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For me, the goal is to gain first hand experience of the true nature of reality which includes the true nature of who I am, why I am here and where I am going. The Kabbalists suggest that there is a singular force of bestowal that is responsible for all phenomena and that its intent is to fill me with unbounded delight; my goal is to validate that claim for myself.
If the Creator is the only force active in the universe then I can come to feel that truth by emptying my mind of the concept that the Creator is only present in my life when positive experiences occur. By getting rid of my narrow preconceived notion about what the Creator is and expanding it to include every aspect of my experience I can come to realize that the Creator uses both positive and negative events in my life as a means to draw me closer to him. If The Creator’s true intent was to create a creature and fill it with unbounded delight then the question becomes, “In what way is this present experience a part of the Creator’s master plan?” Rather than resisting these painful events and viewing them as some form of punishment, I can look into them with a sense of curiosity and attempt to understand the Creator’s motivation behind why he would cause a particularly challenging event to unfold in my life. Perhaps he realizes I have become complacent with my present set of circumstances which have stunted my growth and development towards the ultimate goal. Through the creation of discomfort or some new found sense of dissatisfaction it would force me to look for something sufficient to gratify that empty space. The Creator skillfully uses both hands to draw me nearer to him. With one hand he creates a demand within my heart and with the other he graciously supplies that demand.
I believe true freedom is when an individual is not subject to compulsive behavior surrounding their own likes and dislikes. Often times we are under the impression that we are choosing something but in reality we are enslaved by our desires and our fears. Often times we may avoid acting in alignment with our hearts truest intention out of fear of negative consequences or because we are consumed by something that is seemingly more pleasurable. If we were truly free, we would always act in alignment with our deepest intentions and not be persuaded to do anything else to include outside forces such as the approval and criticisms of others. The greatest freedom would be to realize our oneness with the creator and attain the state of pure altruism resulting in such a deep state of fulfillment that the surplus joy we experience would naturally result in an outpour of love in all directions, with no concern of receiving anything in return because there is no perceived sense of lack. When Unconditional love perceives a sense of lack, its natural impulse is to go and fill that void. There is no consideration as to whether the perceived sense of lack belongs to itself or another. The concept of self and other do not arise in such a state. A being that withholds any type of assistance from someone in need is often acting from a place of selfishness. They perceive a sense of separation and their circle of concern ends at the boundary of their own skin or perhaps at the edge of their social circle. Most of us have a very small number of people that we are consistently concerned about and these are the people that we consider important to us. All others either fall into categories of people that we feel neutral towards or have active hostility towards. The people that are important to us collectively belong to our extended sense of self. This selective group of others allows us to form an acceptable sense of “me” and we are willing to engage in many things to help preserve and reinforce that sense of “me”. Those that fall into either the neutral or hostile categories don’t appear to contribute to our constructed sense of self, therefore we express little to no concern for them. The Great work then is to maximize our circle of concern to include all beings through the realization that all is one in the light of the creator and that nothing is lacking it. Through becoming one with this unlimited force of generosity, we are free to express boundless love with no fear of ill consequences.
<p style=”text-align: left;”>Thank you very much Seth! The doctor analogy is very helpful and believing in something as a means to test whether I can verify it with my own experience is a concept I can get behind. Sorry I meant to reply under my own comment rather than here.</p>
My best experience from the previous course was the insight that my egotism serves as a sort of filter on the whole of reality. When viewed from the relative lens of self concern, the world is oversimplified into a big bad place where very little is in my control. Things are only seen in the light of how they can benefit or threaten my personal agenda. I expect that this course will expand on the concepts introduced previously and hopefully begin to explain how to become more altruistic so as to align myself with the form of the creator and experience reality in its fullness.
Is belief a prerequisite in order to experience the truth of Kabbalah? I am a very experience-oriented person but will this skepticism serve as an obstacle for me? Generally speaking when it comes to science, one begins with a hypothesis or a theory and experiments are conducted to either validate or debunk that theory. In mundane sciences A scientist’s belief isn’t a deciding factor in the successful outcome of his/her experiment. Regardless of what they believe the truth makes itself known. In Kabbalah it is being suggested that there is no one besides him and on some deep level I believe this but this very superficial belief of mine is strongly outnumbered by the overwhelming amount of sensory data that tells me otherwise. To believe that there is one singular force responsible for everything that occurs runs contrary to the apparent multiplicity that a human being experiences on a day to day basis and the only thing that would encourage someone to take such a radically different stance is the suggestion of another view by someone else. I don’t doubt the claim that the creator is the sole force behind everything on an intellectual level but I have a hard time putting faith into concepts that are not based in my own direct experience because it resembles the blind-faith approach of many religions. The choice of words being that a person “should” believe that there is no one besides him and that a belief in an opposing force is a heresy may be true but to an individual with no personal experience to back that claim, on what grounds should they adopt it as a belief? I hope that I am not coming off as disrespectful in any way, I am just looking for some advice on how to make the science of Kabbalah work for me with my skeptical mind. Any guidance you can provide would be greatly appreciated!
