Posts

Posted on

Nitzavim-VaYelech (Standing-Moses Went) – Weekly Torah Portion

Deuteronomy, 29:9-30:20; 31:1-31:30
This Week’s Torah Portion | September 14 – September 20, 2014 – Elul 19 – Elul 25, 5774

In A Nutshell

The portion, Nitzavim (Standing), deals with Moses’ speech regarding the covenant between Israel and the Creator. Moses makes it clear that the Torah applies to the whole of the people of Israel, to every single one, and was given to posterity. Moses stresses the principle of choice: should a person worship other gods, he will be exiled from the land. But if he wishes to be reformed, the path is through repentance. The Creator allows the people to choose between life and death, but commands them, “Therefore choose life” (Deuteronomy, 30:19).

In the portion, VaYelech (Moses Went), Moses gives his final speech before the people’s entrance to the land of Israel. He reinforces the people so they will not fear fighting for the land because the Creator is with them, and he officially hands over the leadership to Joshua, son of Nun. Moses writes the Torah and instructs the people of Israel to assemble once every seven years to read the Torah. The Creator reveals to Moses that in the future, the people of Israel will sin, and commands him to write a song through which the people will remember the Creator.

Commentary by Dr. Michael Laitman

It may seem as though portions repeat themselves, but any repetition is at a new degree. The whole Torah deals only with the correction of the soul. It is as if the soul is cut into slices according to the degrees of the great will to receive, which is why it appears to be the same.

Similarly, each day in our lives seems to resemble the next, yet each day feels different, and life consists of many days joined together. The special thing about this process is that it is not about the people of Israel or the desert, but about an individual going through the stages of one’s spiritual development.

The spiritual development is done in two stages. The first is the preparation in Babylon, in the Bilbul (confusion). The second stage is in Egypt. In this world, a person tries to do as one sees fit, but gives up because this world is leading us into a state where we are not achieving good results in life. The result is a crisis, similar to the one the world is in today.

And yet, we do not seek the meaning of life, but money, power, respect, pleasures, freedom, vacations, and we are beginning to understand that it is impossible to have them. Whether due to personal crises or because of the global crisis, we finally come to the fundamental question, “What is the meaning of my life?” We seek satisfaction in life but we cannot find it anywhere, and without satisfaction we feel like Prophet Jonah, who said, “It is better for me to die than to live” (Jonah, 4:3).

Continue reading “Nitzavim-VaYelech (Standing-Moses Went) – Weekly Torah Portion”

Posted on

What Everybody Ought to Know About Attaining Spirituality in This Life

What the Creator Is

Reality consists of two elements: Creator and creature. We feel this in our senses in various ways, but it is unchanging in and of itself. The sensation of the Creator is what we call “the world,” or “creation.” The creature can sometimes sense that the Creator is being partially or fully revealed; at other times He is altogether concealed. The creature may even lack awareness of the Creator altogether. The extent of awareness of the Creator depends solely on the creature, because the Creator, like the sun, never stops shining.

The Creator has the attributes of bestowal and benevolence. When the creature acquires these Creator-like attributes, this state is called equivalence of form with the Creator. The individual then senses the Creator as fully revealed, to the exact degree that his or her attributes resemble those of the Creator. When the attributes of a person are incompatible with those of the Creator, he or she feels the Creator as concealed. When these attributes oppose those of the Creator’s, the individual feels the Creator does not even exist.

 

How Your Attributes Determine Your Closeness to Spirituality

The creature feels the Creator as pleasure, as wisdom and peace and wholeness. Therefore, the intensity of those sensations depends on the intensity of the sensation of the Creator. The Creator formed all the creatures from an egoistic desire to enjoy. The Creator is perceived by the creature as pleasure in all its manifestations. Pleasure means the sensation of the Creator, or the light of the Creator, which are actually one and the same.

Continue reading “What Everybody Ought to Know About Attaining Spirituality in This Life”

Posted on

Want to Develop Your Sixth Sense? Read This

The Need for Additional Senses to Sense the Spiritual Reality

To research itself and the surroundings, humanity has developed various sciences such as physics, chemistry, biology, and so on. These are called the natural sciences, and they are based on our five senses. To help ourselves study nature, we have built instruments that extend the range of our senses. Gradually, from generation to generation, we have gained experience and reached a better understanding of the problem of survival in this world. But among all sciences, there is one that develops us quite differently—the science of Kabbalah.

Beyond the corporeal world that we research, there is another world, which is concealed. But if it is invisible, how can we assume that this other world really exists? It is because we see that there are specific laws, which are a part of a broader reality. We understand that such general, more rational laws, which describe our lives and our existence comprehensively, simply must exist. There is something that eludes us, something around us we cannot grasp. But how can we come to grasp it if we don’t have the appropriate senses?

 

Why Human Development Increases Suffering

It is quite possible that this alternate creation does exist around us in all its layers, but we divide it into the apprehended part we call “our world” or “this world,” and the as-yet-unfelt layer. If we had other senses, although it’s hard for us to imagine it, we would probably also feel the world differently, perhaps with a broader and deeper vision. But such senses don’t exist, and so we suffer. We don’t know how to behave with one another and with our surroundings because we don’t see our past and future lives.

When dealing with a scientific study of the world, we come to a stage where our knowledge is exhausted, and we’re left helpless. Though there are many ways to enhance our ability to predict the future, beyond the boundaries of our regular senses, they in fact add very little to our understanding of the world. We are capable of attaining very limited abilities to predict events, but we never achieve clear knowledge of the future and complete attainment, which can only happen when we are acting in full cooperation with the world around us.

Continue reading “Want to Develop Your Sixth Sense? Read This”

Posted on

1 Lesson Down, 19 Lessons to Go – The Fall 2014 Free Kabbalah Course Has Taken Off

The first lesson in the new Fall 2014 Fundamentals semester of the Free Kabbalah Course begun tonight with the introductory lesson titled: How Changing the Way You Define ‘Kabbalah,’ ‘Creator’ and ‘Creation’ Changes the Way You Look at Your Whole Life.

100s of people joined in live from all around the world to become acquainted with the 5,000 year old wisdom that is revealing itself to more and more people today.

If you missed out on the lesson, the lesson is now available for free download in the archive. Just make sure you’re signed up at edu.kabbalah.info, and then click on the “Archive” link to find the first lesson available for download in video and audio formats.

Below you’ll find a short excerpt of Q&A from the lesson, and some questions asked by students.

We look forward to seeing you in upcoming lessons and sharing this wondrous wisdom with you!

 

What Does Kabbalah Say About the Soul – A Q&A Excerpt from the Introductory Lesson

Question: What does Kabbalah say about the soul?

Answer: The soul is a sense for us to feel, understand and act towards the Creator (the quality of bestowal and love) in a loving and bestowing way, in the exact same way He behaves towards me.

We don’t have a soul for the time being. We’ve been told you have a soul and that when you die you will go to “lala” land and revel in flowers and clouds, and so on.

The whole idea of the study is to develop a soul. That is why it is such an amazing wisdom.

Getting a bit deeper into it: Just like the Creator created us from scratch, we have to do the same action in this world: create a soul from scratch. That is the whole idea of the study.

From this point in the heart (i.e. the desire from spirituality), from this little scratch, we have to build a soul. It’s a nice question, we’ll get more into that topic the more we get into this course.

Some More Questions Asked by Participants in the Lesson

If you didn’t get your answer live, then you can feel free to ask it in the Student Forum, where Education Center instructors and moderators are ready to answer you.

Continue reading “1 Lesson Down, 19 Lessons to Go – The Fall 2014 Free Kabbalah Course Has Taken Off”

Posted on

You Don’t Have to be a Kabbalist to Understand the Enormous Benefit that Comes from Studying Kabbalah

What Does Kabbalah Study?

The Kabbalah is a science that studies the system of creation, the way it was formed, the root of its essence and its structure. It examines how the Creator conducts this system and how creation should correct itself to rise to the degree of the Creator, which is in fact the purpose of creation. Kabbalah is a science that deals with drawing near to the Creator, whereas religion simply indicates to people what they should do with the protein bodies of our world. The wisdom of Kabbalah has no connection with any popular religious movements.

 

The Real Reason behind the Development of Hasidism

The Baal Shem Tov created the movement of Hasidism to help the Jewish orthodox person integrate a certain amount of spiritual intention in the performance of the physical Mitzvot (commandments). However, the Baal Shem Tov was first and foremost a Kabbalist of the highest degree. He therefore established Hasidism as a popular movement in order to select out of the masses the few people who had the desire and the ability to become Kabbalists. This way he managed to find disciples who later became the first Admorim (Jewish masters and teachers), who went on to establish their own trends in Hasidism and beyond. The task of the movement was to select the individuals who wanted to attain the Creator from the collective and render certain support to the general public.

Continue reading “You Don’t Have to be a Kabbalist to Understand the Enormous Benefit that Comes from Studying Kabbalah”