Forum Replies Created
- Replies
Sorry, my post from below was accidentally submitted twice, so I deleted the repetition here but couldn’t figure out how to delete the entire second message.
So, from the video, it sounds like feeling the future and past are more aligned with being closer to the Creator’s level. Is this correct?
And yet…, it has always seemed to me that when I dwell on the past or future (which I do far more often than I would like), I am most distant from any sense of connection to my Creator. In fact, that tends to make me feel like I am on the dark side of the moon rather than basking in the sunlight of the spirit. By contrast, when I am truly in the flow of the present moment, I feel most peaceful and connected to life. And other spiritual sources, like meditative/mindfulness books, tend to echo this. They emphasize that the spirit of peace is best found in the present moment.
So, can you please explain, which way should I understand this part of the message? My experience tells me one thing but the video suggested another… Thank you.
Close my eyes and breathe. Then open them and look around with a different psychological lens informed by spirituality.
I am blown away by the thought that anything could be better / more fulfilling than strawberry shortcake with whipped cream and sauce…..(just kidding 🙂
More seriously, this lesson really got me thinking about self-worth, & critically questioning the delusion that one is only of value when one is constantly giving to others, people pleasing etc. Because now, it seems that’s just being stuck on the egoistic shame-based levels where the creature refuses to receive anything from the Creator. The next higher level is when you start to let a bit of the Light in, knowing that Accepting the Light is valuable in and of itself because it’s living up to one’s nature & serving the Creator’s desire to bestow. So that was insightful.
What I also personally find valuable in this is that, unlike the 10 commandments (there’s another #10!) where the instructions are (a) half about the relationship between humanity and God, and the (b) other half about the relationship with one’s fellow humans, my understanding of what Kabbalah is trying to communicate here is that it is also important to not neglect cultivating a more enlightened relationship to oneself. Denying one’s own fundamental human needs is not the higher path. Rather, just adding a filter of spiritual intent onto that (in order to attain the ultimate purpose of bestowal) is the higher path.
It’s funny, I’m not Christian but what this makes me think of (this ultimate objective for us to learn to be more like the Creator), is that this could be why, historically, there was a movement where “the Word” (eg., written in Torah) became flesh (eg., in the narrative of Jesus). In the book of Matthew, Jesus said he was not there to remove or add any words from the Law, but simply to uphold it. And this “evolution in teaching methods” fits also with modern scientific understandings of learning theory (eg., Albert Bandura) that humans learn more easily how to behave a certain way by seeing behavioural role models that they can visualize and emulate, than they do via verbal persuasion alone.
So maybe his appearance in history was to enable the broader world (who might have had difficulty learning from words alone), to visualize better what altruism/compassion looks like? And to accelerate humanity’s learning in that regard?
But then what bubbles up is my feeling that it’s such a tragedy that, even if this were so, that it had to be simultaneously accompanied by so much harsh negation of those who were still content on learning via the Word approach (eg., pogroms, inquisitions, expulsions, restrictions on land ownership, etc etc., culminating not only in the Holocaust but in all the current political troubles & grief to others associated with the return to the homeland). So I guess my other question is: Will Kabbalah ever bring me to a point of appreciating why THAT degree of evil was necessary ?
Part of me wants the answer to be yes, to be given a sort of soothing pablum that positions it all as part of a larger Divine intention & just makes me feel better. Another part of me is very wary of any such pablum because of the concern it will promote a kind of “codependent tolerance of evil”. Like, the way that a battered spouse concludes “Oh God didn’t really mean it to be nasty like that, He really meant well in the end.”. Am I to be led down a path where I look at the suffering in the world around me as “just an illusion” caused by God’s higher purpose to get everyone pursuing their own selfish desires until they realize a better way? Like, putting two fighting creatures into an arena actually serves some sort of Divine higher purpose? Is this really necessary before humanity can just attain the higher wisdom ?
In short, my desire to learn more is currently struggling with a rageful judgement about the viciousness of God’s Teaching methods (and this is not directed to Kabbalah in particular, but the latest Kabbalah lesson is just stirring this up more.)
