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Why is it our custom here to draw everything but that? There must be some benefit inherent to those diagrams that could not be extracted from one of the sefirot?
I try not to imagine spiritual things in corporeal ways, and it’s easier the longer I study. It’s clear the spiritual things are concepts and feelings, not objects in the corporeal sense. The one thing I still have not run across a useful description for is the sefirot themselves. I see other places outside of BB are very fixated on them, like some kind of weird magic objects of power. That is off-putting. But I have had literally nothing else to substitute for this gross clunky metaphor because no materials I have seen here describe what they are, other than connected to each other.
But today in the morning lesson “There Is No Blessing In That Which Is Counted” Rav gives a description in a certain context. He says in this context imagine that the 10 sefirot are your skeleton. And it is completely unique to you, like a chassis that you build the partzuf upon anew in each degree. They are not interchangeable, and their qualities in you, compared to another, differentiate what you appreciate and apprehend about the degree.
In another lesson a few weeks ago he mentioned in passing that every “prayer” every desire, even the tiniest, has its own ten sefirot and that absolutely none are like another. All are unique. And I have heard other times that every discrete part of the world is composed of a set of sefirot.
So, based on the little information I have:
– there are specific number of them, which means they’re discrete from each other.
– their names suggests they are themselves characteristics.
– you enter the spiritual world when you first make (a mental model of?) a full set of them.If all these things are true I would imagine them to be similar to a combination lock … or an RPG trait character sheet… or maybe even a piston engine… that all are in certain strength in relation to each other. And that this unique set of relations to each other is what makes the unit unique.
Is this in any way a better placeholder for them in my mental model of reality than a magic fire gem?
ok, that definitely makes sense. It’s clear we get 20X the view of ourselves from the side here compared to the rest of reality.
The past week’s morning lessons Rav gave an example of a person as a box with many layers and pieces, where one piece at a time we recognize the unique deficiency for the Creator in that piece, and ask Him to correct it. And then we move on to the next piece.
In another lesson he described eating as “sorting” all the desires in this world, over and over, as they are different to us as we develop. And he mentioned in that one that the will to receive is evenly mixed down to every particle of reality, which is why we must all sort it completely and repeatedly.
A couple days ago the lesson was about “The Righteous Become Apparent Through the Wicked.” And in that lesson he talked about how the entire substance of our reality is a deficiency for the Creator. And the purpose is to surround us with evil to compare unfavorably to the qualities of the Creator. And I think he means that this negative image we form of reality etches out an accurate image of the Creator, who is opposite to it, but we cannot look at Him directly because it would revoke our free will and individuality. So this is the only way we can figure out what He is like, by what is clearly the opposite.
These three lessons built a different perspective on the friends that I wanted to check with you.
In the YG group curriculum they taught us that the friends are actually fully corrected, and that we only see evil in them because of our own fractured perspective at our low degree. I understand how this is still accurate in the context of these new lessons, BUT I had read the wrong implication into that. I thought they were implying that the friends are an example for us to emulate. I thought it meant that the behavior of the friends was somehow perfect, and that any way my judgment saw them differently was a flaw, so I must annul by accepting them unconditionally and emulating them even if it routinely conflicts with Rav’s description of the Creator and reality.
This became an untenable paradox for me when I started watching the morning lesson daily. I would compare what Rav instructed to what the friends did or said, and get so confounded by it that reality became completely nonsensical to me, and I had to leave the group.
But  now it sounds like Rav is saying that every single bit of our reality at this degree is mixed with evil, including the friends. In that context what the friends are showing me is not an example to emulate, but a unique deficiency for the Creator. I can infer the unique quality of the Creator that is missing for that person, and add it to my tiny version of the Creator missing for myself, like a piece of a puzzle.
In that way, they are like the box with many levels that Rav described. My judgment isn’t actually on the friend. It’s a discernment of what seems to be missing there, and what I can make out of the Creator’s qualities based on that unique darkness. And if this is the case, no matter how badly they behave or what they say, it is helpful in this pursuit. In that case they are not contradicting Rav at all, just illuminating concepts with their opposite behaviors.
Does this seem accurate?
In reference to the morning lesson about “Why the Festival of Matzot is Called Passover:”
When he says that the Creator gathers only the ascents and kills (doesn’t see) the descents, to compose the soul… does that mean the descents disappear completely as if they never happened? Do we forget those records like a past incarnation? Or do we remember the whole story of ourselves and it’s only the Creator who counts only our best parts and nothing else?
In the live lesson that just finished they were discussing the article about selling the beams of your house. That’s one of my favorite articles.
It seems to imply that it’s more valuable to the Creator the effort you put into the fractured relationships rather than the ones that feel genuine.
I am interpreting that since the beams that you are selling (passing across the screen/floor/shoes to not use those egoistic desires?) are the ones that criticize the friends, that seems to mean that the Creator is “paying” for the work on the bad connections. It doesn’t say anything about the value of the good beams.
This reminds me of a question I have about the preparation for the Congress: Is it better to focus your prayers on the desires to connect that are genuine, like having a deficiency to connect with the friends that you really feel a longing for, in order to raise a real prayer? Or is it better to focus your prayers on the desires to overcome the shattering or the “gap” where you can see that you cannot desire to connect with that friend because you don’t know them well or any other reason?
Does that make sense? Is it more valuable to raise a genuine prayer, or to ask for the deficiency?
