November 24, 2024
Archive for September, 2014
September 14, 2014 at 7:30 pm · Filed under Articles, Books
There are 2 Forms of Spiritual Development
The Creator creates the desire, which is a given constant. It rises from below, within us, and surfaces in various intensities. The aim, however, is to change the desire from a corrupted wish to receive for the self alone to a corrected desire to receive for the sake of the Creator. Even an ordinary person, one who is not a Kabbalist, can raise MAN through thoughts, desires, and aims, because there is always a desire in his or her mind to receive from the Creator, though he or she may not even recognize the Creator’s existence.
We must turn to the upper force and approach Him. The very nearness is enough. The Creator’s light, which draws us all toward Him, is, to the creatures, the one and only law of creation. This gravitating force first affects the Jews, and then the rest of the nations. The force awakens us, through pain, to make us approach Him. When a person fails to want the Creator independently, he or she is pushed to it by pain. We will be at ease only if we avoid this force before it acts on us, by drawing ourselves toward the Creator of our own accord. This is called progress in the “path of light,” as opposed to progress in the “path of pain.”
How a Person Attains Adhesion with the Properties of the Concealed Spiritual Reality
Our situation depends solely on how we relate to the upper force that pulls us toward it. It is not a question of politics, and attempts to please our enemies will not do us any good either. Our situation depends not on our willingness to practice the regular Mitzvot (precepts), because the Creator wants the heart, not a mechanical act. We must attain the spiritual degrees of the precepts, meaning to keep the law of creation in the spirit. It is impossible to keep a spiritual law as though it were a mechanical law, because to truly keep a spiritual law means to equalize with it, to be inside it, and to be identical with it. The Creator and the entire spiritual world are a single giving force. Humans must come to resemble it, meaning correct all their desires to be used only for bestowal upon the Creator, just as all the Creator’s desire is to bestow goodness upon humans.
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September 13, 2014 at 10:00 pm · Filed under Torah Portion
Deuteronomy, 29:9-30:20; 31:1-31:30
This Week’s Torah Portion | September 14 – September 20, 2014 – Elul 19 – Elul 25, 5774
In A Nutshell
The portion, Nitzavim (Standing), deals with Moses’ speech regarding the covenant between Israel and the Creator. Moses makes it clear that the Torah applies to the whole of the people of Israel, to every single one, and was given to posterity. Moses stresses the principle of choice: should a person worship other gods, he will be exiled from the land. But if he wishes to be reformed, the path is through repentance. The Creator allows the people to choose between life and death, but commands them, “Therefore choose life” (Deuteronomy, 30:19).
In the portion, VaYelech (Moses Went), Moses gives his final speech before the people’s entrance to the land of Israel. He reinforces the people so they will not fear fighting for the land because the Creator is with them, and he officially hands over the leadership to Joshua, son of Nun. Moses writes the Torah and instructs the people of Israel to assemble once every seven years to read the Torah. The Creator reveals to Moses that in the future, the people of Israel will sin, and commands him to write a song through which the people will remember the Creator.
Commentary by Dr. Michael Laitman
It may seem as though portions repeat themselves, but any repetition is at a new degree. The whole Torah deals only with the correction of the soul. It is as if the soul is cut into slices according to the degrees of the great will to receive, which is why it appears to be the same.
Similarly, each day in our lives seems to resemble the next, yet each day feels different, and life consists of many days joined together. The special thing about this process is that it is not about the people of Israel or the desert, but about an individual going through the stages of one’s spiritual development.
The spiritual development is done in two stages. The first is the preparation in Babylon, in the Bilbul (confusion). The second stage is in Egypt. In this world, a person tries to do as one sees fit, but gives up because this world is leading us into a state where we are not achieving good results in life. The result is a crisis, similar to the one the world is in today.
And yet, we do not seek the meaning of life, but money, power, respect, pleasures, freedom, vacations, and we are beginning to understand that it is impossible to have them. Whether due to personal crises or because of the global crisis, we finally come to the fundamental question, “What is the meaning of my life?” We seek satisfaction in life but we cannot find it anywhere, and without satisfaction we feel like Prophet Jonah, who said, “It is better for me to die than to live” (Jonah, 4:3).
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September 12, 2014 at 7:30 pm · Filed under Articles, Books, Perception of Reality
What the Creator Is
Reality consists of two elements: Creator and creature. We feel this in our senses in various ways, but it is unchanging in and of itself. The sensation of the Creator is what we call “the world,” or “creation.” The creature can sometimes sense that the Creator is being partially or fully revealed; at other times He is altogether concealed. The creature may even lack awareness of the Creator altogether. The extent of awareness of the Creator depends solely on the creature, because the Creator, like the sun, never stops shining.
The Creator has the attributes of bestowal and benevolence. When the creature acquires these Creator-like attributes, this state is called equivalence of form with the Creator. The individual then senses the Creator as fully revealed, to the exact degree that his or her attributes resemble those of the Creator. When the attributes of a person are incompatible with those of the Creator, he or she feels the Creator as concealed. When these attributes oppose those of the Creator’s, the individual feels the Creator does not even exist.
How Your Attributes Determine Your Closeness to Spirituality
The creature feels the Creator as pleasure, as wisdom and peace and wholeness. Therefore, the intensity of those sensations depends on the intensity of the sensation of the Creator. The Creator formed all the creatures from an egoistic desire to enjoy. The Creator is perceived by the creature as pleasure in all its manifestations. Pleasure means the sensation of the Creator, or the light of the Creator, which are actually one and the same.
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September 11, 2014 at 7:30 pm · Filed under Articles, Books
The Need for Additional Senses to Sense the Spiritual Reality
To research itself and the surroundings, humanity has developed various sciences such as physics, chemistry, biology, and so on. These are called the natural sciences, and they are based on our five senses. To help ourselves study nature, we have built instruments that extend the range of our senses. Gradually, from generation to generation, we have gained experience and reached a better understanding of the problem of survival in this world. But among all sciences, there is one that develops us quite differently—the science of Kabbalah.
Beyond the corporeal world that we research, there is another world, which is concealed. But if it is invisible, how can we assume that this other world really exists? It is because we see that there are specific laws, which are a part of a broader reality. We understand that such general, more rational laws, which describe our lives and our existence comprehensively, simply must exist. There is something that eludes us, something around us we cannot grasp. But how can we come to grasp it if we don’t have the appropriate senses?
Why Human Development Increases Suffering
It is quite possible that this alternate creation does exist around us in all its layers, but we divide it into the apprehended part we call “our world” or “this world,” and the as-yet-unfelt layer. If we had other senses, although it’s hard for us to imagine it, we would probably also feel the world differently, perhaps with a broader and deeper vision. But such senses don’t exist, and so we suffer. We don’t know how to behave with one another and with our surroundings because we don’t see our past and future lives.
When dealing with a scientific study of the world, we come to a stage where our knowledge is exhausted, and we’re left helpless. Though there are many ways to enhance our ability to predict the future, beyond the boundaries of our regular senses, they in fact add very little to our understanding of the world. We are capable of attaining very limited abilities to predict events, but we never achieve clear knowledge of the future and complete attainment, which can only happen when we are acting in full cooperation with the world around us.
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September 10, 2014 at 8:58 pm · Filed under Courses, Events
The first lesson in the new Fall 2014 Fundamentals semester of the Free Kabbalah Course begun tonight with the introductory lesson titled: How Changing the Way You Define ‘Kabbalah,’ ‘Creator’ and ‘Creation’ Changes the Way You Look at Your Whole Life.
100s of people joined in live from all around the world to become acquainted with the 5,000 year old wisdom that is revealing itself to more and more people today.
If you missed out on the lesson, the lesson is now available for free download in the archive. Just make sure you’re signed up at edu.kabbalah.info, and then click on the “Archive” link to find the first lesson available for download in video and audio formats.
Below you’ll find a short excerpt of Q&A from the lesson, and some questions asked by students.
We look forward to seeing you in upcoming lessons and sharing this wondrous wisdom with you!
What Does Kabbalah Say About the Soul – A Q&A Excerpt from the Introductory Lesson
Question: What does Kabbalah say about the soul?
Answer: The soul is a sense for us to feel, understand and act towards the Creator (the quality of bestowal and love) in a loving and bestowing way, in the exact same way He behaves towards me.
We don’t have a soul for the time being. We’ve been told you have a soul and that when you die you will go to “lala” land and revel in flowers and clouds, and so on.
The whole idea of the study is to develop a soul. That is why it is such an amazing wisdom.
Getting a bit deeper into it: Just like the Creator created us from scratch, we have to do the same action in this world: create a soul from scratch. That is the whole idea of the study.
From this point in the heart (i.e. the desire from spirituality), from this little scratch, we have to build a soul. It’s a nice question, we’ll get more into that topic the more we get into this course.
Some More Questions Asked by Participants in the Lesson
If you didn’t get your answer live, then you can feel free to ask it in the Student Forum, where Education Center instructors and moderators are ready to answer you.
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