Preparation Question: What does it mean to connect with others? In what desire are we connected?

[Julian Edwards- KabU Instructor]

Preparation Question: What does it mean to connect with others? In what desire are we connected?

[Kathy]

I think humans want connection for validation.

[Cristie]

Shifting from an egoistic perception of reality to a perception based on bestowal means transitioning from self-centered thinking and actions to a mindset focused on giving, contributing, and considering the well-being of others. It involves prioritizing and valuing collective interests and the greater good over personal gain or self-interest.

[Bongani]

Transitioning from an egoistic viewpoint of reality to one centered on bestowal implies a shift in how we perceive the world. It involves moving beyond surface appearances and directing our attention towards discerning the underlying intention behind what we perceive as reality.

[Dennis Ibrahim]

Yearning to attain the property of bestowal from the current egoistic reception for one’s own benefit

[Eric]

An egoist might mix error with truth by practicing these teachings solo, outside of the context of a circle of friends and fellow awakeners who keep in each other in check, and prevent the others from drifting off into the heresy of egoism.

This is where we must be exceedingly careful to discern exactly what constitutes perceptual errors. Any potential “errors” that will enter into one’s account of the search for truth and wisdom will not appear in what is being said in the books or by the teacher, but in how the aspirant will carry out the teaching in the specific context of his own life through the way he or she implements the teaching in the procedural, perspectival, and participatory ways of knowing, each of which parallel the three degrees of purification, illumination, and devakut.

If one is not accountable to a group of caring and attentive friends who monitor each others progress every step of the way, it’s very easy for an aspirant to tragically slide into spiritual inflation and ego-worship (mistaking ego for true “I”).

This is a very subtle and important point, since fundamentalists will often zero in on the content of a teaching as its source of error, when, in fact, the truth or falsity of propositions are nearly impossible to detect at the initial stage of the proposal, for the simple reason that they are merely verbal proposals, and they have not been taken out into an actual lived experienced to be tested pragmatically for performative errors and verifications, as well as the verifications of one’s circle of friends. This is why Kabbalistic circles, and all other authentic forms of enlightenment, were always part of a brotherhood – a collaborative effort of raising consciousness, not just the solo journey of a lone mystic who can easily lose his way traveling the path alone.

Thus, my only cautionary note in what you are teaching here would be for the aspirant to subject himself to a sincere self-scrutiny before he embarks on this process of awakening by asking this question:

**Am I seeking wisdom and self-knowledge in order to “love the Lord God with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love my neighbor as if my neighbor were my self” or I am just doing it to get an ego-boost and to serve my own selfish desires and appetites for pleasure and self-glory?**

[Boke]

It means that I give up my egoistic and negative thougts about myself and the world and replace them with positive thoughts and bestowal. So changing from thoughts based on fear, lack and resentment to pure love.

[Author]

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