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Hello! Take my greetings. Is spirituality higher science? What does Kabbalah say? What are the opinions of Rav Baal Ha-Sulam and Rav Laitman on this issue? Could you please clarify me?
I have no questions. i just have an understanding now i think. like when a puzzle is falling into place.
shalom
Hi Seth. I don’t have any questions at the moment. Probably because they just haven’t formed yet. 😉 I don’t understand the complexity of the course material but I am feeling very comfortable with it. I’m not getting too involved with questioning but rather I’m letting the knowledge wash over me. I have to come back to the videos and readings several times and each time more is revealed. I’m just really content with learning Kabbalah. I feel like I’ve finally found my thing. The knowledge of Kabbalah unfolds as I progress, us both hand in hand and I have faith in that. Also, I totally understand the ‘constriction’ that happens before a new level of spirituality is achieved, how the grief of not understanding and feeling that I don’t belong, produces a longing so palpable. When I truly surrender to this longing, this not knowing, not understanding, then the painful space within me that wants filling is then filled. I have to die to self and then desire with every fibre of my being for union. It happens like this all the time, so much so, that I no longer fret when I know a big lesson is coming up because I know I’m held and that this is a process. Hope my experience helps my fellow travellers.
It’s funny, I’m not Christian but what this makes me think of (this ultimate objective for us to learn to be more like the Creator), is that this could be why, historically, there was a movement where “the Word” (eg., written in Torah) became flesh (eg., in the narrative of Jesus). In the book of Matthew, Jesus said he was not there to remove or add any words from the Law, but simply to uphold it. And this “evolution in teaching methods” fits also with modern scientific understandings of learning theory (eg., Albert Bandura) that humans learn more easily how to behave a certain way by seeing behavioural role models that they can visualize and emulate, than they do via verbal persuasion alone.
So maybe his appearance in history was to enable the broader world (who might have had difficulty learning from words alone), to visualize better what altruism/compassion looks like? And to accelerate humanity’s learning in that regard?
But then what bubbles up is my feeling that it’s such a tragedy that, even if this were so, that it had to be simultaneously accompanied by so much harsh negation of those who were still content on learning via the Word approach (eg., pogroms, inquisitions, expulsions, restrictions on land ownership, etc etc., culminating not only in the Holocaust but in all the current political troubles & grief to others associated with the return to the homeland). So I guess my other question is: Will Kabbalah ever bring me to a point of appreciating why THAT degree of evil was necessary ?
Part of me wants the answer to be yes, to be given a sort of soothing pablum that positions it all as part of a larger Divine intention & just makes me feel better. Another part of me is very wary of any such pablum because of the concern it will promote a kind of “codependent tolerance of evil”. Like, the way that a battered spouse concludes “Oh God didn’t really mean it to be nasty like that, He really meant well in the end.”. Am I to be led down a path where I look at the suffering in the world around me as “just an illusion” caused by God’s higher purpose to get everyone pursuing their own selfish desires until they realize a better way? Like, putting two fighting creatures into an arena actually serves some sort of Divine higher purpose? Is this really necessary before humanity can just attain the higher wisdom ?
In short, my desire to learn more is currently struggling with a rageful judgement about the viciousness of God’s Teaching methods (and this is not directed to Kabbalah in particular, but the latest Kabbalah lesson is just stirring this up more.)
Sharon,
So happy to receive your question.
We don’t have anything like you mentioned where we will have to believe something.All of these horrors, its all what happened to us in the system of klipot.
We are seeing inside of our ego, we are seeing ourselves.
How can we see the Creator?
Change our will to receive to a will to bestow which is what He is, and we will see the Creator.
He is constantly talking to us and in the meantime, we only see ourselves.
Seth@KabU
Can you give me a simple example of a desire in its corrupted form, and then what that desire would look like once corrected? Thank you!
Douglas,
If a desire arises in me to watch a football game, there is nothing good or bad in that, it is a desire that arises in me. But if I am aiming for the goal of reaching the Creator and this game hinders me somehow, then the raw desire becomes corrupted in me.
However, if I had already planted myself in a spiritual environment that advertises to me the greatness of the Creator, His abundance and bestowing His love upon creation, then that influences me stronger than the football game. If I don’t have this importance, then I don’t have free choice, but if I have this importance then I can make a choice and if the power of the environment is strong enough on me, then I can desire adhesion with the Creator and then the light fills that deficiency as there is no light without a vessel.
Seth@KabU
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