Kabbalah Blog

If you listen with your heart to one famous question, I am sure that all your doubts as to whether you should study Kabbalah will vanish without a trace. This question is a bitter and fair one asked by all born on earth: “What is the meaning of my life?“—Rabbi Yehuda Ashlag, “Introduction to Talmud Eser Sefirot“

I was born and raised in one of the eastern European communist countries. Ever since I can remember myself I expected life to be fair and for everybody to love and help each other. As I grew up the realities of life happened. The Communist regime made of me a faithful comrade, a condition that continued until I finished high school and entered the river of life.

Inconsistencies in the behavior of some authority figures planted the seeds of doubt and confusion deep inside of my heart. The search for idealism deepened but eventually started to wane because of the bleakness of the situation. Survival became the name of the game. I started feeling boxed in with no hope for change, until one day a chance for change presented itself. A chain of circumstances caused our lives to take a turn for the worst then eventually into blessing.

My husband had an opportunity to change jobs which was going to change our lives in several ways. The possibility of owning our own apartment was one of them. We lived with my in-laws in a small room and a half, no indoor plumbing. The other change, which was once in a life time opportunity, was that he was going out to a western country for training. What was special about it is the fact that getting out of the country was next to impossible, average citizens were not allowed.

He went for a month but… did not return. What followed was the saga of defecting from a communist country. To make it shorter, I had to leave the country with our little child illegally, crossing the borders on foot, after several prior unsuccessful attempts. Eventually my husband and I got together and after some time in a refugee camp we found ourselves in the US as immigrants.

Coming to the States was a miracle for our little family. It was wonderland. Not knowing the language, the customs, the ways of life here made every experience an adventure.

The first strong impression that is noteworthy for my journey to find Kabbalah came when we saw on TV a public call to prayer for the Apollo 13 incident. We realized that there are many people in this country that openly believed in G-d and it was allowed. Because of this I became driven to explore the phenomenon that was forbidden and shrouded in mystery for us in Communism. We were brought up as atheists. Our parents were forbidden to teach us anything about G-d, but their silent faith in deity left something in us, that now we were trying to sort out.

It was after 6 years of being in the US and learning how to read English that I experienced an unquenchable desire to buy the Bible and to start reading it. After that there was no stopping me.

In the 30 years that followed, I continued searching in the established faiths for the ideal that left me wanting. Questions that I had went unanswered because no one was thinking outside of the doctrine’s box. Looking for deeper meanings in the Bible I joined many studies in theology, history, languages, etc. In 2005 a group of friends and I started reading Attaining the Worlds Beyond by Michael Laitman, PhD, and coupled with the book Kabbalah Revealed by Laitman, and insight into the perception of reality, I knew I was home.

Home, where first the Creator, G-d, became real to me. Very rapidly my questions were being answered and the fragmented information that I gathered through the years was coming into place. I understood why all have sinned and have come short of the glory of G-d. All, especially man, being created as a desire to receive made sense and took the debilitating guilt away, replacing it with desire to be like the Creator no matter what it takes.

Knowing that He is behind everything gives one the feeling of being taken care of by someone that has one’s best interest in mind. Loving your neighbor as yourself becomes possible when one knows what the process is. Life became meaningful knowing that there is a master plan and the Master behind it is not a fickle, fallible individual human being, but the Force that created and sustains everything.  

Through continuing to study I found out that this Force, invisible to the physical eye, can become visible in this world only by us humans who are given mind and reasoning, to display It among us in the form of the glue called love (never to be mistaken with the Hollywood’s  version). We can’t do it by ourselves because we are egoist, selfish beings that look after our own interests, but the Creator that created us that way—hence no guilt—is here ready to help us become like Him. How? Through what is called prayer, a heartfelt prayer.

Prayer is not religion but it is our “hot line to heaven” that He provided Himself. The whole earth is filled with His glory is what comes to mind from the Bible. Yes, many, many Bible verses became alive through the wisdom of Kabbalah. It is His wisdom and it works, makes sense, can be proven, crosses all kinds of borders, and can be experienced by anyone that cares to ask the question “What is this life all about”? It is pertinent to every aspect of life—from the family to the highest government or corporate office.

It is wisdom that I feel privileged to study for the rest of my life. It can be seen very clearly that working on human nature according to the principles laid out in the wisdom of Kabbalah is the human’s task and the reason for us being here—if we are to succeed in correcting every aspect of our lives. Through it we can become the human beings that we were meant to be. I understood why my country did not prosper with communism. No one touched or considered addressing the human nature—our inherent egoism.

Real freedom is what I experienced in coming to Kabbalah!

By Margalit

And by the exodus from Egypt they received the level of faith…and after Passover; the purifying work begins in preparation for the receiving of the Torah. And when the Torah is dressed in a person’s soul, this is the time of Shavuot, the time of the giving of our Torah.—Rabbi Baruch Shalom HaLevi Ashlag, Letter 52

Like a whisper from Nature’s backwaters, there is a call to the Universe to return in integral maturity to Unity. From the faded glow of the Creation Event congeal particles, atoms, and molecular chains—the gases, liquids and solids of the still. With the soul of growth, come forth the walled, chlorophyll-filled cells into upwards drive—communities of trees, grasses into the lush plains, leafy forests, and vine-entwined jungles of the great vegetative ecosystems of Earth.

With the soul of movement does the flexible cell of animal tell of its rising to the buzz, squawk, squeal and growl—the herbage eaters, and carnivores on prowl. The balanced communities of colony, swarm, school, flock, herd and pack—do not hold back their cacophonous concert as they ever so await the organization of the Maestro—still coming back his greased hair with such ego. Where is he of soul of speech, some screech? Locked in his dressing room, and he won’t come out others shout!

So great is the human ego that we believe the journey to the ultimate is complete in our individual selves. We’ve played out our little chess game with Nature, placed It check without needing to blink. Ah, but Nature is a much more clever player than we think.

It whispers a little louder and a bit more, through a keyhole in our dressing room door. So the words most mistily penetrate through the natural straight into human history. “Yes, you individual humans are very important indeed. Why what nobility there is in your arrogance and greed—and you should succeed.

It is right and just that you simply must obtain the wealth and power you deserve. Ah, also deep knowledge your wisdom demands—I really respect your nerve. Now here’s the plan, you’ll need to use your fellow man. So relate to him, trade with him, and across the globe join into larger community—nothing real, fear no loss of independence in this pretense of unity.

Oh my, you’re getting a little uncomfortable? Your civilization has some discontents? It’s okay, all you need is an internet lollipop to feel less vulnerable, and gain some newfound confidence. Now there, some ties just a little stronger for just a little longer…

“Do you feel it now in your hi-tech sensation, globalization? Feel the interdependence, my arms about you my little darling? Oh, stop being so tense, and please quit the snarling! Come to me, grow up and be One, my son, truly it is the ultimate happiness, I promise! I love you. I don’t want to hurt you, you’ll strangle—don’t struggle!”

Every day, a voice goes out from Mount Sinai. Every year, we are reminded. We are taken out of the slavery of Egypt, as Kabbalists tell us, the external mask dropped—the slavery of ego.

There is a count each day, each week of this process towards the singular vessel designated to accept the Light of Love from above the mountain of hatred, Mount Sinai, at the end of seven weeks (Heb. “Shavout”) of seven days.

Hidden within this count are corrections of connections, the highways and byways of mutual responsibility, the tendons tying hated differences into beloved differentiated organs that make future life possible and take it to a higher plane.

By Shavout, we are “as one man with one heart” and worthy of the illumination that can lighthouse a world safely to shore through the stormy seas of globalization.

We don’t circle the square in the plane, but in the higher dimension of integral intricacy and intimacy, to found the column building block of the architecture of unity. Search out each other, learn together, do—and teach. For so we have been designated from time immemorial for this moment…

“’The quality of light of the Messiah, the place of the throne of God in the world—”this is his name that he will be called: The Lord-is-our-Righteous-One (Jeremiah 23:6)’—is built upon the foundation of the viewpoint of actual unity, growing so strong that it penetrates all particulars and all causes.” Rav Kook

By Eliyahu