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I was looking for a quote from Unlocking the Zohar (which I only have an audio copy of.)
It was about how the Creator punishes egoistic behavior.
(Context for my use of the word punishment: So, we are 100% made of egoism, but the universe cannot exist by egoistic principle. So the whole arc of reality is the Creator prodding us as gently as possible, while remaining hidden, towards this realization and the process of learning how to conform to the law of bestowal so that we can use our egoistic nature in a way that is harmonious with reality, and then we can have all the agency of using those laws. And it seems like all this is saying that in the end the Creator clothes completely in me, so I am the one instigating all these “punishments” in order to draw myself through this maze. I understand punishment in that context.)
In this passage it describes the ways the Creator prods people. It says that He always will “strike a person” in their body first, so that it is private between them and the Creator and “no one will know” that person is being struck. And then if that doesn’t work He strikes them “beneath their clothes.” I don’t know what that means, but I think it’s a more overt punishment, but not one that others can see or understand that person is experiencing a punishment. And if that does not work the Creator “strikes them in the face.” Which is a punishment that is public and everyone can see that person is not currently “loved by their master.”
I think this might be a description of how the Creator is trying to communicate with us when we are not making spiritual progress fast enough to stave off bigger punishments. He sends us internal (health and discomfort) punishments to get us to remember Him and turn to him internally. I think maybe other people skip relatively quickly past the internal punishments to the public ones of having a hard life, because their attitude is such that the process of punishment is faster and harder.
My question is kind of personal, and it is if that is the reason why my sister and I have so many health problems?
She is the only other person in my life who sees reality the same way I do. We have always had this secret dynamic of supporting each other in taking huge risks based on faith. And because of this we do very well from a material standpoint. We are able to do a lot of risky activism and treatments of cases and we succeed at that, even in a lot of scenarios where it’s like David vs Goliath and you’d think we’d be obliterated every time. (It’s really scary for our mom to watch, lol.) But we are always fine.
Except we both have chronic health problems that are like a wave we are always trying to surf and could crash over us at any moment. Hers are especially intense and scary. I understand the ways this has benefited us. We wouldn’t have any of these businesses or do the work we do if these ailments hadn’t caused us to learn so much. (Although nothing we cure others with ever seems to work on ourselves.)
If these are communications from the Creator I want to understand how to interpret them more clearly. I really feel that “donkey driver” analogy because it seems like the Creator and I are separated by a mattress and the only way He can tell me what I need to do is by whacking it at significant moments. It’s so frustrating.
I want to increase the “resolution” of my interpretation of the “whacks” so we are not making a thousand guesses what each thing might be trying to tell us. I suppose that’s what you mean in that analogy of the machine where you only need to know exactly where to hit it. Is there a way to look at specifics of what is happening to us to understand what we’re being asked to do? Or all I can do is keep reading these Kabbalah books?
The search functionality on the library at Kabbalah.info seems to be broken. Is it just broken in my browser, or I should try to report it to someone?
Realizing that this is like a dream and we can choose to wake up by understanding that everything that is good can only be achieved through doing the opposite of what the stories of this world appear to depict on their surface. That everything consciously chosen and understood must replace everything we passively accepted as true without examination.
I was thinking about this question and it seems like the difference is that in a religion there’s a middle man telling you what’s what about reality and “(hearsay) about divinity.
Kabbalah is a system of protocols to discover for yourself and so far every protocol I’ve been able to implement had precisely the result they described.
When I read about the concept of “the left rejects” it makes me wonder if a material consequence of this function in the spiritual world is what causes all my sensitivities and allergies. My whole life seems to be composed of trying things that work fine for everyone else, and discovering that I can’t use them. There are very few foods I can eat without problems. I’m sensitive to a lot of drugs. I am a “sensory defensive,” meaning I can’t function in most environments. I can’t tolerate most people’s entertainment… it gives me tics and nightmares. And I adore people, but they have little use for me since I can’t partake in most of what they do in life. So I mostly take a role of observe and emotional support from a distance, instead of having active relationships.
It’s like I am backed into a tiny corner of reality. I like my corner a lot. But it’s minuscule compared to what most people seem able to experience and consume.
Is this a side effect of “the left rejects?”
It helps me to think about stories I’ve read or seen that are believable and relatable, where something seemingly horrible happened and it ended up being necessary for the best possible outcome. My very favorite storylines have a character who started out as the villain, and did horrible things and horrible things happened to them, but they changed as they went along and turned into the hero in the end. Sometimes the characters remind me of how I was or things I did when I was a teenager. When I look at people around me who didn’t go through anything like that when they were young they seem to be stuck in a thinner reality that’s boring to them and they feel aimless. It seems probable that the difficulties are the direct cause of what’s good about my life now. I think this might be true on a collective scale too.
I try to think of those concepts when I’m trying to understand how I could 100% agree with this reality if I understood the underpinnings of it.
