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Hi Mona,
The Creator instilled in us our egoistic nature. Defying His will in this context means being able to rise above this egoistic nature and aiming to bestow instead.
Baal HaSulam talks about this in the article Shamati 19, here’s an excerpt:
Then one has close contact with the Creator to help him turn the will to receive to work in order to bestow. One must believe that from this extends contentment to the Creator, from his praying to Him to draw him near in the manner of Dvekut [adhesion], called “equivalence of form,” discerned as the annulment of the will to receive, so it is in order to bestow. The Creator says about this, “My sons defeated Me.” That is, I gave you the will to receive, and you ask Me to give you a desire to bestow instead.Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2025/07/my-sons-defeated-me/
Albert @ KabU
Hi Luz,
1. Different groups have different schedules. So it depends on your group.
2. As we learn, “there is no coercion in spirituality”. No one will force you to do anything you don’t want to do. But through our participation in the group, we exponentially speed up our spiritual development. So it’s highly recommended.
All this will be more relevant for us in the advanced semesters of KabU, where everyone will receive their own virtual Kabbalah group and learn how to properly work with it.
Albert @ KabU
Hi Charlene,
We’ll learn in the lesson on the perception of reality that the external world is a reflection of my own internal world. If I’m not corrected, I will see in front of me an uncorrected world full of suffering. If I correct myself, I’ll look at the same world and the same people, but now they will appear the opposite.
It’s like I have these dirty glasses through which I see the whole world as dirty. The moment I clean my own glasses, I’ll look at the same world, but now it’s clean and perfect.
So when we correct ourselves, we’ll reveal the true reality in which only goodness exists, and that our previous egoistic perception was nothing more than a dream.
Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2014/04/in-neutral-gear/
Likewise with life and death, as we develop spiritually and begin to reveal the reality outside of our ego, our attitude to life and death will change.
Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2013/06/life-and-death-in-the-eyes-of-a-kabbalist/
Albert @ KabU
Hi Claudio,
It’s good to have a certain healthy level of skepticism. Nobody wants to succumb to some dogma, nor to waste any of the precious time that we have in our lives. And of course you can continue to study Kabbalah here and see if it’s something that suits you or not. Regarding your other questions/concerns:
1. Kabbalah is a science. Here’s a link to my previous answer to you on this topic.
And here’s another post from Rav Laitman on the topic: https://laitman.com/2011/06/a-science-about-the-world/
2. Kabbalah is not a religion, you don’t need to believe that something will happen to you after you die. On the contrary, the results of your studying Kabbalah is something you discover in your life.
3. Kabbalah is not a philosophy. It’s not based on someone’s speculations, but only on what was attained by the Kabbalists. And to avoid philosophical speculations, there are clear limits as to what we can and cannot discuss in Kabbalah. So if something is unattainable, we do not talk about it.
For example, Kabbalah gives us a method for how we can attain the Creator in our lives. But what is the Creator? 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/
4. As to whether Kabbalah is for you or not, I cannot answer that for you. It’s not my job to convince you that it’s for you. We learn that “there is no coercion in spirituality” and that “one studies only where his heart desires”. So if after a certain period of time, you see that the materials you’re learning here still don’t click with you, you should consider searching elsewhere to find exactly what you’re looking for.
Albert @ KabU
Hi Tiiu,
Aspiring to see the big picture is part of it, but to truly reach and feel spirituality, we need to become similar to it, to the qualities of pure love and bestowal that are found there. This is just like how a radio can pick up an external wave, when we tune the internal frequency of the radio to that wave.
Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2013/04/everything-is-attained-by-the-equivalence-of-form/
Albert @ KabU
Hi Tiiu,
Our very nature is egoistic. Just like a PC cannot just reprogram itself to run as a Mac, we too cannot just change our own nature or correct our own desires. We need outside help for this.
This help comes to us from the light. It’s a special force that has the ability to correct us. Our work boils down to extracting more and more of this light, especially through the Kabbalistic studies, and it does all the rest.
Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2013/02/sunbathing-in-the-rays-of-the-reforming-light/
Albert @ KabU
