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Hi Jasmine,
It’s not my place to comment on your personal life, but we can talk about these things in general.
1. The Creator is the pure quality of love and bestowal. As such, He does not lack anything. Meaning He does not need us thinking about Him or loving Him, etc. The only ones benefiting from this whole process is us.
Although we sometimes use the words that we perform a certain action in order to bestow to the Creator or to bring Him contentment, but in truth it’s just a game to help us to develop. Just like with kids, when we spoon feed them, they see the example from us and want to pick up a spoon and feed us back. Do we really need them to feed us? Of course not. But we still accept this from them, smile, show them how happy they made us by feeding us etc, since we know that through this game, they grow and develop. So ultimately the Creator is not lacking anything. And all of our attempts to bestow to Him are nothing more than a type of game for our own development.
2. Coming closer to the Creator works according to the law of equivalence of form. Meaning that we can come closer to Him to the extent that we become similar to Him, to His qualities of love and bestowal. But since He is not in need of us loving Him (point #1), this is done in practice specifically with other people. Meaning that loving other people is the way by which we come closer to Him. In other words, there is no such thing as disconnecting from people while thinking about the Creator. Our closeness to Him is specifically through our closeness with other people.
The foundation of this type of work is done in a small Kabbalistic group. And once we build a certain foundation there, we can add more and more layers on top of that, until we can include the whole world in that connection.
Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2013/04/everything-is-attained-by-the-equivalence-of-form/
3. We learn from the Kabbalists that every single moment comes to us directly from the Creator, this is called “there is none else besides Him”. Furthermore, they also say that He is the “good that does good”. Meaning that every moment He is sending us nothing but goodness. But why then don’t we see this in our world? Why do we see so much suffering and problems in the world?
This is because our world is governed by our egoistic nature. This egoistic nature is opposite to the Creator’s nature. Because of that, it inverts the Creator’s goodness into something bad. It’s just like multiplying numbers: a positive times a negative equals negative.
So as long as we remain within this egoistic nature, we will continue to see and feel more suffering and horrors in the world. But if we correct our nature to be similar to the Creator’s nature, then we will reveal the true reality in which only goodness exists, and our previous egoistic state would appear as nothing more than a dream.
Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2011/06/how-can-we-justify-the-creator/
Albert @ KabU
Hi Paulo,
If you’re talking about simply an intellectual study of the wisdom of Kabbalah, then yes, on such a superficial level, it’s possible to study from the same sources and reach the same conclusions.
But if you’re talking about actual spiritual attainment, which is not just an intellectual understanding, but rather a feeling, there we cannot compare one person to another. This is because each and every person is completely unique and feels the world through his/her uniqueness. As such, it’s impossible to compare how one person feels spirituality with another.
Although we can say that whoever reaches the same spiritual degree will experience the same things that are found on that spiritual degrees. But nonetheless, each one will experience those things through their own uniqueness. Just like two people can be riding in the same car, one person can feel hot while another can feel cold.
And if we’re talking about two different spiritual degrees, then their experiences could be light years away from each other. This is because every new spiritual degree comes with a completely different set of values and way of thinking. What was valid on the previous degree, becomes false on the current one. What we used to value previously, becomes worthless. This is called “what is waste for the upper is nourishment for the lower”.
Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2017/01/rising-to-a-new-degree/
Albert @ KabU
google translation of the questions:
How do I know whether or not I am fit to study the wisdom of Kabbalah? Is there any spiritual condition or precept of conduct or morality that I must meet in order to be fit to study the wisdom of Kabbalah?
_________________________
Hi Enrique,
The only condition to studying Kabbalah is the desire. If a person has such a desire, which is called the point in the heart, then this entire wisdom is open to them. And if a person does not have such a desire, then naturally they would not even want to study Kabbalah.
Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2008/11/only-people-with-the-point-in-the-heart-can-feel-that-kabbalah-is-the-salvation/
So how do we know if this is the place for us?
When the point in the heart awakens, it pulls a person to the place where it can get realized. So when a person finds such a place, there is a certain inner resonance, a click where a person feels that he found the right place for himself.
So no one can tell you if this is the place for you or not, you need to feel it for yourself. This follows the rules that “there is no coercion in spirituality” and “one studies only where one’s heart desires”.
Albert @ KabU
Hi Sara,
Although we point to 1995 as to when Kabbalah became revealed, technically the prohibition was lifted much earlier, from the time of the Ari. He was the one to make a very special correction within the entire spiritual system, after which its not only possible, but a must to openly disseminate the wisdom of Kabbalah in order to help the whole world reach its correction.
Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details on the Ari: https://laitman.com/2010/08/the-ari-rav-isaac-luria-the-godly-man/
So why do we say 1995? Let’s put a few things into perspective:
Kabbalah is the method of correction of our egoistic nature, thereby revealing the Creator, the general force of love and bestowal. Why was it necessary to conceal such a wisdom? Because egoism was still not yet fully developed. For example: if you compare Kabbalah to a medicine that can cure a rare disease, obviously you can’t take the medicine before you’re diagnosed with the disease, but once the disease actually manifests, you can take the medicine and be cured of it.
It’s just like the 5 stages development of a disease within a person. First a person is healthy. Then he is sick, but he does not feel it. Then the disease spreads to the point that he starts to feel pain and symptoms of the disease. This then pushes him to go to a doctor to get diagnosed and find the cure, and etc.
2000 years ago, egoism was still on a very low level, there was no need to correct it. Starting from the days of the Ari, egoism already grew to a certain extent (and technically the prohibition on Kabbalah ended there), but humanity still didn’t feel sick, on the contrary the ego was the main driving force of all of our development. Then from around 1995 egoism peaked and began to show itself as bad, like a cancer that begins to kill the host body. This is the peak at which there was a true need for the cure. Which in essence is what the Kabbalists have been waiting for all these years, for the desire, for egoism to fully ripen.
Albert @ KabU
Hi Luke,
Yes, you can say that. If we’re not yet in spiritual attainment ourselves, then we don’t yet have the tools to verify such things, and so we have to take them as assumptions. It’s just like with any other science. For example, when I read a physics textbook, I see different formulas and experiments that research our reality. If I’m reading this textbook in 8th grade, then I have no choice but to accept the things written there since they come from a credible source. If I’m reading this textbook in college, I’m already given some tools with which I can measure and verify some of these things for myself. And yet there are some concepts that are so advanced, that I have no way to verify them until I become a physicist myself and get access to all the tools that will help me research these things.
Same with us here. There are some things I can verify for myself even when I’m just starting in the fundamentals of this wisdom, and then there are things that I can verify only when I myself have reached attainment.
Keep in mind that although there were many different Kabbalists and Kabbalistic books throughout the generations, nowadays we mainly learn from the writings of Baal HaSulam and Rabash. They were the ones to adapt this wisdom specifically to the level of egoism found in our generation, so their writings are the most suitable for our correction.
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 Luke,
In Kabbalah, we learn that the commandments are allegories about the internal process of the correction of our desires. Meaning that first of all, we should perform these commandments internally, correcting our egoistic desires into that of love and bestowal.
Externally, if a person decides to perform these things physically as well, like it’s done in the Jewish religion, that’s up to them. But that’s not what we’re learning about here.
Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2016/02/mitzvot-commandments-the-correction-of-desires/
Albert @ KabU
