It's the WednesdayWisdom Show and you want to know - is spirituality a theory?
You hear this all the time, and maybe you feel this, and maybe you say this -I'm not
religious I'm spiritual.
The problem with that statement and that desire is that we don't really know what spirituality
is.
We have a pretty good idea of what religion is - it's a belief system, usually a community.
One thing we do know about spirituality is that it shouldn't be based on beliefs, that
spirituality in the generality means that a person has direct experience as opposed
to simply believing something.
But in general there's no hard definition of what it is that a person should be aimed
at, what they should be experiencing when we talk about spirituality.
So saying that a person is spiritual is like saying I'm nothing.
Now that may be very spiritual if you can actually reach the point where you're nothing
and everything, but it means that we don't have a target, we don't know where we're going.
There are people who aren't necessarily not religious, but that they haven't really reach
that experience, that direct experience level within their religion, Sometimes at the beginning
of a person's conversion or awakening in religion they will feel some very very strong things
and their reason does not get in the way of the power of what's going on in their heart
and in their perception and they feel that they are in direct contact with, what should
I call it, the figures, the avatars, the beliefs of that religious system.
But when a person stays in a religion long enough they eventually get a hunger for "what
is the essence of this thing?"
And there were people who never bought into a religion even if they grew up in one, and
don't have an affinity to it.
I mean they have a customary affinity because it's family you know, and it's Community.
Those things are great and they're warm.
They're good, but as far as fulfilling the desire of the person to touch truth and direct
experience - it's generally lacking.
So then, what is it that a person is seeking that they want to directly experience?
We have all kinds of things in New Age spirituality and one of the Hallmarks of the New Age spirituality
is that it's not really anything.
It's like a smorgasbord.
You can pick and choose anything you want from all different paths and there is an idea
behind all of this that somehow they're all equal and they all take a person to the same
place.
THAT is actually a theory and it's an odd one because in any of the practices and traditions
that New Age people admire there was a fundamental part of it that's lacking in that approach
- that is the absolute commitment to the path.
Those spiritual paths were not eclectic in their time, nor are they today.
They require a deep commitment to the method of a particular path because for a person
to climb on any of these paths they have to stop doing all of the other things, concentrate
their efforts on that path, and then see what happens, test it out, you know.
Move from the aspects of - "well I believe in this" to - I am either experiencing what
it says or I am not experiencing it.
So then what is spirituality?
What is a person supposed to be experiencing that they can say whether or not they are
having a direct experience?
I would like to explain what one particular path, the one that I'm connected with - Kabbalah
- how it defines spirituality.
It says that spirituality, the spiritual is selfless bestowal - that a person should reach
a place where they give to the entire system - people, plants, animals - you don't even
have to break it down - just that the entire system that we live in, that the heart should
be filled with a desire to fulfill everything outside of ourselves.
To bring good to absolutely everything without referring it to ourselves because we're naturally
part of this system.
So it is pure bestowal without a trace of receiving for myself.
This is a thing that doesn't exist in a person at the beginning of their spiritual path because
it's not built into a person.
This is why we say that a person must climb the ladder, so to speak, in order to reach
this sensation.
The sensation is actually an intention.
It means that it's a use of life itself, a proper use of life.
Now that's the goal and we can't look at ourselves and think "well, oh yeah I understand that
I feel that.
I can do that."
No.
There is a methodology, because it's a science.
Today we can better understand many aspects of this science that in the past we couldn't
because we hadn't developed to the point where the way that we think was capable of that
- where certain things in the dimension that we live in became evident enough that we began
to sense beyond the physical.
- and again, the definition of the physical in Kabbalah is not matter but it is a quality
of desire - physical being a desire for myself, and spiritual or higher dimensions being a
desire for the whole system.
So there's a method of using the search for this definition of spirituality as an experience
within yourself.
And even though one has got to learn all of the things in this science in one way or another
and use the methodology in this science - this target is kind of like - Do you know this
trick?
That you can get out of any maze by simply putting your right hand on one of the walls
and never allowing that hand to come off the wall?
So no matter where it takes you, even if it takes you down what looks like a dead end
you just keep following wherever you end up being led as a result of never taking your
right hand off the wall and you'll eventually come out of the maze out of the labyrinth.
Well this is the guiding principle - it's the it's the radar beacon behind all the work
that a person is doing.
Now it still say seem that - "well this still is kind of vague no?
I mean isn't spirituality - how do you feel a thing like that?
What are the actual borders on a sensation?
- how do I even know what I truly desire? and on top of that how do I know what I'm
truly intending by what I desire?"
Well, none of this is left to chance because nothing in creation is done by chance.
That's all laid out in a highly scientific precise manner.
Take a look at this.
This book, a rather large tome, this is a book that's used in the first few semesters
at KabU and it contains articles, diagrams.
principles all by authentic Kabbalists.
These are original texts, Kabbalistic texts, and they explain the science plus the approach
to the science.
For instance, here is a diagram of what occurred in the general forces of nature prior to the
Big Bang and then what happens after that point of desire is reached in which dimensions
or worlds can then extend from that initial point of desire, and then how all of those
worlds are broken down inside each phase or dimension of human experience, of desire - and
we're part of this whole general desire of the Universe, part of the general system - right
down to the place where we exist - to this sort of halfway point of creation of the general
development of the evolution - of what Kabbalah calls the creature - and then - both the methodology
and the map in which one ascends back through these stages.
but in a very conscious way.
And all the time that this is happening that Target, that keeping ourselves aimed at that
pure bestowal is what a person feels to one degree or another as they move through these
different states.
And they're all measurable.
They're all actually common to everybody who undertakes this method - so you can check
out how to do a particular, let's say experiment, of self-development, and it's not self but
development from self to the whole - you can check it out by looking at the Target using
all of the components of the experiment, that is, what a person needs to do to advance their
connection to this, or to see their disconnection from the ideal of spirituality - which is
this selfless giving.
And anybody who goes through these different states feels exactly the same thing at that
point in their development.
That's why it's called a world, because there's a kind of, there's a commonality there for
those who are working in it.
By the way, world also means in this system, it has the same meaning in Hebrew as both
concealment and revelation, so the both of these things happen depending on the qualities
that the person is working with and what they're comparing.
This stuff is really fascinating and I'm sure many of you are like - "show me!
Explain to me at least an experiment or something!
How does this science work?"
Now here's the problem - it's a spiritual science.
It is about the forces above the material world and that means that the definitions
of those terms are not anything like the definition of terms of the physical sciences.
And you can't reach an understanding of the terminology just by taking it in intellectually
because the whole process of the upper science is that the scientist has to change HIMSELF
to be in equivalence with the spiritual state that he wants to investigate.
So likewise, the understanding of the terminology is an ongoing process in which a person learns
what the Kabbalists actually mean.
That doesn't mean that any of this is vague, it's very concrete in what happens inside
of a person.
And all of that is to say that as far as Kabbalah goes spirituality is not theoretical.
It is a concrete science that can be felt in the heart, that uses this world, the matter
of this world and uses it to rise to another level.
And it is a science of the upper world, of the spiritual world, and so it's very difficult
when you first look at this and you hear about it - impossible and absurd to judge whether
or not this is actually so.
The only way that a person can know is by testing it for themselves and having a direct
experience of whether it works or not.
And you go from your own theoretical ideas about spirituality into hard testing of what's
so or not, and that's the great benefit of being serious about spirituality - putting
your ladder down in one place and climbing in that place because you can't carry your
ladder here there and everywhere and never put it down.
That's it for today so please, if you like this then like share subscribe.
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