5 Minutes Of Light From The Daily Lesson: Relationship To One’s Spiritual Teacher
Posted on November 23rd, 2009
It is written, “The Creator created man to be forthright, but people came up with many calculations.” It seems to us that the world is so huge and multifaceted, but that is only because we cannot unite everything within one root and we’re dispersed among various desires. We perform many calculations while searching for different things that can help us gain power and derive pleasure.
Yet when we begin to concentrate all of this within one root, which is to give to Him, we come to one simple principle. We begin to focus everything on one goal, which is to “Reveal the Only One that Bestows.”
This revelation occurs by the principle of similarity, where a person has to build an inner system making all his numerous desires and thoughts follow one simple principle: “There is nothing but bestowal!” Finding the quality of bestowal inside oneself means revealing the Creator. The problem lies in the fact that it is impossible to abandon the numerous calculations and aspire to this one principle, to the only One that Bestows.
However, as a consequence of one’s efforts, a person begins to understand that all the obstacles are meant to help him. They emerge only so that through them, a person would direct himself to the true goal.
If we search for the revelation of the spiritual world in the right place – in the connection we build between us, and if that is where we wish to reveal the Creator, then we will demand this connection and it will be revealed to us. On the other hand, if we don’t focus on this goal alone, then we are engaged in a multitude of calculations, and thus we will advance in all possible directions except in the direction of the truth.
But there’s a catch: Even when you try to hold onto just this one direction, various interferences begin to show up, throwing you off aim and trying to distract you with other goals. This happens in order to show you the areas where you lack the precision and sensitivity to keep the right aim. The interferences work to constantly raise your sensitivity, helping you to be directed more precisely toward the right point, rather than just “toward the sky.”
All the various calculations we make are egoistic desires of this world, such as for money, honor, power, and knowledge. These are the various interferences that constantly come to us, and when they do, we should strive not to lose sight of the goal behind them all. We should try to make the goal out through the fog and the derangement of feelings. We will then see that this whole confusion was created for our own benefit.
Our egoism is help against “us” – against our egoistic selves. Therefore, when we change and acquire the quality of bestowal, the interferences will vanish. During the period when spirituality is concealed, there is no other force to help us besides egoism, which directs us toward the goal (the Creator) through interferences.
It is impossible to receive spirituality (meaning, to acquire the quality of bestowal that’s similar to the Creator) just by studying the books by yourself. You need a live teacher because only he can connect your present level with the spiritual level. The teacher has to serve as the intermediate level between you and the Creator. On your own, however, you will never be able to “jump” up to the Creator’s level. Your teacher is the intermediate degree between you and the spiritual world. He is able to do this because he exists in both worlds simultaneously.
The Ari and Baal HaSulam both write that intermediate states are the means to shift upwards. For example, see Part 3 of Talmud Eser Sefirot, “Inner Reflection.”
Even if a student could ascend to the first spiritual level on his own, it would still take him a very long time to learn about the Upper World without a teacher’s help, and then he would not have enough time to correct himself. Just like in this world, first you have to grow up for about 20 years, and only then can you begin to live on your own. But if you did not spend the first “20 years” of your “life” next to a teacher, then you are like a child who never received an upbringing or education, and who grew up without any support from adults.
That is why a person must listen to what the teacher tells him and make every possible effort to carry out the teacher’s advice. The student should accept this advice above his own egoistic surmises. Don’t be like a child who refuses to open his mouth and accept food, since what will the teacher be able to give you otherwise?
A question I received: How can someone without spiritual attainment find a true Kabbalist in order to study with him?
My Answer: How can you find a true Kabbalist? Well, what is a true Kabbalist? Baal HaSulam writes that a true Kabbalist is someone who strives only toward the Creator and toward nothing else, such as anything related to this world or himself.
The only means that makes it possible to reveal the Creator, the Upper World, and the quality of bestowal is a Kabbalistic group. The group is a connection among people’s aspirations to reveal the quality of bestowal among them. This quality is called “the Creator.”
You aren’t trying to learn a Kabbalist’s earthly habits from him. What you learn from him is how to cancel yourself, where “cancelling yourself” means to cancel your egoism in relation to the goal – the attainment of the quality of bestowal. You have to accept this goal without any resistance to it, with full trust and no criticism, as if you were a baby.
Criticism and verification have to take place before you accept the teacher as your instructor. However, if you have a point in the heart, then you have nowhere to run from an instructor who is showing you the truth.
But what is “the truth”? It is the force of bestowal, deemed the Creator, and it becomes revealed inside your love for friends and then for the whole world. If you see that the other students and the teacher are trying to accomplish this, without considering anything besides the Creator important, this means you have found the right place to study.
Yet, this still doesn’t give you any guarantee that you will attain the goal. From here on, everything depends on you; this is where your freedom of will starts. But at the very least you have found a teacher and a group, which is the place where the Creator can be revealed.
A teacher is not the flesh and blood person you see in front of you, but attainment of the Creator and experience along this path. What you should be absorbing from him is not the earthly things, but his connection with the Creator.
A question I received: You have explained that all worlds from the World of Infinity to our world are similar to each other in all their details as branches and roots. When I read about these worlds in The Book of Zohar with the desire to attain spirituality, and if I connect to the text, then I will enter the Upper World and see the spiritual picture through earthly images and through the book. Is this correct? Does this contact happen only when studying at a lesson?
My Answer: When we proceed through the text in The Book of Zohar, we start seeing an internal spiritual picture by receiving impressions and qualities from the text that the book talks about. We start identifying names of characters, objects, and places of our world as qualities of reception and bestowal that are big or small or good or evil.
A panel of qualities emerges in us in parallel to the picture of this world. This spiritual picture remains in us as a model that corresponds to the allegorical story line. The Zohar uses words of our world to explain the world of the qualities of reception and bestowal, which make up all that exists. These two qualities draw a picture of our world for us, and they also form the picture of the Upper World.
As we accumulate examples of correspondence of the two languages and the two worlds while reading The Book of Zohar, as we learn and organize them within us, we are able to perceive more spiritual impressions.
Question cont’d: For now, does my whole study consist of sitting in front of a book and trying to feel what is written in it, so that it will create spiritual models within me?
My Answer: The result of all our actions in the group and in dissemination, and the conclusion of all our efforts to attain the spiritual world, is revealed within us as images of reception and bestowal, and of qualities of the creature and the Creator as well as their various combinations. Revelation of the soul, which is the sensation and understanding of the Creator, happens as a result of these actions.
A question I received: How do you know the answers to all the questions?
My Answer: I have a special “phone” that I use to dial “Above” and get the answers. This “phone” connects the lower world to the Upper World, the lower one with the Higher One. In our world, if I don’t know something, I go to my mom, my dad, the teacher, or to anyone who will answer me. In the spiritual world, however, you have to look for the answers only from Above – you won’t even find them in the book. You have to try to feel them inside yourself because this is where you will connect with the Upper One, who has all the answers.
Each question arises in us as a feeling of emptiness. If I feel emptiness, it means I have a question. If the emptiness becomes filled, that means I have received the answer. If the question is about something that is beyond our world, then the answer is felt in the form of “the Light from Above.”
To “call Above” means I raise my question to the Upper One. My question to Him is called “a prayer.” I ask for the answer, and if I really want to know, then I receive the answer and it fills me. I feel it inside.
How do I answer your question on my “phone?” For example, you ask, “Mommy, can I have ice cream?” Your mother doesn’t want ice cream herself, but she takes your desire, goes to the store, buys the ice cream and gives it to you. Hence, she takes your desire to the store.
I do the same. I listen to your question and accept it inside myself in order to feel it as my own. Then I raise it “Above,” the same as a mommy does when she goes for the ice cream. I then receive the answer from Above and give it to you.
Thus, if I want to hear the question that a person is asking, I need to love him and take his desire as my own, raise it “Above,” receive the answer and give the answer to the person asking the question.
If a person has the ability to do this, then he can receive answers to all questions.
(From the Children’s Lesson at the Eurasian Congress)
Аt first glance, it seems that not all of my properties are equally useful and I would gladly get rid of some of them. But we only feel this way because we don’t know how to use them correctly.
Even after correction is complete, a person retains all his original traits. All we can do is to use them in different ways. This is what the methodology of correction, Kabbalah, is all about. We don’t destroy creation, and in fact it’s prohibited to obliterate, ruin or diminish our properties since they are created by the Light and only the Light can alter them in the proper way.
As we advance spiritually, we develop qualities and desires that are even more negative and despicable, but this is actually a reason to rejoice, because it’s proof that we are making progress and that we have enough strength to complete correction. That is where free choice lies – in accelerating the process of correction before being hit with negative events that would force correction upon us.
At this very moment you should come to understand the meaning behind everything that happens with you, and start using all the resources at your disposal (the teacher, the group and the books) to attract the Light, the force that will transform you. If you don’t take this initiative yourself, you’ll be pressured into it by external crises and events.
One way or another you’ll reach the end of correction. The wisdom of Kabbalah simply allows you to move forward in a way that avoids shocks and allows you to anticipate and avoid negative events. If you slow down this tempo of correction, you get hit. The strength of the hit you receive directly corresponds to how much you’ve slowed your progress. This is the sole cause of suffering in the world.
Only the greatness of the goal pushes all the temporary and fleeting things in our lives down our list of priorities. You’ll come to realize that the goal is so superior that even the shocks that destiny gives us on our way towards the goal are of no importance.
The point at which you’ll stop sensing the blows or shocks altogether is reached by rising above your egoism and learning how to use every one of your desires in order to achieve maximum bestowal, rather than trying to minimize the shocks you receive.
A question I received: I consist wholly of the desire to enjoy. Then who within me is observing the twists and turns of this desire from the side?
My Answer: Indeed, if I am a desire to enjoy, I can only compare the intensity of its particular manifestations.
However, if I have a “point in the heart,” the embryo of my soul, the Creator’s part from Above, a particle of the desire to bestow, a grain of truth – it is precisely against this point that I begin to appraise and systemize everything else. I then find myself incapable of agreeing to anything if it bears no relation to it.
One comes to Kabbalah with a point in the heart, which becomes a reference point for his entire life. He no longer plunges into comparative calculations of egoistic desires, no longer strives for maximum profit with respect to money, fame, power and all the other “blessings” of this world. No, now he checks everything against the truth – the spiritual point that had awakened within him.
This leads one to a new level, which carries with it new expectations. After all, now he feels that without the method of Kabbalah he is unable to develop his point and include everything else inside it. This point now becomes his touchstone and the standard by which all his desires are assessed.
A question I received: How does love of others transition to love of the Creator?
My Answer: There is no transition. Love of the Creator does not put an end to love of others; it’s just that the system of connections among all desires in the universe becomes revealed to me and within me.
But this system is me as well. The concept of “another” stops being “outside” and is discovered “inside,” as part of me. In the World of Infinity, we were all one single desire, which then descended along the spiritual degrees as the desires became distanced from one another. That is how all the people in the world feel now.
We think that we are different and distant from one another. But as I correct myself towards unity, I discover the truth: that we are all part of one system. And the fact that I used to perceive us as disconnected was simply an error on my part. From unconsciousness I revive myself to consciousness and become aware of this wholeness. Nothing at all changes except for my outlook, attitude and perception, as I discover that there is no “I,” but only “we.”
“Others are part of my soul” isn’t just some lofty rhetoric. As I clamber out of my present self, I discover my soul existing in all the external desires. After all, the soul lives outside of me, since the soul is the desires of “others,” and within these desires, I discover the spiritual me and my eternal state.
Presently my perception of self is imaginary, a sham. However, as I discover the desires of others, I suddenly realize that these desires are mine, that they are my soul. Whereas previously I was being shown a “movie,” showing me that I existed in a body that I must care for.
It follows that my true desires are outside of me. They make up the vessel of my soul, and the Light that fills them, the Light of the soul – is the Creator.
RSS Feeder Subscription
E-mail Subscription
Audio Version Of The Blog
Get the Weekly eNewsletter
Follow Laitman.com on Twitter