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Hi Richard,
Yes, you can say that. Essentially all of life is just a game between myself and the Creator. This is called “there is none else besides Him”. We’ll learn more about this concept in the upcoming lesson. In the meantime, check out these blog posts from Rav Laitman for more details:
Albert @ KabU
Hi Yvonne, good question!
Authentic Kabbalah has been concealed for the past 2000 years, so naturally there are a lot of misconceptions associated with it. Just picture a 2000 year old game of telephone… Essentially Kabbalah is the method by which we correct our egoistic nature. As a result of this correction, we become similar to the Creator, the general force of love and bestowal. As a result of becoming similar to Him, we reveal this force of love in practice, in our lives.
The first one to actualize this was Adam (about 5800 years ago). His name gives us a hint at this since Adam comes from the Hebrew word “Dome”, meaning “similar to”. He was not the first one alive, but rather the first one to reveal the Creator by becoming similar to this quality of bestowal.
This wisdom gets passed on ward from Adam until Abraham who adapted it to the people of his generation and made the wisdom more practical. Abraham put together a large group of Babylonians who were interested in actualizing this method. These people later on became the Israeli nation. The word Israel comes from the Hebrew words “Yashar” “El” meaning straight to God. These are the people who had an active point in the heart in those days and were interested in revealing the Creator.
These people greatly succeeded in this method. The peak of their success was symbolized in the building of the first and second temple, which reflected the level of unity and bestowal they were able to reach. At a certain point, they lost the spiritual connection between them (the destruction of the 2nd temple) and what remained was just these external symbols of their connection.
At this point the wisdom of Kabbalah became concealed. People still had the holy books, Torah and etc, but they did not know how to use them. Since the Torah is written in the language of roots and branches. Meaning it uses words of our world to describe spiritual phenomena. But if a person does not have this spiritual connection through which he can see this, then he thinks this book is talking about this world, history, morals, commandments, etc. From this emerges the Jewish religion.
From all the above we see that Kabbalah itself is not connected to any religion, philosophy, or the myriad of spiritual methods out there. Check out these blog posts from Rav Laitman for more details:
Albert @ KabU
Hi Shaun, great questions!
1. Spiritual work is something that we do with other points in the heart in this safe environment that we call the Kabbalistic group. If you practice this anywhere else, in the best case scenario you’ll build some good relationships, in the worst case, people will think you’re weird or try to take advantage of you. But either way it will not lead to goal of our spiritual work, which is the revelation of the Creator. So generally with the rest of the world it’s best to just act normal, like everyone else. Meaning don’t make a saint of yourself and at the same time don’t cause harm to others, but just act there the way normal people act.
2. We were all created as egoists on purpose. It’s precisely thanks to the ego that we can rise to high spiritual degrees. In Kabbalah, the ego is not a bad force but rather a partner that helps us to advance. Meaning we don’t eliminate our ego, we rise above it. It turns into a type of hill or mountain that we rise above. In other words, the greater the ego, the further up we can climb, and the greater the spiritual level we can achieve. On the other hand if we eliminate the ego, then the spiritual level we can achieve is relatively tiny.
Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2011/02/the-worse-the-better/
Albert @ KabU
Hi Vyacheslav,
The study materials here are mostly in English. You might be better of on the Russian version of our site: https://www.kabbalah.info/rus/
After you finish the basic course, they will also be able to get you in contact with the local study group in Odessa.
Albert @ KabU
Hi Mark,
We’re not yet on any spiritual degree, we’re still in the preparation period prior to the spiritual ladder. But once we start to do real spiritual work, we can measure our progress in our attitude towards other points in the hearts. That I’ll feel how my attitude towards them changes from complete indifference, all the way until I feel them as pieces of my soul. We’ll learn more about this in the more advanced lessons.
Albert @ KabU
Hi Marc,
Yes, you can say that it’s the same thing just described in a different style/language in the Torah. Keep in mind that when Kabbalists talk about the Torah and Mitzvot, they are not referring to physical actions that we carry out with our hands and feet in a religious manner, but rather they describe the inner corrections that take place over our desires.
Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2016/02/mitzvot-commandments-the-correction-of-desires/
As well as my 221960 below for more details: https://kabuconnect.com/forums/topic/ask-anything-about-week-5-lesson-and-materials-and-get-an-answer-from-a-senior-kabbalah-instructor/#post-221960
Albert @ KabU
