[Niklas]

Thank you very much for your answer.

I am not so sure about the inside/outside the group thing. I have sometimes stumbled across the phrase “working ten”, so I imagine that we will form a smaller, tight group with which to study in later courses.

I can imagine that this provides possibilities that are impossible outside a “controlled environment” as you put it.

However, for now, I trust my intuition. I do feel that it takes a certain time and preparation to re-adjust the heart’s frequency to Kabbalah again, after having spent time with friends (even when those experiences are one of the most loving experiences I have ever had).

I will take from this reply that envy can be a motivating force, so even if it creates more suffering for others (initially) it still accelerates their process.

I once heard Gil Shir saying “you will feel what’s what and go from there”. Even though this is only starting and difficult sometimes, I want to trust my intuition nevertheless.

[Niklas]

Every day I am confronted more and more with envy. I think that this is one of my next big Reshimot. So, I would like to know, if Kabbalah has anything to say about envy specifically.

Right now, I am always leaning back and forth between self-protection and the protection of others. I try to avoid envious people, and if I have to interact with them, I try to avoid any topics that spark envy within them.

From experience I know that if you are envious of someone and you feel that this person has pure intentions (i.e. is still warm and friendly towards you), the envy hurts even more. So, I don’t even want to be friendly to envious people because I do not want them to feel the pain of envy.

As I said, this seems to be a Reshimot for me, and every day it gets a little harder to deal with it. What makes it even more confusing for me is that there are people who I dearly love and that dearly love me, but they are hit with this envy and they do not know what to do. I felt how a specific topic sparks intense envy for a friend of mine, but around this specific topic there is still strong love. So she doesn’t seem to know what to do either.

I would love to get ahead of this Reshimot, so it does not have to manifest as a “physical ordeal”, but rather it is experienced as a “voyage of discovery”, a “spiritual treasure hunt”.

[Niklas]

I wish for all of my classmates (but also to all of humanity) that they can live a beautiful life without trouble. A life full of excitement, wonder and inspiration. I wish for everyone that they find their place in life, that they know how to get there, that they always know what to do in each situation, and ultimately, that they are able to bring the beautiful thing that they are to its full expression.

[Niklas]

I was very curious to learn a little more about the symbolic language called “The Language of Roots and Branches”. Since I am coming from Christian Mysticism, I have had many symbolic dreams, visions etc.

I always said that those messages come from the “spirit world”. At first, I wasn’t sure, if Kabbalists talk about a different “spiritual world” than me. They do not because many, many messages from the spirit world fit in perfectly with Kabbalah. However, I have learned that I constantly misinterpret those messages completely. I already knew that they are talking in a symbolic language and that this symbolic language is always about inner states and feelings, but only through the wisdom of Kabbalah was I able to properly understand many of their messages.

In an attempt to make sense of the messages, I started creating a symbolic dictionary, so I can interpret the messages, relate them to inner feeling states and finally understand them. However, now I know that this approach is exactly the wrong way around. Kabbalists start with feeling states and by first attaining a concept deeply, they start to understand symbols correctly and are even able to write their own symbolic documents, eventually.

I feel like my approach is an approach that easily leads to confusion, so I will try the kabbalistic approach.

I learned that “Nations” stand for physical desires and “Israel” represents the desire to have a direct connection with or attainment of God. I also know that “angel” stands for “a force of nature”.

I believe that “queen” stands for the female, receiving principle (the will to receive) and King stands for the male, giving principle (the will to bestow).

With this knowledge, I want to share a song that has found me. As someone coming from Christian Mysticism and learning the symbolic meaning of Kabbalist words, the following song summarises all that I have learned or gone through up until the end of Week 3 ingeniously. As I said, I will stop trying to understand symbolic messages intellectually first, but use the kabbalistic approach of first attaining a concept and then understanding the symbols behind it instead. Still, I love that song.

For me, it has been sung from the Creator for the point in the heart.

Angel by Son & Dad: https://youtu.be/alMzOlqdiwo

[Niklas]

I want to share an excerpt from “Kabbalah for the Student” about this. It is from a chapter called “The Weakness of ‘World Reformers'”

This is the key to understand the weakness of world-reformers throughout the generations. They regarded man as a machine that is not operating properly and needs mending, meaning to remove the corrupted parts and replace them with good ones.

And that is the tendency of all world reformers—to eradicate any harmful and bad in the human species… and it is true that if the Creator had not stood against them, they would certainly have by now cleansed man entirely, living only the good and useful.

But because the Creator meticulously watches over all the elements in His Creation, not letting anyone destroy a single thing in His Domain but only reform it and make it useful and good, all the reformers of the above-mentioned kind will vanish from the face of the earth, and evil inclinations will not vanish. They live on and count the degrees that they must still traverse until they complete their ripening.

At that time, the bad attributes themselves will turn to good and useful ones, as the Creator had initially perceived them to be, like the fruit on the tree that sits and waits and counts the days and months it must still wait before the completion of its ripeness, at which time its taste and sweetness will become evident to any person.

However, I feel a certain tendency to buy into the thought of “I have the answers and all those world-reformers are wrong“. I don’t like that. So, here is another excerpt about this that hopefully softens the heart a bit.

It is from “Kabbalah for the student” chapter “Everything is Evaluated Not by its Appearance at a Given Moment, but According to its Measure of Development”

Everything in reality, good and bad, and even the most harmful in the world, has a right to exist and should not be eradicated from the world and destroyed. We must only mend and reform it because any observation of the work of Creation is enough to teach us about the greatness and perfection of its Operator and Creator. Therefore, we must understand and be very careful when casting a flaw in any item of Creation, saying it is redundant and superfluous, as that would be slander about its Operator.

All the above chapters are from the bigger chapter “Peace in The World”, if you are interested.

[Niklas]

I love your profile picture. I think as you keep learning about Kabbalah, you will be amazed at how ingeniously your profile picture relates to your expectations.

[Author]

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