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?

[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.

[Garry]

From an egoistic perception, I perceive and feel a corporeal “reality”, where everything and everyone is totally separate from me. I don’t sense myself being an integral part of anything in the world.

My ego creates an “illusionary/delusionary “reality” of a world of separation, which seems to be governed by  laws of space, time, energy, matter & motion. And, if I want to succeed in it, I had better focus my attention and Intention on taking care of myself,  thinking in terms of “what’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is yours”. With my subconscious mind playing my ego’s favorite radio station, WIFM (What’s In it For Me) in the background 24/7, I find myself (consciously & unconsciously) calculating and thinking in terms of how to receive more and more for my sake alone- even to the extent of using and exploiting others- as my ego couldn’t care less about others.

As my perception of reality shifts from egoism to one rooted in bestowal, I begin to sense my connection with others, thinking in terms of WE instead of ME. I begin feeling that I am an integral part of the general Soul (of Adam HaRishon), which includes all the 8+ billion people as well as everything else in this world. I begin to understand that whatever I do does affect everyone and everything.

While still desiring to receive more and more pleasure (as that is my nature; that is how I was created), I begin to consciously scrutinize my A.I.M (what is my Attitude, Intention and Motivation) behind what I am thinking & doing?  Gradually I begin to change my intention, from receiving for myself alone, to one of receiving for the sake of bringing contentment to the Creator.

This switch to altristic intention enables me to gradually reach an “equivalence of form” with the Creator–the very force of Love and Bestowal.  “Love your Friend as Yourself” becomes something real, a principle that enables me (as I connect with friends), to Feel & Reveal more and more Reforming Light and to share it with everyone.  And so, as I change, everything else around me changes! I begin to perceive a “different” world!

[julie]

I cannot overcome my ego alone. I cannot attain equivalence of form on my own. I can’t attain spirituality alone. Basically the only way I can switch from an egoistic perception is with a group of ten with points in the heart, a Kabbalah teacher and the authentic Kabbalah books.

[Sharon]

It means to yearn for true connection with the friends in order to reach the Creator together. Changing our egoistic desires from wanting to receive for ourselves into the desire and intention to bestow to the others….this is what connects us to the Creator. It’s a shared desire and common goal we all wish to attain.

[Author]

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