A question I received: I would like to understand the meaning of the sacred name HaVaYaH: the beginning of the letter Yod, the letter Yod, and the rest of the letters in their order. How do they designate the Sefirot in our Kelim and in the worlds, and how does all this relate to Malchut both in the spiritual world and in our world, in our souls from Nefesh to Yechida?

My Answer: The letters and the Sefirot are the same thing. There is nothing besides the desire and the Light that created and fills it. Everything else is a designation of their mutual states. The framework of the spiritual desire is the five-level desire, whose last level constitutes the final desire.

It’s the same with us: The desire forms until we start perceiving and realizing it. It must go through four stages of development, beginning from the Light that begets it as a point, the beginning of the letter Yod, and then continuing along the four phases of the development of the HaVaYaH. Once the desire is formed, it starts reacting to the Light that begot it, and this is already the reversed HaVaYaH. [Read more →]

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News Story: Why Are Men Going Off Sex?

“Men are increasingly going off sex due to stress, depression and the inability to talk about their problems, experts have claimed.

A team at a relationship counselling service has reported a whopping 40 per cent increase in the number of lazy blokes, admitting that, despite being physically able to have sex, they don’t have any interest.

‘They tend to be men in their thirties, forties and fifties and married. It is a serious issue. It counts as a psychosexual dysfunction, rather than just a relationship problem, because these men haven’t simply gone off their partner but off sex altogether,’ a newspaper quoted Peter Bell of the organisation as saying.”

My Response: The feeling of emptiness, the lack of fulfillment from the Upper Source – even if only subconscious – leads to general depression and the suppression of all bodily desires. Lately this isn’t just a problem, but a universally acknowledged fact.

However, the study of Kabbalah brings about an outburst of all desires and growth of egoism, both on a widespread scale and individually. It is written, “since the destruction of the Temple, only those who work to become similar to the Creator have retained the true taste of copulation.” Mainly, this refers to spiritual copulation – Zivug de Haka’a with the Upper Light, but it also has results in our world. It is talking about people who are working on the intention to bestow…

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A question I received: Dear Rav, the path of Kabbalah has become my salvation, it’s something to live for, every day I immerse myself deeper into Kabbalah and this makes me happy, I receive the answers to all of the questions that just wouldn’t let me be throughout my entire life, I see the light and the way to rid myself of my egoism. I’ve just read about people that don’t hear things, that “fall asleep,” so what should my attitude be towards the fact that we fall asleep during the web class?

My Answer: Sometimes I would fall asleep during Rabash’s lessons. It happens and there are many reasons why. However, one needs to continue studying and do everything that’s in one’s power, like going to the lesson even when knowing that he might end up falling asleep. It’s because we don’t want knowledge, but the entrance to spirituality. Spirituality is awarded according to a person’s effort, and not according to one’s knowledge of the material.

Related Material:
* Spiritual Work – a chapter from the book Attaining the Worlds Beyond [Free PDF Download | Purchase]

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News Story: Down the Tube: the Sad Stats On Happiness, Money and TV

“Put down the remote and back slowly away from the television.

Despite the sharp rise in our standard of living in recent decades, Americans today are little or no happier than earlier generations. Why not?

A new study suggests one possibility: Maybe we need to be smarter about how we spend our time. And, no, that doesn’t mean watching more TV.”

The article continues by outlining three components of happiness:
1. Your nature or personality, that is, whether or not you’re a happy person by nature – and you have no control over this.
2. Your life’s circumstances, such as your age, health, marital status and income. The study continues by saying that these are nowhere near as important as people usually imagine them to be, giving the example that even if our income doubled, we would get used to it very quickly.
3. Your use of your time.

The study showed that people were generally happy in activities that the authors described as “’engaging leisure and spiritual activities’ – things like visiting friends, exercising, attending church, listening to music, fishing, reading a book, sitting in a cafe or going to a party” – and that people choose to undertake such activities, instead of doing them out of necessity.

Moreover, the study mentioned watching TV as taking a lot more of people’s time than the above-mentioned activities did in the past, and that if we spent more time on the “engaging leisure and spiritual activities,” we would then have a more satisfying life.

My Response: Soon we will start finding out that even these activities will leave us empty and unfulfilled. We will search for fulfillment in all kinds of places, until we arrive at our last desire: the desire to discover the meaning of life, through the attainment of the Creator.

Related Material:

* ARTICLE: It’s All About Pleasure – Although we enjoy different things, we all share a common need to fulfill our desire for pleasure

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A summary of Baal HaSulam’s article “There Is a Difference Between Corporeality and Spirituality” (article #164 from Shamati):

In corporeality, the force precedes the act. Such is the arrangement at the end of correction: no act is done until there’s enough strength to carry it out.

In spirituality, the act precedes the force. Everything takes place according to a step-by-step disclosure of desires suitable for correction, from the easiest to the most difficult. Therefore, the work needs to begin even before one has the strength to carry it out.

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Do demons and spirits exist in our world? The Kabbalists describe demons and spirits in their books, while using words, names and descriptions of our world. So how does Kabbalah define demons and spirits?

As forces. All in all, there is nothing in the universe but forces. These forces make us depict all kinds of shapes and images within us, like on a TV or a computer screen. Everything we see in our world is the product of how these forces are displayed within us.

In the spiritual world there are no images whatsoever, but only forces and properties. Therefore, there’s nothing out there beyond the things that we clearly see. Names such as angels, devils, demons and so forth are used to indicate forces. For instance, you can call the force of gravity – the angel of gravity.

Filed under: Spirituality - 4 Comments →

The 13th issue of the Kabbalah Today publication is now available.

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Editor’s Note
More Real than Reality TV, More Connected than the Internet
Read Article >>>

Anything but Survival
The game show, Survivor, is an excellent example of how not to behave in order to survive in our world. But are we – people of the world, stranded on planet Earth – really that different from the contestants on Survivor?
Read Article >>>

To Be or Not to Be?
Death is one of the most unsettling, yet fascinating, phenomena we all face. At one point or another, it touches the lives of each of us, forcing us to ask profound, seemingly unanswerable questions.
Read Article >>>

Facebook – What’s All the Fuss?
The obsession with Facebook expresses a deep rooted desire within each of us—to feel connected with everyone. But does the largest virtual community really deliver the new and improved social world we seek?
Read Article >>>

Tom, Jerry and Our Children
Today, even Tom can’t help us teach good values to our children. Not to mention Jerry…
Read Article >>>

Extras – Why Does Love Always Hurt?
Love always hurts us, because in our world, love is based on the needs of the ego. Whether we are aware of it or not, our love always comes with the calculation: “Is it worthwhile for me or not?”
Read Article >>>

“Light” – the Kabbalistic Meaning
The word “Light” brings all kinds of positive associations to mind. But in Kabbalah, Light is higher than anything we can imagine – it is, in fact, a quality of the Creator Himself.
Read Article >>>

Living the Spiritual Dream World
We all begin our lives perceiving and living in this corporeal world, until one day we discover a unique desire for something new and different, mostly called “spirituality.”
Read Article >>>

Kabbalah: User Manual
What’s it All About?
Although we often feel like isolated individuals and see a world of schisms, Kabbalists say that we are all interconnected and interdependent.
Read Article >>>

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Philosophy has placed a lot of effort into proving that the corporeal is produced by the spiritual, that the soul begets the body. This is, of course, nothing more than philosophy’s invention. The spiritual has nothing to do with the corporeal; there’s no connection between them whatsoever.

Philosophy’s whole uselessness and confusion lies in that it takes pride in a theoretical understanding of the Creator. Kabbalah, on the other hand, is based on and speaks only about actual attainment.

The spiritual represents a force unclothed by a body, and therefore, it is without corporeal form, without any connection to the corporeal. As far as the soul goes, philosophy considers spiritual entities to be unattainable, attributing them to the category of pure reason.

How can the spiritual beget and sustain the corporeal? Such a question is only difficult for philosophers. This question presents no difficulty to a Kabbalist, because Kabbalists attain the total opposite of what philosophers imagine. Moreover, according to Kabbalists, any property of a spiritual object is similar to its corporeal property.

The time of philosophers has passed, and their reign has ended – thanks to materialistic psychologists. Materialistic psychology was built on the ruins of philosophy. Today, everyone understands philosophy’s uselessness, because it lacks a legitimate foundation. The opportunity to disclose Kabbalah to the world arose when materialistic psychology came about, and inflicted a victorious blow to philosophic theology.

Today, Kabbalah will be able to prove its validity by clarifying the uselessness and falsehood of philosophic theology, which inherited the throne of Kabbalah such a long time ago.

Based on: Y. Ashlag (Baal HaSulam) “The Wisdom of Kabbalah and Philosophy”

My Current Mood: confused

Filed under: Perception - 1 Comment →

We are capable of only one action – intention. There are no others. All of our physical actions are nonexistent, and so are our desires. Everything other than intention is inanimate, dead or halted – there is no motion in the spiritual, regardless of the fact that we perceive dynamic physical activity.

In summary:
1. The actions of our world (of inanimate, vegetative and animate nature);
2. The actions of a regular person in our world;
3. The actions of a religious person in his commandments and rituals;
4. The actions of a Kabbalah student;
– none of these are spiritual actions; they don’t exist in the Upper World.

Only…
5. The actions of a Kabbalah student
– are justified as preparation for spiritual actions.

Only our intentions of selfless bestowal are perceived in the spiritual world. When they appear in us, we appear in the spiritual world; when they disappear, we disappear from the spiritual world.
I compare this to acceleration – a derivative of motion. Like Einstein said, consider uniform motion as a state of rest, and see only acceleration.

My Current Mood: thoughtful

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Originally, one soul of Adam was created, which divided into 600,000 souls, each of which divides into a great number of sparks.

However, the spiritual doesn’t divide into parts. Therefore, in reality there exists only one soul of Adam and it is contained wholly within each individual. The soul is divided into 600,000 parts by man’s egoism.

Initially, egoism expels and distances the Light from the soul. But if the ego undergoes correction through the study of Kabbalah, then the common soul shines in it.

Therefore, there are various circumstances with regard to the person:
1. He feels his individual soul and doesn’t understand that it is – the common soul,
2. Corresponding to the level of unity with the souls, the Light of the common soul shines within him,
3. When egoism is completely corrected, he feels that his soul exists in everyone, and the common soul shines for him to the fullest degree, as it does in Adam.

From here the three periods of man’s spiritual growth are created:
1. A spark of the soul,
2. The individual soul – perceives itself to be a part of the common soul, which brings about a feeling of lovesickness,
3. Approaches perfection in bestowing to the Creator; connects to the common soul. [Read more →]

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