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This week has really impacted my dreams. Now when I dream I am every person in that dream. Like I had one where I was being chased by a team of people with guns, but I wasn’t afraid because I knew exactly when and how to duck and turn and hide.
And then I was the man who was leading that team and they were in a debriefing and he was eating a durian fruit, and I knew what it felt like to like the taste and texture of durian.
These multi-person dreams are much more vivid and detailed than a regular dream. It is so interesting, and seems so normal in that context.
Understanding that it is ALL you and yours.
I was getting worried about finishing this course because the weekend before last I was able to attend two live meetings and it was great. But after that I got hammered with so much illustration work that I couldn’t even do my reading or any of the interactive stuff. All I could do was listen to the Basic Concepts in Kabbalah and Kabbalah Explained Simply playlists on YouTube. And I was in a bit of a panic because I was afraid the world was kicking me out like it did a long time ago when I first did these courses and then was pulled away from Kabbalah for more than a decade.
But then I was able to come back today and watch the Revelation and Concealment video. And I realized that everything I was shown in the past two weeks was actually walking me through some realizations I absolutely had to have to understand this video. It wasn’t that I was being kicked out at all. It wasn’t rejection, it was special attention.
And that makes me very excited to get to group work at some point.
And it makes me very grateful for all the work they do at B’nei Baruch, because as soon as I came back here I could feel all this understanding and effort that was like held in escrow for me. I returned to discover this wonderfully playful and attentive version of reality. I feel like somehow they prepared that for me.
It sounds like coming from that belief system that instills a habit of intention to agree with the Creator might be a big help in advancing in Kabbalah. In my experience the difference we have to bridge, coming from Christianity, is to understand that there are no exceptions in the Creator’s will to bestow on us. His will is all love and good to all of us all the time. . . none of the judgements or exclusions we’ve learned in church apply.
I think the recurring theme I see about this concern is “fake it till you make it.” Trying to emulate the Creator will attract the assistance of the Light, which will set up scenarios for us where it is possible to be like the Creator through our natural desires combined with our new intentions.
It’s like Gianni said in the Spiritual GPS video, we have to get in alignment in order to aim correctly, in order to see correctly. It’s like we are out of phase with reality. Like you can only see reality through a narrow aperture, or through a fiber optic cable. If we are looking at it out of alignment we might see a bit of a glow coming from that area, but definitely not a discernible image.
But if we read the texts and we understand that we are moving ourselves by changing ourselves on the inside, then at some point we will be in the alignment where that image resolves on our organ of perception (the kli, like an eye,) and reality will come into focus.
Maybe that machsom barrier is just the point where we move from running away from the painful consequences of our egoism, to gaining some perception of the Creator and being drawn towards it?
My preparation is to want the change so I can be moved to the exact right spot to see.
It is fascinating to compare my experience this time to when I studied here 10 years ago. At that time I recall everything I learned seemed to have wrenching quality of being paradoxical and in jarring opposition to life as I knew it.
At the time I didn’t have a job and my family was really struggling to make ends meet. I think that maybe I used Kabbalah as a way to escape from the world, and that version of an internality emphasized the chasm between me and everyone and everything in my life. I ended up having to quit when my life hit the Emergency Eject button on me.
I had learned enough at that point to feel like I had a strong idea how the world worked, and it definitely did help me for all those years I was gone. I was able to approach everything from the standpoint that this is probably good if I just wait to see how it plays out. And it was. But I couldn’t get any closer. I didn’t get to participate in the meaning that Kabbalah imbued the world with.
Now that I am back here everything is different. I feel like this space was carefully prepared for me. It’s easy to be here and everything around me seems to support my studies. Everything that used to seem to contradict Kabbalah now fits perfectly in its place, as Kabbalah describes it.
Those last videos where the Rav describes the appropriateness of taking care of your life and getting to a sustainable and peaceful point in it before you begin to study… that makes so much sense now.
And this time I definitely get to participate. There is a humor to the process, and there are hints everywhere that everything I’ve ever dreamed of is not only possible, but probable, and inevitable.
