Women Just Can’t Accept That They Will Never Be The Same As Men

laitman_2009-03_7925A question I received: Do you ask yourself why women ask you the same question all the time? The answer is: because you don’t give them the answer. You don’t give the answer for the individual spiritual advancement of the women. When women ask you about this, you start a long speech about the men’s part, the group, the women’s role in the world Kli, and so on, avoiding saying how women can make spiritual advancement individually. Today at the morning lesson you gave a very perplexing explanation, ending with the frightening words, “if a woman advances in spirituality alone, she will get the form of an angel or demon.” So I have the feeling that you are avoiding telling us something.

My Answer: I have nothing else to say: a woman does not wish to hear the answer because it does not make her the same as a man. She cannot sit next to the men and study together with them at night, hug them, drink and sing with them, and so on, because she is a woman, and I cannot change that. I do provide the method of individual correction, but it is not what women desire; instead, they want to be “like men.” That is their tragedy.

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Laitman.com Post: Woman = Desire
Laitman.com Post: What Should Women Strive For?
Article: “Conditions for Women’s Spiritual Advancement”
Article: “Man and Woman”

8 Comments

  1. Sorry to ask this, Rav, but in this question and answer it does sound like you are being evasive. The questioner says, “You don’t give the answer for the individual spiritual advancement of the women. When women ask you about this, you start a long speech about the men’s part, the group, the women’s role in the world Kli, and so on, avoiding saying how women can make spiritual advancement individually.” And then you reply, “I do provide the method of individual correction, but it is not what women desire; instead, they want to be ‘like men.'” But the questioner wasn’t asking what women can do to be like men, the questioner was asking what women can do for their individual spiritual advancement. Am I missing something here?

  2. Are women supposed to “correct individually”? EXPLAIN PLEASE.

  3. By the way – of course we “want to be like men” if they get to hug, drink beer together and … connect.
    The main thing that brought me to Kabbalah in the first place was loneliness. So of course we want to do the same things that men get to do – it erases their loneliness! We feel lonely.
    And my loneliness increases when you end your answer like that.
    Please don’t just say “that’s the way it is”, explain what we should do instead? Or tell us that we won’t be lonely, but we won’t connect like the men, OR SOMETHING.

  4. Does this have to do with the shechinah at all? Women already have the divine presence in them, therefore it’s foolish for them to strive for spiritual advancement – they have already attained it. By trying to attain more they’re are either being disgruntled in which case they take on a demon form, or they are idolizing, in which case they take on an angel form. Men don’t have this luxury, they have to strive for spirituality. Women have spirituality and therefore the most important thing for them to do is to live their life? Is this why Eve is the living one? Or am I just speculating?

  5. I don`t want to be like a man,I would rather want them (men) to be more like me,to know what sensivity is,next to their other ideniable qualities.Would`nt that make a more complexe being

  6. I believe I have attained understanding as how we are deceived by the concept of time and space; that there are things external to the self (generating objectivity) and internal to it (conforming subjectivity). I understand that I am not what those perishable attributes given to me by external causality say I am (nation, race, social status, family upbringing, natural prowess, gender and all the attributes that feed our sense of prejudice), regardless of how much they determine how I go about life… Therefore I don’t understand why man and woman, the female and the male, should be seen as separated, almost as the only two concepts transcending each other, with defined different roles within the aim to correction. Rather, I believe that they are like anything else, positive compatible concepts that need each other to unite and fill each other with what the other lacks. Thus, a man is more male (but there is some percentage of female within him) and a woman is more female than male and both require to be filled with what the other has, just like in any other true relationship. It is, after all, about getting read of the notion of power in the way we relate to the other, be this a man or a woman or even a monkey.

    However, if I understand well Michael Laitman, he is trying to say that the concept of female and male is itself full of prejudice and full of pre-conceptions that need to be overcome. In order to achieve this, the woman should not aim at being like a man but complement, complete, him and seek to be complemented, complete, back. And man should not see the woman as a external entity that is there to comfort him and help him reach spirituality, but rather a companion that fill his lack and requires the same level of fulfillment.

    Because beyond gender, as with every other perishable attribute of the person, there is only a human soul yearning for correction.

    A woman who is trapped in the shackles of vain consumption and needs to go out shopping beauty products to feel good about herself is only a victim of a world that enhances our egotistical desires, encourages us to promote the worst of our being (the Narcissus) in order to enslave us into a repetitive process of work, consumption, debt, work, with the promise of a better tomorrow that will never happen.

    This is the real devil in the world. But we don’t see it like that. At the moment we see that enhancing our evil attributes, related to ego, the world progresses and although it appears to be for the better, it is not quite like that for most. Yet, the devil whispers, where was your God in Haiti? And many are ready to listen to him and find no answer to his question and thus conclude that God cannot exist if he allows such horror. But the devil is of our own making, because we hear this question resonating in our despairing heart as we feel helpless in front of natural disasters of such proportions and do not want to confront the real question, namely, “Where were you, we, us, the men and women of progress, when Haiti happened?”

    Sorry if I’m drifting, I see everything in relation to everything else… I hope to engage in further attainment through your replies and if I am wrong, to learn the way out…

  7. It still stuns me that religion and spirituality are used to devalue women and women’s questions which attempt to question the gender asymetry apparant in your answer and quite frankly in your teachings. If we take the creation stories at face value, we need to accept that man & woman were created as equals and to rule over all. Hundreds of years later we read of the “man & wife” dichotomy which places women under or subservient to men. It is an interesting reorganization which for the first time creates a power dynamic based on sex. But my hope is that enlightened readers of Torah and indeed Kabbalah understand the social context of the writings, musings, and attempts at setting moral and spiritual boundaries. Moreover, the social context and beliefs of interpreters also comes in to play. So perhaps, the perpetuation of such gender asymetry speaks more to the beliefs of the authors and interpreters than what should in fact frame our understanding of the Divine.

  8. Why can’t a girl hang out with guys, and talk about the meaning of life with them ? Most of my friends are men, and so long as we don’t get this idea in our heads that we are ipposing opposites, but on the same mission, we get along fine.

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