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Hi Milos,
Our initial choice of the spiritual environment is not up to us. This follows the saying that: the Creator puts man’s hand on the good fate and says “choose this for yourself”. Meaning He awakened your point in the heart and brought it to a good spiritual environment in which you can nourish it. Only after that, the rest is up to you.
So what needs to happen for me to start actualizing my free will here? After all, the point in the heart is seemingly forcing me to be here. If so, then this desire needs to be taken away from me little by little, and there I begin to reveal more and more the place of my freedom.
This is similar to how we teach a child to ride a bike. First the parent holds the child completely. Then as the child learns to pedal and balance himself, the parent lets go a little, then a little more and a little more, until the child continue to pedal without the parent holding him at all.
So we too need to learn to continue to do this work even when that initial desire for spirituality begins to disappear or when the ego grows and begins to pull us into many different directions. When that happens, we’ll feel a need for mutual work in the group, the spiritual environment. On one hand when I fall into my ego, they need to pull me out, and on the other hand I need to help pull others out when they fall. This is why Kabbalists have always studied in groups (physical or virtual).
We will learn more about this in the more advanced semesters on KabU, where you’ll receive your own Kabbalah group with whom you can practice these things.
Albert @ KabU
Hi Jasmine,
When we study Kabbalah, we learn about our higher states of development and begin to yearn to be there. This yearning evokes the light and the light gradually correct us, adapts us to those higher levels, until we begin to feel them in practice.
In other words, we study not in order to gain knowledge, but in order to extract more light. It’s ultimately the light that makes all the changes on us, our job is to just extract more and more of it, especially during the Kabbalistic studies.
Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2013/02/sunbathing-in-the-rays-of-the-reforming-light/
As for our future selves, we learn that we’re all parts of a single interconnected system, like cells within one body. We begin to reveal this connection gradually, starting from a small Kabbalistic group, as if reconnecting a single organ of that body. And then we add another organ and another, until we expand this connection to the whole world.
In our connection is where we reveal the Creator. He is like the glue that makes it possible for us to connect. This is essentially the goal of Kabbalah, to help us correct ourselves until we reveal the Creator in practice, in our lives.
We’ll learn about this in the upcoming lessons, in the meantime check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2014/05/puzzle-adam-harishon/
Albert @ KabU
Hi Calvin,
You can say that reality exists in the form of a hologram, where a part of me is found within everyone else. This is why a big part of our work is to reconnect all of reality back into one. By that we reveal ourselves on a higher level. It’s almost like seeing ourselves as a cell within the body vs seeing ourselves as the whole body.
Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2011/07/who-am-working-for/
Albert @ KabU
Hi Janice,
We were indeed created in the state of perfection, in complete adhesion with the Creator. (Baal HaSulam describes this in the article Introduction to the book of Zohar). But this was an unconscious state, like a baby in its mother’s womb. So we necessarily had to come to the complete opposite state, to lose that state of perfection, in order to once again reach it, but this time consciously.
And the fact that we had to lose this state is not something bad, but it’s a necessary part of our development. It’s just like with kids. We don’t just give them a completed jigsaw puzzle. On the contrary we take it and break it down into many pieces. Then in the process of them putting it together, they grow and develop. Same with us, this process of losing that state is a necessary part of our further growth and development.
This process also adds to us a certain level of freedom, without which, we would be no different than machines, or robots, that were programmed to act a certain way and they just carry out this inner script. Instead, we were programmed one way, and we rise above this inner programming, become independent of it, and then develop our own desire to advance towards this goal.
Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2014/01/from-perfection-to-perfection/
Albert @ KabU
Hi Zied,
If we fully correct ourselves, we continue to exist within that corrected desire, and there is no need to reincarnate again to the level of this world.
Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2015/06/what-happens-to-the-soul-after-death/
As for Baal HaSulam, since the book of Zohar was written from the highest degree, the state of the final correction, and since Baal HaSulam wrote a full commentary on the book of Zohar, we can conclude that he attained the full correction.
Check out these blog posts from Rav Laitman for more details:
https://laitman.com/2011/10/baal-hasulam%e2%80%99s-memorial-day/
https://laitman.com/2023/04/due-to-the-influence-of-the-light/
Albert @ KabU
Hi Calvin, great questions!
Good and bad disappear on very high spiritual degrees. If we have not yet attained those spiritual degrees, we cannot just take it as a fact and start building our reality around that. Until then, good and bad do exist.
Good means becoming similar to the Creator, adhering to Him, to His qualities of love and bestowal. Bad means falling back into our egoistic nature which disconnects us from the Creator.
The correction is to correct our egoistic nature.
Why do we need to correct our egoistic nature? Because it makes us opposite from the Creator. As a result of becoming opposite to Him, we become separated from Him. This follows the law of equivalence of form.
Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2013/04/everything-is-attained-by-the-equivalence-of-form/
Why does the intention matter? Since our very nature is the desire to receive, we cannot truly bestow like the Creator. The best that we can do is to receive with the intention to bestow. Even though the action is still one of reception, the intention to bestow converts that action so that it would actually be considered bestowal.
Check out the Guest & Host Analogy from Chapter 3 of Attaining the Worlds Beyond for more details.
Albert @ KabU
