Does this mean the creature literally rejects the light of the creator, or what exactly does it mean to have this restriction in place? Why would the creature create this restriction after realizing the true intention of bestowal?Laila,
There are a few things here.
If the end of the story was where you say, then you are right, the vessel is filled with light, everyone is happy, let’s go home.
But we are not there yet.
The vessel is full of light. That is something. But what do we have now.
We have 100% minus (vessel) and 100% plus (filling/light).
In the material world if you are there and I am here, then we are far. If we are next to each other then we are close.
In spirituality, if things are opposite they are far and as much as they are similar, they are close.
So, the vessel and the light are as far apart as possible. They are the most opposite.
So now we have a problem.
I’m going to use examples from this world, only to point to specific qualities and attitudes, this is not a representation of spirituality: a baby is a perfect baby, she eats and plays and receives everything from her mommy. As a baby she is perfect and if that was the end of the story, we’d be good. But if the baby is 40 years old with the same qualities of just receiving mindlessly from the upper ones, we’d say that there is a problem. We want the baby to grow up and become an independant creature.
Back to the vessel…the vessel is full and 100% opposite. She has nothing to bestow to the Creator, she has nothing of her own, so all she can do and it’s in her attitude is to stop receiving, to at least not be 100% opposite from the light.
This sets into motion a whole next set of events.
From here as the vessel starts to calculate how much it can receive but only as much as it can receive in order to bestow. And by this we set in to motion the creation of all of the partzufim, sefirot and worlds and by this there is the ability to “purify” the vessel until 100% of the vessel can receive in order to bestow.
We will learn about all of this, including where the vessel receives more than it can bestow and the vessel shatters, known in the books as the “sin” of Adam, etc. etc. There are many many details here.
Your question is accurate, the answer comes from broadening your understanding and perception of the bigger picture.
Seth@KabU
hi seth.
what is tzimtzum aleph and how does it referee to the path set in front of me?
what is ein sof
Ben,
We are learning about the structure of the upper worlds and the cascading of the endless upper light, also called the light of ein sof,
ein = without
sof = end
down through many concealments, the word “world” in Hebrew is related to the word “concealment”, each world conceals the upper light.
When the light passes through these 4 phases, there is a vessel who contains all of that endless light!
However she has a problem, she is 100% a receiver of the light while the Creator is 100% a bestower of the light. And the vessel (kli) is now as far from the Creator as possible, endlessly far. It is intolerable but the vessel cannot give anything of its own, so it stops receiving…many operations happen after that, but for the time being we are learning that malchut of ein sof stops receiving. This is called that she made a tzimtzum, this is tzimtzum aleph, the first tzimtzum.
Seth@KabUBen,
We are not yet talking about the created being, we are still talking about the blueprint of creation, prior to the material world. Learn this process well as the structure, later you will feel how all of the other processes extend from here.
A discernment is some clarification that one makes, a simple example is that you have a pile of rice and you sort the good grains from the bad ones, you clarify what you are doing, what you have in front of you. From a distance it looks like a pile of white rice, then as you get close you realize, oh, there is some sorting to do here, then you start the process and the more you get closer and get your hands in the work, you start to see what you need to do.
Seth@KabU
Why does the light give different amounts of pleasure to its creatures? Is this because of karma and past lives?
Why doesn’t the creature bestow total bliss to every creature regardless of what the creature has or hasn’t done during its lifetime (sinned / not sinned).
I am not clear as to why Creature A, for example has a happy family life, has a great education, lives if a rich country and has an amazing happy privileged and contented life. Creature B however is equally a good person and creature B but was born in a poor country by the creatures will which has lots of murders and rapes etc poor health because of poverty and famine and because of what the creator has chosen bestowed on creature B the creature hates its life? I can understand why creature A enjoys receiving all the bounty that it gets
Philip,
You need to learn a bit about the structure of reality, perception of reality, and then you will understand these things. In the wisdom of kabbalah, the answers do not go in the ears.We perceive the world through our egoistic senses, these senses depict the world in front of us. A dog has different senses and therefore a dog perceives a totally different life, he doesn’t think about COVID or about the grocery store and bills. Also a baby, also each and every one us experiences a unique reality, all of them are depicted through our senses.
When we study, lights illuminate the darkness a little bit at a time and we feel a new darkness and opposite from that we build together a connection that restores the vessel there and then again a new reshimot reveals and we feel the new darkness and then we make another correction and like this we advance left and right, left and right.
So you revealed something that you don’t agree with. The Creator made a perfect reality and you revealed in your perception cruelty and suffering.
I recommend going over this weeks lesson again without the intellect of the day to day world.
Try to enter into the feeling of the spiritual world, you will see where we are, besides what we are imaging in our 5 corporeal senses with the animal senses we have. We want to be Adam and also perceive in 5 spiritual senses.
It is something very special.
We will see and then we will understand the same reality, but with a different perception.
As we learn in the books, that all the worlds exist inside of a person.
Seth@KabUPhilip,
He is the source:Take our sense of sight, for example: we see a wide world before us, wondrously filled. But in fact, we see all that only in our own interior. In other words, there is a sort of a photographic machine in our hindbrain, which portrays everything that appears to us and nothing outside of us.
Baal HaSulam, “Preface to the Book of Zohar,” Item 34
Now go learn 🙂
Seth@KabU
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