Forum Replies Created
- Replies
Yes, all of our lives in this world are to accumulate enough impressions – and these are inevitably impressions of the suffering and futility of all our pursuits in this world, and the little bit of good is only because you can’t feel one thing without comparing to it’s opposite. That’s why the Upper Force also sends us good. But it is not interested in us feeling good in this world unless we will alongside it be striving to fulfill the goal for which our life was created, because it has a specific goal, and the Upper Force only thinks of this goal. That’s why for us what is considered dark is actually the Light, because the Light is was brings us closer to the goal, but what brings us closer to the goal is what takes us further from our comforts, doesn’t let us rest, causes us to ask “what is the purpose of living in this world?” In short, it pushes us towards the inner change in which we will truly feel the darkness as Light. We exist already in the Upper World filled with eternal sublime pleasures like a cat exists at a grand symphony. We don’t have the right vessels to enjoy this Light. Therefore, we need new vessels, which start to be formed during the study of the wisdom of Kabbalah, and then we’ll feel the wondrous world in which we exist.
That’s good. But the same way knowledge about this world would be useless if you weren’t also in that world you’re researching, we need to attain the Upper World, to be born into it. Then that inclination for knowledge could make you a great Kabbalist. The Creator created a wondrous Upper World, worlds, which are for us to discover, then research.
That’s what Kabbalah is for, to open up this seed, which has in it the potential to open up the Upper Worlds. It’s a closed point for now but out of this precious point emerges a whole new reality. It needs around it people who also have this point (this can be a virtual society like ours), books by those who already attained that Upper World, and a teacher (which can also be through the computer screen).
Because knowledge is the highest of desires of this world after which we start wanting to attain the world that exists beyond our five senses. Before that we strive, first, just to feel, in our sense of touch, various plastic toys, and people, first mom, then someone of the opposite sex perhaps, we wish to rear children. These forms exist in our desire, want it or not. It’s there somewhere, eternal. We always want to delight in food, and various other pleasures of the body. Realizing the limitations of all these fulfilments, we also wish to make these fulfilments more accessible, so we desire money. It’s a quantitative way of guaranteeing I’ll have these fulfilments and also to ensure my safety, which is my ease, since my most basic need is not to have to move, since movement is suffering. Once I’ve secured these basics, I also wade into a new domain of pleasure, which is the social domain, and here I use whatever I can, to gain Respect, honor. If my desire is at this level, then I use the other desires, to this end. So it could be that I need more and more money, to get respect. It could be that I acquire vast knowledge, but it’s to aim at a lower level desire, of respect. Or, I could use the fact that I already have respect, for whatever reason, in order to get an even lower order desire, such as money. For example, I use by famous name to get money and I don’t care about the adulation so much. After moving through these degrees, where I am involved in all of them – food, sex, family, money, power, honor and knowledge – but I use them in a way that all the others serve the degree of desire that is my primary desire – I move through these desire like a baby moves from wanting to play with a ball, to wanting to play with dolls, to wanting to play with other kids, to greater and greater desires, up to, say, wanting to win a Nobel prize in physics. We too, as adults, move through the desires (not necessarily in a single lifetime) until we reach the desire for knowledge. But not in order to win a Nobel prize (honor/money) or for the sake of creating a nuclear bomb (power), but for the sake of knowing the truth itself. And within this Knowledge desire it could be that I am not developed enough to realize that to settle on a certain philosopher’s summary of “the truth” – say, Plato, Nietzsche, etc. – is not actually the complete picture and perhaps not even the correct one. And here it is possible that I discover in me a new desire that doesn’t belong to any Earthly ones. It’s the Point in the Heart, a spark that fell from the Upper World, into my desire. It demands actual attainment of the wisdom of Kabbalah specifically. It can’t settle for merely hearing about the Upper Worlds by those who attained them. When it learns the wisdom of Kabbalah, it feels like a truth that has always existed deep within, as if it somehow knows all of this already. It has to learn about the state it used to be in before it fell and became enrobed in the body of this world so that it can rise back up, in full attainment of the Upper World, even more concretely than we feel and attain this world. Every person will go through these stages of development of the desire as surely as a child goes through infancy, adolescence, etc. This means that everyone, too, will attain the purpose of this development which is the awakening of the Point in the Heart, and attainment of the Creator.
Hi SJE,
It’s ok to be lost with this material, it’s speaking of a reality we don’t feel yet, but which we can start to feel gradually.
Baal HaSulam writes in Item 155 of the Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot:
“Although they do not understand what they are learning, through the yearning and the great desire to understand what they are learning, they awaken upon themselves the Lights that surround their souls…Hence, even when he does not have the vessels, when he engages in this wisdom, mentioning the names of the Lights and the vessels related to his soul, they immediately shine upon him to a certain extent. However, they shine for him without clothing the interior of his soul, for lack of able vessels to receive them. Yet, the illumination one receives time after time during the engagement draws upon him grace from Above, imparting him with abundance of sanctity and purity, which bring him much closer to achieving perfection.
Therefore, if you have specific questions, we can delve into them and come closer to these matters.
