the summary of Jewish mysticism

 

We are a cholent

A cholent is stew that has beans, meat, potatoes.

Let’s start with the beans – there are many different colored beans and we have many different colors to our desires – in essence all desire boils down to the desire for pleasure, but there are many forms of pleasure: there is food, there is comedy, there is intellectual discovery, there is intimacy etc. etc. – but the corollary of desiring pleasure, is not be in pain, and likewise there are many forms of pain, there is cold, there is heat, there’s fear, there are many many phobias (fear of something bad that will occur, not the least of them, of other people when we have negative experiences) etc. etc.

Now these feelings, desires, really exist (though with possible variations but generally quite similar) in all animals – it is our hardwired biological instincts – there are countless studies that attest this.

However, what is unique to a human, as God says in the Bible, “I breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.”

We find animals were created from the ground with their soul, they and their body are one.

A human though was given a unique soul which is reflected in the one part of our brain and body no other animal has, and that is the prefrontal lobes, an independent rational mind.

This makes us not only a subject of the body, but its observer.

We, as opposed to all other animals, enjoy curiosity, enjoy discovery, and we also think we have attained truth based on the information that makes sense to our brain.

One of the first things the brain identifies with is that this “machine” that cries, that gets hungry, that reacts to my will, is me.

This is a great mistake – the proof is simple, let’s say the machine doesn’t react to our will as we see God-forbid in the case of a paralysis and many other illnesses (if we want to go more esoteric, there have been people comatose who have come out of it, yet they were conscious, people whose bodies were dead and came back to tell of themselves floating somewhere else etc.) so it is simple to say that the body that lies like clay, non-responsive, isn’t the person who seeks to evoke responses. It is obvious, that though thank-God my body reacts to me, I am the intentions which are fulfilled by the body – again, my body is like a car – if it’s a good car, it will go where I want it to go.

This leads us into an entirely new field, for it means that I am really a soul – like a ghost which inhabits for a time (as there was a time when I didn’t and a time when I won’t) my body.

So then the next logical question is, what exactly is a soul?

Well truth be told, a soul is part of God.

We also call the soul, life-force.

Hence, what makes the human soul different to the animal soul, as Commentator’s comment on the verse that, God breathed a soul into man, is, man’s soul is a conscious intelligence aware based soul.

So now we understand that we are actually highly conflicted people – the reason for this conflict (which BTW has been observed by every philosophical, spiritual, religious system) is because we have two drives in us – on one hand, we have the instinctual urge for pleasure and fear of pain etc.; on the other hand we have a rational me, who would like to do things; there are thousand and one examples of this: “I would like to eat healthy but I also like sweet and tasty food”, “I would like to excersize but I am also lazy”; “I would like to get up early, but well, it’s the lazy thing”; “I would like to not fear but my heart may pump ‘Danger Warning’” “I may wish to stop being addicted to pornography, to drugs, but my heart says ‘Pleasure, Go Get It.”

Generally speaking it is very difficult for the mind, an intellectual idea of what is good, to overtake the heart, which is an emotional feeling toward something.

So we need to address this issue:

For we fundamentally have two issues, the first is our pleasure addictions and the second is our fears.

Let’s begin with the overview of Kabbalah’s soul-map.

Kabbalah teaches that fundamentally speaking we are subdivided into three columns, the right side is our pleasure desires.

The left side is our fear, anxiety (which also translates into jealousy of those who lack fear, hence judging them harshly; for judging is an aggressive move – for in truth we don’t really care about another’s injustice; it’s only when our justice is not love-based but fear based, it makes us jealous when another feels free; hence the mind invents why they deserve to be shamed; which we see truly, that the worst of society, are antisemites, judging the best of society, Jews etc.)

So the center is the ideal stage, where we overcome both “addictions”, as well as fear, but we’ll get to that one step at a time.

To begin, we need to realize “I am not my desire, rather my desire impinges on my happiness” – everyone who has any experience in life (not to mention studies prove this) know that any indulgence loses its pleasure pretty quickly; so ice-cream becomes boring if you have it at every meal; so number one we must reject everything that will give us pleasure! – “if it gives me pleasure, I despise it!”

Number two, dealing with fear is much much harder, for there is a natural reaction to protect ourselves; there are a number of ways of dealing with fear, but providing that our fear is not a pulsating one – in other words, you cannot tell someone to get over a trauma if they are currently in it! – For example Victor Frankel writes that when people would scream in their dreams in the holocaust, they wouldn’t wake them up; for the reality they would wake up to, was as bad, and the cause of, their nightmares – A person needs shelter, needs money, these are absolutes. – However often our trauma relates to memories, hence people who come back from war or have suffered trauma, and all of us have been bullied at one stage or another, have fear based anxiety – so we should take the Baal Shem Tov’s advice – If you see the good in the bad, the bad turns to good! – One must develop a belief that everything comes from God only to help me; this takes away anger, and takes away fear.

O.k. so presumably now I despise my desire for pleasure and I have no fear, now we come to the center, the purpose of existence!!

The purpose of existence is to listen to God!

Practically, how do I do that? – Well, believe it or not, God is waiting for you to pick up the phone – yesterday I spoke to a friend of mind, a very good person, and he said how he would love it whenever his married children would call – even if the only reason they called was because they had a problem.

Well you are God’s child – at least in His point of view!

He is eagerly awaiting for you to call Him!

And here is how!

All you need to do is say, “Daddy, can I ask you a question?” and you will here in your mind (in your voice) “Yes.” – Then ask your question – anything – then you will hear an answer.

It may take you, as it has taken me, a million times to really realize that this is real; but once you do, the ultimate purpose of creation, namely that God wants to be your personal Dad – and as He is unlimited He can be everyones’ personal Dad – will occur.