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Win Prizes by Sharing Your Experiences with Kabbalah

If you’ve been through any of the Bnei Baruch Kabbalah Education Center courses and would like to share your impressions to help people decide whether or not it’s worthwhile for them, then we welcome your input… moreover, you can win prizes doing so!

Kabbalah is a very misunderstood and misused term, and often people who would otherwise very much enjoy and find a lot of meaning in the Kabbalah courses and materials Bnei Baruch offers, are turned off from the beginning by the word “Kabbalah” – with all the commercialism and other misunderstandings connected to the term.

Therefore, if you’ve been through any of the courses and would like to help people decide to take the course, those who are thinking whether or not to attend the next course, we’d love to hear from you.

You can write a testimonial here of your experience with the EducationCenter that covers:

  • How did you feel before you found the EducationCenter?
  • How did you find the EducationCenter?
  • How do you feel now that you’ve been through the EducationCenter?

Write Your Testimonial Here & Win Prizes! »

 

Win Prizes by Sharing Your Experiences!

We would like to offer 3 people who submit their entries this week $50 gift vouchers at the KabbalahBooks.info online store.

Write Your Testimonial Here & Win Prizes! »

Contest conditions:

  • The 3 winning entries will be chosen at random out of all the complete entries sent in this week.
  • A complete entry is one which is at least 100 words in length, and includes first and last name, location and headshot photo, and is submitted through the entry form at this link: Write Your Testimonial Here & Win Prizes! »
  • By submitting your entry, you agree to have it placed on this Testimonials page.
  • In order for the contest to be effective, there needs to be a minimum of 25 complete entries. If there are not 25 complete entries within the next week, the contest will continue another week until that number is reached.
  • If the minimum number of complete entries will be met by Sunday, November 23, then the winners will be announced on the Kabbalah.info Newsletter of that same week, and also in Kabbalahblog.info that week. If the minimum number of complete entries will not be met, then there will be an announcement mentioning so in the newsletter and in Kabbalahblog.info.

Write Your Testimonial Here & Win Prizes! »

 

The next Free Kabbalah Course will begin on Wednesday, December 4. 

If you haven’t yet attended a course, sign up today & you can already begin a self-study course immediately, and then join the live classes with spiritual seekers worldwide on Dec. 4, ask the instructors questions & get answers live, get access to the Student Forum, a free eBook & materials, as well as regular bookstore student discounts & much more!

Sign Up for the Free Kabbalah Course Today »

Image: CollegeDegrees360. “Student.” Flickr. Yahoo!, 30 Oct. 2013. Web. 16 Nov. 2013.

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VaYishlach (And Jacob Sent) Parsha – Weekly Torah Portion

Genesis, 32:4-36:43
This Week’s Torah Portion | November 10 – November 16, 2013 – Kislev 7 – Kislev 13, 5774

In A Nutshell

In the portion, VaYishlach (And Jacob Sent), Jacob wants to make peace with Esau after running away from him and being with Laban for many years. Esau sends angels to Jacob, and they inform him that Esau is headed toward him with four hundred men.

Jacob is alarmed by the looming encounter, and at night, an angel appears before him. Jacob struggles with it and defeats it, but is hurt in the thigh sinew. The angels alert Jacob that his name has changed as of that moment from Jacob to Israel. When Esau comes, they embrace and make peace, and Jacob moves to the area of Shechem.

Later, the portion speaks of Dinah, Jacob’s daughter, who is abducted by Shechem—the son of Hamor, the Hivite—who wants to marry her. Jacob’s sons allow the marriage on condition that all the men in the city perform circumcision. Once they perform the circumcision, Jacob’s sons kill all the men, bring Dinah back, and loot the city.

The Creator instructs Jacob to move to Beit El, where the Creator blesses Jacob with many descendants and the inheritance of the land. At the end of the portion Rachel dies when she delivers her second son, Benjamin. Isaac also dies and is buried by his sons, Esau and Jacob.

 Commentary by Dr. Michael Laitman

This portion deals with very deep scrutinies that one makes within the soul in order to correct it from the intention to receive, from its egotistical form. We need these scrutinies for the soul because it was broken in a process known as “the breaking of the vessels,” the ruin.

Once a person achieves the degree of Jacob, which is still a degree of Katnut (infancy), a person discovers that it is impossible to move forward. Having risen above the ego, above the will to receive, and having reached a state of Katnut, called Galgalta and Eynaim, leaves one nothing with which to advance. In order to advance, one must find within oneself additional inclinations, additional broken Kelim (vessels). Upon their correction, the person will be able to rise along with them. In other words, whenever we are in a certain state, we must first descend, mingle with the negative, and only then rise to the positive.

The portion speaks of precisely that state. That is, a person who reaches Jacob’s state and cannot advance further must reconnect with the Esau within—the evil inclination that is still not corrected. Such a person heads toward it despite fearing that the egotistical desire might suddenly overpower, that perhaps he or she will not be able to come out of that state.

This calls for a special preparation. The text narrates that Jacob divides everything, the women, the children, and all the people with him. In other words, one sets one’s desires straight, arranging all of one’s qualities in an internal preparation for the disclosure of the flaws within, in order to properly cope with them.

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Glossary – VaYishlach (And Jacob Sent) Parsha – Weekly Torah Portion

 

Struggle

The struggle is an internal one between the ego, which pulls us toward worldly pleasures such as food, sex, family, money, respect, knowledge, and power, and the purpose of life, which is to discover the upper realm, to which we need to rise, to a complete, eternal life.

Also, we need to do it now, as it is written, “You will see your world in your life” (Masechet Berachot, 17a). Here in our lives is where we discover the eternal life of the soul, which is why we live in two worlds. We need to come to a state where the death of the body does not feel to us as death at all, as if we have lost anything of ourselves. Rather, we remain because we discover that the upper degree of life is several times greater than the sensation of the physical life.

This is the goal we should achieve, and we can only achieve it through a struggle by a group, a society, by studying the right sources. To rise above the physical, corporeal life, we must not slight them, but use them in order to rise.

Reconciliation and Peace

Reconciliation and peace mean that for now, we cannot cope with our evil inclination and turn it into a good inclination, using it in order to bestow, since we have to turn the qualities that existed in us as negative—which we were using only for our own pleasure and against others—into qualities of bestowal upon others.

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3 Things You Need to Make Spiritual Progress

1. A Teacher

The study of Kabbalah does not just include work in the books. Physical actions for the benefit of the group, organizing lectures and Kabbalah study groups are more beneficial than the study itself. Serving the teacher is also more beneficial than studying with him. In his “Speech for the Completion of The Zohar,” Rav Yehuda Ashlag quotes the following saying of ancient Kabbalist sages: “Make for yourself a rav and buy yourself a friend.”

In other words, choose a person whom you think is important and make that person your teacher. Then, try to please him or her. Your teacher is very important to you. By pleasing your teacher, you’ll get used to doing for others, and by the force of habit you’ll be able to do the same for the Creator. By being spiritually close to your teacher, you’ll receive the degree by which the teacher appreciates the Creator. That will give you a chance to do at least something for the Creator, and enter the spiritual world this way. At the same time, you will acquire the sensation of the greatness of the Creator and you’ll be able to advance to complete adhesion with Him.

Observing your teacher’s requests with the aim to fulfill them allows you to attain spiritual resemblance with them. You’ll be able to receive their thoughts and knowledge, and above all, attain their love and attraction for the Creator, which would give you the ability to develop and progress spiritually. However, studying with your teacher is always motivated by the desire to attain personal knowledge for yourself. As a result, the study does not bring with it spiritual nearness to the Creator. In other words, by doing things for the teacher, you attain their thoughts and by studying you will attain only their words.

You can only attain their thoughts if the motivation to serve the teacher stems from the desire to please the teacher, and not yourself. In the opposite situation, when our motivation is our desire to serve for self-gratification, studying is the goal and becomes more important than serving the teacher.

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Kabbalah: The Method of How to Receive Pleasure

We cannot live without pleasure. After all, our very essence is the will to receive delight and pleasure, and the purpose of creation is the attainment of perfect pleasure.

There’s nothing wrong with the pleasure itself; we must correct its objective, not the desire itself.

So what do I do with my desires? I want a big, beautiful house; though a small one will do just fine. I want a new car, though the old one still runs. As for my job, I’m still interested in one that bears more responsibility. Do I have to clear out these desires in order to make room for more study?

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