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The Secret of How the Desire for Spirituality Develops in a Person

Did You Know That There Are 5 Stages of Human Desires?

The development of humankind over thousands of years is a realization of different levels of desire. The search for ways of fulfilling these emerging desires determines this or that level of civilization’s evolution and everything we define as technological and scientific progress.

Because desires constantly improve, evolve from smaller to bigger, humankind advances. Kabbalah divides the entire complex of human desires into five stages:

  • Primary stage or still degree: need for sex and food
  • Second stage or vegetative degree: striving for riches
  • Third stage or animate degree: craving for power and fame
  • Fourth stage or speaking degree: thirst for knowledge
  • Fifth stage or speaking within the speaking degree: aspiration to spirituality, to the Creator

 

The Desire for Spirituality Is the Greatest Human Desire

The need for sex and food are the same desires as those of animals. Even in complete isolation, we would still feel hunger and the urge to reproduce, to have sexual relations.

Desires for wealth, power, fame, and knowledge are human desires, since to satisfy them one must be surrounded by other people.

We are born, our animal and human desires develop, and then we find out that their realization does not satisfy us, since our secret but true aspiration, which we cannot yet realize and formulate, falls outside the boundaries of this world.

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Warning: Are You Really Fulfilling Your Life’s Purpose?

The Reason for Studying Kabbalah In a Nutshell

If we cannot feel the upper world, it appears to us as though we and the world have our own existence, and we cannot see how much we ourselves and the world we live in are controlled from above. This is the reason we feel that our surroundings are hostile and not a means to rush us back to our root.

Before the soul descends to the body, it is a small point in its root. From there, the soul descends to our world, clothed in a body, and loses contact with its root. It can return to its root only if it annuls the bodily desires for worldly pleasures. There are, all and all, 620 desires in the body. By correcting them, the soul returns to its root, where it receives 620 times more pleasures than it had before its descent.

People who have crossed this road and accomplished this correction are called Kabbalists. They live in our world and in the spiritual root simultaneously. They tell us how to rise in degrees that climb from this world back to our spiritual root. When we read their explanations, we attract the illumination of the upper light that pulls us forward.

 

How a Kabbalist Operates for Everyone’s Benefit

All through the generations, Kabbalists have helped humanity advance to its goal: the purpose of creation. But that help was mostly secretive, “behind the scenes.” Today, however, because the desire for spirituality has already developed in millions, the Kabbalists clearly state that the help of the entire population is necessary to draw the spiritual light by the study of the wisdom of Kabbalah.

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4 Things You Absolutely Must Know to Thrive Spiritually

Did You Know That Your Soul Is a ‘Desire to Enjoy’?

Like the earth in the story of Genesis, the soul must go through a certain process of development in the body. It takes more than one lifetime to complete the process, meaning that the soul clothes itself in many bodies over many cycles. Although the process is clear, we can go our entire life without feeling that we have a soul, a spiritual component, thus not realizing the purpose of our life in this world.

As we have said, the soul is merely a desire to enjoy, to receive. It defines the attributes and the needs of the body, while the body itself is a dead object. The development of the soul creates different needs in the human being. Its desires change with its evolution from desires for bodily pleasures—food, sleep, and sex, just as in animals—to the desire to return to its spiritual state, its primary state from which it descended to this world.

Those desires do not evolve one at a time, but in a jumble. That is why a person can feel he or she has a craving for knowledge and at the same time a desire for money, honor, and sex. It happens in any person, because all the desires are made of a unique compound.

 

Why the Desire for Spirituality Is Unique

The same principle applies to the desire for spirituality. It can be revealed along with lower desires, but what distinguishes it is that we cannot satisfy it with anything mundane, because the source for this desire is outside our world. The revelation of such a desire testifies to the degree of development of the soul.

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Ki Tavo (When You Come) – Weekly Torah Portion

Deuteronomy, 26:1-29:8
This Week’s Torah Portion | September 7 – September 13, 2014 – Elul 12 – Elul 18, 5774

In A Nutshell

The portion, Ki Tavo (When You Come), begins with the last part of Moses’ speech before the people prior to his death. Upon the entrance to the land of Israel, Moses orders the people to write the words on big, whitewashed stones, and to build from them an altar for the Creator.

Moses describes the blessing that will come to Israel if they keep the Mitzvot (commandments), and the cursing that will come to them if they do not. He describes the state of the blessing and the curse on Mount Eival, and on Mount Gerizim—who will stand on each side, what are curses and what are blessings, and how they should be said.

The portion also deals with the Mitzvot of the first fruit, and the tithing laws. At the end of the portion Moses summarizes the events through which the people went, the Creator’s help on every step, and the people’s commitment to keep the Mitzvot.

Commentary by Dr. Michael Laitman

Our soul consists of 613 Mitzvot (commandments). Initially, they are all as the evil inclination, meaning aiming to benefit ourselves. In each of our desires appears—in the best case scenario—concern for ourselves. In the worst case scenario appears how we lie, steal, and use others for our own benefit.

Even if we do not use others, we still feel that the worse off they are, the better off we are. By nature, we are built to compare ourselves to others.

And yet, there is no one to complain to about it because the Creator admits, “I have created the evil inclination.” It is a process that began in Egypt, where we received the big evil inclination, the will to receive.

We discovered it at Mount Sinai, where we agreed to be “as one man with one heart,” to bond. Although we were by a mountain of hate, we united around the mountain and expressed willingness to unite. Although we were unable to actualize it, we were prepared to go for it. That was enough to receive the force of correction called “Torah,” whose light reforms.

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Do You Know This Shocking Truth About the Bible’s Abraham?

Why Abraham Is Just As Relevant Today As He Ever Was

Just as the Creation story can be used to help us understand the evolution of our souls and our purpose on the earth, the story of Abraham the Patriarch teaches us about the essentials of growing toward the Creator and coming to know Him in our lives to fulfill our purpose in life. Anyone who ascends from this world toward the Creator and unites with Him must take the same path that Abraham first took, and for which he is regarded as the father of the nation.

If we relate to the Torah as a historic tale, we will see that it is not very different from the histories of other nations. But the Torah does not deal with the past, rather it deals with us. It deals with each and every one of us; with who we are and what we are and what we must do with our lives. The Creator appeals only to people, to each and every person. That is how the Torah explains the entire system of creation. Each person contains everything that exists in all the worlds inside him or her, including our own world. Besides humanity, there is only the Creator. Humanity is the representative of creation and of all the other worlds.

 

What ‘Abraham’ Really Is

The Creator turns to Abraham, who represents a specific attribute in us and who is like all other properties (nations) in a human (Av Ha’am, Abraham in Hebrew, means “the father of the nation”), and tells him: “I now separate this specific trait in you, which is called Abraham, and you must leave your country, meaning your situation and all the desires that you cur- rently feel. Go from your homeland, and break free from the desires you were born with.”

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