February 5, 2025
September 7, 2014 at 7:30 pm · Filed under Articles, Books
Did You Know That Your Soul Is a ‘Desire to Enjoy’?
Like the earth in the story of Genesis, the soul must go through a certain process of development in the body. It takes more than one lifetime to complete the process, meaning that the soul clothes itself in many bodies over many cycles. Although the process is clear, we can go our entire life without feeling that we have a soul, a spiritual component, thus not realizing the purpose of our life in this world.
As we have said, the soul is merely a desire to enjoy, to receive. It defines the attributes and the needs of the body, while the body itself is a dead object. The development of the soul creates different needs in the human being. Its desires change with its evolution from desires for bodily pleasures—food, sleep, and sex, just as in animals—to the desire to return to its spiritual state, its primary state from which it descended to this world.
Those desires do not evolve one at a time, but in a jumble. That is why a person can feel he or she has a craving for knowledge and at the same time a desire for money, honor, and sex. It happens in any person, because all the desires are made of a unique compound.
Why the Desire for Spirituality Is Unique
The same principle applies to the desire for spirituality. It can be revealed along with lower desires, but what distinguishes it is that we cannot satisfy it with anything mundane, because the source for this desire is outside our world. The revelation of such a desire testifies to the degree of development of the soul.
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July 11, 2014 at 7:30 pm · Filed under Articles, Books, Perception of Reality
How Changing One’s Intention Expands Perception
The only difference between the vessels that perceive the corporeal reality and those that perceive the spiritual reality is in the intention. The corporeal vessels are egoistic and the spiritual vessels are altruistic. Intention is related to one’s attitude towards the use one makes of one’s desires.
The only state that really exists is the state of Ein Sof (Infinity). In that state, the Light is present within the Kli. However, that state is concealed, and the concealment prevents us from experiencing the state of Ein Sof. The altruistic intention gradually removes this concealment and exposes the Light that permanently fills the Kli.
If we keep this depiction in mind, we will remember that we never reveal any Lights outside the vessels. When Kabbalists say that Lights enter or exit the vessels, they wish to emphasize how one draws nearer to the attainment of the constant state. In Kabbalistic terms, Ein Sof is a state of “complete rest,” meaning it is unchanging. Our work is to gradually prepare our tools of perception to perceive that state. Thus, the only change is in our abilities to perceive.
If Nature Is Perfect and Eternal, Why Don’t We Perceive It?
When Light “clothes” a person and one feels how it gradually enters, the constant state becomes gradually clearer as one awakens to feeling it. The Light never actually enters and never actually exits. It only becomes clearer and more evident, meaning more revealed and less concealed.
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June 30, 2014 at 7:30 pm · Filed under Articles, Books, Perception of Reality
How Can the Spiritual Reality be Perceived?
The gist of our work is the making of the Kli. If we know how to build our tool of perception correctly, we will understand where we truly are. Our substance consists of a desire to receive delight and pleasure.
If we can make this substance sensitive to insights concerning reception and bestowal, we will be able to use it to perceive the spiritual world. It is similar to the way a block of crude iron is melted to create engine parts. When assembled correctly, they yield a working engine.
Similarly, we must work with ourselves to perceive spirituality. Building the spiritual Kli is a lot like sculpting—you must carve the raw material and file it until the desired shape appears. The raw material, in this case, consists of our desires, our thoughts, and intentions.
How a Change of Intention Enables a Person to Feel Nature
The Creator formed Creation with the intention of doing good to His creatures. To realize His goal, He created a Kli—a will to receive—that would receive His benefit. At first, this will is shapeless. Shaping the will to receive is the work of us all until it is robed in its final form—bestowal, the form of the Creator.
The substance itself remains as it was first made—a will to receive pleasure—but changing the intention to bestowal likens its modus operandi to that of the Creator. Thus, the intention is the form.
Kabbalah books depict the forms that one should create in the will to receive, degree-by-degree, to finally sense the benefits that come from the Creator. The general will to receive consists of 613 desires, and each of these is topped either by an aim to receive, or an aim to give. These forms of reception or bestowal that “cover” each desire determine one’s degree of spiritual attainment.
A degree is a certain level of strength of the Form of bestowal. This enables the benefits of the Creator to manifest within the will to receive. The diverse fillings within the will to receive are the origin of the many names of the Creator. It is the perceiving individual who names the Creator according to the flavors he or she feels within the Creator’s bestowal.
What Kabbalah Researches
Once the Kabbalists attained the nature of reality and studied it, they divided the manner of recognition of reality into four levels: Matter, Form in Matter, Abstract Form, and Essence. Kabbalah is a practical study method that leads researchers thoroughly and systematically along the evolutionary trail. As in any other scientific method, Kabbalah teaches the researcher what to do, which results are to be expected, and expounds on the reasons for them. Kabbalah does not engage in depicting theoretical states that one cannot carry out independently and with full awareness.
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March 20, 2014 at 10:57 am · Filed under Articles, Books
In “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah,” Baal HaSulam divides the onset of Creation into five stages and one restriction, but we can cluster them into three groups. Think of the first two groups as a car and the fuel for its engine, and imagine that the third group is the driver.
The first group contains only Stage Zero, the Root. This is the desire to give, the energy that creates and sustains the car called “Creation.”
The second group—Stages One and Two—builds a “platform” for evolution. This is the car itself. In a sense, the platform that the two stages have built resembles what Richard Dawkins described in The Selfish Gene as “The primeval soup,” the oceanic substrate that contained the ingredients for life’s inception.
The third group—Stages Three and Four—is “the driver.” Its role is to start the engine of evolution—the interaction between the desires. As we will explain below and in the next chapter, the restriction is the wheel with which creation is driven toward its purpose: discovering the Thought of Creation.
Stages Zero and One
In Kabbalistic terms, the existence of a desire to bestow without a desire to receive is called “the Root Stage” or “Stage Zero.” The Root Stage is immediately followed by its mandatory offshoot—“Stage One”—the desire to receive, which is permeated with the abundance given to it by the Root, the desire to bestow.
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October 29, 2009 at 5:24 am · Filed under Daily Kabbalah Lesson
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YZf4QDpk5Y]
(If video is not visible, then watch it here)
A prayer is called a part of the desire I wish to correct.
Based on the Daily Kabbalah Lesson of 28 October, 2009:
The Daily Kabbalah Lesson is taught by Dr. Michael Laitman, based on authentic Kabbalistic sources, and includes live participation by Kabbalah students and viewers on Kabbalah TV.
The lessons will be continuing daily at 8:10pm until 11pm EST (U.S.), Saturdays through Thursdays, on Kabbalah TV, and are available for free download in the Kabbalah Media Archive.
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