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What most inspired me in this course was learning the essential building blocks of Kabbalah and beginning to see how they fit together into a coherent picture. I originally started down this path because I wanted to understand what it really means to have free will—something everyone talks about, but few of us really stop to examine.
The idea that has affected me most is deceptively simple: there is only the Creator. The Creator’s nature is bestowal, while the creature’s nature is reception. Yet within us is an imprint of the Creator that allows us to recognize the difference between our nature and His. The Creator is concealed so that we can freely come to desire that equivalence ourselves—not by ceasing to receive, but by changing the intention behind reception from receiving for ourselves to receiving for the sake of the Creator. I have come to understand this choice of intention as the deepest meaning of free will.
I have also learned something about myself. As I study Kabbalah, my own path is becoming clearer and the limited identity I have constructed over a lifetime is beginning to fall into perspective. The material world is still very real, with all its demands, pleasures, disappointments and struggles, but I am beginning to understand its limitations and perhaps even its purpose. Those limitations awaken the desire to look beyond ourselves and gradually shift our intention from serving the ego toward serving the Creator.
Kabbalah teaches that there are two paths toward this correction: the path of suffering and the path of Light. For the first time, I feel that I can consciously participate in choosing the path rather than simply being pushed along it.
My wish for my fellow students is that each of us continues this journey together and discovers these principles through our own experience—not merely as ideas we understand intellectually, but as something we begin to perceive and live. May our connection help each of us move beyond the boundaries of the individual ego and gradually reveal the greater reality that has been concealed from us.
My work is to change my intention from receiving for myself to receiving in order to bestow upon the Creator. If bestowal is my orientation, then every condition becomes an opportunity to examine and correct my perception and intention.
There is none else besides Him; everything comes from the Creator. What I perceive as evil is the Creator’s bestowal experienced through my egoistic vessel. This understanding creates a space between what happens and how I respond. In that space lies my freedom: to correct my perception, trust that every condition serves my growth, and choose an intention that moves me toward equivalence of form with the Creator.
To view reality from the perspective of the Creator is to understand the spiritual roots of what is perceived in this world. It would present a clear, unbiased picture of the entire nature and sensation of reality which is 100% bestowal by the Creator. Therefore, one would be and feel 100% altruistic.
I just watched “Defining The Goal” that rounded out my perspective on bestowal and reception. The idea that to achieve Lishma one has to be all in, means that one has to enter and remain in a state of bestowal to the exclusion of reception.
Of course, that goes contrary to our nature which is to get what we want (…or need). Sometimes we don’t even get what we need and that becomes a big challenge to Lishma. Just ask Job.
But it reforming our very material nature to a spiritual nature implies becoming like the Creator and that requires developing the intention of giving at all times. Reception comes at a time and in a form we won’t perceive until it arrives.
This summary of the video is actually a question…
Exactly how does one focus intention to perceive the Creator at all times, in spite destabilizing bad conditions that arise– and they sure do arise?
As I absorbed the lessons in this course, I deliberately began perceiving and accepting every adversity as coming from the Creator as nothing but just more bestowal coming from the Creator. I just paid my tax bill the other day (it was a bummer, but now way around it), I stare down my expiring client engagements wondering when the next contract is coming (while the clock is ticking in the background), I’m navigating thorny family issues that arose out of nowhere (I do my part but it’s not entirely in my hands), I hold my breath waiting for an important asset transaction to materialize (stressful on several fronts) and that’s not all. I’m sure everyone can relate.
Through all these, now I just smile and thank the Creator for giving me everything and set my intention for everything to resolve for his sake (“serve it up, I’ll eat since it clearly makes You happy, otherwise you wouldn’t have sent it to me). I refuse to allow myself to think I don’t deserve any of this or that I even like adversity (any more than I like my wife’s lasagna). I just have to keep the right intention and eat what I have to eat. That’s it. Come what may– lasagna and all. That New York strip may come or maybe something better. Either way, I’m eating.
Is that it? Man, I hope I’m doing this right. 😄
I used to call this “maintaining equanimity” and it is, but now with a much stronger focus on the knowledge the 1) Creator is all there is, 2) that I am one soul with the collective and 3) the collective unites with the Creator. So, that means the “I” that needs all these great things to happen, doesn’t actually exist anywhere but between 6-inches from ear-to-ear.
Kabbalah teaches that the Creator’s very nature, defined as total bestowal (to the Creature) is constant and unchanging. Religions, on the other hand, operate under the idea the Creator can stop bestowing for many and unknown reasons (e.g., punishment, for more offerings, etc.). The latter feels illogical. A Creator with mood swings.
If the Creature perceives a negative event, the implication, for those with a religious practice is that the Creator is withholding bestow, which can mean the Creature did or failed to do something. Religion offers special prayers, pleas, sacrifices, rituals and amends to persuade the Creator to bestow again.
However, Kabbalah teaches that if the Creator is total bestowal at all times, and one’s focus should be being open to interpreting positive and negative conditions as coming from the Creator, as both only benefit the Creature. The idea is to change one’s perception of negative events so that they are instead perceived as bestowal in another form. That way, adversity is carried with certainty that everything (adversity too) comes from bestowal, while keeping one’s intention focused on Devekut.
Question: “How would you currently define the goal for which you are studying?”
I am studying Kabbalah because I have always sensed there is an underlying system that would make sense if I only find it. It’s clearly veiled in ancient symbols, in everything from religions to government institutions, logos and other things I could easily cite. I’ve always known but but couldn’t find the string that led here. The moment I ran across Kabbalah I knew I found it. The further I advance my these studies, the more it becomes clear that this is the original source of the divine system. It’s a rational system that explains who I am and why I’m here. It’s offers a step by step framework to develop the sixth sense to unit with the Creator while where here on earth. Now earth means Malcuth to me and I can begin to perceive beyond the things the surround the five senses.
