Kabbalah Thoughts

[Menolly]

With feed back like that, I guess I best remember to continue on Sundays.
Thanks Cambo.

[Caelyn]

...I do sometimes wish for a security blanket .

Consider again my post and its link from last summer.

As my posting history (in this thread and elsewhere) attests, I am no materialist. Still, if any material object can draw me...even now that I am so much older than I was...it is a security blanket!

[Cambo]

I did see that link, Caelyn, and I agree!

...even now that I am so much older than I was...

How old is that, exactly? Is the avatar current?

[Caelyn]

Exactly? That is not an easy question...

My native plane is not that of the Watch. The post I linked was written when I was perhaps 18 months old by your reckoning...yet I was already far older on my plane than that age would indicate. This led to many misunderstandings...and my plane has been through some convulsions since then. I really have no good reference point as to how much time elapsed, or how old I now am; only that a very considerable amount of time has passed on my plane, as well as some (although much less) on yours.

Yet I am as I was...and the truths I learned from my mother and the goddess she served have not changed.

In the tongues of your plane:

愛があります

There is love

"The same in any language
The same in any name
Call it what you feel
Call it whatever's handy
We don't have to know the name
We don't have to have the same name
We don't have to have any name at all..."

[Linna Heartbooger]

The spiritual seeker seeks the meaningful.
The mystical seeker seeks the experiential.
The material seeker seeks a security blanket.

Do you think one person can be an ardent seeker of all three?

~"Linna the contrary"

[Savor Dam]

Yes, I do think that to be possible, Linna...and I think your choice of adjective is very germane to the question.

[Menolly]

Control is about me.
Assertiveness is about you.
Control expresses fear.
Assertiveness expresses compassionate confidence.

[Menolly]

The soul discovers the world in two ways: mind and heart.
The mind discovers the world in two ways: me and you.
Emotion discovers the world in two ways: pain and pleasure.

[Menolly]

Oh gosh, it's been awhile.
Let me try to get back on a weekly track, since the site I get these from has been posting new ones almost daily.
ah!
And it is the one that prompted me to start posting these to the Watch...

The body experiences the contours of space.
The mind experiences the arc(h) of time.
The soul experiences the sphere of consciousness.

[Cambo]

I like that one especially, Menolly.

[Orlion]

Oh gosh, it's been awhile.
Let me try to get back on a weekly track, since the site I get these from has been posting new ones almost daily.
ah!
And it is the one that prompted me to start posting these to the Watch...

The body experiences the contours of space.
The mind experiences the arc(h) of time.
The soul experiences the sphere of consciousness.

With a little re-wording, we got some definitions of body, mind, and soul.

[Menolly]

Consciousness means
thoughts remembering feelings
and feelings enlivening thoughts.

[Menolly]

I'm stepping away from the usual format today. I just received today's emailed blog entry by the author of the Kabbalah Thoughts I quote. I know a lot in the Jewish community are asking the same things. I figured I would share this here.

A Murder in New York

~Laibl Wolf, Dean, Spiritgrow - The Josef Kryss Wholistic Centre, Australia

Bad things happen to good people. Why? Why must the good suffer? Where is cosmic justice? Where is Divine mercy? The Kabbalistic text, the Book of Tanya by the Alter Rebbe, opens discussion of this most perplexing enigma in its opening chapter.

Leiby Kletzky, a nine year old innocent child was brutally murdered in Brooklyn, NY – his body hideously dismembered. The seeming wantonness of the killer’s deranged mind can only add to the frustrating outrage and sensibility – especially of a believer.

For me personally it reawakens my early fury and profound indignation when as a tender youngster, perhaps also at nine years of age, I discovered the brutality of the Nazis while perusing the shelves of my parent’s books. I still feel the deep stab of unbearable spiritual pain when I ruminate on the sheer bestiality of Hitler’s Nazis. Today I can rationalize Nazism as anti-Semitism taken to its logical end in the mind of a morbid exterminator leading a sick zombied nation to squeeze the life out of ‘Jewish vermin’.

But Leiby’s brutal killer is a fellow Jew! Yes, it’s true that amongst the ‘Kapos’ were also Jews who were forced to be traitors upon the pain of death. Last week, however, little Leiby was not singled out as a Jew. He was an innocent youngster who fell prey to a monster.

To seek meaning out of this madness is a foolhardy exercise. All random killings are of the same insensible category. Does this allow the believer to question G-d? Would not questioning G-d place the believer outside the pale of belief?

When confronted with the same question by a holocaust survivor who had lost his whole family, parents, wife, and children, the great Lubavitcher Rebbe responded: “Not only are you allowed to question G-d, but you must question G-d. Because in questioning G-d you also affirm that there is a G-d,” - albeit an unknowable G-d.

There are strong precedents in the Kabbalistic tradition for such challenges to the Divine. The great saint and mystic, Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev even took G-d to court (Beit Din) over the suffering he witnessed. The court ruled in Rabbi Levi Yitzhak’s favour. Elie Wiesel, the post-holocaust novelist and essayist has G-d being similarly tried by Auschwitz prisoners, with the ‘jury’ returning the same verdict - guilty.

In both instances, the historical summons issued by Rabbi Levi Yitzhak, and the contemporary one created by Elie Wiesel, the ‘finding’ of Divine ‘guilt’ is followed by the solemn intonation of Kaddish – the prayer solidly affirming G-d’s existence and justice.

An adage: ‘To the atheist there is no answer; to the believer there is no question’. Yet, is it really conceivable that the believer will not ask the question? Can we stand by and with cold theological dissertation, observing the pain and suffering of innocents, and hold our tongue? Admittedly, it is the height of conceit to for the limited human brain to comprehend the infinite. But the imperative to challenge and confront the Creator on issues of justice and mercy, His own self-description, is vital – but only in the spirit of humility and the lens of awe.

We must constantly question the existence of pain, suffering and evil. And G-d must respond why Leiby was murdered, why tens of millions of human beings of all denominations were murdered under Hitler and Stalin – why the ideal of the Seventh day has not yet manifested, as Kabbalah envisions, in the Seventh millennium.

The question is not the question. The mystery is that we can and should question - even though the echo of response is yet to be heard.

[Menolly]

The physical world is a metaphor for higher reality. You are much more than what you seem to be.

…panentheism!!!

[Linna Heartbooger]

“Not only are you allowed to question G-d, but you must question G-d. Because in questioning G-d you also affirm that there is a G-d,”

I agree with this a good bit.
Questioning God in prayer also can be an opportunity to affirm that He is the sort of God willing to dialog with His creatures-- even when the scope of our vision is so small.

Admittedly, it is the height of conceit to for the limited human brain to comprehend the infinite. But the imperative to challenge and confront the Creator on issues of justice and mercy, His own self-description, is vital – but only in the spirit of humility and the lens of awe.

I love this too; and the reminders for humility.

[Linna Heartbooger]

“Not only are you allowed to question G-d, but you must question G-d. Because in questioning G-d you also affirm that there is a G-d,”

I agree with this a good bit...
I think that humans being permitted (even encouraged towards) that kind of prayer is just amazing.

Admittedly, it is the height of conceit to for the limited human brain to comprehend the infinite. But the imperative to challenge and confront the Creator on issues of justice and mercy, His own self-description, is vital – but only in the spirit of humility and the lens of awe.

I love this too; and the reminders for humility.

[Cambo]

To the atheist there is no answer; to the believer there is no question.

Guess I've still got a bit of atheist in my soul (heh), cause I've always loved questions and been suspicious of those with the answers. The bigger the question, the more suspicious of the answers I get.

[Menolly]

I agree with you, Cambo. I think the adage saying to the believer there is no question contradicts what the author later says in the blog post which Linna quoted.

Not only are you allowed to question G-d, but you must question G-d. Because in questioning G-d you also affirm that there is a G-d,

I think that whole essay is basically a disagreement with the adage quoted within it.

[Menolly]

Imagination is the interface between reality and infinity - the physical and the spiritual.

Not sure I agree necessarily with this one. Something to ponder further.

[Cambo]

Hmm. I can see what they mean- but isn't imagination also the interface between reality and "stuff we make up?"