Making sense of your life: following Quantum Physics, Kabbalah & your own Intuition to a more meaningful existence

“Making Sense of Your Life: following Quantum Physics, Kabbalah & your own Intuition ”

to a more meaningful existence

How to refine develop your intuition

How does an intelligent modern integrate the insights from such different disciplines as QP & K, and how do we reconcile scientific infromaiton about evolution and genetics evolutionary sociobiology and the whisperings of our higher intuition

What’s left of ‘us’ after total control of emotion?! Who is it then doing the controlling – what are the criteria, agenda of the entity that is left after this process?

At what point is there a disparity divergence between these: the ethical path, the path of self-development (atheistic), higher consciousness (eg Buddhist), a spiritual ascent , and religious saintliness (Ramchal), a path leading to maximal fulfillment happiness etc even if is Hugh Hefner’s life, Developing physical brain self-mastery for self-interest.

Developing physical brain self-mastery for self-interest (rather than spiritual quest etc): becoming aware of and controlling: dreams, emotions, and our( r)eactions when we are emotionally affected..Acquiring a clear picture of our abilities and disabilities. Mastering our memory to whatever degree is beneficial. Control of sleeping habits. Being able to conjure up internally whatever sensations are otherwise elicited only by ourside stimuli.

Also, and these are already mmore like consciousness raising an spirituality: Attaining higher level so fawareness. Ability to focus all our intelligence. Mastering intuition. Achieving joy and exuberance, exhiliraiton, love, that is independent of externals. etc.

Controlling the Will. We want to be free, we don’t want our Will to be free (to wreak havoc on US).

An atheist who feels mind is primary (eg Nagel?) will wish for much of the same as does a religious person.

Combining “en od milvado”, shma, kadosh kadosh, veahavta lereacha kamocha

AR: Our Task, and the way to ‘happiness’ is via nullifying ego and therefore overcoming the seeming separation form our essence which is God. The way to accomplish this is by heloing others. We should be like God, meaning that we ARE God and therefore when we are most true to ourselves we are “poseach es yodecha umasbeah lechol chai ratzon” like God does, and this is based on ‘veahavta lereacha kamocha’ via eg Hillel’s ‘don’t do to others that which you wouldn’t want done to you’ ie don’t be like God in ‘punishing’ or giving nisyonos (unless you truly would want them!). God is unity not ;one’, ‘ecahd’ as in Breishis, so we have shma yisrale hashem…echad. And God is everywhere, en od milvado, sowe say ‘kadosh…melo chol haaretz kevodo’. And the way to cleave to God is to love God: “ve’ahavta es hashem elokecha bechol levavch..”, Feeling love for another is a gift , and to know that the love is desired is a great ift, and to know that God is aware of us and wants our love is a great gift on its own, and if we accomplish this love then in a way that is sufficient, and we do what we should be doing lishma, for love, but the side-effect is that we are out of our ego and therefore in the pleasure that comes form dvekus….So althoughit does say that God loves us, nevertheless the greater gift is that God desires our love. Our complete passionate love. Most rulers and gods ask for awe or worship or tithes, not love.

veahavta of shma and veahavta lereach are related: getting out of one’s ego, and this is an attaching to our soul which is gGod, and is therefore an act alss of loving God.

Look up David Aaron sources for God loves us.

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Is there a distinction between ve’ahavta and ve’ahavtem? Ie veahavta of shma and veahavta lereach vs veahavtem is hager etc….what are the other veahavta’s?

AR’s main themes, chumash and sci, sci/relig

• FW/creation/creativity
• Mind/body
• Events as prophetic visions, that is the most fundamental realm
• Dreams
• Adam/FW, Eden
• observance of holidays and shabbos is hidden in Torah, but findable: YK/Eden = torah commandments are reflections of events in chumash, YK is re Eden, shabbos mlachos = creation actions;
• mida kneged mida/karma: plagues etc.
• actions of humanity lead to commandments: Ten commandments;
• reaction of navi to prophecy causes actualization;
• Avraham understands that God tells him re Sdom in order to defend it; Rivka understanding that it is a message, and not passive prophecy but a task.
• Names.

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Deeper meaning of clichés/obvious statements/wisdom sayings

• Grass is greener
• Don’t know what you have til its gone

• Do this for Mishle?

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COMPARISONS

Recent rabbis/schools

· Laitman http://www.kabbalah.info/

· Burg

· HaRav Sheinberger: learned under talmid of Sulam, Harav Brandwein (father)

· HaRav Brandwein: see further below

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http://www.academia.edu/1380638/Kabbalah_A_Newsletter_of_Current_Research_in_Jewish_Mysticism_1_2

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Many of the ideas in Living Inspired are similar to my FW ideas, creation-ex-nihilo/creativity/FW etc, I should make it more explicit. Connect up my ideas from chumash book to my life-wisdom ideas, eg the deeper meanings of obvious things (grass is greener, don’t know what you have til its gone), and to some things from travel etc, to Retro Un book ideas etc, chumash should have meaning at cosmological level and also at personal life and self-growth level, and my vorts should reflect this.

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A stitch in time saves nine: it is our nature to ignore problems when they are small, but these tend to grow; why do we ignore it? Bec it is work to fix, and we push it off or think it is fine as is. But if we now can focus on the amount of effort or trouble it will be later, then that will weigh on our minds so much that we will summon up the determination to take care of it now, ie it is a a suggestion of a technique how to overcome the natural tendency to ignore things when they are still small.

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One may think that there are unrelated topics: cosmology, religiojn, spirituality, character development (self-growth). But of course they ar einterelate,d and several books show how.

Sefer Reshis CHachma, eliyahu de vidas, talmid of Ramak, maybe of the ari too. Discusses the idea of being like God. This is a central topic of the Sulam. How holiness is related to character trait development, humility, no envy or hatred. (inreconneciton of humilty, awe and devotion.

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R David Aaron Endless Light:

The Ancient Path of the KABBALAH to Love, Spiritual Growth and Personal Power

AR: brilliant title, seamlessly combining words and themes that draw people’s atrention, deepest things people are interested in.

“Endless Light”: beautiful!:

The Ancient Path: this is always a draw

of the KABBALAH

to Love, Spiritual Growth and Personal Power: three separate topics, each on their own are topics that people buy books about. Brilliant! See how he ties it all in

AR: He will say that the creation is act of love, endless light, but it shattered. In the conclusion of book: Starts with idea of opening of Tatz book, why create the endless light if it was known that it would immediately shatter? So that we’d have tasted it and develop a desire for it, and know the real thing and not be beguiled to fake, empty substitutes.

Introduction

Starts with: “This is a book about life, about meaning, about love – about choice, fate, destiny, you, me, God.”

Brilliat combination. People want a book about life, about you and me.

Then he speaks of his own struggle and how he came ot these ideas and he hopes it will help others struggling similalrly, Brilliant!

The next paragraph again combines ideas, this time seeming opposites:” The thirty five hundred year old teachings of the Torah….contain sone of the most revolutionary ideas about existence to have inspired human beings throughout history.”

AR: This starts out sounding beautifully contradictory it is ancient and yet it is revolutionary, and then ends with it having been inspiring over all history, which changes the meaning from being revolutionary, but does so subtly, but the ending is fascinating on its own, And he ties them together well.And it is still revolutionary yet ancient and also has affected humanity throughout history, but is not old and outdated…

Then a brilliant paragraph talking of diff bet torah and kaballah, they are the same, torah explains principles of life through the stories of Adam,…Moses, and kabbalah gives the underlying paradigm, torah is heart of wisdom, K is the soul.

All such great interweaving of ideas.

Then a personal story, long, illustrating how he learned the abstract principle underlying it all; preparing oneself to be able to receive.

Then a final great two paragraph….. mastering the art of receiving… life as a gift, life’s gifts of love, spiritual growth, awareness, creativity, freedom, inner peace, happiness, and holiness.

AR: WHAT A LIST!

And ‘receiving’ is similar to theme of Ashlag, or at least learning to receive properly is a precursor stage to learning to receive in order to bestow.

Conclusion of book: last paragraph of book: Torah and Kabbalah offer a way to receive the light..K is ‘receptivity’….the mitzvoth are the path of emunah, the art of receptivity..bond..healthy relationships with one another and with hashem … we can receive the Endless light only when we are willing to share it. We can do it only one way – together.

AR: So the final point “we can receive the Endless light only when we are willing to share it” is definitely like R Ashlag.

Then continuing the introduction: …universe and we are interlinked….

our individual lives reflect a universal process. Human psychology is really a particular manifestation of cosmology (AR’s italics)(AR: re our individual lives reflect a universal process: as Raphi said the stories in chumash are about aspects of humans that are universal, every story is about us…)

AR: perhaps one can draw paralleld, seed and egg, gestation, birth, growth, greater awareness death parallel to phydical orign and evo of universe. And stages of inner development, psych and spiritual development of individual, parallel to dev of un.

We are all connected, we affect cosmos and v.v.…..we are not alone

I hope book will help you understand life’s deeper meaning and receiving its joys. Let’s make the journey together.

AR: critique of second last paragraph. Seems to change topic, from the italicized one above to “All of reality shares…”, which should be its own paragraph. Should be sentence in-between: some phrase after “”manifestation of cosmology” and therefore…..see if the book itself presents/expounds on the missing idea

DA: “EL”: 2^nd to last paragraph of Intro to the book: “All of reality shares in our struggles…” This is similar to MY: “If you look more deeply into the matter, you will see that the world was created for man's use. In truth, man is the center of a great balance. For if he is pulled after the world and is drawn further from his Creator, he is damaged, and he damages the world with him. And if he rules over himself and unites himself with his Creator, and uses the world only to aid him in the service of his Creator, he is uplifted and the world itself is uplifted with him.“

Chapter 1: “What’s it all about”.

First two paragraphs: “In order to live a meaningful existence we must understand the goal of existence, “ the theme of life, otherwise how can we know that what we are doing is contributing to the progress of the world or to its regress”. This is a strange statement at first, odd to begin a book with this, one would imagine that he would say “In order to live a meaningful life we need to be connected to others, we need to etc” not “otherwise how do we know that..” and the idea that we can mistakenly do actions that actually regress the world is strange, in fact who says we have such power etc. But it is not strange, it is very similar to MY.

1.The first point, that we need to first understand the goal of existence is the first point of MY:”THE FOUNDATION OF SAINTLINESS and the root of perfection in the service of God lies in a man's coming to see clearly and to recognize as a truth

· the nature of his duty in the world and

· the end towards which he should direct his vision and his aspiration in all of his labors all the days of his life.”

2. The second point is similar to the point above in the Intro, re affecting the world, so this too is similar to MY..

Note: DA introduces here the idea of ‘the theme of life’. See if he uses this phrase later and explains what it is. Maybe it is like Tatz.

He then talks a lot about what ‘god’ is, he says when he sees his baby, or sunlight in the woods, it affects him profoundly, he feels a sense of presence, an experience it is an encounter, he wants to thank God for all this, so to him God is this, the reality of what he experiences, not specifically a being existing in reality but reality itself….

Then he says: God is not a remote Energy itself, ”the relationship between “God/reality” and humanity is described in K and T as close, personal and intense – a deep, mystical experience that cannot be grasped, but only described.”

The first heading of ch 1 (a few pages in to the ch) is the section “God as tyrant”: The last paragraph is tha thte relationship between God and humanity is close, personal and intense – a deep mystical experience..” MY perek 1, 2^nd paragraph, describes the purpose of life as dvekus, uses the word ‘close’ in the quote from Dovid HaMelech “Ve ani kirvas elokim li tov” (thilim 73).The last paragraph of the chapter amplifies all this: “It is indeed fitting that his every inclination be towards the Creator, may His Name be blessed, and that his every action, great or small, be motivated by no purpose other than that of drawing near to the Blessed One and breaking all the barriers (all the earthy elements and their concomitants) that stand between him and his Possessor, until he is pulled towards the Blessed One just as iron to a magnet. Anything that might possibly be a means to acquiring this closeness, he should pursue and clutch, and not let go of; and anything which might be considered a deterrent to it, he should flee as from a fire. As it is stated (Psalms 63:9), "My soul clings to You; Your right hand sustains me." For a man enters the world only for this purpose - to achieve this closeness by rescuing his soul from all the deterrents to it and from all that detracts from it..

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DA: “EL”: Ch 10: ‘Free and Natural’: I underlined

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MY:The means which lead a man to this goal are the mitzvoth

EL: last paragraph of the book stresses the importance of mitzvoth: “The mitzvoth are the path …”

Ch 11 “Personal Power” is about keeping the mitzvoth. 2^nd paragraph of the ch,and then in section “Self Expression..” the first and 2^nd paragraph, etc.

Ch 12 (last ch of book): “Direct Connection” re prayer, as “cultivating our own willpower to create a direct connection to hashem so that we can change ourselves and become capable of receiving what has been waiting for us all along.”.

Conclusion: R Tatz “LI” first ch.

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Last two sections of Ch 1:

Music score analogy to Kabbalistic writings, need to understand it is music and know how to read muisic and know how to hear the music from the symbols etc. Same with kabbalistic ideas, so take this into account when reading about the ideas here.

To give someone love you need first to create space within yourself, and in your life, and then bring them into it, and then respect their individuality, so you enfold them and also maintain their separatenenss. When all this is done it is all an act of love. Creation of the universe, of existence, of us, involved all these – God created a space, then brought us in it, and respects our independence.This is immanencs and transcendence. [AR: God respecting our individuality is giving us true FW.] And so we should understand creation as a great act of love on God’s part, love for us.

“The kabbalistic story of the creation of the world is essentially the story of love:”

DA also says the following, but these points have not been made by him, just stated, so it needs further elucidation, perhaps in thenext chapters: “Hashem is manifested in this world through love. …’love’ is the word in our vocabulary that comes closest to describing the experience of Hashem. “Life is the love story”””Life is about love”

DA states several points here that he has not yet explained:

· Creation was an act of love, and we can receive the love (AR: need to explain: if creation was a one-time act of love it is not clear how we now can receive it; also, if creation was an act of love, to whom was the love directed, and how does it come to us?)

· To receive it we need to share it (AR: this is like Ashlag [but not ‘sharing’ exactly, rather it is ‘veahavta lereacha kamocha’ as ego-reduction rather than as ‘love’, ie the stress is on the underlying effect or cause of the love (selfishness-reduciton), rather than the love itself]. But for DA where does this need to share come from? And why is it so?).

· We are vessels God created, we are built to receive God’s light

· God’s light is overpowering (so the vessels broke: and he explains why God gave the light knowing that the vessels would break , and the answer is Tatz ch 1).

· The breaking of the vessels represents our inability to receive the light independently,

· so we need to build ourselves in relationships with others in order to achieve the state where we can receive the light without shattering.

P21: ”Mending the vessels is the challenging process of rebuilding ourselves within relationships, so that together we can receive the Endless Light of love, which is the gift of Hashem.”

AR: DA says the creation involved Endless Light, but light is a gift to us (AR: is this a reference to “Or ganuz latzadikim?: R Shienberger’s yishuv is or ha’ganuz. DA was his talmid?)

AR: so this is why the formation of Eve, and ‘lo tov heyot haadam levado” are part of the creation story, The purpose of the split into male/female is:

· to give Humans the ability to develop love between each other as a means of knowing how to love so they can love God and feel God’s love’;

· because each is created in the image of god and with God’s breath as their essence so loving each other is loving God.

· love is selflessness, so developing love develops selflessness which reduces the ‘dirt’ part of the body and leaves the essence which is God and so we are united with God and feel the joy (of course not ‘we are united with God’ which makes it seem that there is more than just God.)

Creation was an act of love: in Ashlag it is an act of ‘giving’ ‘mashpiah’.

we can receive the love, but to do so we need to share it. AR: So this is like Ashlag, but focus is on love.

Ramchal:

Rmabam:

He explains why Love is kindness and justice together, and then ends the chapter with the following statements, which still need elucidation:

· kindness and justice are among the key organizing principles of the Torah,

· the Torah is the Book of Life.

· When we follow the Book of Life (ie the Torah) we learn the ways of kindness and justice (which are the ways of love)

· and in doing so we create a world that can receive the gift of love.

Chapter 2:

DA says that to reflect the oneness of God we have to include an other, as God did.

R Ashlag: to receive the joy, we need to be like the creator. AR: This was always a sticking point for me, why this was necessary. There was the image of a pipe with the appropriate gauge etc, but this is too mechanical and is not understood why God is limited in giving if the gauge is not correct.

Summary of R Ashlag: We can feel the most love from God when we are most close to God. In spiritual sense, where there is no physical measure, being ‘close’ means being ‘like’, so being close to god means being like God. So when we are most like God, we will be able to experience the greatest love from God. Being like God means being all about giving, not receiving. So we have to work our way up to the level of “receiving in order to give”, which is closest to being like God, in order to receive God’s love to the maximum level. So the bottom line is that God desires to give, and humans desire to receive, but they can only receive what God desires to give – love, joy - if they develop in themselves the desire ‘to receive in order to give’.

We are created in the image of God, but in breishis it also says that Man and Woman together are the image of God, ie God is the unity of both. So no one person can achieve the state of being God’s image on their own, only by love wiht an other. (That is the reason for this story being in the creaiotn account ) So to achieve the oneness that reflects the image of God we need to male space for an other, to love.

God says ‘lo tov…” and Adam had all the animals brought to him. But they were not his ezer kenegdo. Why? Because, as told earlier all the animals are subordinate to humanity, and one needs an equal to create love. That is ezer kenegdo. Not a relationship of dominance. And though it says ‘hu yimshal bach’ this is obviously something to be overcome, as the sweat of our brow is overcome with technology (AR: And The pain of childbirth with medications).

Intro, ch 1, Ch 10: I underlined extensively.in my paperback

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I have paper spiral-bound ‘book’ of R Brandwein;s teachings, at end is his lectures covering Da’as Tevunot of Ramchal. Read it,

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Excerpt from the web

………AR take on HaRav Ashlag via R Brandwein via Raphi: ………

AR: It is a fact that some people can sometimes seemingly ‘choose’ to be happy. There’s a hidden issue of FW here, whether those who chose to be happy were simply wired to do so, to ‘choose’, or whether it truly is a choice.

One can make this ‘secular psychological’ insight into a religious tenet: we are designed by God to be able to attach to joy, to experience God as giving in joy. We have FW, and can exert it to make the choice to be happy/experience joy.

According to HaRav Ashlag (via R Brandwein via Raphi): The deepest way to do a mitzvah is via happiness, the happiness is its essence, because that is the way to attach to God, who is operating via joy.

We should stir up the happiness in us when we do a mitzvah, happiness that we are making God happy by doing the mitzvah.

The main way/one way to joy is via Tfilah (avodah).

We should pray and consider that we are doing it for God, to make God happy, and we should feel happiness that we are making God happy, and then the feeling of Joy enables us to connect to God because then we are operating as God does.

AR: God has given us this gift, that we can pray and consider it a giving, and thus a way to experience joy, and thus to connect to God.

Raphi: we always do things because we want to, it gives us pleasure, whether higher or lower.

AR: As per R Tatz, it is necessary to change the ratzon, and the way to do that is via prayer, so I combine Tatz and Raphi by saying something like this: the way to change the ratzon is by wanting different things, via prayer we attach to joy and that motivates us to want those things?

When God created the universe there was maximal joy on God’s part: Yismach Hashem BeMaa’asav”, when we give we feel joy, we connect up to God by being the same as God.

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Akiva Tatz: gives credit for all the ideas to: R Moshe Shapiro, R Mordechai Miller, R Yitzchok Zev Josef

Living inspired $1 http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/1580231411/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_1?pf_rd_p=486539851&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=1568710267&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=11VX6SBFNP1B3J21GWMJ

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Relate ideas of “Living Inspired” to what I wrote re FW/cosmology, and cosmology/Kabbalah etc, and to Rabbi Brandwein-R Ashlag

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In the list below, keep in mind the idea mentioned by Raphi that each character trait, each story, of the people mentioned in tanach is about all of us, and ismeant to tell us something about our mission etc,

Can one correlate:

· the levels of R P ben Yair to the characters in chumash/nach?

· The sefiros with any of this?

Chumash

AR: The best way to make an impression on a listener, to have them internalize a message, is often a story rather than a philosophical presentation. The Torah recounts stories, and relates pronouncements of God etc, rather than a formal presentation, owever there is of course also the accompanying inner teachings etc, which perhaps had this. And the Nevi’im expounded on these (perush haneviim laTorah), and then the mishna and Talmid etc, and then Rambam, Ramchal etc. They were able to present things in a formal way because everyone of their readers were already familiar with the basic message in story form. They were merely banging in the point with a hammer for those who had not grasped it from the story or they were articulating the message of the story to all those for whom the stories resonated.

· Maaseh breishins

· Gan Eden

· ‘Ki lekacho elokim’

· Noach ish tzadik, tamim

· Avraham:, he is described as ‘eved hashem’ (‘avodah temimah”). And his actions exemplify… and his words …. indicate his understanding that….

· MR: he is described as anav (this is the level of anavah in P ben Y). And his actions exemplify… and his words …. indicate his understanding that….

· Mah Hashen doresh …ki im….(maybe look for the collection of psukim I one made)

· We are created to recive joy etc: Letov lecha, veha’arachta yamim, ve achalta ve savata, vesamachta bechol hatov……maybe also the enigmatic: Kimei hashamayim al haaretz (see meforshim on this)

· Vaya’ncha vayar’ivecha lenasoscha ladaas hayeshchem ohavim et hashem..(life is a test, all misfortune is an opportunity to get closer to God)

Nach

· Eliyahu = prishus?; as described by his ascent he eventually achieved level of techiyas hamesim?

· Ma’aseh merkava

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Mishneh/Beraisa

Mentions “Chasidim HaRishonim” (Brochos perek 5, first mishnah).

R Pinchas ben Yair.

· Development via a specific well-defined path,

· with successive levels,

· need to achieve them in a particular order,

· leading to ultimate leel of “tchiyas ha’meysim”.

Gemara

· discussion of chaisdim hars=ishonim’

· discussion of R Pinchas ben Yair, and of perek chelek?

Ge’onim

Rambam

· Mishneh Torah:

o Mavo (Intro): kabalah, mesorah and mesirah (moshe kibble…umesorohle…), role of yehoshua contrasted to group of yehosha, pinchas, elazar. Idea of ‘mitzva’ as the oral explicairton given to MR re the Torah.

o Hilchos Yesodei HaTorah, Yesod hayesodos. There is a list of the 13 yesodos, and thi sis the yesod of those yesodos?

o Hilchos De’os: developing character traits, temperament etc, but a spart of keeping a mitzvah. And he places these at the top of the list, so ther is an irder implicit I the development.

· Sefer hamitzvos: he lists ahava, yir’ah, lehidamos lashem

· Perush al hamishna: pirkei avos, see perush of brachos re Chasidim harishonim?, see perush on R Pinchas ben yair braise?....etc..perek chelek?

· Moreh nevuchim: developing ot level of ‘nevuah”? maaseh merkavah, maaseh braishis.

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Yesodei HaTorah: sodei hatorah: using large initial letters for first four words not only gives Y H V H but also makes it more apparent that the second word is SOD.

Is Yesodei HaTorah the creaiotn account and De’os the Garden of Eden story (Da’as)?

Can it be that the list of 10 mitvos that h covers in Hilchos De’os are like the sfiros, like the 10 dibris, and that all the key words are in the etz ha’da’as story.

Key word sin the Eden story (and cration) are davek, ruach nishmas etc, but what about ahava? Ther eis yir’ah? And there is the opposite of ahava – evah, which is the same except a yud instead dof a heh, so together they have a yud heh.Or take out the yd and leave a heh instead etc.

……Living Inspired………

AR: combining the issues of the first 6? chapters of LI:

Living Despaired (or: Expired): We have moments of high when we think we can achieve anything, we start life with great expectations etc, and then it is all downhill from there. Maybe it would have been better not to have been misled by the high, better never to have experienced it, at least then one would not have the intense disappointment.

Our lives are a string of either random events or worse, they are a string of disasters leading to eventual destruction of all our dreams and aspirations, and then get old and die.

The challenges facing us are beyond our ability, there is no hope in achieving success in those, and so the wise move would be to not even make the attempt. And it is completely unclear what the right path would be, when we have several choices, how can we tell which is the correct choice, and often either way it seems that the decision was the wrong one.

My life is in a rut, I’m a machine, programmed to do what I do, I’m a prisoner in this brain which is wired by evolution to keep my nose ot the till, to the grind. What’s the use of praying for a change, ….

Living Inspired:

II. Structure of the Mind

Chapter 8: Silence:

Ch 9: Desire:

I. Body & Mind (AR’s word).

Body’s root is the neshama, mind’s root is FW. (“the inner wisdom has a higher root…ratzon, desire. In this source lies the origin of all inner life. The outer mind can never initiate…

Nothing, emptiness..suddenly there is something, flash of an idea. At the interface is desire, the motivating energy of bringing something into being from nothing.

…...the motivation is ratzon – ‘desire’ or ‘will’., the source of all inner life

No thought can be traced more deeply than to this point…the ultimate reason for choosing to do this or that….the deepest source of all outflow in the mind and neshama…this deep root is the tool of bechira….bechira is expressed as the tzelem elokim …that is why the ultimate source of all is ‘ratzon hashem’.

Ratzon is the root of personality, it is all of personality, everything else is derivative of it, automatic consequence of it (like a machine) In terms of meaning it is everything,. Superficial changes in the personality are only changes in the strategy of how to achieve the same end, the only meaningful change is in the root. The challenge is to fight down to one’s core, lay it bare, reach the interface with the root of the neshama which is beyond it and animates and inspires it..

III.Desire and the depth of Prayer: the exercise which most directly develops this contact with the root of desire is tefilla. Purpose of tefilla is to change not God or God’s will but to change US, our ‘personality’ in the meaning as mentioned above.

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Tatz like R Ashlag: ch 9: ratzon, desire. In this source lies the origin of all inner life… the exercise which most directly develops this contact with the root of desire is tefilla. Purpose of tefilla is to change not God or God’s will but to change US (our ratzon)

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Summary of R Ashlag: We can feel the most love from God when we are most close to God. In spiritual sense, where there is no physical measure, being ‘close’ means being ‘like’, so being close to god means being like God. So when we are most like God, we will be able to experience the greatest love from God. Being like God means being all about giving, not receiving. So we have to work our way up to the level of “receiving in order to give”, which is closest to being like God, in order to receive God’s love ot the maximum level. So the bottom line is that God desires to give, and humans desire to receive, but they can only receive what God desires to give – love, joy - if they develop in themselves the desire ‘to receive in order to give’.

Show Rafi my BH booklet with FW article re FW is the activator. And the other article with the connection to Breishis etc.

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Editing for my reformulation of R Brandwein:

Add re 4 worlds, Asiya , doing

Make it a commentary on breishis, ie quote the psukim with the concepts used as basis, and say this can be seen as a commentary. Preface that torah shebichsav is subset of sheb’al’peh.

Vessel = kli =à desire to receive

Typo of sorts, I wrote – instead of the word ‘minus’, and it is not comprehensible as a result.

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office@baalhasulam.org, thekellmans

I am sending my reformulation of Harav Brandwein’s words. I would of course be interested in his comment.

I also have some advice about the cover and opening of the booklet:

It’s purpose à Its Purpose, no apostrophe!

The quote re Messiah seems odd and out of place as preface, and can turn off a casual reader, so maybe it should be placed later.

Perhaps add a blurb on the cover:

· Kabbalistic insights, but without Kabbalistic terminology

· Novel yet founded on ancient tradition

· living a fulfilling meaningful life, overcoming pain and suffering

· With application to current issues such as capitalism and society, science and religion

Change: Man à Humanity

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My reformulation:

The torah teaches that we are created in the image of God. On the one hand God is transcendent and beyond out understanding, but on the other hand we are created in God’s image and can sense transcendent truths when they are phrased in humanly-comprehensible terms.

God is perfect and so we would suppose that in a Transcendent sense, God has no needs – but we, though created in God’s image – do have needs. How is that, and why is it so?

Well, the sages taught ‘the Torah speaks in the language of Humanity’. Using such human-type phraseology to understand the Transcendent, we can say that in some sense God does have a need, and as we are created in God’s image, this need is in some sense reflected in ours. God has a need to give, and we have the need to receive what God wants to give.

It is in some sense like the ‘image’ in a mirror, we have the opposite complementary need, and so we are created by God to be in God’s ‘image’[1].

Another basic teaching of the Torah is that God created the universe from nothing, in other words it is not that the universe always existed, or that there was something co-existing with God, eternally, but rather there was only God and then God created the universe from nothing, since there was nothing before it[2].

Connecting the two above ideas, we can say that since there was only God at first, and God has no ‘need to receive’, it must be that the need to receive was created by God. Indeed, since the essence of the creation was so that beings would exist who needed to receive what God wanted to give, the essential ‘creation from nothing’ was the creation of this need to receive.

Since God created the universe in order to benefit Humanity, to give them delight, God created their need as a desire, with their delight being derived from the satisfaction of the desire. We can thus speak of God’s need to give as a ‘desire to give’, and our human need as the image of this is ‘the desire to receive’, specifically to receive what God desire to give us.

As we all know from experience, the greater the desire, the greater is the delight upon satisfying the desire; thus in order to maximize the delight that humanity would achieve upon receiving what God desired to give, God created within humans a great desire to receive what God desired to give.

According to Kabbalah however, there is a problem - two entities can only connect when they have a ‘similarity of form’. And if the desire to give and the desire to receive are opposites, there is no connection between them, and a being wishing only to receive will not be able to do so from a being wishing only to give. Therefore, in order for humans to benefit from what God wishes to give, humans - though they are motivated by the desire to receive - must develop in themselves the desire ‘to receive in order to give’. In this way, they become desirous of giving, like God, and therefore they become similar to God, and therefore they can receive from God.

To sum it up: God desires to give, and humans desire to receive, but they can only receive what God desires to give if they develop in themselves the desire ‘to receive in order to give’.

A crucial aspect of this is that just as God’s desire to give meant creating the universe, so too Human development of the desire ‘to receive in order to give’ means taking actions, it is not just a mental activity of developing a desire. Indeed the way to actually develop this desire is via actions. One does not first engage in mental development to reach this stage of desiring to receive in order to give, and then undertake actions that express this, but rather the way to achieve this state is via actions, specifically the mitzvoth, both those between God and Humanity (Shabbat and holydays, food laws, purity etc) and those between people themselves (ethical action, social justice etc)[3].

The creation of beings where there were none before, and creating a new need, in some sense requires a ‘contraction’ of God, God went from ‘everything there is’ to ‘everything minus the new beings and needs’. A basic Kabbalistic teaching therefore is that the first step in the creation of the universe was therefore this ‘contraction’, to allow for the presence – the very existence – of the universe and humanity. We, as God’s image, must also as a first step ‘contract ourselves’, reduce our ego, make space for the existence of ‘the other’, and act from the principle of ‘love your fellow as you love yourself’. By taking real actions based on this we imitate God and become ‘alike’ and therefore become able to receive God’s munificence.

Another crucial element is that the motive for this undertaking must be the desire to please God, not the desire to receive from God.

A person who develops this desire to receive in order to give, and does so in order to please God, will achieve spirituality, and benefit from God’s ‘abundance’, the flow of God’s beneficience for which God created the universe and humanity.

Note: This path is only for those who truly love God and wish to connect to God, it is not for those who wish to achieve ends that are for their benefit - even if it is the satisfaction of being ‘the most spiritual being’ around, or in being’ the leader of the nation’. In fact, as part of the development of the connection with God via the development of the desire to receive in order to give, through love of God rather than the desire for personal gain, whether in terms of fame, fortune, adulation is God’s requests to undertake actions that involve tremendous sacrifice, like the 10 tests of Abraham. Each test was calibrated to be more challenging than the previous one, in order to further refine Abraham’s soul. Seen from the outside, this is like God punishing a person for fulfilling God’s own request, or making requests that involve a person undertaking tremendous punishment. And then requesting again, and punishing upon successful fulfilment again, each time involving a more severe ‘punishment’. No human motivated by desire for personal gain – however ‘spiritual’-seeming that gain may be - would willingly undergo those types of test-purifications in order to reach the later stage of closeness to God that Abraham reached; such a person would quit the series of tests long before the 10^th. Only someone motivated truly by a completely unselfish desire to receive in order to give, and by love of God rather than desire for personal gain will desire to undergo this type of testing-purification,

Note: The Torah teaches that God formed humanity via blowing the divine breath into a dirt-form. At a deeper level therefore, other than its fleshly aspect, humanity is God. There is no true separation between humans and God, in fact no real existence of beings other than God. All was only God and all is still only God. The human task is to develop to the point where this is realized, via renouncing the ego and self-based needs, acting upon this, and thus bringing about a ‘reintegration’ so that there is again only God.

All the above was of course speaking in human terms, from the perspective in which we as humans have our own separate existence.

Desire to receive in order to give: actually ‘Lehashpiyah’, not to give

One never actually gets to the state of receiving in order to give (mashpiyah).

A tzadik renounces desire to receive, this is like dying since the essence of human life is to receive, then later has return of it, so this is considered ‘tchiyas hameysim’, and now is closer to level of “r in order to g”. The ‘4 worlds’ are states of being, we are born in state of asiyah, ari reached level of atzilus.

The universe and humanity continue forever, but we can’t understand these issues, they are beyond us, maybe when we are in higher states we can understand more.

These teachings were taught by the Ari but no one understood them. The sulam was his gilgul to explain it. Society, humanity had progressed by then to understand concepts of universality, human rights and dignity etc, and now can comprehend in a natural way the meaning of the teachings – that the ikkar is asiyah, mainly via ve’ahavta le’re’acha kamocha, which includes all humanity, that serving humanity is holiness. Also, to understand that the Jewish people must act as a nation to help the world understand these teachings and achieve the higher states ….

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My iidea after seeing R Brandwein writing first pages/hearing lecture: old question is why a perfect god needed to create the world. Can answer ‘in order to give’, but that is a need too. So maybe an answer is that indeed god had this need to give, but the other side of the need to receive, and this is human. So I am saying that the Sulam’s idea was made to follow from this: that the need to receive is what was created me’ayin, the rest is from what was already, ayin is the need to give because there is no need to recive, need to receive nothing. And we have to work our way up to the receiving in order to give, which is closest to being like god, and when we are most similar, that is when we can feel the most love from and too?and in spiritual sense, where there is no physical measure, being ‘close’ means being ‘like’, so being close to god means being like god in being all about giving, not receiving.

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What about this is Rabbi Ashlag’s interpretation, what is from the Zohar, what would Rabbi Akiva have said about this? What do other respected Kabbalists of our ages have to say of this?

R Ashlag’s innovation: but is it really?

My question: what would rabbi akiva have said upon hearing that this was the essence of torah.’what does Rabbi B thing R Akiva would have taught then to this audience as the essence of torah,if difference, why?

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Is the reason for Rabbi Ashlag’s way my interp see below)

Rafi:

I w

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[1] There are several sense in which we are in God’s ‘image’, this is one of them 9Hebrew: Tzelem, dmut, are also for optical images: camera is matzlema in modern Hebrew, Dmut is for example the appearance of someone in artistic rendering).

[2] Without the connotation that there was time ‘before’ creation, time is part of the creation, but we of necessity must speak in human terms.

‘creation form nothing’ is in Hebrew ‘yesh me’ayin’. In classic Latin terminology this is translated as ‘ex-hihilo’.

[3] ‘ma hum rachum, af atah rachum….In Latin: Imitatio Dei

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Ideas in Akiva Tatz's "Living Inspired" which I had written about:

1) Idolatry is self-serving, asking gods for things, the gods serve

man not vv p72-74

2) Purpose of prayer is to change one's SELF p101-2

3) Moshe Rabbenu: because he had no ego, hashem could fill him p125

(like U Laibel re Betzalel was filled by god's spirit and therefore

was no room for ruch shtus)

4)Elisha and kelim: the flow stopped because there were no more kelim:

p103

5)Shabbos melachot are like mishkan (chapter near end re shabbos): see

also Nechama Leibovitch.

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