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Hi Kristin,
The Kabbalists tell us that there is no one closer to a person than the Creator. We exist in Him like an embryo within the mother. So with or without words, the Creator feels everything that we’re going through.
The main thing on our end is to constantly turn to Him, to constantly be in connection with Him. Whether through words or not, it does not matter, what is important is to constantly turn to Him.
Check out this clip from Rav Laitman for more details:
Albert @ KabU
Hi Dave,
Each weekly lesson has its own recommended reading section. Here’s the Week 1 link.
There are three recommended books for this course. Kabbalah Revealed and Attaining the Worlds Beyond are there to give you a solid foundation in the Wisdom of Kabbalah. Besides the recommended readings, it’s good to read through these books from beginning to end a few times.
Kabbalah for the Student on the other hand is a textbook of primary sources. This is an advanced level book which we’ll be studying from throughout our entire spiritual development. It can be a bit challenging for us without the proper foundation of the previous two books. So for now, it’s best to just stick with reading the recommended reading materials in that book. After you get a good foundation, you can read through that one as well. And in the more advanced phases, we’ll study articles in that book together and in greater depth.
Albert @ KabU
Hi Lana, great questions!
1. Taking care of our family is a necessity, we must continue to do so. As for our connection to the world, that is also very important. After all, we learn from the shattering of the common soul of Adam HaRishon that our entire work is in fixing the broken connections between people. So eventually we will reach a state where we feel ourselves connected to the whole world. But this is a gradual process. Just like a body builder cannot just go straight to lifting a thousand pounds, we too cannot go straight to trying to connect to the world, we need to build up to it.
We do this by focusing all of our spiritual work on connecting with other points in the heart in the Kabbalistic group. It’s like we’re building here a certain nucleus. Once we build that nucleus, we will be able to add to it wider and wider circles of the world, until we’ll come to include the whole world in that connection. But this is gradual work. And until we build that nucleus, we have nothing with which to do any spiritual work towards the world. So until then, how do we behave towards the rest of the world? We behave there normally, just like everyone else.
2. Kabbalah is a method by which we can correct our egoistic nature. As a result of this correction, we become similar to the Creator and reveal Him in practice. The process of correcting our nature to make it resemble Him is called Torah & Mitzvot.
Torah comes from the Hebrew word Ohr (Hebrew for “light”). So when Kabbalists use the word Torah, they are not referring to the physical book, but rather to the light. This is a special force that we can extract, especially through the Kabbalistic studies, in order to correct our egoistic nature.
As for the Mitzvot, when Kabbalists use the word Mitzvot (plural of Mitzvah) they are not referring to the corporeal commandments that a religious person performs with his hands and feet. But rather the Mitzvot are the internal processes by which we draw the light and correct the egoistic desires.
Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2010/11/spice-up-your-desire/
3. Harmful meaning that it can deviate us from the spiritual goal. If we want to succeed in Kabbalah (or in any spiritual practice really) we should practice it without mixing other things into it. Otherwise it’s like following two different GPS systems. One leads you to the goal through the west highway, while the other through the east highway. If you follow both, you’ll just wind up going in circles.
As for choosing which sources to read, in our days, we mainly study from the writings of Baal HaSulam and Rabash. This is because egoism grows from generation to generation, so Kabbalah, the method for its correction, needs to get adapted in each generation for that level of egoism. For example it’s like in medicine, if a person has a headache he can just drink a tylenol and that’s enough to fix him. But if it’s not just a little headache but something cancerous, then that tylenol won’t do anything for him but he needs a completely different regime to heal himself.
This is why Kabbalah gets adapted in each generation to the level of egoism that is currently found in that generation. So although there were many different Kabbalists and Kabbalistic books throughout the generations, nowadays we mainly learn from the writings of Baal HaSulam and Rabash, since their writings contains the light that is most suitable to correct the egoism that is found in our generation.
Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2015/11/the-great-kabbalists-and-their-works/
Albert @ KabU
Hi Jarrett,
In the lesson about the shattering of the common soul of Adam HaRishon, we learned that the only thing broken in the entire system of creation are the proper connections between people. So our entire spiritual work is in fixing those connections.
Just picture all of humanity is part of a single system. Like a 8 billion piece jigsaw puzzle. Each piece of the puzzle (each person) is perfect by itself and does not require any correction. Meaning that we don’t need to recolor any of the pieces or cut off any seemingly excess parts. The only thing we need to do is find where each piece fits relative to all the other pieces.
So there is no need for fasting or doing any work on ourselves. None of that corrects the spiritual source of the problem. All of our spiritual work is in correcting the connections between us.
We’ll learn more about this in the advanced 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 Ben,
In Kabbalah, the Mashiach is not a person but a force. Mashiach (Messiah in English) comes from the verb “to pull” (Moshech in Hebrew). This is the force that has the ability to “pull” us out of our egoistic nature into the Creator’s nature of love and bestowal.
Albert @ KabU
Hi Yusbel,
I’m not sure what you mean by recycling the ego. Maybe you can link me to where you heard that phrase so I can comment within that context.
As for being in harmony with nature, nature is composed of two opposite qualities: bestowal and reception. Harmony in nature is when we find the right balance between those two qualities.
Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2008/10/nature%E2%80%99s-commandments-the-creator%E2%80%99s-laws/
Albert @ KabU
