Why the Books of Kabbalah Are Essential for Spiritual Development

Kabbalistic books are not like ordinary books we buy in a bookstore, or like the ones we study in university. They are not even like the ones we study from in Yeshivot (rabbinical colleges). The special thing about the genuine books of Kabbalah is that reading them improves the readers, makes them feel something new, and helps them to develop their sixth sense. It is with that sixth sense that a person begins to discover spirituality, to see what is beyond our world. With it, he or she begins to see the forces behind the objects of our world.

Kabbalah Gives a Person Tools to Benefit Themselves and Others

The minute we are able to go beyond this outer shell before us, we will begin to feel the forces that control our reality. Then we will be able to connect with those forces, influence them, see what exactly we are doing right and what we’re doing wrong. With this understanding in hand, we will discover how we should behave in order to match ourselves with a supreme and mighty force that surrounds the entire reality. This way we will be able to live consciously in a better world for all of us.

I do not mean to say that Kabbalah teaches us how to improve our lives at the expense of others. On the contrary: the contact with the upper world teaches us how to refrain from hurting others, how to attain the true desire to give. The laws of the upper worlds are the only laws that exist in reality; they raise humanity to the degree of MAN. We currently have no contact with them, and because of that we break them and thus inflict harm on others and ourselves.

Read the rest of this entry »

Did You Know that Everything You Do Is in Order to Receive Pleasure?

Our happiness or unhappiness is contingent upon the satisfaction of our desires. Satisfaction of desire is defined as pleasure and may appear in various forms. Fulfilling our desires requires effort. In that regard, Rabbi Ashlag states the following: “It is well known to researchers of nature that one cannot perform even the slightest movement without motivation, meaning without somehow benefiting oneself. When, for example, one moves one’s hand from the chair to the table it is because one thinks that by putting one’s hand on the table one will thus receive greater pleasure. If one would not think so, one would leave one’s hand on the chair for the rest of one’s life.”

Why Sensation of Pleasure Depends on Desire

The intensity of the pleasure depends on the intensity of the desire, but as satisfaction increases, the desire decreases respectively, and in consequence, the pleasure too. If we look into our pleasures, any kind of pleasure, we will see that they all diminish as soon as fulfillment begins. The maximum pleasure is experienced with the first encounter between the desire and its fulfillment. For example, the greater the hunger, the greater the pleasure derived from its satisfaction. However, if we are given food when we are no longer hungry, we will be unable to feel any pleasure and will probably even feel repelled.

Thus, pleasure from something depends on the desire for that something; there is no pleasure in the desired thing itself. As the sensations of fulfillment and pleasure fade, we are prompted to pursue new pleasures.

2 Approaches towards Dissatisfaction in Life

Humanity normally deals with the problem of the dissatissfied will to receive in one of two ways: the first is acquiring habits, and the second is diminishing the will to receive. The first way relies on “taming” desires through conditioning. First, one is taught that every action yields a certain reward. After performing the required task, one is rewarded with the appreci- ation of teachers and the environment. Gradually, the rewards are withdrawn, but the person labels the act as rewarding. The performing itself yields pleasure, since “habit turns to second nature.” We feel satisfied when our execution of the act improves. The second way is primarily used by Eastern teachings and relies on diminishing the will to receive, since it is easier to not want than to want and not have.

Read the rest of this entry »

Introducing the Pyramid of Your Desires

A pyramid of souls exists, based on the desire to receive. At the base of the pyramid are many souls with small, earthly desires, looking for a comfortable life in an animal-like manner: their focus is food, sex, and sleep. The next layer comprises fewer souls, those with the urge to acquire wealth. These are people who are willing to invest their entire lives in making money and who sacrifice themselves for the sake of being rich. Next are those who will do anything to control others, to govern and reach positions of power. An even greater desire, felt by even fewer souls, is for knowledge; these are scientists and academics, people who spend their lives engaged in discovering some- thing specific. They are interested in nothing but their all-important discovery. Located at the zenith of the pyramid is the strongest desire, developed by only a small number of souls, for the attainment of the spiritual world.

How to Enlarge the Importance of Your Best Desire

We all have this pyramid of desires within us, which we must turn upside-down so that the sheer weight of the top will compel us to aim for the purest desire, the infinite desire for truth. We must reject and discard all our earthly, egoistic desires and put every effort and energy into increasing the desire for spirituality. This is achieved through the proper way of studying.

When people truly wish to increase their longing for spirituality, then the light around them, the spiritual world hidden from them, starts to reflect back on them, making them long for it even more. At this stage, group study under a Kabbalist’s guidance is crucial. A major change in the souls descending today is that they have a definite desire to achieve spirituality. Even ordinary people are seeking something spiritual, something beyond our world.

Read the rest of this entry »

Reincarnation According to Kabbalah

In each generation over the past six thousand years, souls have descended that were here on previous occasions. None of us is a new soul; we have all accumulated experiences from previous lives in other incarnations.

Souls descend to earth in a special cyclical order. The number of souls is not infinite; they return again and again, progressing toward correction. The same souls are encased in a series of physical bodies that are more or less the same, but the types of souls that descend are different from one another. This is referred to nowadays as “reincarnation,” but Kabbalists use the term “development of generations.”

The Purpose of Reincarnation and Why Each Generation Is Unique

This intertwining, the connection of the soul and body, assists in the correction of the soul. The human being is referred to as soul, not body. The body itself can be replaced, just as organs can now be replaced. The body is useful only in that it serves as an encasement through which the soul can work. Each generation physically resembles the previous one, but they are different from one another, because each time the souls descend they are imbued with the added experience of their previous lives here. They arrive with renewed strength obtained while they were in heaven.

Thus, each generation possesses different desires and goals from the previous one. This leads to the specific development of each generation. Even a generation that does not reach the desire to know the true reality or a God-like recognition accomplishes the task by the suffering it endures. That is its way of making progress toward the true reality.

Read the rest of this entry »

Look How Much Our World Is in Crisis Today

An overview of the state of humanity in our time yields a sullen picture, one that could aptly be named “a crisis.”1 It seems that in all areas of life—personal, familial, national, and international—we are faced with escalating situations to which there are no solutions in sight.

Depression is soaring, followed by an increasing escape to drugs and alcohol. The family unit is disintegrating; domestic violence, alienation, and divorce are perpetually increasing; social polarization widens; and corruption in the government has become daily news. War and terrorism have become globally commonplace; social decline, natural disasters—all those and more have become a daily reality to many.

Thus, uncertainty and insecurity increase. While past leaders could make long-term plans for humankind and determine their short-term actions accordingly, today they cannot outline clear policies for the continuation of our existence.

Are Today’s Enormous Crises Unsolvable?

In and of themselves, crises are not negative. Humanity has been in crises before; and every time they have produced more highly evolved states. A crisis in one field leads to the rising of new fields. But today the situation seems essentially different: collapse is happening in almost every field of life and almost simultaneously.

This escalating crisis is even more perplexing in view of the achievements of science and technology, which have provided us the means to make our lives much more comfortable and easier than ever before. It seems that time and space have shrunk and that the world is truly becoming a small village.

Theoretically, science should have provided us a sheltered world, one where we could live peacefully and safely without a care in the world. Many thinkers, supporting modernization, were certain that industrialization and progress would place humanity on the brink of a secure and bountiful era.

Read the rest of this entry »