Before the beginning of creation there was only the light of God, the all in all. Being absolute perfection meant that The Endless One had to be able to experience dynamic perfection...the act of becoming perfect. Thus, the Endless One created a vessel and poured His (I only use this pronoun out of habit) light into it. The vessel could not contain his perfect light and it shattered. The shattered pieces of the vessel became four world of existence, with ours being the lowest realm - the realm of action. Our souls are sparks of God's light - sparks of God himself. In our realm we have a sense of God's existence, but we are overloaded by sensory data that distracts us (sensory data in this case being simple light, colors, and sounds). The purpose of life is to simply work to reunite that spark of God in us with the aspect of God that exists in absolute perfection. We are the ambassadors of God's dynamic journey toward perfection. Not only are we his hosts in this mission, we get to become perfect with him. We are that spark of God inside of us. That is our true nature. We are not Gods in and of ourselves, but our true nature is a tiny spark of God. The way to work toward perfection is to follow his commandments. Wait though. God supersedes religion. We're not talking about one religions set of rules and traditions. We're talking about the essences of God. His aspect of love, compassion, neighborliness, forgiveness, respect, honor, etc. Very often these are wrapped up in the most highly respected rules of the religions. The Torah has 633 commandments, but 10 of them are highly honored. The virtues expressed in the 10 commandments are the respected virtues of any true religious system. As James said "True religion is taking care of orphans and widows." Being willing to honor the spark of God inside of you by following these expressions of him changes you, which pushes you further toward the reunion. ***Most of this came from my basic understanding of the Kabbalah, but other sources included the New Testament and my own opinion.
really enjoyed that article... what is meant by endless...?...is it a one dimensional meaning? endless in what way(s)?
Endless means that he has no restrictions. Many call him the Eternal, but that still denotes time. He exists outside of time and has no beginning, end, or restrictions. The sages call him the Ein Sof, which is Hebrew for endless one. The beauty of Kabbalah, and it was something I was learning (if you'll read some of my other posts in the religion section over the past year and a half) before I ever read a word of Kabbalah, is that paradox is embraced. Actually, paradox is godly. Can God make a rock that is too big for him to lift? Yes AND no. Can God fully be absolute perfection and still be experiencing dynamic perfection through us? Yes. These are things we'll never grasp in our lifetime, because our minds operate with an either or duality, but people who have done heavier psychedelics (Mods, I'm not talking about other drugs, just a quick reference to a class) can attest that at some point they logically knew they were still a separate body, but they could not tell where their body ended and the rest of the universe began. The ultimate unification of everything is in the Ein Sof, and the vessel of that unity is love.
Sorry, no empirical data for proof. It resonates with me, but take it as a thought experiment if you'd like.
Me too brother, me too. And I don't say that in a narcissistic manner as in "I'm right and people need to believe like I do." I just think that people in life need to be respectful to others and of other's beliefs. I believe that I'm on a viable path to God, but if someone else doesn't believe that, what's it to me? If they're interested in hearing about my journey I'll tell them. I keep a blog and post on here to share my experiences as well, but why do people feel the need to exclude others (and belittle others) just because they don't share beliefs?
Well sometimes it is quite necessary, because sometimes what a person believes is harmful to society. Religions in general are capable of great humanitarian things, but the passion in faith and literal translations of ancient texts often causes terrible harm to humanity. If you were to use your beliefs in order to push racism, sexism, homophobia, etc.. and use your scripture to support those claims I would show you and your beliefs absolutely zero respect. Get my point?
Totally get you man. I guess I should have expressed mine as "who cares what others believe as long as those beliefs are not harmful to other people." Religion has done a lot of harm to millions of people throughout the ages, and I completely understand atheist sentiment in wanting religion to just go away, but evil is still going to occur, and religion...in other cases...has done a lot to fight evil. If a person's religion is based on moralistic law, it is destined to do harm, but if a person's religion is based upon divine unification in love, then it can do a lot. For example, the Catholic Church has literally murdered millions of people throughout the ages. As an institution it has a deplorable history because of deplorable men. But there are also true and honest saints who have come from that tradition. In fact, large groups of nuns just basically told the pope to fuck off because he ordered them to stop feeding the poor and instead focus on the "homosexual agenda."' An institution will not bring peace to the world, because institutions have the intrinsic desire to protect themselves, but people within various institutions, and outside of institutions will bring peace. Kabbalah teaches that even people who deny God are working toward the divine unification if they live by the precepts of love, compassion, etc.
Essef! Nice to see you too. I'm sorry things have fallen through with the e-zine. My spiritual journey took a huge turn and the magazine just wasn't a priority at the time (not to say it won't be in the future). My time spent on here also tapered off as I spent more time on blogging about my journey. But, things are calming down a bit, so I'm hoping to spend more time here again.
Make sure you're not mixing Ein Sof (Without End, "The Endless") up with the being that we call God. God came about as a result of tzimtzum and the shattering of the vessels according to Kabbalah. While God is intimately connected to Ein Sof, our conception that we call God is not Ein Sof because, while we can conceive thoughts of God, it is impossible to conceive thoughts of Ein Sof or even Ohr Ein Sof (Endless Light) I'd be happy to share more if you're interested. Chabad Hasidism is the religion I was raised in and Kabbalah is the way we explain the universe
Thanks cookiecrisp, I'm definitely interested in hearing more. I've only recently begun studying. In fact, this afternoon I actually first made the distinction between the Ein Sof and "God" (though that distinction only exists from our perception). I was doing some reading on the Sephirot and noticed that Ti'feret (and below) seems to be where our ideals of God emanate from.
who are you to judge? like you are the ruler for what is good for society...HA! what a load of arrogant garbage. for one, if anyone does not speak honestly they are a hatefilled liar...and any who say homosex is healthy and ok are liars who lack all scientific support and all credibility. just brain washed ignorances without any true knowledge of what they are speaking of. so bring on you hate filled rages, they are so ingorant they are laughable and a joke....you think they are scray? too much!.. what science do you have to support your fantasy? show it or shut up what the detrimental bullshit... get my point?
i do not see how eternal donotes time, they seem the opposite to me...depending how how the translation was doen and from which word as compared to everlasting and getting into to that would take an aion to figure out... but in dealing with restrictions...that is one of the things about mohammed's arguements against Christianity and the virgin birth that seemed to fall short... itis like when anyone ask, why would GOD have to do something? well, HE does not have to do anything, can do anything...so when mohammed said GOD has no need to begot anything but can just say 'be' and it is, mohammed was being truthful..but GOD did not have to say be, he could have just thought it and willed it... so debating what GOD does not have to do, is no way to measure what GOD does and does not, will and will not do.. he did it again when arguing with the unbelievers...or rather writing about his discourses witht hem...he would respond with questions...but in another chapter, when they did so, he excused that away as people looking for a way around the truth... so he did the same thing he faulted others for doing.
Ok... And how did you know I was even talking about you? I guess the shoe fits and you're wearing it. I like the OP's attitude and disposition.
what is hard to understand about it...he made a tatement that he can jump on beliefs that according to him are hurtful to society...so i simply asked him to show us why he thinks he has the almighty wisdom to make that decision...he listed some reasons..i asked for science to show why he thinks he is correct on one of them... if you cannot understand that, try harder with honesty please, it is not that hard.