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I have a few questions.
* How does authentic Kabbalah define mysticism?
* In your response to Henry’s question, you referenced a change in the heart. Are you speaking exclusively of the spiritual heart, or also of the physical and/or energetic heart. By energetic, I mean the non-physical heart that is part of the energy body of a person.
* I recall, I believe in a ‘5 Minutes of Light’, Rav Laitman distinguishing between two types of egoism (if I understood correctly). One, the will to receive for myself, and the other having to do with an intention to actually sabotage spiritual growth once the point in the heart has awakened. Is that Amalek? Am I correct in understanding that this is actually ‘sent’ by the Light, to keep one from not becoming complacent, but rather, to foster the growth of that point more and more intensely? Lastly, is it possible to send me a link to that ‘5 Minutes of Light’? I’d really appreciate being able to see it again now. With Gratitude.
Miryam,
We are dealing with a method.
We are a will to receive.
We want to receive pleasure, by design.
We suffer because we can’t receive pleasure endlessly, we are always empty again and the giving is much more than the receiving so we always want more.
So to stop the suffering and try to correct this, the creature stops receiving (called tzimtzum).
So now the creature is not receiving.
But the creature is not fulfilling the purpose of creation which is to create a created being and fill it with fulfillment.
So the creature decides to receive, but only with an intention to bestow.
Now the creature can endlessly receive since it has acquired vessels of bestowal opposite the vessels of reception.
We will study all of this later in the The Study of the Ten Sefirot by Baal HaSulam.
There is nothing “mystical”. What seems like a miracle is only something that we did not yet perceive that level of the laws of nature.Please send the request for the video to Ruth and the team at [email protected] and they will be able to send to you!
Great work,
Seth@KabU
In the Tip and Quote of the week it says ‘try and ascribe everything that happens to you to the “giver of the pleasure,” the Creator.’
I am trying to do this. I can manage for very short instances but then get distracted. I seem to also get confused by the concept of ‘everything’, as what I’m aware of as everything changes in each moment, so as my mind tries to ascribe the ‘everything’ the everything is changing.
Does this get easier with practice? Will there be more specific directions in later lessons?
Thank you.
Marion,
You are correct. If the method was to sit and inhale for 10 seconds and then exhale for 10 seconds or if the method was to repeat a mantra or if the method was to say some lines from a prayer book, we could say that we did it at such and such a time each day, we did what we were supposed to do and we can then measure our results.
But for us, we have a moving target, the world around us is always changing. Sometimes we wake up and feel great, inspired, full of hope and other days, everything feels wrong, nothing goes right and we feel terrible.
And what is everything? If you’ve ever been really hurt by someone, maybe someone close to you, there is this feeling that there was life until that moment and then after that moment, you just can’t believe that such a thing could happen, you couldn’t imagine this person could do that, in short your definition of “everything” has to increase to include even this terrible thing. And like that, “everything” keeps changing.
Actually nothing is changing with respect to the upper light only our vessels are changing as each new record (reshimot) reveal, each new step.
As much as you can invest in the study when you have a good mood, keep a journal of your inspiration and new insights. When you feel down, go back to that.
Hold on. We are all here and each one will help the other.
We are spiritual pioneers and we will succeed together,
SethHi Seth,
Thank you for your answer.
Would you be able to give a short description of what the word ‘ascribe’ means in the sentence ‘try and ascribe everything that happens to you to the “giver of the pleasure,” the Creator.’
Just a little bit more about what inner intention this word should evoke.
Marion
Marion,
If you are writing the script, attribute it to Him, ascribe it to Him.
There is a hero in the story.
The police chase the hero.
The tax man comes after the hero.
The girlfriend breaks up with the hero.
And then through all of this, the hero discovers some power he didn’t know he had. He would have never looked for it if it weren’t for these problems, so then he discovers his power and makes it to the castle in the sky and he sees that the Creator prepared it all for him so that he would be able to find Him up there.
That is to ascribe it all to Him.
You will have 1000 of thoughts and clarifications and emotions as you go through “the police chase” and “the tax man”, and of course “the breakup”, but through all of this and by really dealing with them, it gives the hero many emotional clarifications about who is he, what he is really aiming for in his life, etc.
Seth@KabU
If the reshimot lead you back to the ascent of the ladder , starting , i guess, with the point in the heart, how do we expand the need to find the next step (degree). Are there signposts on the way? Is it about the thickness of the screen?
Are the 125 degrees contained of the 613 mitzvot? Is it clear at each stage what is expected to bestow?
I hope these questions are clear for you. Thanks in advance for the reply.
Paul,
Very good question, nice discernments. Actually very similar to Michael and Henry’s questions below.
If you have kids, you can understand this concept very well. Tell a teenager to put on a jacket, they say, I’m not cold. You however know that in 30 minutes the teenager will be cold, because you in your wisdom were also once a teenager and also a 20 year old and 30 year old, so you’ve seen this rodeo a few times and you know in 30 minutes he will be cold.
Or tell them to eat dinner because they will be hungry later. And they say no, and then you get in the car and …”Dad, I’m hungry”.It’s not that you can tell the future, it’s just that at our current degree, we can’t see the next degree, so if we are wise, we will seek out those that have reached what we want to reach and we will see what they did and what they recommend.
Of course, we don’t know where these spiritual degrees are, we are the teenager who doesn’t feel cold. It is cold and he will feel cold, but in his current perception, he doesn’t feel it.
The mitzvot are corrections that we make upon spiritual desires, that happens after we are on the ladder of degrees. The numbers are not so important now as we the numbers speak mostly of qualities and it’s not worthwhile to spend time sorting out all kinds of numbers, because, once you feel the cold yourself, for example, you will know what cold feels like and understand to put the jacket on. So our main think is to approach the method and organize ourselves in simple ways, do leave behind all kinds of confusions that we brought here with us about what is spiritual and what is not spiritual and all kinds of imaginations that cause us to waste a lot of time until we clean ourselves of them.All in all, we are talking about natural laws. A baby does not sit in a classroom memorizing words, but she learns to speak. It’s a wonder. And that is like us. Mostly our work now is to be absorbed in the influence of the upper one, the light, the sources, the spiritual environment that I am making around me so that I can live my normal life and also in my internalilty, I’m starting to build a place where in addition to paying taxes and buying groceries and dealing with difficult people at work, I’m also building a new perception. At once, I am the teenager and the parent. I don’t feel cold, but I already start to understand that what I feel and what is the truth are different things.
I feel according only to my will to receive pleasure, that determines my perception of reality. And I want to acquire a new perception that includes the endless reality, the endless fulfillment.
When we have the opportunity to invest in raising the importance of our spiritual goal, then we do it as much as we can. Then the Creator adds thickness to us and then we raise the good connection again and like this we approach the ladder, left, right, left, right.
Seth@KabU
How can I tune in to receive from the root when in this reality (in my false reality) everything is a polarity of it ? Just imagine telling a mango seed that it’s going to become a tree when in reality it has no idea that it must die before it becomes a tree.
How can that seed conceive and believe the thought that it is going to become a tree when there are no traces or proofs to show that it actually came out of a mango tree.
I hope my question was amply asked I’m really having a hard time conceiving this reality.
Michael,
On the one hand, you continue to live your life in this world, with work and family and health and on the other hand you continue to read and study what the kabbalists write to us. We are like that mango seed but, we have the plan of creation in our hands. To the extent that we can appreciate and make this treasure great in our eyes, to that extent we will get the strength to listen deeper and deeper. And time after time you will feel how you are advancing and then you invest more and make the treasure great again in your eyes, and again you will get powers to rise.
Seth@KabU
Dear Tony, thank you for the very interesting lesson about the screen. How do we actually do it in real life? For example, let’s say I trade & invest in the share market. Earning a profit make me happy. So how can I apply the Screen here? What should be my thought/intention so that my receive (profit for myself) becomes giving? Thank you!
Hi Henry,
Actually the Upper Light performs these actions.
Our work is always on the side of the vessel.
We arrange our lives, we invest in the spiritual society so that these new discernments, new reshimot all awaken and again we get up again and again and build this connection and this structure inside of us and then when we do this, the light fills this kli.Unlike a yoga pose or a meditation technique that you can do something with your hands and feet, we are learning about something that has to do with the heart. How can we change the heart from wanting to receive for itself?
There is no problem to earn a living or even to be successful. On the other hand a person can be simple worker in the street and spiritually they can come to similar degrees.
Regardless of what we do in our animal life, that is what it is called, the level of “animate”, so above that is where we can enter a spiritual perception.
In real life, you will learn the fundamentals of the wisdom of kabbalah and after that be organized in a small group with other students and then you will begin the inner work in two lines and then three lines and then you will be on your way.
Seth@KabU
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