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Hi Chris,
You’re right, 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 Jolina,
Spirituality is a state of wholeness, a state in which we are all connected, like cells within a single body. Just like in a corporeal body, when the cells are properly connected, they don’t need any language to communicate between them, the information simply flows between them. Likewise in spirituality, there is no need for a language.
In our current corporeal state on the other hand, when we don’t feel that spiritual connection between us, we do need a language. The language that Kabbalists developed for this is the language of roots and branches.
Check out these articles for more details:
https://laitman.com/2013/09/from-root-to-branch/
The Essence of the Wisdom of Kabbalah
Albert @ KabU
Hi Michael,
Yes, there is a difference between understanding the thought of creation and attaining it. The difference is that when we attain it, we become similar to the Creator, to His pure qualities of love and bestowal, and as a result of that we reveal Him in practice in our lives.
Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2012/04/when-all-doubts-will-dissipate/
And yes, it does happen in degrees, 125 degrees of us gradually becoming more and more similar to Him.
Keep in mind that we’re still in the preparation period prior to this spiritual ladder of 125 degrees. 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 about this in the more advanced lessons.
Albert @ KabU
Hi Michael,
We’re aspiring to unite with the Creator, we’re not there yet. If we have not yet attained this connection in practice, we cannot just take this concept as some maxim and live by it.
Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2014/10/if-i-am-not-for-myself-then-no-one-will-help-me/
The Creator is the force of love and bestowal. It’s the singular force behind all of reality. This force created us and is operating every moment to develop us until we reach the best possible state in life: adhesion with Him.
The creature is everything outside the Creator, meaning if the Creator is the force of bestowal, the creature is the desire to receive pleasure. This desire is ingrained within all of us, including the still, vegetative, and animate levels of nature. Essentially all of our reality is composed of varying degrees of this desire to receive pleasure.
Furthermore, when we speak about the Creator, we speak about how we feel this thing called the Creator within our corrected desires.
In general, Kabbalah divides our research of the Creator into two parts:
The first is His essence (atzmuto in Hebrew). This is He Himself, His point of view, the Creator as an entity separate from the Created beings. We’re incapable of researching this part of the Creator because our research tools are not built in such a way that we can grasp such things. Perhaps after we finish the process of correction, we’ll discover additional research tools through which we’ll be able to research these things, but until then we limit ourselves and don’t talk about this part of the Creator because we cannot properly research it.
The other part of the Creator is called Bo-Re (Hebrew for Come (Bo) and See (Re)). This is the part of the Creator that we can research and reveal. How do we research this? Through the desire. When we take a part of our desire to receive and correct it in the direction of bestowal, in that corrected desire, we reveal a certain phenomenon, we call this phenomenon the Creator. This is why there are many names for the Creator (in Hebrew), since every time we correct a different part of the desire, we reveal a different aspect of this thing called the Creator.
So all of our understanding of this thing called the Creator is based on what we reveal within the corrected desire. But whatever exists outside of the corrected desire, whatever we don’t grasp, perceive or attain within the desire, whatever is beyond our tools of research, we don’t talk about. We need to keep these limits in mind in order to stay within the realm of science and not venture off into religion or philosophy.
Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2017/11/the-concept-of-god-in-kabbalah/
Albert @ KabU
Hi Naomi,
Nothing is in vain, everything in the past was necessary for our current level of development.
It’s just like how we educate kids. As an adult, you can look at a child and wonder why he is playing with a fake car, seems like it’s done in vain. But in truth, the toy car is exactly what is best for his development, and if he played with a real car, it could actually cause him a lot of harm.
Same with us. Everything we went through in the past was exactly what was needed for our level of development. And now that we’ve grown up, we are given different tools for our development. Once we develop even further, we’ll discover more refined means for our development as well.
Albert @ KabU
Hi Naomi,
Yes, it’s a dynamic number of people. And yes each one has to correct their part in the collective soul.
All of humanity is part of a single system, like cells within a single body. Within this singular system, there is a certain order of corrections that need to take place. It’s like building a large jigsaw puzzle. First you start with all the corner pieces, and only then do you gradually work your way to the center.
It’s the same with our spiritual work. There are those that are awakened to this work earlier and those that are awakened to it later. Those that received awakened points in the hearts are like those corner pieces of the puzzle that need to start the whole process. Later on, due to their good work, they pave the way for the rest of the world to join this process.
So ultimately, whether a person receives a point in the heart now or later depends on their place in the system, which is called the root of one’s soul.
Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2010/10/the-root-of-the-soul/
Albert @ KabU
