Ask about Kabbalah

[agricola]

I asked my husband last night how he would translate 'ayn sof' and he said 'endless'. I told him it was a kabbalistic statement about God, and he said, 'that works'.

According to the Tanya (which was written by the earliest (I think) leader of Lubavitcher Hasidim) -

The Blessed Holy One is not separate from creation even for a moment. God's light, which is 'part' of the infinite God, is immanent in everything everywhere always.

(Remember, all Hasidic groups incorporate mysticism into everything).

A contemporary take on this idea brings in the metaphor of a hologram (a picture created by laser - a picture made of 'light'). A hologram shows a picture, and if you cut the hologram in half (printed on the right sort of material) you don't get 'half the picture', you get the WHOLE picture on both halves (with a little loss of definition). And if you keep cutting the picture into pieces, EVERY PIECE still has the complete picture (continuing with loss of detail - the picture gets fuzzy, but the whole picture is always there.

Each entity within the universe is one of the snippets of film. Each contains all of the elements of divine manifestation...All of God is included in any part of creation.

(This is a great metaphor, because later on when we get to Lurianic kabbalah, this works beautifully with Luria's creation imagery).

[agricola]

Don't forget that concept of every entity in creation holding the ENTIRE 'image of the light of God' - all the divine manifestations are present in everything - that's important soon. Of course, the smaller the entities (like a blade of grass, say) the 'fuzzier' the image may be - but it is still there -

However, the fuzziness means it is not always equally easy to see God....

The fact that reality is a refraction of God's light provides us with our religious metaphors. A piece of rock may represent one metaphor for God...inviting us to imagine God's firmness, strength and immovability. When we speak of God's purity, however, we might use the image of ....a newborn baby. God offers us metaphors for divinity in every aspect of our lives. We can see them if we look.

One of the names for God in the Bible is 'I will be what I will be'. This implies that God is in the process of manifesting in the world. Still, much of God is concealed, and according to Kabbalah, there are different levels of manifestation and concealment.

...each human being, without exception, carries the stamp of divinity...each of us is...a complete hologram of God.

The only problem is, like the tiny holographic photo, each of us is somewhat fuzzy....some of our divine nature is...concealed. That concealment presents us with our life task: to become 'revealed' to be a clear, radiant image of the Divine.

So - God is immanent in everything in creation, but we can't readily see that. There is some level of concealment of this inner reality. We need to learn how to look 'beneath' and see this complete image of God's light in everything (including us) and then we will see what is really 'real': everything is part of God. We are all 'one'.

[agricola]

chapter 2 part 2 The Turkey Prince

Unfortunately, nobody TELLS us that we are supposed to work to radiate our image of divinity into the world - instead we are taught we have to work hard to get things -

Then Frankiel drops in a story from Rabbi Nachman of Breslov called 'The Prince who thought he was a turkey'. I'll find a link to it if I can - summary - a prince thought he was a turkey so he sat under a table, took his clothes off and would only eat crumbs. Nobody knew what to do. They called a sage, who took his clothes off and sat under the table with the prince and said he was a turkey too. After a while, the sage put on some clothes (one day at a time here) and said to the prince 'why can't a turkey wear a shirt?' (and so forth). Eventually it was 'Even a turkey can sit at the table' and the prince was dressed, eating normally and sitting at the table.

The turkey prince is a metaphor for each of our lives.

Basically, he was so narrowly focused (on being a turkey) that he didn't notice what was all around him - and we don't either. We are narrow-minded. We focus on acquiring 'things'. We don't realize we are really 'princes' (made in the divine image).

Even when we get glimpses of 'the table, the beautiful glasses and silverware, the conversations of the nobility' etc - we miss what is REALLY important: communion with God - the 'king' who is the 'owner' of the beautiful palace and everything in it, down to the lovely tablecloth we are sitting under, focused on our turkey level vitally important 'things'.

What we should be focusing on - what all mysticism focuses on - and what we know inside our souls even though we have forgotten it - is our yearning to be close to God (devekut: clinging).

Shabbat - done properly - is a little mini-image of entry into the royal palace of the king (God), where we can sit at the royal table (not under it!) and be a part of the grandeur - like the prince. Notice that the prince did not have to give up being a turkey in order to sit at the king's table.

He could be a turkey as long as he wanted. Each of us has our own nature, which will not be overruled but rather transformed.

[KLP]

So Agri, how long have done Kabala or been a Kalaba-ist? I know a lot of celebrities are into it, but I guess regular folks are into it as well.

[agricola]

chapter 2 part 3 Revealing Divine Light

Humans started out being godlike - but were overcome by doubt and confusion, and by listening to what they wanted - their own desires. Since then (since the Garden of Eden) humans have had problems recognizing their inner reality as princes/princesses.

In a sense, Adam and Eve were too uncertain, too fragile to hold the divine glory. That sense of fragility echoes a kabbalistic explanation of the creation story. According to ...Rabbi Isaac Luria, the divine light gave form to the world by emanating ten vessels or sefirot (pronounced suf-fee-ROAT), and then pouring light into them. But the original light was too powerful, and it shattered the vessels, scattering shards of light throughout the universe. Those shards make up out present world. Each shard is now covered with a klipah, or shell, and the human task is to crack open the shell to reveal the light. The shell is the facade' the light inside is true being. On the human level, the shell is our persona or ego, the front we show to the world. The light inside is our soul, our unique refraction of the divine image.

The concept of the ten sefirot are SUPER important in kabbalah.

The task - the correction for the original error of Adam and Eve - is to separate the good and evil that have become mixed in the world. This separation happens every time we make a choice for the good.....as we choose the good, we also begin to re-create ourselves as beings that shine with an inner light.

When we discover something is blocking our manifestation of the divine image, we clear it out, and more of our true inner light can shine.

Whoever owned this book before me did a lot of highlighting and underlining and side notes. At this point, he or she wrote 'self-salvation'.
I don't think that is precisely right, because it implies that there is no input from God in this at all. But since the entire light of God is present in everything, naturally these fragments WANT to be united...anyway, this is a great point to have a bit of discussion. The next part of chapter 2 introduces the ten sefirot, with their names and meanings and mapping to the human body and it is DENSE, with a lot of new terms and things to remember. So why not pause at this point, and ask some questions or discuss things before we continue?

[agricola]

So Agri, how long have done Kabala or been a Kalaba-ist? I know a lot of celebrities are into it, but I guess regular folks are into it as well.

I am barely one at all, klp. My 'natural tendency' does not lean toward the mystical. But as I grow older, I have come to appreciate the value of story and metaphor in our lives.

Kabbalah is a very rich and ancient Jewish tradition of mysticism, and it has had (from Medieval time onward at least) influence also on Christian mysticism, so the concepts and ideas are useful at least when reading 'theology' or understanding liturgical symbols, in both faiths. I don't know enough about Islamic mysticism to compare, but I know it exists, at least (Sufism).

[agricola]

well that was quiet.
OK - so far:
The world we see is not the 'real' world.
God is immanent in all creation.
The divine manifestations are the 'immanence of God' (God's 'light') and all of them are present in every created entity, because, remember, God is 'immanent'.

The last part of chapter 2 introduces the 'sefirot': the ten vessels containing the various divine manifestations - or maybe they are branches of the Tree of Life - or maybe they are the body parts of 'Adam Kadmon' the universe-spanning pan-human....

Well. Nobody said this stuff was simple, did they?!

[agricola]

The world we see - the mundane world - is the lowest level of the cosmic 'palace' which is God's creation. Nothing is what it appears to be 'really' because we don't know how to look at things. Humans also, are not equivalent to our mundane physical selves.

The bodies we experience are dense manifestations of a deeper structure known as the Tree of Life or Tree of the Sefirot...Although those original vessels were destroyed, their form was reconstructed and became the basic template for the next creation that ensued.

The concept of sefirot (and there being ten of them) goes WAY back - the first mention we know of is in the Sefer Yetzirah, a mystical work dating to at least the third century CE (maybe earlier). The SY talks about the 'Ten Sefirot of Nothingness'.

The commentaries explain that these sefirot allude to attributes and names of God.

These 'names' (titles, descriptions) became known as how God manifests in the world - so the more 'names' you know (the REAL names) the more 'control' you had over them. This is very much like 'magic', but doing 'magic' was really more of a side issue for the kabbalist, who studied the mystery of names more for theological and spiritual reasons, not because he could use them for charms or spells. That didn't stop various itinerant 'charmers' from selling charms and spells involving 'the Name' to credulous folks for all sorts of reasons.

I think there was someone in the NT? Simon the Sorcerer? Also Jesus told his apostles they could cast out demons 'in my Name', and baptism uses the formula of the Trinitarian Names: 'Father, Son, Holy Ghost' which is part of the formula that makes a baptism 'valid' in the eyes of most Christians.

I often see a mention that Jews aren't or weren't 'allowed' to say the Name of God out loud (the real name, the one with four letters). It was simultaneously 'too holy' and 'too dangerous' to invoke. (I am now having a flashback from Beetlejuice. Oh well).

But I digress -

In kabbalistic language then, if we speak of the sefirah (singular form) of Tiferet - Splendor, we mean that God manifests in the world through what we perceive as splendor...But we should not be too attached to the precise wording, for the divine name associated with splendor is far deeper...The difficulty of capturing God's manifestation in words tells us that the sefirot also represent levels of concealment. Kabbalah teaches that the divine light is so intense that if it were presented to us directly, we could not see it at all - in fact, we could not exist.

Simple designs showing the ten sefirot (and their relationships) are laid out somewhat like a human body, or like a tree, with the root at the top (crown of the head of a person) and the fruit at the base (feet). On these models (see my second post) the level closest to God is at the top. The level that manifests itself in the physical world is at the bottom. Or alternatively, the root is in Heaven, with the fruit of the great tree in this world.

OK?

Keter (Crown) at the very top.
Binah (understanding) and Chochma (wisdom) on the next level
Gevurah (strength, restraint) and Chesed (generosity, expansiveness) on the third level down
Tiferet - splendor
Hod (surrender) and Netzach (perseverance) fifth set
Yesod (foundation)
Malkhut (manifestation) at the very base.

[agricola]

in this version, the names are a bit different, but not too -

[agricola]

Basically, you always have Keter at the top and Malkhut (manifestation, or kingship - it can be either)at the base, but some versions shuffle the ones between around a LITTLE (not too much). Here's a link to numerous versions - I invite you to take a look and start to become familiar with the names of the ten sefirot:

h**ps://www.google.com/search?q=images+sefirot& ... 22kD85M%3A

Frankiel now tells us she will discuss the Tree from two perspectives. First, from top to bottom -

how the divine energies transform and manifest themselves, proceeding from God's emanation of divine light to the world as we know it.

That's Part II of the book: The Unfolding of Creation

Part III will

'describe the sefirot as also the "Path of Remembering"...This mode of understanding will take us on a more circuitous route, beginning at the bottom of the diagram and moving up the tree in terms of stages of development, but also spiraling through the sefirot to indicate their interrelationships. Ultimately, this process will bring us into the depths of our hearts, where we unify our human selves with the Divine

' (Heavy stuff!)

Now there's a chart with all the names, the Hebrew and English translation, the part of the body each sefirot relates to (I should add that) and the 'meaning' or explanation of the meaning of each.

name: translation: body part: meaning
Keter: Crown: crown of the head: divine spark, will, or soul
Chochma: Wisdom: right temple: first emanation of light, spark of inspiration, seed of thought
Binah: Understanding: left temple: nourishing the spark into a flame
Da'at (replaces Keter, which can't be described apparently): knowledge: brain stem and spinal cord: (also 'the eleventh sefirot') unifying and connecting knowledge (chochma and binah generate da'at)*
Chesed: expansiveness: right shoulder and arm: lovingkindness, divine grace and support
Gevurah: restraint: left shoulder and arm: discipline, limitation, strength of character
Tiferet: splendor: heart and solar plexus: harmonic balance of tendencies (it is 'tiferet' that bolts everything else together) - kind of like mindfulness?
Netzach: perseverance: right hip and leg: energetic initiative, stamina
Hod: surrender: left hip and leg: acceptance, yielding
Yesod: foundation: womb/genitals: processing and transmitting the energies of the preceding sefirot - kind of like the control station
Malkhut: manifestation: feet and (for some reason) lips: Kingship, Shekhinah (the manifestation of God in this world) the final impression made on the physical world, the divine presence immanent in the world.

*Chabad is the name of the outreach arm of Lubavitch Hasidim. There are Chabad houses and emissaries all around the world, doing outreach to all Jews to bring them back to 'yiddishkeit' (Jewishness, Judaism, being Jewish). Chabad is an acronym for Chochmah, Binah, Da'at: wisdom, understanding, knowledge.
Just thought I'd throw that in.