November 26, 2024
Archive for December, 2014
December 7, 2014 at 5:50 pm · Filed under Articles, Books
According to Your Soul’s Desire
In the beginning of Creation there was one common soul: the Light (pleasure) and the corresponding body (desire), Adam. These were merged in adhesion with the Creator, and therefore received maximum delight. The soul’s nature is merely the will to receive pleasure, and the soul was filled with pleasure in accordance with its desire.
How to Calculate Your Address in the Spiritual Worlds
Since the difference in desires leads one away from the Creator, different worlds were formed at different levels of remoteness down to our world. What separates spiritual objects is not space, but their spiritual incongruence and dissimilarity of properties. Therefore, the number of souls, meaning separate spiritual objects, determines the number of people in the physical world. Here, every part of the common soul is given a certain period of time (life span) and repeated opportunities (life cycles) for correction.
How to Move Up in the Spiritual Worlds
A person is born only with the will to receive pleasure for self. All our “personal” desires originate from the system of impure forces. In other words, we are infinitely remote from the Creator, we cannot feel Him, and are therefore considered “spiritually dead.”
However, if, while struggling with oneself, a person acquires the desire to live, think, and act only for the sake of others and the Creator, such soul purification allows one to gradually approach the Creator until completely merging with Him. And as one comes closer to the Creator, one feels increasing delight.
It is for this soul transformation that our world and all the spiritual worlds (the steps on the path to the Creator) were created. Merging with the Creator is a task that everyone must accomplish while still living in our world. Our world is the most opposite point from the Creator—opposite from His properties.
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December 6, 2014 at 10:00 pm · Filed under Torah Portion
Genesis, 37:1-40:23
This Week’s Torah Portion | December 7 – December 13, 2014 – Kislev 15 – Kislev 21, 5775
In A Nutshell
In the portion, VaYeshev (And Jacob Sat), Jacob dwells in the land of Canaan. The protagonist of this portion is Joseph, Jacob’s youngest son. Joseph was gifted with a knack for prophetic dreams. In one of them, he sees himself ruling over his brothers. He tells them about it and turns their envy against him.
His brothers lead the cattle to Shechem to graze there, and his father sends him to them. On his way he meets a man and asks him about his brothers: “I seek my brethren” (Genesis 37:16). By the time Joseph finds his brothers they are already conspiring to kill him because of their envy. Reuben manages to prevent them from committing the murder and the brothers decide to throw Joseph in a pit, instead, in order to sell him to the Ishmaelites. A convoy of Midianites that passes by takes Joseph with them down to Egypt.
When Joseph arrives in Egypt, he hides in the home of Pharaoh’s captain of the guard, Potiphar. Potiphar’s wife tries to seduce Joseph but he refuses. She avenges by saying that Joseph tried to force himself on her, and he is thrown to the dungeon.
In the pit, Joseph meets Pharaoh’s two officials, the chief cupbearer and the chief baker. He also discloses his gift for prophetic dreams. He predicts that within three weeks the chief cupbearer will be released, and the chief baker will be hanged. Joseph asks the chief cupbearer that upon his release he will go to Pharaoh and tell him that he, Joseph, is jailed for no reason and that he should be released.
Commentary by Dr. Michael Laitman
This portion contains a profound spiritual message. It narrates the correction of the soul, which is man’s purpose in life, and the reason why the Torah was given. Initially, the evil inclination appears, as it is written, “I have created the evil inclination, I have created for it the Torah as a spice,” for “the light in it reforms it.” “Reforming” means returning to a state of “love your neighbor as yourself.” That is, it brings a person back to the quality of bestowal, similarity with the Creator. This is what we should achieve, as it is written, “Return, Oh Israel unto the Lord your God” (Hosea 14:2).
The Torah demonstrates how the ego, the will to receive, keeps changing until it is corrected. In the example shown in this portion we see how all our qualities connect, then separate, manifesting imbalance among them until they beget more advanced qualities, closer to bestowal.
Jacob is the beginning of the quality of bestowal within us. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are the three patriarchs. Jacob is actually the senior, containing both the desire to receive and the desire to bestow within us, as it is only possible to elicit the middle line using both. The middle line, Jacob, is still not attributed to the level of execution in us, but to the level of decision making.
The expression of Jacob’s execution level is his sons, from Reuben, the eldest, to Joseph, the youngest. And precisely in this hierarchy do the qualities within us hang down. This is how our ego, in all its (still incorrect) forms, is corrected. The one who completes them is Joseph, the righteous. He gathers all the previous qualities into the quality of Yesod (foundation), which is called “the righteous Joseph,” or “a righteous, the foundation of the world” (Proverbs 10:25).
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December 5, 2014 at 5:30 pm · Filed under Articles, Books
You Must Desire to be on the Wavelength of Spirituality
When we want to be impressed by something, whether emotionally, intellectually, or otherwise, we must be on the same “wavelength” with it and thus possess the same quality. For example, to detect radio waves, the receiver must produce the same wavelength, and only then can we detect the wave on the outside.
Your Senses Are Currently Opposite to Spirituality
Nature’s overall force is a “desire to give,” to bestow, to impart abundance. conversely, our nature is one of “desire to receive delight and pleasure,” a desire to enjoy for ourselves alone. Our nature is self-centered; it is how we were made, as Kabbalah tells us. In other words, we are in contrast with the upper force, opposite from it, and hence we cannot sense it.
Is there anything we can do to sense it? We cannot destroy our nature and our will to receive, nor do we need to. We should continue with our lives as usual, and at the same time acquire new tools of perception.
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December 4, 2014 at 5:30 pm · Filed under Articles, Books, Zohar
The Purpose of Your Existence
The Book of Zohar explains that we exist in a single, vast system, called “Nature” or Elokim [God], yet we sense only a fraction of that system, a fraction called “this world.”
The purpose of our existence is to rise above the boundaries of this world and feel the entirety of the system known as “Nature,” the upper force. When we achieve this degree, we will be filled with abundance, infinite pleasure and light, with sublime perception and understanding, a sense of balance, wholeness, and harmony as they exist in the overall Nature.
To understand what we must do to arrive at all this bounty, The Zohar recommends that we examine Nature’s conduct from a slightly broader angle than usual.
How You Can Consciously Evolve in a Healthy Way
Our world is a closed world. We exist in a single, general system whose every part is interconnected. We cannot consider ourselves above Nature and omnipotent; it is a sure way of destroying ourselves. We also cannot escape Nature because we are an integral part of it. Hence, we must study the general law of Nature and go hand in hand with it.
Our urge to evolve is wonderful, but we must do it in the right way, towards a healthy connection between us and the rest of creation in a way that does not violate the harmony and the overall balance of Nature. This, in fact, is the basis of the wisdom of Kabbalah.
Observing Nature teaches us that all living organisms are built on the basis of caring for others. Cells in an organism connect to each other by mutual giving for the purpose of sustaining the whole organism. Each cell in the body receives what it needs for its existence and spends the rest of its efforts caring for the entirety of the organism. An inconsiderate cell that does not take its environment into consideration and harnesses it for its own good is a cancerous cell. Such a selfish act eventually leads to the death of the entire organism.
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December 3, 2014 at 5:30 pm · Filed under Articles, Perception of Reality
The Conditions of the Soul Development
Man cannot exist in our material world without some elementary knowledge about nature’s laws, and of what is useful and harmful for him in the world and in people around him. Equally, man’s soul cannot exist in the spiritual world without the knowledge of its nature.
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