January 15, 2025
September 26, 2014 at 7:30 pm · Filed under Articles, Books, Israel
A Manual to Come into Contact with the Forces that Govern Reality
If an ordinary person were to begin studying a Kabbalah book in the right way, meaning after having studied the introductions and gone through some preparations, after being given a certain “key,” he or she would see how to communicate with the forces that act on our entire world and would know what to do with them.
In a Kabbalistic prayer book it says, for example, “Extend light from Partzuf Leah, pass it through Partzuf Zeir Anpin to its three Sefirot of NHY, then come down to Rachel, then couple them one with the other.” This is the sort of material you will find in a Kabbalistic prayer book, which is in essence a manual with exact instructions about how to change things in the control room of reality and what to change above to induce the desired change below. But without sufficient preparation, it makes no sense and would not lead the reader to any further understanding.
Today Everyone Must Enter Reality’s Control Room
In all previous generations, the Creator raised a few souls to do their work for the collective, but in our generation, everyone must do this work according to his or her own ripeness. Everyone must open the books of Kabbalah and begin to study the instructions to learn how to change reality. We have to reach the same level and quality of performance within our- selves as is described in the books to make the necessary changes in the upper worlds. All of humankind will eventually have to enter that control room and everyone will come to a place reserved for him or her alone.
The prayer cited earlier describes the way desires and thoughts about reality are meant to be used. The only force that can influence reality is the power of thought and humankind’s willpower. Kabbalists have prepared these prayer books as manuals that show us how to work with our desires. We only need to know how to read them and learn what to do, and we are required to do that right now.
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September 25, 2014 at 7:30 pm · Filed under Articles, Books, Zohar
Why Spirituality Should Be More Important than Corporeality
At the end of his “Introduction to the Zohar,” Baal HaSulam writes that if we preferred spirituality to corporeality and spiritual laws to corporeal laws, if we chose a spiritual leadership over the corporeal one, we would organize our world correctly, exactly like the spiritual world, and then our inner values would not collide with the values that come down to us, and we would feel pleasure and peace instead of pain and suffering.
The Secret of Influencing Your Reality
When tragic things happen to us in this world, there is nothing we can do to change it. Things happen as inevitable consequences of earlier thoughts, and there is no way to act in the spirit against something that already descends on you from above. All you can do in this world is to try as much as you can to avoid bodily harm, in our world of consequences. If you really want to influence your reality to avoid future tragedies, you should rise upward, to your origin, your root, and the place where the root of your enemy lies as well, and begin to sort things out there. The immediate result will be that everything in our world will change, because there is nothing in our world that is not a result of the world above.
Spiritual Development Requires Practicality
In many Jewish homes there are copies of The Zohar, mezuzahs (a text from the Bible that Jews place on doorposts), and charms. People think that there is some power in them, but in fact they do not help us today. We’ve come to a point in history when we have to rise above these things; we should go beyond them and get to know the power itself, its operations on us, rather than thinking that if we put up a mezuzah everything is going to be all right. We have to start being practical and focus on the upper force.
Why the Study of Advanced Kabbalah Books Requires the Study of Introductory Books First
Before we study The Zohar, we must first study several introductory books. There is much to read and learn to know how to open the book and what to search for in it.
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September 24, 2014 at 7:30 pm · Filed under Articles, Books
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.
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September 23, 2014 at 7:30 pm · Filed under Articles, Books, Depression
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.
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September 22, 2014 at 7:30 pm · Filed under Articles, Books
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.
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