October 24, 2024
September 30, 2014 at 7:30 pm · Filed under Articles, Books, What is Kabbalah?
The Purpose of Kabbalah
Throughout history, during those times when Kabbalah was concealed from most people, rivulets of the wisdom still seeped through, which gave rise to various erroneous conjectures about its purpose. Even today, most prevalent concepts about Kabbalah are fundamentally wrong. Kabbalah engages neither in improving the human existence in this world, nor in mystical or ecstatic experiences.
The sole purpose of the wisdom of Kabbalah is realizing the desire for spirituality, which in turn leads a person to realize his or her purpose in life. Once that desire surfaces, a person begins to need the Kabbalah; before that, it is redundant.
Why Kabbalah Is No Longer Hidden
In previous generations, when the desire for spirituality had not yet ripened, Kabbalists set up boundaries on the study of Kabbalah, aiming to filter out those with unripe desires. The few whose desire had ripened in them were imparted the method, despite all the limitations. Now that humanity is experiencing the surfacing of the last degree of the will to receive— the desire for spirituality—concealing the Kabbalah is no longer pertinent. The ban on studying it has been lifted and the filtering at the gate of the study is performed in an entirely different way: Being a method to acquire genuine spirituality, the Kabbalah naturally filters out those with other desires, such as for sex, money, or power. It simply cannot assist in fulfilling those desires.
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September 28, 2014 at 7:30 pm · Filed under Articles, Books
Why Each Person Must Enter Into Spiritual Correction
Reality can be changed by anyone, so long as he or she is thinking of the Creator. If his or her soul has ripened through all the cycles and its time has come to know spirituality, it is inevitable that he or she will have to enter the process of spiritual correction and learn to manipulate the spiritual powers. It doesn’t matter where we are in the world, there will be torments and catastrophes standing ready for us wherever we go, as long as we do not realize it. In the end, we are at the center of the world, and there is no escape from that.
It’s All about Taking Responsibility for Your Development
We can anticipate that if we do not wake up now, there will be an increase in our troubles. The more we neglect the matter, the stronger will be the force that we will need to put us back on track. It is just like physics: when you throw something and it is diverted from the right path, the longer it continues off track, the greater its deflection and the greater the force needed to bring it back to the right track. That pattern will happen with us, too, if we do not change our ways. We don’t have a choice but to start listening to what is happening with us.
It is most urgent to realize that nothing happens without a good reason, and that our behavior influences what comes down to us from the upper worlds. We cannot act like small children, crying and searching for ways to escape the troubles of life. We must become part of a mature humanity: one that knows what it is doing and can assume responsibility for its actions. This change in attitude will begin by keeping in mind that there is always a reason for our condition. That realization will prompt a larger shift in our consciousness, and then we will start to look for the reasons behind everything that happens to us in this world.
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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 17, 2014 at 7:30 pm · Filed under Articles, Books
Did You Know There Are 125 Degrees of Spiritual Attainment?
Our task is to attain the highest degree in our advancement toward the Creator. That is the purpose of creation. The ladder between the Creator and us consists of 125 degrees or steps, also called desires. Each desire constitutes a complete and separate degree and is different in each stage of development. However, our own world does not constitute a degree of spiritual desire and is therefore excluded from the count of the 125 degrees. The 125 degrees begin only one step above our world, starting with the first degree of the spiritual world, and so on until the end of the 125th degree. What characterizes a higher degree is a greater desire to give and be altruistic.
The range of spiritual degrees is also divided into five worlds: the worlds of
- Adam Kadmon,
- Atzilut,
- Beria,
- Yetzira, and
- Assiya.
Each of these worlds is also comprised of five Partzufim, and each Partzuf is divided into five Sefirot. Thus, the entire structure consists of 125 degrees (5 by 5 by 5). The worlds, the Partzufim, and the Sefirot define desires, their power, and spiritual degrees in ascending order.
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September 14, 2014 at 7:30 pm · Filed under Articles, Books
There are 2 Forms of Spiritual Development
The Creator creates the desire, which is a given constant. It rises from below, within us, and surfaces in various intensities. The aim, however, is to change the desire from a corrupted wish to receive for the self alone to a corrected desire to receive for the sake of the Creator. Even an ordinary person, one who is not a Kabbalist, can raise MAN through thoughts, desires, and aims, because there is always a desire in his or her mind to receive from the Creator, though he or she may not even recognize the Creator’s existence.
We must turn to the upper force and approach Him. The very nearness is enough. The Creator’s light, which draws us all toward Him, is, to the creatures, the one and only law of creation. This gravitating force first affects the Jews, and then the rest of the nations. The force awakens us, through pain, to make us approach Him. When a person fails to want the Creator independently, he or she is pushed to it by pain. We will be at ease only if we avoid this force before it acts on us, by drawing ourselves toward the Creator of our own accord. This is called progress in the “path of light,” as opposed to progress in the “path of pain.”
How a Person Attains Adhesion with the Properties of the Concealed Spiritual Reality
Our situation depends solely on how we relate to the upper force that pulls us toward it. It is not a question of politics, and attempts to please our enemies will not do us any good either. Our situation depends not on our willingness to practice the regular Mitzvot (precepts), because the Creator wants the heart, not a mechanical act. We must attain the spiritual degrees of the precepts, meaning to keep the law of creation in the spirit. It is impossible to keep a spiritual law as though it were a mechanical law, because to truly keep a spiritual law means to equalize with it, to be inside it, and to be identical with it. The Creator and the entire spiritual world are a single giving force. Humans must come to resemble it, meaning correct all their desires to be used only for bestowal upon the Creator, just as all the Creator’s desire is to bestow goodness upon humans.
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