October 24, 2024
October 21, 2014 at 5:30 pm · Filed under Articles, Books
The Shift from Suffering to Spirituality
Kabbalah teaches us that at the beginning the Creator uses pain, and unfulfilled desires in order to turn the person’s attention towards spirituality. Thus one’s reality is full of pain and suffering until one starts to locate the source, and the meaning of it all.
Reality changes because if we strengthen our contact with the Creator, there will no longer be a need for pain, the very same pains that are initiated from above to bring about that contact.
Thus, the external circumstances will change, since we will no longer require the same pains.
How Life’s Torments Build in You a Desire for Spirituality
People do not understand how changes in the world occur or how. But the torments they suffer make them search subconsciously for an upper power and pray to it because there is no one else on whom to rely. That prayer, that earthy still prayer, works. Using the torments, the Creator puts us in a no-win situation and corners us until we actually start looking for an alternative planet to live on. But that planet cannot be found, except in the Creator.
For example, it is interesting to consider why the Creator brought the Jewish people to the corporeal land of Israel, rather then to the spiritual one. The return to Israel was the result of a prayer that was lying in our subconscious and of the pain and suffering we Jews had endured over many years. We prayed for our own place, and we received that place. But if we had truly understood that our sufferings had happened for a certain purpose, then our prayer, the prayer of the unsatisfied mass, would have been aimed differently, and a new solution would have arisen on a different level, a spiritual one.
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October 20, 2014 at 6:30 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
How Obstructions on the Path to Spirituality Work in Your Favor
When we are attracted to someone, we are immediately filled with joy, even before we make actual contact with that person. As in corporeal love, so is the case with love for the Creator. But to prevent us from being satisfied with mere attraction, the Creator makes us feel that our situation is a low one, lacking in unity. If the Creator hadn’t done that, we would be satisfied with the pleasures of desiring, without actually attaining anything. The feeling of lowness added to the desire for the Creator forces us to rise to the level of spiritual coupling and enjoy unification with the Creator.
God shakes us up with unpleasant incidents and situations, until there is enough torment to spark a desire for the loved one, a need to create a spiritual coupling.
That is why the soul descends from the upper world to this world and dresses in a body to incarnate in this world, so as to return to the root from which it came and cling to it again. To correct the body, we need to recognize that obstructions are not what they seem, but rather necessary catalysts to help us connect with the Creator.
It is precisely because we feel the obstructions and try to struggle with them in a heroic battle that we increase our desire for the Creator, so that we can once again be united as we were before the soul was clothed in a body, with the same power and intensity. The adhesion between us and the Creator is strengthened by the very struggles we endure in seeking out that connection.
Giving the Desire for Spirituality Importance Over Your Other Desires
There is always contact between us and the Creator, but for us to be able to feel His love, the Creator places an obstruction before us called the body—the desire for every pleasure possible apart from the Creator. To truly understand the Creator’s love for us, we must gradually uproot the obstructions of the body, thought by thought.
The Creator takes into account everything that is done to us, and when we have experienced the right amount of situations, when we earnestly desire for adhesion with the Creator with all our strength, nonstop, only then comes the moment of adhesion.
Only when we have reached the state of adhesion can we justify what the Creator sends us, from the lowest situations to the highest spiritual acts. Then we realize that everything that happens in life happens because of the Creator’s love and desire to unite with us. That, in turn, creates in us a neveending and unlimited love for the Creator.
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October 19, 2014 at 6:30 pm · Filed under Articles, Books
To Fight For or Against the Desires You Have to Develop Spiritually
Can we overpower our own desire? Should we or should we not fight our own desires? After all, how can we know what is in store for us in this lifetime? That depends on our degree of spiritual development, which determines everything inside us and what we can and cannot do. The answer is to indeed fight, but just to realize that we cannot do anything by ourselves, and also to study ourselves. That is what we were given our minds for, in addition to our desires.
How Sensations Influence Your Perception of Reality
We attain everything within our Kelim (vessels), our emotions. Our world consists of the overall impressions we receive from our senses, and this is how we perceive reality. If our senses change, or if we add another sense, then our world will change as well. Hence, we expand our world by changing our senses and acquiring new senses, as if rising from world to world on the ladder of worlds. By that we change the reality in which we exist.
Why Bitter Sensations Actually Aid Spiritual Progress
In the spiritual world, things can only exist in pairs: pleasure or the absence of it, true and sweet, false and bitter. The truth is always sweet, and the lie is always bitter, and they always correspond. But that situation doesn’t exist in our world. Falsehood is not bitter, and truth is not sweet. In our world we constantly face tough decisions: to choose the sweet but superficial and false way, or the bitter but sincere way.
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October 17, 2014 at 6:30 pm · Filed under Articles, Books
Why Every Action Brings a Person Closer to Spirituality
Every person was created with a complex corporeal body, and what one does in this world affects it. Therefore, what we do in our world is important. Whatever we do with an intention toward the Creator is considered a spiritual act, though the act itself might still be completely “beastly.”
Nevertheless, anything we do inevitably leads us toward the purpose of creation. Even the pains we suffer in life do not come in vain, but are collected, and when the right time comes, they count in our favor. This happens slowly over many years, and we are not a consciously active part of it. To shorten this long path of pain, the Creator gave us the Torah, which directs us to the right goal less painfully.
Kabbalah Is a Method that Speeds Up Your Spiritual Development
Only in recent decades have a growing number of special souls begun to descend to our world, these souls having collected a sufficient amount of pain. These souls took the path of pain, accumulated deficits, and now those pains have turned into a yearning for the wisdom of Kabbalah. In future lives, these souls will delve into the study of Kabbalah more intensely and within a month or two attain fantastic results because they have accumulated a sufficient desire for it in their past lives. If a person has a strong enough desire to study and focuses just on Kabbalah for one purpose only, then in three to five years he or she will enter the spiritual world.
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October 7, 2014 at 7:30 pm · Filed under Articles, Books
Kabbalah Unveils the Mystery of What Happens to Your Soul After Your Body Dies
Kabbalah teaches us that our physical body is simply a clothing for or eternal soul, that goes through life cycles as it develops towards its final correction.
What happens to our bodies after death is much like what happens to the wheat seed when it rots in the ground. The physical body disintegrates and we receive a new body. But the soul, the former spiritual potential, still remains in the form of a gene, potential information that transcends from one phase, from the old physical body to the next, through a physical detachment called “death.”
As long as the body has not fully disintegrated, the next cycle cannot start. Only when it disintegrates does the new cycle of evolution begin. That is why Jews bury their dead with- out delay. There are even some practices that enable the new life to begin sooner, such as adding lime to the grave so that the body will rot faster—as though asking for the new phase of correction to begin sooner.
The Secret of Developing Your Soul Without Having to Undergo Death
The transition from life to life requires a complete disintegration, just like the wheat seed, until only the essence remains: a pure power, denied of any physical clothing. This essence is called the reshimo. Between the degrees, between one life cycle and the next, there is a severance, a void. For this reason a person cannot see the transitions from phase to phase. However, a Kabbalist transcends from cycle to cycle thousands of times. He or she controls the transitions, and in each of them leaves behind a reshimo. A Kabbalist doesn’t need to leave the physical body to begin a new life because he or she identifies with the soul, not with the body.
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