How the Book of Zohar Can Help You Develop Spiritually

How the Book of Zohar Can Help You Develop Spiritually

What Is the Book of Zohar?

“Studying The Zohar builds worlds.”
– Rabbi Shalom Ben Moshe Buzzaglo, The King’s Throne

Ten Kabbalists, headed by Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai (Rashbi), joined together at the highest spiritual degree. From their union, they wrote The Zohar for us. The Zohar is not merely a book. It is a closed system, from our level to the highest level of reality. It is a system designed to launch us into experiencing unbounded existence, both in understanding and feeling the whole of Nature.

 

Why the Book of Zohar Is So Special

The book is built in a very special way. It speaks of things that seemingly happen in our world: stories about people, animals, trees and flowers, mountains and hills. However, in truth, it tells us about the soul and the higher forces.

Thousands of years after the writing of The Zohar, the greatest Kabbalist of the 20th century, Baal HaSulam, wrote the Sulam [Ladder] commentary on The Zohar, where he explained The Zohar in the language of Kabbalah. The language of Kabbalah helps us put the pieces together and understand what is really being said in The Zohar.

 

A Book That Inverts Your Perception Of Reality

When you read The Zohar with the Sulam commentary, even without first understanding how everything unfolds, The Zohar begins to change our perception into an opposite perception. It changes our attitude toward the world. The Zohar provides examples that connect us to our next state, a more evolved state in giving.

It is similar to the way we rear our children. We continue to show them examples of a slightly more advanced state in order to develop them. Thus, we gradually bring them to more evolved states. The Zohar affects us similarly, unveiling the next degree that awaits us.

Continue reading “How the Book of Zohar Can Help You Develop Spiritually”

Contrasts – Ego and Love

Contrast_Ego and Love

 Contrast_Ego and Love

 We must not destroy anything within us.

Even the most negative attributes should remain.
We do not create anything new,
but only correct how we use
what already exists within us.

Question: Why were we created with ego in the first place, if we will eventually have to correct it?

We come to know the world by comparing opposites —hot vs. cold, black vs. white. We recognize one in relation to the other. If everything were white, we wouldn’t detect anything. Likewise, if everything were black, we wouldn’t detect anything, either.

Contrast is always necessary, the disparity between colors, sensations, and places. We sense the differences between things, but not each thing separately.

The Creator is love and bestowal. However, we will not be able to sense what bestowal is if we are not opposite to it. This is why we need the ego—“help made against him.” Being opposite from the Creator helps us know and sense the Creator.

Continue reading “Contrasts – Ego and Love”

Why Spiritual Development Requires Proper Examples From Proper Teachers

Ocean Shores, Washington, Dec 31, 1998

Humans Develop Through The Examples Of Others

The Wisdom of Kabbalah is the practical method, that can help any person to enter spirituality, perceiving the fixes operating reality, attaining the Upper Force.

To begin to understand how the wisdom of Kabbalah assists us in sensing the upper force, consider a growing child. There is nothing more natural than the process of maturing, hence this comparison will accompany us throughout the book.

When a baby is born, it begins to hear, to see, and to react. It learns and develops from examples that we present to it.
If we left the baby to grow in the woods, it would imitate the animals and grow like an animal. With the exception of a few instincts and reflexes, everything about us comes from learning.

 

Can Spirituality Be Developed Through Observational Learning?

Can we learn the upper system in the same way if we do not feel it? How can we be like that baby, or even a drop of semen that only wishes to be born into a new quality called “giving”?

Continue reading “Why Spiritual Development Requires Proper Examples From Proper Teachers”