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A quick update and a question: I am still in the same catch-22. I’m still studying, but not as vigorously as I used to. I am almost depressed, and almost nothing makes me deeply happy anymore. I feel numb and heavy both in body and mind. I am not satisfied with my achievements anymore. I have all I need, and nothing makes me happy. Not my house that everyone says is beautiful, nor my income, my corporeal achievements, my health and fitness, nor even my job as a doctor. I drag myself to work. I know I am not clinically depressed whatsoever.
You last said working with the group is when things start to shift, and there have been no words on new young groups. I still feel stuck in the same loop with depression and heaviness as the only tangible progress. Do you have any idea when a young group is expected to be formed and when I might realistically be able to join? In the meantime, what should I do to prepare and make genuine spiritual progress instead of going in circles?Hi
I have a question. I am currently reading the book “Attaining the Worlds Beyond”. I reached a section, and again, the same catch-22 concept was brought up:
P 39 reads:
“Therefore, by striving to emulate the Creator in our thoughts, desires, and efforts, we are, in fact, building the structure of our own eternity. However, dedicating yourself to the Creator is only possible when we realise the Creator’s greatness.”
I have had no first-hand experience (attainment) of the Creator’s greatness up to this point. I can attribute all the greatness to him subjectively because I choose to, but there is no objectivity in the process. All I have are the things said here and there, most of which do not pass the critical faculty check. So, I have to think of or believe in a Creator who is said to be great, and closeness to it is the path to spirituality and salvation. I have realisations, or, better said, “justifications in the Creator’s favour” for what are often called unfortunate life events, and that those led me here, where I convince myself is the best to be because I have no idea of other places I could have ended up in.
My question is, while I don’t have a strong grasp of the Creator just yet, how am I supposed to direct every action towards him, want to be close to him or emulate him? If the Creator is nature, my experience with nature is a brutal dog-eat-dog cycle of birth and death.
How does this confusing catch-22 situation break? I keep studying every day and watch the recorded graduate videos, but there is always some sort of brutal uncertainty and doubt. Could you please shed light on the matter?
The Creator arranged this to be a catch-22. I’m given dissatisfaction with this world, drawn to the wisdom of Kabbalah, and told that my dissatisfaction is because I was never meant to simply live and enjoy my life here like the animals, but to become like the Creator. I’m then told “…but the Creator is completely concealed and cannot be imagined…and by the way, you need to become like the Creator…then you will enjoy the sublime good that He planned for you in the Thought of Creation.”
It has to be this way, that on the one hand, we know what the goal is – become like the Creator – and on the other, the Creator is concealed. Were He revealed, and not even revealed but only revealed as if “from behind”, as something that was possible “around the corner” no one on Earth would think about anything else – not capturing land, making a trillion dollars, winning an election or a World Cup – only reaching the Creator. Because that swallows every other pleasure – because He is the essence behind the clothings over all the other pleasures, that one is unknowingly seeking. So, you understand that running after Him this way does not lead to bestowal but to hypertrophic receiving in order to receive, which is the opposite of the goal of becoming like the Creator, and we’d never ever reach it.
So, He’s concealed. What’s it mean that He’s concealed. He is actually right before me, however I have no vessels, like you wouldn’t hear the music at a concert you’re at if you had no ears, say, because you’re a snake who “hears” through vibrations. In fact, that concert, instead of pleasurable, will seem to you as a hellish cacophony of vibrations. This is how we’re perceiving the Garden of Eden we’re in now, with our lack of vessels of spiritual perception. This is how heaven appears when you have only our 5 senses from birth. If we add spiritual vessels, we perceive the total recipe of reality, which changes everything – how we see what was, what is, and what will be.
How do we add spiritual vessels? I have to connect with others who have the same kind of awakening that brought me precisely to the wisdom of Kabbalah, a signal that they have the missing parts of my spiritual vessel. What we study here is how to do that, because this vessel was broken precisely in a way that I won’t be able to connect to them without somewhat doing so in a way that already resembles the Creator. I don’t know how to do it but I learn what the parameters of this connection are, and I of course misinterpret them or even can’t quite hear them. But if I play toward that state, there is an Upper Force of development that helps. It’s the same source of all development in our world, and by me playing in states that are destined for me anyway, I awaken those states sooner than they would have come anyway (but in much less pleasant ways). Gradually, I both connect the parts of my vessel, thus reveal the Creator, and in doing so, become similar to Him.
I don’t have any questions, but I am totally stoked about becoming part of a group of 10 and beginning the real work!
How long before we’ll be assigned to a group of 10?
How will we be notified?
A quick update and a question: I am still in the same catch-22. I’m still studying, but not as vigorously as I used to. I am almost depressed, and almost nothing makes me deeply happy anymore. I feel numb and heavy both in body and mind. I am not satisfied with my achievements anymore. I have all I need, and nothing makes me happy. Not my house that everyone says is beautiful, nor my income, my corporeal achievements, my health and fitness, nor even my job as a doctor. I drag myself to work. I know I am not clinically depressed whatsoever.
You last said working with the group is when things start to shift, and there have been no words on new young groups. I still feel stuck in the same loop with depression and heaviness as the only tangible progress. Do you have any idea when a young group is expected to be formed and when I might realistically be able to join? In the meantime, what should I do to prepare and make genuine spiritual progress instead of going in circles?I’ll see if I can get an update on Young Group but I don’t think everything rides on that.
We only advance in joy. In sorrow, we don’t move an inch spiritually. “Almost depressed” is no better. It’s zero or one, sorrow or joy. Either I feel I’m on the way to something good or not. If I feel I’m on the way to good, even a good meal, I’m already in joy for the time being. If I feel I’m on the way to a spiritual meal, I’m in joy all the time. How do I feel that? I need to study to draw the Surrounding Lights from those states that await me. If my Point in the Heart is awakened, that means that I have to feed it adequately – otherwise it simply darkens my life without providing spiritual livelihood. Every day and many times a day it needs this food from our sources, lessons, group meetings, and so on. Then the rest of life will balance in relation to this spiritual counterpoint.
Sometimes I am doing some activities in my everyday life. And this is happening just lately… And that way I do my thoughts are connecting it with the Creator, in way that I see how my actions come from above. Or is just a knowledge that my actions come from above. Is it how we start feel connected ourselves on the body level and spiritual level?
For example, I have a very busy day, running from one thing to another and go to work after all. All of a sudden I am at the back yard a front of our raspberry bush which is full of ripe fruits and need to be picked up. I have to make a decision some of my next activities to get off from my list, so I can pick the raspberries. And going along on the row I am starting to catch my thought , as If I replace the raspberries with the word” knowledge “ it will show me another perspective of my activity …
raspberries are covered with snow at the winter, spring comes, they grow slowly , you need to water them and etc. And if I don’t take the decision right now to pick them up and share them with some friends, it will be not fare to the whole process of taking care of them. The knowledge is a seed in the right environment, that it needs a long time to grow, to be taken many actions, spend time … and at the end you need to share it with your friends as the raspberries.
And also I pick up all ripe fruits from one section, and then I move on to the next. But as I look back is always some fruits I did not see.
By me changing the perspective, or raspberries =knowledge; friends are the short cut towards my knowledge it feels great:)It feels very inspiring , that the Creator shows you your connection to other friends on the pat of awakening through your everyday journey ❤️
Thanks for your reply. Correct me if I am wrong. The course and various written and video materials implied that working in a group of TEN is the only way to achieve this goal, as that’s where we practice reconnection and altruism. So, my understanding has been that almost everything relies on it.
Another thing is that, unlike what you said, there is not always joy in the path. On several occasions and references, this heaviness and gloom are attributed to the Creator’s gifts for advancement. Am I wrong?A person still needs maybe a year of independent study to absorb the main articles and he still typically has enough fuel on his own to draw the light he needs to advance.
No, gloom is not a part of the path. One simply won’t advance, except in joy. Always one can find an alternative text to justify some other view. That’s because there are always 3 lines which contradict each other. A person has to receive the resistance but always return to joy, right away. One extra second in suffering is already the Klipa (shell), and one enjoys that suffering – instead of spiritually advancing.
I understand that the group is a system, how is it we can be connected to the system at any place even while at work. How does that work?
That’s in the thought, and in the heart. Through many actions and efforts in the right direction, it’s possible. In the graduate program we learn all the ways of connection. Connection is something fairly complex, comprised of a combination of inner attitudes toward the group, which have to hold together at once for it to be called connection. They’re summarized also in the first, say, 20 articles of Rabash.
I can completely understand why a spiritual environment is needed. But most of the time, we are in our daily environment(s). My question is: how can i transition the work that i do in the spiritual environment, into my daily environment? There also i would like to work with the right and the left line, in order to come to middle line.
You have to first build the device, and then go out with it. You can’t build some new invention in the street, and it won’t be better if everyone will add their two cents on the matter; you have to build in a lab. That’s what the grad program is. And you will always need to start from this lab before you’ll know how correctly to relate to the world outside it. So, first you have to really build it strongly and correctly.
For now, what you have in daily life is to behave as if you don’t study Kabbalah, while on the inside you live in the discernment that there is None Else Besides Him, the Creator that controls you and everyone, and that He only does good to you and everyone. Try to stay in those 3 inner and outer modes so that there is a split between what you’re doing on the outside and inside.
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