It Maybe Mystical- But Really????

Rosanne

I read all the threads in this forum, because I like the subject. Please have pity on this woman who was raised in a different mindset and has trouble getting past gobbly gook. The mystical Kabbalah indeed! Some posters make it so hard to understand- how about some plain talk? Some writers on the subject (authors) seem to live somewhere I don't- like in a sphere in behind Mars! I do not need to become a Rabbi nor do I want to tie a red string around my wrist - I can learn from you who post here as long as you understand that sometimes it seems to me, that I feel like I am trying to gatecrash conversations between higher beings. I don't think the message and meaning of the Kaballah will be diluted if it is explained in a less 'high flying' way. It may be a bit boring for those who have a great understanding, but I think you sometimes lose the poor old plodder like me. That is a real shame!
I had a Eureka moment when I read Umbrae's post, Thank God for small mercies ( well a large Mercy to be more precise) please consider the Lillies of the field, when some of us are just a plain daisy- low to the ground!
Umbrae said:
Kabbalah is also a way of life. It’s not simply books and words.
The Mishnah is the ‘oral code of laws’. It helps us live in four worlds, even though we are only aware of one (Asiyyah).
Kabbalah helps us understand that everything we do think and say in Asiyyah, resonates in the other worlds – and that eventually – everything evens out.
Yishuv Olam (settling the world) is a concept that comes from Genesis 2:15 where we were ‘assigned’ “to till and tend” the world. We are directed that we should try to increase the quality of life of not only ourselves, but of our fellow man – without creating want, to create abundance without creating need. It is central to the concept of living the Kabbalah.
AMEN! (or is that 'ahhhh Men! Thanks Umbrae) ~Rosanne
 

Dave's Angel

Bravo Rosanne (stands up and applauds).

I have been in this position and the sad thing is it regularly puts me off further study of the subject for several days at a time.

You have mail as some of the things I'd like to say aren't for everyone's ears (or stomach).

Just posting here as well so any other readers know Rosanne isn't *quite* a voice crying in the wilderness.
 

Debra

"Me, too, I'm with Roseanne on this," she said meekly.
 

venicebard

Rosanne said:
I don't think the message and meaning of the Kaballah will be diluted if it is explained in a less 'high flying' way. It may be a bit boring for those who have a great understanding, but I think you sometimes lose the poor old plodder like me. That is a real shame!
I had a Eureka moment when I read Umbrae's post, . . .
. . . which made sense to me as well. I believe in being basic: truth is the simplification of reality (as opposed to opinion, which is the oversimplification of it). My take on its Merkabah roots simplify the Kabbalah. But somehow when I try to explain former, no-one grasps: perhaps I am not being charismatic enough, else it is simply that no-one asks for clarification (as if they think me-it dunce-inane).

Simple: there are only four wheels that I know of that relate to all mankind -- which I therefore attribute to Ezekiel's vision, which they fit -- and they are also the 4 Kabbalistic worlds.

1, Atzilut: That whose hub is the crown of the head of Upright Sentience, the 'Platonic' Form or Idea which, without Itself changing, creates and causes everything by drawing all to Itself. This One Form (that draws all other forms towards Itself) is Kabbalah's Adam Qadmon ('Primordial Man'), origin of the 10 Sefirot and prior to any division into male and female (else it would not draw all, but only half). The first 10 signs of this wheel are described in the book Bahir ('Bright Clarity'): beginning at 'Supreme Crown', they progress through Wisdom and its storehouse to lovingkindness (4th, straight ahead or out), then the 'great fire' (5th sign completes the first side of the fire triad), 'throne' (approach to straight down), and 'Holy Palace' (straight down, the body), then Foundation and two Victories or 'enduringnesses', namely the doer, whose repair is the Foundation of the Work (transmutation), and its thinker and knower, who did not undergo the Fall and hence remain intact to guide the Work.

2, Beriyah: That whose hub is the crown of the head of seated Adam ('Man'), in whom archetype and individual meet, whereupon it is called the 'Throne world' (where 'God's Form' descends to grace Man). The first 10 signs of this wheel are described in the (misleadingly titled) Sefer Yetzirah as 5 pairs of opposites, making the axes (respectively) eternity-present ('first-last'), right-wrong, up-down, east-west, south-north.

3, Yetzirah: That whose hub is at the heart of seated Adam, which thus forms the zodiac of the body and defines the previous wheel as what surrounds this. The first 10 signs of this wheel are those on which much of the Zohar is based and thus Lurianic Kabbalah as well: they are forms, the forms leading from that of Adam Qadmon, the 1st, to the present 10-fingered so to speak, who is last, and the Great Work is to reascend (or ascend for the first time if your an evolutionist, I guess) from the current form to that Form which draws the others (the 1st).

4, Asiyah: That whose hub is at the heart of the womb of Man, for this is a reality in both male and female in that while it manifests in the bodies of women it manifests in the minds of men. This, though dark (being the womb, space, the present instant, and light having finite velocity) represents the world of physical cycles themselves (Coins or rounds): eternity-'precession'-Saturn-Jupiter-Mars-year-Venus-Mercury-month-day, the single quotes to remind that precession of equinoxes resuilts in revolution of the heavens in a forward sense about the zodiac (that of signs).

This model eliminates the need to juggle the order of Sefirot as later sages have done, for the difference in terminology of Bahir, SY, and Zohar are easily and naturally explained.

AMEN! (or is that 'ahhhh Men! . . .
. . . should it not be 'ahhhh Man!'?)