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Kabbalah Revealed #3

The Path of Pain & the Path of Torah and


Mitzvot
Bold and indented: Original text of Baal HaSulam
lowercase italics: emphasized words
Capitalized Italics: transliteration from Hebrew

Hello again and welcome to Kabbalah Revealed. Im Tony Kosinec.

Last time we spoke about the force of development, the progression of


desires, and the way in which reality moves us along the path of development.
We spoke about the quality that is the definition of the upper worlds, the
spiritual worlds, the quality that is the definition of the physical worlds, and
what it is about the way that we perceive that makes the spiritual worlds the
greater reality hidden from us.

We looked at the progression of desires. We saw that there were four


categories of desires that are considered physical, and that because of the
Thought of Creation, which is to create a creature and bring that creature to
unbounded delight, it must progress by means of what the Creator finds
delightful.

And so, all expression of development from the Thought of Creation is


expressed through a lack and a filling. We saw that desires progressed from
simple desires (animal desires for sex, for shelter, food, and family). And,
when that was filled, we moved onto greater desire, which was a desire for
wealth, which is an accumulation of the first one. When that desire feels
empty to us because we are still feeling something driving us, something
thats pushing us ahead, something thats pulling us forward, we feel that
thing as a kind of a taste, as something that we must have, and we move
towards it. And, once we have it, we cant taste it anymore. But this is the
force of development moving us on. From wealth, we move on to fame,
power. Once we fill that, we are moved on by our emptiness into knowledge.
Once we find knowledge empty, we find ourselves in a confusing situation in
which nothing from this world can satisfy us. If you recall, its at that point at
which a completely new level of development becomes accessible to us.

The Path of Pain & The Path of Torah and Mitzvot

[Tony Kosinec]

When that special desire enters the heart from the spiritual, which is qualities
of the will to bestow, it changes everything within the human heart. The
human heartwhen we hear the term heart in Kabbalah, it means the sum
total of all desires that a person hasthis heart is still filled with desires that
come from the physical world. These are still the things from categories one,
two, three and four.

This desire, which is a desire to reach the spiritual, is called Israel, from two
Hebrew words, Yashar, meaning straight, and El, meaning Goda desire
for a direct connection with God. These corporeal desires are called nations,
the nations of the world, in other words, the desires of the physical world.

Up until this point, the force of development, the way in which desire moved
us until we came to a point where we actually needed to feel what was above
the physical world, happened in an unconscious way. But from now on, it has
to happen in a conscious way because this point in the heart is a spiritual
gene. Its like the embryo of the soul. The soul is kind of a desire and it must
be filled. The heart must be filled with this desire, it must fill everything despite
these corporeal desires. In other words, all of the desires that we have, have
to undergo a transformation, a correction. And its by correcting these desires
that the desire to go directly to God can be fulfilled.

Now why is that? In our original state, at the root of our soul, we were
connected to the Creator as the Creator and the creature. In fact, these are
the only two things that exist in creation, the Creator and the creature. And
here, we were adhered to the Creator as one being, as one unified creature.
But because of the Thought of Creation, which is to create a creature and fill it
with delight, that was only the starting point. It was the beginning of the
system. And this quality of the creature, which is the will to receive, started to
expand purposefully. And, as a result of the expansion of this quality, of this
desire to receive for myself alone, a greater diversity in quality started to grow
between the quality of the Creator (which is bestowal) and the quality of the
creature (which is reception).

As this egoistic intention expanded, the first creature, the whole creature, the
collective soul called Adam ha Rishon (meaning, the first man), descended
through a system of worlds, through 125 steps, to greater and greater egoism
until the soul reached a point in which it became separated into what appears
to be physicality. That is, the collective soul was shattered into 600,000 parts,
each one of these parts having a piece of the original, each one of these parts
a desire. Now, because this is a processand this is only the halfway
pointthis broken, shattered aspect of the collective soul in which we
experience isolation, separation from each other, a kind of antagonism
towards each other, a desire to exploit each other, and an experience of the
physical world, is the halfway point, and it is going to be corrected. It is going
to rise back up through this system of worlds, back into this state of adhesion
with the Creator. But it cant do it all at once. So purposefully, it was broken
into 600,000 parts.
Each one of these parts was likewise broken down into 613 desires. That is,
each individual desire within Adam ha Rishon consists of 613 desires that can
be corrected, the parts are small enough. Its like dividing a huge treasure and
giving a coin to each person knowing that each one will return this quality of
bestowal. This point in the heart thats placed inside of it can be trusted to
bring that point back to its origin and put the treasure back together as a
collective once again.

So, in the point in the heart of the individual who begins to feel this desire for
spirituality, this coin from the treasury of the King, plus the 612 other desires
that exist in the heart, must be transformed bit by bit to resemble to a greater
degree, the quality of the Creator, to reverse this process.

Now the thing is, this process of the return of the correction (Tikkun), of the
transformation, of the fulfillment of the Thought of Creation, its going to
happen. And all of us, all 600,000 pieces of the collective soul, are going to
rejoin and are going to ascend from physical, selfish perceptions and a world
of suffering back into a complete and whole interrelationship with each other
in such a way that we will reach the goal of creation, which is adhesion to the
Creator and the complete filling of the greatest unbounded desire. Its going to
happen. But the question is, will it happen consciously, with our agreement, or
will we be pushed to it?

You see, theres one goal and the goal is assured, but there are two paths to
the goal. One path is called the path of pain, and the other path is called the
path of Torah and Mitzvot.

The path of pain is the path that we are all already on. Its not even really a
path. Its what we see as the slow, grinding evolution of humanity that we call
history. It is a kind of clinging to our physical way of perceiving, to the
characteristic that we really need to transform. And, as a result of this
non-conscious involvement with the process of development, we find
ourselves being pushed by events. We see catastrophes, we see tsunamis,
we see wars. We have personal experiences in our lives--experiences of pain,
experiences of suffering that are caused only by the lack of conscious
involvement with the process of the development of desires in their correction.
This path can go on, and on, and on, and its disastrous. Once the point in the
heart appears in a person, though, it becomes a conscious involvement. And,
this is the path of Torah and Mitzvot.

Torah means instruction by the Light, and Mitzvot means a transformation of


a quality of one of the 613 desires from its egoistic expression to its altruistic
expression.

Every event that happens in our lives is really a Mitzva, a possibility for
transformation being presented to us. Now, when I say the word Mitzva, I
dont mean like the physical commandments where you are instructed to do a
certain thing. And there is a list of all these things in the Shulchan Aruch, in
the Table of Jewish Law and so onDo this physical thing now. Im not
saying dont do the physical thing, but what I mean is that this is an inner
correction, its a correction of desire. So, whether you do the external good
deedwhether its a religious good deed or whether its something that we
consider to be something nice for somebody elseyou can do any external
deed and you can be filled with hatred and selfishness. You cant measure
anything by that. Were talking about one of these 613 desires thats
presented to us as an event in our life.

Our entire lives are planned in such a way by this process of development to
present to us the opportunity to take what we first feel as a desire to receive
for myself in a given situation and transform that into its altruistic form to try to
understand what the thought of the Creator is, the Thought behind giving me
that situation. Because, as you remember, the only way that we progress
along spiritual space is by altering a quality within me to resemble that quality
in spirituality that I want to enter. Thus, what it is that I want to know according
to this new desire, this desire straight for the Creator, is that I want to know
the Creator. I want to have a direct sensation. I want to feel in my desires, in
the tangible things that occur in my life, what is the thought of the One, of the
Upper One, of that upper level that gave me this perfect, structured situation,
that gave me this opportunity, like a birthday present, for me to take it first in
its corrupted form. And, by analyzing and seeing what it is, feeling what His
thought is behind it, thats a Mitzva, thats Tikkun, thats transformation.

These 125 states by which we descended from our connection to the


complete reality down into our separated status as individual people and
desires, these 125 steps are also completely encompassed by these 613
Mitzvot, so that the correction of these transformations will bring the individual
all the way back up the ladder.

Another feature of this is that each and every level of descent is imprinted in
us as a gene. Every point by which a greater and greater degree of the will
to receive was added is remembered by us like breadcrumbs on a path. This
being, the first spiritual gene, this point in the heart, our access to ascent, is
actually the entry point on a chain of spiritual genetics called Reshimot,
remembrances. And, all of the events that happen in our lives that bridge us
between these 613 transformations of the will to receive to the will to bestow,
that bond us to the Creator. each event is laid out for us in a perfect pattern so
that we have the opportunity to recognize what it is that we need to do.

Now this action of correction and transformation, this Tikkun, is not done by
us. Its done as a result of a desire that we have to make this contact with
spiritual light. And, as a result of the desire that we have, the work is done by
the Light. Its an action done on us by Surrounding Light.

The Zohar says, When a person comes to purify themselves, they are helped
from Above. In other words, its as a result of a gut-level need that used to be
a need for those four corporeal desires being transformed into a greater and
greater need to know what the quality of bestowal actually is. We cant reach
this ourselves. This work is called the work of God, not because we go out
there like a bunch of nice soldiers and do the job that God assigned us. Its
because the work itself of transformation, purification, Tikkun, is done on us
by the Light as a result of an expanded desire. But dont be confused by the
word Light. Dont think of it as a physical thing. Remember that the quality of
the spiritual world is a quality of attributes. Its a quality of intention,
feeling-states.

If you want to feel the contrast between your intention and the intention of the
Light, then you cant simply have a desire and have it filled directly by some
kind of pleasure the way that we do that in the physical world. In order to feel
the difference between our state and the state of the Light, the my intention
and the intention of the Light, its necessary to have a sensor, something that
can feel the Light. And this sensor must be an intention. Its called a screen.
This is what we referred to in our last show as the additional sense, the sixth
sense.

This screen acts as a resonator, a contrast point between the desire that
sends this which is given by the Light. Rather than having it just go directly in,
it hits this screen and it causes a sensation, a sensation of difference between
the intention here [Instructor points to Kli] and the intention here [Instructor
points to Light]. And this screen, or Masach, is the tool. This is the way in
which we can turn the will to receive, which is our matter and the only tool that
we have to work with, into something very different. We can begin to feel and
receive the Light only according to an intention that matches the intention of
the spiritual world. We will deal with this more later. But what happens when
this can actually occur, when the feeling in here, the intention in the screen, is
the same as the intention in the Light? This is called a corrected desire. And
this contrast creates a need in us, the right need, a particular need. It builds a
lack in a particular direction. It makes us want to feel what we dont have, and
that is the sensation of the Light, the thought, the intention behind the Light.
And, it moves us in the intended direction of greater and greater correction.

Every time that a desire moves in transformation from its corrupted form into
its perfected forma transformation from its will to receive to the will to
bestowthis puts us in touch with eternity. It connects us more and more to
the thought behind the entire process. Not only does it do that for this one
particular desire and for one individual, but as a result of the connection, the
interconnection in Adam ha Rishon-- that part of person number 1--that desire
within person number 1, like a hologram, becomes corrected in each one of
the other desires and reconnects them to each other. So, it raises not only the
person who does the correction, but their entire world, so that our perception
of our reality, the reason that things happen, the thought behind it--whether or
not good and bad things are occurring--this changes. A person can feel the
total goodness behind the guidance of the entire system and is no longer
fooled by physical ideas of whats good and evil.
This perception of the love behind the process is really what enlightenment is.
Now we see good and bad events surrounding us, things that we want to
happen and things that we feel should not happen, this sense that we do
something right or we do something wrong, that we make a certain act and
were punished for it, that there is a good force and a bad force in realitythis
is not reality. This is the way that it appears to the will to receive. And,
enlightenment means that we can see, despite anything that appears to us,
what the real, unifying thought is behind that.

Join us next time when we look at the force of development, the reason for
suffering and how we can rise above that.

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