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Kim,
The most perfect answer ever!
I’ll try to keep up the quality of work here.
Regarding all of the baggage that you are bringing from previous places… first of all, have some gratitude for all that prepared you for where you are now and the path you are on.  Second, you will have to work with this and if you want to advance, you will need to get past it.
A person who still speaks like he did in 5th grade will not succeed as a lawyer.
Similarly, all of the definitions and concepts that you grew up will not help you in a new place with new definitions.
What is a sin?
What is love?
Who are Adam and Eve?
What is day and night?
What is the exodus from Egypt?
For a kabbalist, all of these things are inner states that each person will go through.Instead of answering, what is a sin in kabbalah? first you need to know what is this wisdom you found and how does it depict reality, what words do the kabbalists use and if they say sin, what do they mean? When they say Israel & the 70 nations of the world, they are talking only about the different desires in each and every person.
So, follow the lessons and try to grasp what we are learning. If things are not clear, write down notes in your notebook.
And importantly, do not apply definitions from another place to what you hear in the wisdom of kabbalah.
It will confuse you a lot and you will not be able to move forward naturally.
Seth@KabUPaul,
You are correct, when referring to the name Yud Hey Vav Hey the kabbalists refer to it as HaVaYaH.
(Others sound it out and come up with something like YaHoVaH. That has nothing to do with what we are engaged in at all.)
When the Creator is in the aspect of dwelling, he is called Shochen and the place where He dwells is called Shechina, but I don’t know much about Hinduism and so I won’t speak about it.Yud Hey Vav Hey is a primordial code that we study in other original source books. All of reality is encoded in this name, similar to our human code is encoded in our DNA.
Seth@KabUSteve,
Before the emanations were emanated and the creatures were created, the Upper Simple Light filled the whole existence.
And then upon His simple will, came the desire to create a creature who could enjoy all of that Light. That infinite vessel that was created to hold that Light, is called Malchut of Ein Sof.
Ein Sof means without end.
In spirituality there are not higher and lower and more and less.
All of those calculations are related to our world in order that we can measure where we are in relation to the Creator.
To be like Him, we need to become 100% bestowing, as He is bestowing.
But His desire is to fill us with His abundance, so we need to also receive His abundance in order to bring Him contentment, to fulfill the purpose of creation, which is to create a creature and fill it with endless abundance and delight.
So as you were sort of saying, the end of this process of creation is when we will receive, but we receive not in order that our ego will delight, but we receive in order that the Creator will be delighted, since He wants to fill us.
So we do end up being eternally fulfilled in the end.
It’s like a game between child and parent.
Seth@KabUKim,
We limit the books that we study from to only books written by kabbalists who have reached the spiritual degrees that they are writing about.
We have major works like the Study of the Ten Sefirot by Baal HaSulam, which itself expands on the Tree of Life by the ARI. These texts describe how the light of Ein sof emanates from above to below and cascades down through the worlds, partzufim and sefirot.
Additionally we have texts that deal with our inner work from the opposite direction, from below to above. Where we study all of the degrees that we go up as we retrace the steps that the light took as it was concealed and came down until our world.
But your question is clear, and demands and answer, why all of this system in the first place?!
And here we have a simple answer, however it takes time and effort to understand.
The kabbalists explain that we are still in the field of endless light, love and bestowal. However we don’t feel it, we feel the opposite, that we are always deficient, empty and far from the Creator.
They explain that in the state where we are totally absorbed and one with the Creator, with the endless fulfillment, there in that place we don’t feel ourself at all. The Light is so great, the pleasure so great that we lose all sense of self and are totally absorbed. To give you a much smaller example, image if your biggest role model of all time were to come to you and ask to spend the day with you. Could be the person you admire and hold the highest in your eyes and this person wants to spend the day with you. So you would be happy to carry his or her bag, to eat where she wants to eat, to talk about what she wants to talk about, you wouldn’t care about your own needs because you just want to be with this other person. Now image that it’s not another person, but the source of all life, in this case, our identity is like a spark absorbed in the sun.
So how do we solve this problem? How can we feel all of the abundance and love?
For this we were created 100% opposite from the Creator. He is 100% to give and we are 100% to receive.
But, this also leads to another problem. Due to this situation, we our qualities are opposite from His and we are as far as east is from west.
And so through many garments called worlds, the Creator clothes Himself more and more until all that remains is a tiny spark of light that shines through. This is what we grab onto and slowly by working, dancing, playing with Him, we reveal more and more light until we do reach again that state of complete unity with Him, but now it will be after all of our efforts to reach it, so instead of being a spark absorbed in the sun, we will be fully conscious and have attained all of these sensations and feel that we are together with Him in everything, eternally.
Seth@KabI
