These ASK ABOUT topics are focused on INFORMATION about new paths, rather than on sharing our personal journey. Please keep it to one topic per new path. This is a place for SUPPORT and AGREEMENT only, not a place to tell someone their new path is wrong or why we disagree with them.
What are the general rules (common to all religious traditions, really):
1) doing good and giving to others in need - serving others.
2) set aside time to work on your own relationship to God/divinity.
in Jewish mysticism, acts of goodness are the basis of what is called the 'arousal from below' - human action that will in turn stimulate God to shower divine love on earth.
A famous Hasidic rabbi put it this way:
After the creation of 'man to work on it' (the earth), every arousal from above, to arouse the attribute of the Supreme Expansiveness, depends on an arousal from below, that is, the charity and kindness that we do in this world...in these times..the principal service of God is the service of charity.
History is the fiction we invent to persuade ourselves that events are knowable and that life has order and direction. That's why events are always reinterpreted when values change. We need new versions of history to allow for our current prejudices.
Malkhut-Manifestation is traditionally represented by King David, for the Hebrew letter of his name signify 'empty and empty' or 'poor and poor', holding nothing to himself. As David represents the human being as servant of God, his name stand in contrast to a certain enemy of God, in a way that Ezekiel prophesies will occur in the future (Ezek. 38). This enemy is named Gog, the letters of which mean 'full and full', that is, full of himself even after having been shown the reality of God. Spiritually, this speaks of the ultimate war between the one who nullifies himself before the infinite and the one who hold(s) on to his ego. When that war is over, the ultimate manifestation, known as the Kingdom of God, will be complete.
History is the fiction we invent to persuade ourselves that events are knowable and that life has order and direction. That's why events are always reinterpreted when values change. We need new versions of history to allow for our current prejudices.
I took daughter no. 3 out of town for shopping (birthday) today and we talked about kabbalah a bit at lunch. Daughter no. 3 studied philosophy at college and views all religions and religious traditions as -roughly - schools of philosophy.
As always, whenever you try to explain ideas to other people, you figure out the idea a little 'better' yourself (or ideally you should!)
So what I told her, was that if I had gone out to write this same kind of book as Frankiel, I would have STARTED at this point which she has reached mid-book (for the record, D#3 said she'd have done it the same way Frankiel did). But I would have started with 'see the world around us and ourselves and see how diverse everything is. Now think about what scripture SAYS about God, and understand that the kabbalists, both ancient and today, are using as their BASE ASSUMPTION - the absolute ground of understanding on which EVERYTHING must stand - the firm belief that God is radically ONE, a single 'whole' containing everything that is.
So THEN they will understand the diversity of the universe as - inevitably - a false picture of difference, because 'IN REALITY' (according to their base assumption) everything we see, touch and feel is in reality unified.
And THEN they have all the very diverse pictures of God/the nature of God which are depicted in the Jewish scriptures - God is a warrior, God is a storm, God is a mother bird, God is jealous/angry/loving/just....God is fire, smoke, a husband, a lover, the ruler of the world - a still small voice...
And God is also radically ONE, a single whole.
Once that idea is firmly in mind (that God is completely One and completely 'spiritual', i.e., non-physical and without form), THEN we consider the aspects of God as they appear TO US, and the diversity of everything as they appear TO US, and we start to 'see' that there is - there must be - an underlying unity and common theme to everything, which leads back to the God that is ONE.
So - just as we may talk about our boss in her capacity as supervisor, and ignore the complete human - we talk about her abilities to delegate, her sense of business decision making etc - and we don't even MENTION her collection of early Picassos or her fondness for Thai food, because they are (temporarily) irrelevant to the aspects of our boss as a supervisor - we consider that the mentions of God in the scriptures are similarly focused on whatever 'aspect' of God's Oneness is apparent to us AT THAT PARTICULAR TIME. 'All' of God is 'present', but the scriptures are relating events which concern only certain aspects at each event described.
Now this is just my idea of a way to explain 'sefirot', and I could certainly be way off. But what do you guys who are reading this think? Is this analogy useful?
Back to the blind men and the elephant - there is a possibility that the blind men, in touching various parts of the single elephant, might think that they are actually perceiving several DIFFERENT 'elephants' (one of which is like a rope, another like a tree, and so on) and therefore think that there is more than one 'god' (since our elephant here is standing in for God). BUT our blind men (being Jews) KNOW for an absolute FACT, that there is only ONE elephant (only one God) and therefore, even though they have wildly different impressions of what this God is 'like', they know that they are dealing with ONE God and the SAME God - who just SEEMS to be different, so they are going to call these various (and very different) aspects of God 'sefirot' (vessels) which 'contain' some particular MANIFESTATION of the God who is ONE - again, another analogy which seems to me to be useful. What do you think?
History is the fiction we invent to persuade ourselves that events are knowable and that life has order and direction. That's why events are always reinterpreted when values change. We need new versions of history to allow for our current prejudices.
Kabbalah says that we are the thousands of mirrors of the one God. How can we realize this awareness in our lives? How can we know, through all the world's turmoil and strife, the love and beauty that God wants to manifest within us? We do it by filling Malkhut-Manifestation - ordinary existence - with divine reality, clearing all the sediment from the lamp so that light can shine all the way through from Keter-Crown.
As we are grownig up, we rarely see ourselves as vessels of divinity...during that period (of growing up) we are involved in innumerable exchanges with the other beings in our lives, exchanges that offer us opportunities to define our lives....we reach adulthood still entangled in the energies of childhood and adolescence -- the social energies that...are embedded in the four lowest sefirot.
So we need to first learn to understand ourselves, and the first step is 'naming' - identifying our attachments to our ego. Most people develop a sense of self, attached to their name or the names they are called, very early in life (Remember that book, A Child Called It? this part of the chapter reminded me of that book).
Names are the signature of the sefirah of Manifestation. The first act of Adam in the Bible, the act that completed creation, was to name the animals.
Frankiel goes on to mention the nicknames we acquire, the names we give ourselves, the way some people change their names for various reasons, all of them basically involving a change in the way they see themselves.
A
ll this playing with names is a symptom of the process of trying to fit a soul into an ego, a cultural construct. ...On this level (Manifestation) we are like actors on a stage, each with a part to play, and the entire system of education in every culture teaches us what that part is...
Seeing the discrepancy between your assigned role and your inner sense of self is the first step in maturity....
All this effort - and sometimes literal world traveling - is part of our spiritual development, says Frankiel, as we try to discover our 'divine name' - since we are in the image of God (that is, we are each of a manifestation of God) we also have divine names.
History is the fiction we invent to persuade ourselves that events are knowable and that life has order and direction. That's why events are always reinterpreted when values change. We need new versions of history to allow for our current prejudices.
The idea of reincarnation is rare in Judaism, but not unheard of - the idea of gilgul (circling, returning) enters Judaism through this kabbalistic teaching that the soul has a mission to understand itself, and may need more than one life to accomplish whatever fails to be accomplished in one life.
According to Kabbalah, the results of past lives - our accomplishments and failures - are encoded in our bodies. The great eighteenth-century thinker knows as the Vilna Gaon (R. Eilyahu Kramer, 1720-1797) held that the unique possibilities and limitations of the physical boy derive from one's previous life or lives.
(a gaon is a 'genius'. The Vilna Gaon is 'the genius of Vilna' - a city in eastern Europe)
I've been seeing research recently which says that we can inherit various characteristics from our parents based on trauma or stress which they encountered DURING their lives - check out 'epigenetics'.
The sefirah of Foundation (Yesod), if you remember, relates to 'inheritance' and the passing on of information.
So we inherit in a sense, the 'merits' of our forefathers. Any 'bad' would be something we need to continue to work on from more recent lifetimes.
But what we 'inherit' isn't so specific as to determine what we will DO with these characteristics -
The Talmud says of King David that he was destined to shed blood, but it was up to him whether he would become a murderer, a warrior, a ritual slaughterer of meat, or a ritual expert in circumcision. He became a warrior on behalf of his people. With all of us, certain qualities will be encouraged by society; our religious heritage can offer a higher vision and a good personal discipline to help us refine our talents. Still, the crucial work has to be done on our own.
In other words, people are different, and have different talents and tendencies, and it is up to the individual to take what they are given, and 'bend' it (or make choices) which (ideally) lead toward the greater good.
History is the fiction we invent to persuade ourselves that events are knowable and that life has order and direction. That's why events are always reinterpreted when values change. We need new versions of history to allow for our current prejudices.
Today we had two visiting young rabbis from Chabad, and I got the chance to talk to them about kabbalah and the sefirot - they are quite young folks (20) and will not study this seriously for another couple of decades, but we had a great discussion -
Some of their points:
All the sefirot are (also) within each of us (as well as within everything else).
It isn't just a divine manifestation, these are HUMAN 'manifestations' - mirrors or reflections or elements that exist throughout the world all the time in every place and every 'thing'.
The example they used was - a mathematical statement. 1+1 = 2. This is true everywhere, all the time. So, too, the sefirot are everywhere, all the time.
And: every sefirot contains all the sefirot - there is 'wisdom' in beauty and there is beauty in Foundation, etc. Not only are all the sefirot in everything, everywhere, all the time, also all the sefirot are within all the sefirot.....
History is the fiction we invent to persuade ourselves that events are knowable and that life has order and direction. That's why events are always reinterpreted when values change. We need new versions of history to allow for our current prejudices.
If you look at the Tree of the Kabbalah, you can kind of see a human being also - and each sefirah corresponds to a body part - the 'legs' are the sefirot of Perseverance and Surrender - these are our 'support systems', so to speak. They can be things like our families and communities work to support us - guiding and advising and protecting. When we work to make our families stronger or our communities better, then, we are drawing on the our sefirot of Perserverance and Surrender.
...it is important to remember that while social influences are powerful, they are not determinative. They are interacting with us. We have choices. Our relation to Perseverance and Surrender, therefore, is different from our relation to Manifestation, which...represents the social context in its givenness. As the kabbalists often repeat, 'Malkhut has nothing of its own.' Infants have no control over who their parents are...
(Manifestation (Malkhut) is just what IS - we don't have choices about that. But we do have choices about HOW we react to what 'is').
Depending on our temperament and our stage in development, one or the other side may be easier for us.
We may use our Perseverance to work 'for' something, or our Surrender to stay out of a competition or situation we don't feel comfortable with, for example.
These two - remember - are 'legs' - they work in tandem. When one is strong (moving) the other is passive (supporting). Ideally, each of these 'legs' will be equally developed and you will 'move' in a chosen direction for your life without being handicapped.
Frankiel goes on to discuss how our emotions are sometimes attached to our physical selves - how certain movement sometimes bring certain memories back. Perseverance and Surrender also involve our emotional states - perseverance (I don't think I've typed that darned word correctly ONCE)
'builds experiences that are conducive to good emotional habits'
while surrender is
'the energy that enables us to feel acceptance and gratitude'.
When these sefirot get OUT of balance - seriously so - it is because of some trauma. The solution is to balance the trauma with its 'opposite'. E.g. Gandhi's response to British oppression wasn't to meet it with aggression, but to meet it with the 'opposite': non-violence. But it was non-violence based first in pride of accomplishment (Gandhi had a bunch of self-help productive activities involving his followers - so they felt self confident about their own worth and abilities, before they were able to meet aggression with non-violence. Martin Luther King Jr said that you can't heal hate with more hate, only with love - and you can't 'love' until you understand, accept and are willing to reconcile.
History is the fiction we invent to persuade ourselves that events are knowable and that life has order and direction. That's why events are always reinterpreted when values change. We need new versions of history to allow for our current prejudices.
At this point, I kind of feel like I should throw out the reminder that kabbalah is NOT 'mainstream Judaism'. It is common belief mostly among the various Hasidic groups, and in the Jewish Renewal movement (which is very hippie-new agish). But kabbalah as a body of interpretation has been around a LONG time (certainly over 500 years) and it draws strongly on existing Jewish teachings and traditions ('kabbalah' MEANS 'the tradition' in effect - literally 'received').
Some people are drawn to rationalism and logic and others are drawn to mystical/spiritual/emotional ways of thinking. Kabbalah is very 'friendly' to the mystical/spiritual/emotional kind of mind.
History is the fiction we invent to persuade ourselves that events are knowable and that life has order and direction. That's why events are always reinterpreted when values change. We need new versions of history to allow for our current prejudices.
And Agri, you are drawn to this or practicing this as your new path? Does your husband also follow this new path or does it cause problems in your family is just one person follows this new path?
Isn't the world wonderful...I am all for rational optimism and I am staying positive.
I don't. I study ABOUT it, I don't study to 'be' a kabbalist. It isn't my personal inclination (mysticism). But I can appreciate it as a system, and as I mentioned, many ideas have entered mainstream Judaism over the centuries, so most Jews are at least minimally familiar with some of the basic teachings.
My husband is the most secular of secular Israelis: this sort of thing, in his opinion, is simply bunk and not even particularly interesting bunk.
Our rabbi here is out of the Jewish Renewal movement, so in that aspect of things, it is impossible to AVOID some of these teachings. I also quite like, personally enjoy and find thought-provoking, the statements, poetry and prayers, and the stories, of Rabbi Nachman of Breslov. I don't agree with his rejection of rational logic in favor of mystical spirituality, however, I do think that his mystical spiritualism is profoundly wise and he speaks to my heart....he just doesn't speak too loudly to my mental faculties. But there's hardly anything better for my emotional health, when I am feeling down, than to read a little from Reb Nachman.
The system of kabbalah as it exists now is a whole 'myth' in the purely religious sense: it is a coherent rational model of the universe and everything in it, why it is here, how it works, and what its end will be. Charming. My issue with it, such as I have, is that it is impossible to 'test' and therefore is only 'real' if you believe in it, without evidence (or at least, no more evidence than any other religious story). It is the kind of model that gives meaning to people's lives and explains where they come from, why they are here, and where they can hope to go in future. The ideas in it are 'metaphors' for the human experience, explained through a Jewish filter.
Islam has the Sufi movement, and Christianity has it's mystical models as well - I think the book of Revelation is a strong candidate for a part of the standard Christian theological 'story' which is clearly mystical - every element in it stands for something else. It is the story of the end of time told through a Christian filter (explanation of meaning).
History is the fiction we invent to persuade ourselves that events are knowable and that life has order and direction. That's why events are always reinterpreted when values change. We need new versions of history to allow for our current prejudices.
