On Thoughts, Feelings, the Past and the Future

In all the situations that face us in life, we should strive to see everything as coming directly from the Creator, and to see His point of view as if it were ours. We should assert that “it is He who stands between everything else and me; it is through Him that I look upon everyone in this world, including myself. All that is perceived by me emanates from Him, and all that emanates from me goes only to Him. For this reason all that surrounds us is He.” As it is said, “You are both before me and behind me, and You have placed Your hand on me.” “All that is in me,” one should say, “all that I think and feel, comes from You, and is a dialogue with You.”

It’s Always Darkest Before the Dawn

The most horrifying feeling is our perception of the endless abyss.

This strikes us when a sudden void seems to open up right beneath our feet; a void characterized by hopelessness, fear, lack of any support, and a complete departure of the Surrounding Light that has given us a sense of the future, of tomorrow, of the next moment.

All variations of this dreadful negative feeling stem from the greater original sensation and, actually, can be considered aspects of it. All of them are sent to us from the same source, Malchut, the empty soul put forth by the Creator so that each of us will fill each part of that soul with Light.

All the sensations of darkness we experience emanate from this empty soul and can be overcome only by faith in the Creator, by perceiving Him. It is for this reason that all suffering is sent by the Creator.

Spiritual Growth through Faith in the Creator

King David, the embodiment of our souls, describes the condition of the soul in every line of his psalms, depicting all its impressions as it ascends the various levels. It is astonishing how much we must bear before we have the understanding, the awareness, and the way to the right path. No one can tell us what the next step should be.

Only by necessity, having stumbled on the previous step, will we choose the right action. The more we are spurred on by hardships, the faster we can grow spiritually. Thus, it is said, “Happy is the one who is afflicted by the Creator.”

We should not know our next step, or our future; the prohibition against fortune-telling in the Bible should not be taken lightly.

Spiritual growth occurs only through the growth of faith. This is supported by the fact that everything we live through at a given moment, and everything that we will live through in the next moment, emanates from the Creator and can be overcome only by attaining closeness with Him. This occurs by necessity, since our nature refuses to admit that He has domain over us.

The knowledge of our future state, or merely our confidence in our knowledge of it, takes away our opportunity to close our eyes, keep quiet, and accept any sudden manifestation of the Higher Rule as true and just. This is possible only when we come closer to the Creator.

Let Kabbalah Be Your Spiritual Guide

The Bible describes all of our progressive states of spiritual ascent in the everyday language of our world. As we already know, there are only two qualities in all creation: altruism and egoism, the quality of the Creator and the quality of His creations. Kabbalah, on the other hand, describes the stages of spiritual ascent in the language of direct feelings, as is done in this part of the book, or in the language of Sefirot, the physics- mathematical description of spiritual objects.

This language is universal, compact, and precise. Its external form is discernable by beginners. It also helps us to understand others and be understood by them, since it focuses on abstract spiritual objects and on events that, to a certain degree, are removed from us.

When we have moved to the spiritual stages, we can use this “scientific” language to describe our own actions and feelings, because the Light that we perceive already carries the information about the action itself, the name of the action, and the spiritual level.

However, a Kabbalist can convey feelings and sensations about a particular spiritual level only to one who has already experienced that level, since another person will not under- stand these concepts. Similarly, in our world, an individual who has not undergone a particular sensation and who does not know it through an analogous sensation will not be capable of understanding it.

“The Everyman’s Guide to Attaining Spirituality” is based on the book, Attaining the Worlds Beyond by Dr. Michael Laitman.

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