Nearly everyone has an opinion about what spirituality is, but almost no one has any connection with the spiritual world or any idea how it works. People have argued that the spiritual can be understood through arts such as music, or through science, religion, even psychology.
But spirituality can really only be understood when experienced.
This means that a person must somehow be able to enter the “place of the spiritual,” research it, and determine what its properties are. In other words, they must undertake a process of discovery. The tool for this process is called “Kabbalah.”
Kabbalah – a Method for a Breakthrough to the Spiritual World
Kabbalah is a clear, concise system that helps us to discover what that mysterious lack is, and then provides a proven method to fill it. One cannot attain the spiritual through psychological or other earthly means. Methods that involve meditation or special music certainly do produce psychological phenomena that make us feel wonderful, but that is not the spirituality to which I am referring.
The spiritual world I refer to can only be revealed through a wisdom that serves as a branch, a lifeline, a connection between “here” and “there.” Our world, as well as that of the spiritual, operates through forces. The study of the method of Kabbalah is a complex system comprised of one’s own work, by which one draws upon oneself a very special and unique force.
That special force Kabbalah refers to as “Light” awakens the spiritual desire in us, a desire to fill the lack that originally brought us to search for answers. That lack is our wish to continue living in this world, but primarily from a physical perspective in the animate body. What changes is everything that has to do with our minds and our desires; they should operate on an altogether different frequency, as if one were breaking through an invisible barrier to another world.
Simply put, Kabbalah is a method that allows a person to experience and research the spiritual. In doing so, one discovers and reaches many different spiritual degrees and states. The process that enables us to have these incredible insights stems from a spiritual concept called “equivalence of form.”
The Creator
The wisdom of Kabbalah utilizes its own specific language in order to describe certain aspects of the spiritual. For instance, terms such as God, Creator, and Emanator are actually labels of specific forces and degrees. The different names of God used within the wisdom simply describe our perception of a single force from a different perspective than previously experienced. In other words, the difference between one spiritual degree and another is not that the Creator has changed; it is just that a bit more of Him has been revealed because we have changed.
We experience one degree at a time, so whatever we experience as the next higher degree we always perceive as the Creator. In fact, as we discover a degree, it will appear so perfect, so right, that we find it virtually impossible to think there is anything else but this degree. Yet, as time passes, another layer will be added, provided that we keep working towards it.
This force, the Creator, has but one singular mission, to delight His creatures in any possible way they can be delighted. This is considered the one primary law of the spiritual worlds.
Every other law is a branch of that law, which cascades downward and is responsible for everything that happens. The simplest answer is that every single thing that happens to you every second of the day has but one sole purpose: to bring you to the point of utter bliss, and to be completely filled with the Light of the Creator.
Kabbalah breaks down the structure of the spiritual into pieces, then pieces of pieces. One can also visualize the overall structure as a five-layered onion. In the center is the heart, the Creator. We, the souls, are on the very outside of that onion. We are concealed from the Creator by these five general layers, which Kabbalah calls “worlds.”
One can think of these layers as coverings, or veils, that hide what’s inside.
From the innermost point, the heart of the onion, the Creator pulls us toward Him.
When we, as His creatures, feel that pull inward, we normally sense it as pain. That pain is the result of our resistance. The more we resist, the more pain we feel. This is the source of our troubles and the troubles society experiences as a whole.
But when we begin to cooperate with that force and work with it in order to come closer to the Creator, we will no longer feel any pain. Instead, the force will become a source of pleasure.
To equalize with the Creator means to be equal to Him in every manifestation. It does not refer to the Upper Force itself, but to how He relates to things, how He appears before us, within us, in the way that He wants us to feel Him.
The Creator created us from His wish to give, to bestow. He created our will to receive exactly in the amount that He wanted to give. That is why we must attain everything that He wants to give us – eternity, strength, perfection, total control. So our target is to obtain those same characteristics.
The primary law of creation is the singularity of the Creator—the one and only power that controls everything. There is none else beside Him, and that power is one of bestowal.
The second law of creation is that the Creator is totally benevolent.
We cannot settle the contradiction between these two laws as they appear in our conception of reality. If we explore the world around us, it surely doesn’t seem as if the Creator is being benevolent. But people who achieve that equivalence of form will tell you that this is no theory, but pure fact.
People who enter the spiritual and are working on achieving that equivalence of form are called “Kabbalists.”
The Creature and its Correction
As creatures, we are at the very center of the Creator’s creation. We were created for only one purpose: to first establish contact with Him, then to begin a relationship with Him. Of course, our ultimate goal is to realize, meaning to make real, His sole purpose, to delight His creation. We accomplish this task through a process called “correction,” meaning to achieve equivalence of form.
The correction of a person makes it possible to be filled with the Light of the Creator, meaning to feel the Creator.
We start from a state that Kabbalah calls “this world,” where the Creator is totally concealed from us.
The spiritual worlds are measures of concealment of the Creator from His creatures.
Our initial perception, that first contact, is considered the ascent of the soul to the first spiritual degree. What happens next? The soul continues the process of correction, making it resemble the Creator more and more.
Then, at some point, we reach a final step of our personal correction. Kabbalah calls that Gmar Tikkun, or the “end of correction” of the soul.
“Kabbalah – the Method for Entering Spirituality” is based on the book, Wondrous Wisdom: Everyone’s Guide to the Study of Authentic Kabbalah by Michael R. Kellogg.
