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Very peaceful. In hindsight, I am connecting memories of different instances that, together, make sense as learning experiences toward a unified spiritual development.
After I walked away from the religion of my childhood because of trauma, the fragment of kli in my heart sat like a splinter in a festering wound, symbolizing disconnection not only from the larger kli of all humanity, but from my particular community. My need for reconnection to something larger grew only bigger over time.
After these lessons (like, “formal religious beliefs actually impede spirituality” – WOW, my heart has not sensed a truer thing spoken by a spiritual teacher before…), I am now feeling that the teachings from the spiritual journey I have been on for the past several years (a 12 step program for eating disorders, & the kundalini yoga) have actually, all along, been the Creator holding my hand and gradually walking me home, in a sense (toward my spiritual inheritance, but without disconnecting me from the extended human family of connections and deeper spiritual insights I’ve made along the way). This feels like an enormous gift.
Honestly, my prayer is for you folks to have a presence in all Jewish schools in the diaspora. (Perhaps other schools would be open to it as well, I don’t know, but I know I would have benefitted enormously from your insights as a child and teenager when my world was crumbling around me). Just feeling very grateful right now.
Hi Corey
I’m new at this like you, but I see no one has answered your question yet. So I hope it’s okay to share my wild guess here (with the hope that an instructor would jump in to provide further correction as needed.):
My guess is that someone who has passed away would have — in the course of their passing — transitioned from “the real world” to the “hidden world” . At that point, all the good (higher) qualities that this person cultivated in life would become blended in with the Higher whole. But if this person proactively cultivated NO redeeming qualities on their own when in the real world, I think they would somehow still become reconnected to the root because everyone begins life gifted with that little point of Light in their heart (whether or not they cultivated that seed any further). And that little point is their ticket Home (And while we might be inclined to think they end up with a bit less real estate within that larger root compared to others who had cultivated more quality, I’m not sure it would matter up there. Maybe interconnectedness with all the other great qualities is the dominating force.)
I would be most grateful if the next Kabbalah lesson could convince me – really and truly convince me – that it’s okay to let go of the reins of vigilance (eg., stop doomscrolling the news) because the true nature of reality is that the Creator completely has my back. And not just in some after life, but in this world.
I do believe that something higher has carried me from a dark bottom earlier in my life (lived experience of abuse & inter-generational trauma), but also believe that I played an important accompanying role in my survival by making wise & ethical choices along the way, including focusing my career in a loving direction (ie., on remedying the roots of suffering that other families like mine encountered). Yet I also feel, sadly, that my contribution has been just a drop in an ever growing bucket.
So, in a nutshell, surviving is not quite thriving when I am still holding onto the reins tightly. I suspect I’m blocking my kli from receiving more of the Light by doing this but, I don’t know how to trust the universe I guess.
Here’s what has been blowing my mind, from both Lesson 1 & the extra materials videos that accompanied it: It is recognizing how all these Kabbalistic words & symbols have been already emerging in my life over the past 10 years before I finally signed up to this website yesterday, on my birthday (exactly 40 years since I made the conscious decision to cut ties from my faith of origin, which I also only realized last night, like my 40 years in some kind of spiritual sleepwalk in the desert). A couple of specific examples:
1. Ein Sof (infinity) – I bought a necklace with the infinity symbol a few years ago because it felt like the only expression of spirituality I could relate to
2. Repeated references to “ The Light”: I joined a yoga group ( a kind of kundalini) because I feel universalistic in my soul and I was searching for spirituality, and they make constant reference to their version of the divine being “The Light”
3. The hidden interconnectedness: I had come across this concept in many readings from other domains, but it eventually influenced my research interests in sustainability
4. The notion of our earthly focus to desire to enjoy life: A roofer who did our home roof over a decade ago brought tears to my eyes (I’m sure he thought I was nuts), when he came to sign the contract, because his mannerisms reminded me so much of my late father who I really missed. So I asked this man if he was Jewish, and he said yes, how did I know? It was just something subtle but I felt it. And then he said “Our purpose here is to enjoy our lives”. Like, philosophy from a roofer, out of the blue. It was so weird. And only thinking about it now am I realizing that my late paternal grandfather, who I never met, was also a roofer back in Eastern Europe.
A friend once told me coincidence is the Creator’s way of remaining anonymous. But what this first lesson & videos are telling me, is that these fragmented pieces are the Creator’s way of letting me know I was never alone. He/(It) was probably just shaking a hand like my Dad used to do and saying, “Nu? Ready to learn yet?”. Sorry for the long post… just feeling like there’s already so much value to unpack….
