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Kabbalah is almost 6,000 years old. It predates religion. What was later created as external representations of what are in fact internal actions, people in our world call Mitzvot. But what the Upper Force actually demands of a person are not physical actions, He doesn’t cae “whether one cuts at the front or the back of the neck of the cow.” What He wants is the heart, to really change, from a Desire in order to receive, to a Desire that has a new sensory organ atop it called the Restriction & Screen. This way one will use all that one is, but in order to bestow. The ultimate all-inclusive Mitzva, according to Rabbi Akiva, is “love the other as you love yourself.” It’s love. Not the love we imagine in our world, but actual bestowal. And all the other Mitzvot, which all also have to do with the heart (as opposed to physical actions) are also only the details of the above-mentioned Mitzva. It follows that although some religions have gradually started using Kabbalah to strengthen the religion, as a kind of authority next to it, Kabbalah is actually unrelated to religion as religion stands today.
Kabbalah agrees that we have nothing to be ashamed of. We are under a law that was arranged before our universe, that says that we shall never again feel shame. That’s why a person lives their whole life never allowing himself to get into a shameful situation. By the same token, people would like to cause others to feel shame, especially when they do things we disapprove of. But spiritually speaking, the Shame that was felt in the Upper Worlds, will never be again because we will correct our desire to receive that lacks an intention to bestow, and then we will be able to receive the true pleasures without shame. Until then, what we experience in our world is called “thin candle” and not the true fulfilment that awaits us.
No, I don’t need to be ashamed if I’m Jeff Bezos. I earned all this because I’m diligent and smart. I deserve it. But not only that. Humanity is indebted to me. Look what wonderful convenience I’ve created for billions of people. Look what wealth my company has given its shareholders. If anything I deserve a Nobel prize. And no matter who you give as an example, they will have justified themselves similarly. Even a thief has his self-justification. Man lives his whole life as he does only to avoid ever feeling shame, and he never does. He would first die than truly feel shame. Every decision he makes is a calculation to avoid shame.
That’s right, Hing. We don’t need, don’t benefit from and even detract from spiritual advancement by breaking our corporeal desires, since those are considered above reproach. They are what you have to give this donkey you live with, for it to exist. The test is if I would prefer not to use it but I need it to live in this world: a normal apartment, car, career, family, etc. As long as it doesn’t get in the way of my spirituality. And if I live this way it becomes clear that I can use it all for the sake of the spiritual goal.
I understand only that the path to the Creator is a very narrow bridge. And ours is the perfect, ideal reality from which to reach it. It is utterly managed by iron laws of nature. We think we’re free and feel that we’re free, but we’re as managed as we understand the inanimate level of nature to be. A bit less we imagine the vegetative level to be under utter laws and government. A bit less we understand the sheer lack of free choice of the animate. And by the time we talk about ourselves, because we’re not above the degree but it’s subject, we’re already utterly convinced that we have free choice and you can’t tell us otherwise. But if we’d be on a higher degree (which we also can’t imagine exists) we’d see that we’re moving around like atoms according to their nature – not living real lives. And to rise to the Upper World, to that higher degree, is also by iron laws. One who reaches that level, and only he, can tell someone else how to reach it (it will never simply occur to the person how to do it, and he also can’t reach it with an a la carte method that seems right to his ego). Therefore he has to find a teacher that he thinks is authentic and follow his every advice. He has to trust his instinct, and choose once, and then stick with the path his chose, and correct himself there, and not be confused by each person or group that claims such and such. This is called “one studies where the heart desires.”
The Upper Force has no problem of time and space. So, another few billion years, no problem. But that same humanity – not the bodies but the desire that is their essence – will be the one to go through the corrections, and every moment longer it waits to undergo these corrections, they become harsher. Like a child who fails the 3rd grade 3 times, 4 times, each time he sees it’s a worse treatment he receives there – and yet the very same tests await him.
