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Kirtanman
USA
1651 Posts |
 Posted - Jan 05 2010 : 10:33:55 PM
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Hi All,
I've posted quited a bit about Kabbalah in recent times.
As discussed in another thread ("Profound Kabbalah Song") ... a good "general feel" for Kabbalah is sometimes hard to find ... especially in terms of how it might sync up with some of the Eastern wisdom (yoga, Buddhism, etc.) with which some of us are more familiar.
The post/article by Tau Malachi which follows is pure Kabbalah ... the only exception, and it is purely a linguistic/symbolic one, is that he references the name Yeshua (Jesus), as opposed to saying Mashiach (Messiah), or even Mashiach Ben David (the Messiah, the Son of David), as a Jewish Kabbalist would.
Other than that, the symbolism, the Hebrew, the Torah/Old Testament references, and the very-well-articulated map of consciousness ... are as "pure Kabbalah" as it gets.
Enjoy; ShalAUM!
BY THE WAY: Alef (or Aleph, as it is often spelled), Bet (often spelled Beyt or Bayt) and Gimel (terms you'll see, below) .... are the first three letters of the Hebrew alphabet ... or, more accurately ... "Alephbet"!
In Hebrew, like Sanskrit, there is a sophisticated spiritual meaning connected with each letter; sophisticated numerical encoding (is connected with each letter), as well. Please Google "Kabbalah", "Gematria" and/or "Hebrew", if interested.
And, as Kabbalah so elegantly points out: it is all, indeed ... as simple as ... A, B, G!
A couple of other possibly helpful definitions:
Sefirot = Chakras
Abba and Imma = Shiva and Shakti (male and female polarity; subjectivity and objectivity); Abba and Imma are informal terms for Father and Mother in Hebrew.
Chokmah and Binah are the polarity/union of Shivashakti, the union of which is beyond polarity ... the supernal (thought-free) awareness which is centered in the Heart of Knowing .... Da'at ... which is why Chokmah, Binah and Da'at are combined in Kabbalah, and known by the shared acronym "Chabad".
**
Tau Malachi on Knower Knowing and Known
"In pop-occultism Da’at and the Abyss are, perhaps, the most misunderstood principles of the Tree of Life, the teachings on which are often fraught with all kinds of misconceptions in sheer ignorance. One will often hear of individuals claming, “I’ve opened the gates of the Abyss,” and yet have nothing to say about the nature of mind or how the radiance of mind arises as the magical display of reality; but truly, the Abyss is the depth of mind, consciousness or soul, the depth of the Mind of God, if you will, and is the veil rent in the recognition of one’s own mind and the Divine Mind as one and the same – hence, the breakthrough to Supernal or Supramental Consciousness, and the experience of conscious union with God and Godhead.
If we wish to gain insight into what “crossing the Abyss” might mean we can consider the response of Ha-Shem to Moses when Moses asked to see the face of Ha-Shem. Ha-Shem says to him, “You cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live.” And Yahweh continued, “See, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock; and while my glory passes by I will put you in the cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by; then I will take my hand away, and you shall see my back; but my face shall not be seen” (Exodus 33:20-23).
Of course, we may contrast these verses with verses from the Gospel of St. John, such as when Yeshua Messiah says, “Not that anyone has seen the Father except the One who is from God; he has seen the Father” (6:46), or when he says, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (14:9).
Now when it is said that “no one shall see me and live,” it means that such seeing or knowing requires that one disappears – the seer and the seen vanishing so that there is only the pure radiant awareness of seeing and hearing and knowing, *pure being*; when it is said that the one who is from God has seen, this is one who has disappeared, becoming complete transparent to the Divine and Supernal Light, *abiding in union*.
Here we may say, the prophet Moses has a life of his own, but Adonai Yeshua has no life of his own, but his life is Abba, the Father; Moses looks and see through Imma, the Mother, but Yeshua Messiah is the seeing, hearing and knowing, the being of the Father – Moses is able to draw very near, arising into the peak of mental consciousness, cosmic consciousness, but Adonai Yeshua Messiah abides in union, embodying Supernal or Supramental Consciousness, *Messianic Consciousness*.
In Imma, in Elohim, there is the knower and the known, but in Abba the knower and the known vanish in the knowing, *True Gnosis* – the one is the experience of the Reality-Truth-Continuum in a dualistic state of consciousness, whether gross or most subtle dualism, but the other is the experience of the Reality-Truth-Continuum in pure radiant awareness, *Non-dual Gnostic Awareness*, the Supernal or Supramental. “Crossing the Abyss” is the dissolution of the final, most subtle and sublime dualism, passing into the non-dual realization, Supernal or Messianic Consciousness; in other words, it is the ultimate enlightenment and liberation of the mind or soul-stream: liberation from the Gilgulim so that the mind or soul is free from the necessity of incarnation in material forms, material life.
Of course, until it is due season, until the soul-being develops and evolves to its maturity and fruition in Supernal or Messianic Consciousness, the Gilgulim is the vehicle through which it develops and evolves – thus, that which may be said to hold souls in bondage is also the vehicle of their liberation, the Great Exodus. (Note that there are two gimels in the word gilgulim; according to the masters of the tradition, one indicates bondage and the other indicates freedom.)
In truth, Gimel, the camel, facilitates something much more than mere passage through the desert – human beings can trek through a desert effectively without a camel. What the camel facilitates is *trade and commerce*, and a greater exchange between cultures; the camel facilitates the development of human civilization and culture among desert peoples of the Middle East in ancient times – what this represents is the exchange of sparks between souls which is an integral part of the gilgulim, and is integral to the development and evolution of soul-beings.
Like the gilgulim itself, on the one hand this exchange of sparks is the karmic web, forming karmic cords that hold souls in bondage; yet, on the other hand, it facilitates the development and evolution of consciousness to the Highest of Life, the coming into being of a Divine and Supernal Humanity, the Messiah of God. (In connection with “footprints in the sand” we might contemplate the phenomenon of ivur – the impregnation of our souls by sparks from the souls of holy tzaddikim and maggidim, which serve to uplift and empower us in the Great Work, and to facilitate our soul’s tikkune.)
Indeed, souls are bound to compulsory incarnations, the generation of ruach and nefesh arising from an unconscious state, until such time as the soul is able to abide in Clear Light Union, abiding in the Presence of Awareness in Union, no longer falling into unconscious oblivion in dreamless sleep and death; this abiding in Clear Light Union, awake, is “seeing of the Father,” and abiding in this Holy Union one comes from the Father and is the emanation of the Father, the True Light – what arises and appears is the radiant display of the pure primordial elements, the Body of Glory and Body of Emanation arising from this Body of Truth.
Here it must be said, unenlightened souls do not “sign contracts,” as though agreeing to the conditions of their incarnation as some new age teachings would have us believe – rather they are compelled into incarnations by their karmic continuum, the unconscious play of their desires and fears driving them into incarnation, as though leaves falling from trees blown by the autumn winds; only in the awakening of the soul is there liberation from unconscious karmic compulsion so that one might be said to have chosen to come and to have come from God.
Yet, in the midst of this there is Divine Grace, a secret operation of the Holy Spirit, a Fiery Intelligence – a Divine Impulse in the midst of this play of psychic and spiritual forces towards the Highest of Life, an *evolutionary impulse*; and there is the Mercy of God in reincarnation, for passing from one life to another souls develop and evolve to reach higher and higher rungs on the Ladder of Lights, higher and higher gradations of consciousness – ascending through the Sefirot of the Tree of Life.
The gilgulim is the interplay of free will, in terms of our desires and fears, and the choices we make, and the interaction of cosmic and spiritual forces with our souls, as well as Divine Intervention, Divine Revelation; through this souls develop and evolve towards the Highest of Life (Elyon), whether swiftly or slowly, through cycles of progress and regress. All souls are in this forward motion of *Creative Evolution*.
Bet is the place of the beginning, the place of creation; but Gimel is the act of the beginning, the action of creative evolution – it is the movement of God in creation, all creation flowing out of God and into God at one and the same time, all in a wave-like motion progressing to the Highest of Life, the prototype of which we see in the Risen Messiah.
According to the opening of Genesis, in the beginning, in Bet, Ruach Elohim (the Spirit of God) moves over the surface of the Deep, the Great Abyss; this is the Spirit of the Supernals, and in this movement, which is called “no movement,” the Word of God is spoken, “Let there be light,” and so the Divine and Supernal Light shines forth through Da’at, the rays of which are the seven Sefirot of Construction, the seven Days of Creation, which manifest the seven heavens, seven earths and seven hells of Kabbalistic cosmology – all raying out from what may be called the “Eighth Heaven,” or the “Secret Star,” which is Habad (Hokmah-Binah-Da’at).
All flows out of Da’at, and to the extent that Da’at is inseparable from Hokmah and Binah, Abba and Imma – Yahweh Elohim, we may say it all flows out of Habad; the ground of this outpouring and the space in which this outpouring exists is the Great Abyss, the Great Void or Emptiness, which is the true nature of all that appears, Belimah, “without what,” or Ain, “no-thingness.”
Now here we may speak the perception of Elyon, the Most High, as known and understood in Clear Light Union – it is the truth of God and No God, Self and No Self, simultaneous; such is the very nature of Self, which is also the very nature of God – Ain.
When Adonai Yeshua walked on water, and encouraged a disciple to do so as well, what was he revealing by way of a demonstration? As with all of the wonders he performed, no doubt, he revealed the reality of our experience as a radiant display of mind, consciousness or soul; but walking on the water he reveals the essential nature of all that appears – that we are all no-thingness walking in and on no-thingness, the Great Abyss. At the time, as with the prophet Moses, this was a sight too overwhelming for the disciple, Peter, and so he sank in the waters, falling once again into the unconscious karmic continuum, the spell of forgetfulness.
Yeshua Messiah does what he sees the Father doing, he does the works of the Father – the works of God; doing the works of God he embodies God and we see God in him, and so it shall be with us when we also do the works of the Father – the Divine will be embodied in the Human One (Adam). What are the works of the Father? They arise from the desire to enact loving-kindness (Hesed), which corresponds to the light of the first day of creation, this Mercy of God, which is the *Light of the Messiah*; these works of the Father, as we see in Yeshua Messiah, are *Gimilut Hasidim*, acts of loving-kindness, deeds so generous that Ha-Shem does not even ask everyone to do them – in fact, they are deeds that must be done on account of love and compassion, and for no other reason, apart from any outward compulsion or any desire to receive; an action of the *Pure Desire to Give*.
There is such an action for every soul to perform, one that, in truth, God will not ask of us, but that the we must look and see for ourselves; this act is the fulfillment of our soul’s mission, our part in the great tikkune (Gadol Tikkune), which brings our soul to its fruition, completion (Gemara). Indeed, acts of loving-kindness, as Adonai Yeshua demonstrates and teaches us, is our soul’s redemption (Geulah). Thus, in the Gospel of St. John, Adonai Yeshua encourages his disciples to Gimilut Hasidim, saying “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (15:12-13).
The gilgulim, the transmigrations of the soul, is brought to its fruition in this – the Light of the Messiah, the *Love of the Messiah*; radical acts of loving-kindness, unconditional love, boundless compassion.
This is how souls “cross the Abyss,” as we witness in Yeshua Messiah, who taking up the cross on account of love, is raised up from the dead by Divine Grace and passes into the Great Ascension, opening the way for us and establishing a Sanctuary of Grace for us – the embodiment of God’s Mercy or Loving-kindness (Hesed).
In truth, such acts are not something that we do – they are movements of love, the radiant display of love; there is no doer in them, for in love there is no doer, there is only the love of the Beloved, the doer disappearing in the passion of love. Such is the nature of the Pure Desire to Give, and it is the very nature of Supernal Mercy, Supernal Grace – in such acts of loving-kindness it is Divine Grace that moves and accomplishes the action, bringing it to it perfect completion in El Elyon, God Most High.
Here we may say that any instant we surrender completely, giving way to the passion of love and letting love carry us wherever it will, in that very instant Divine Grace will accomplish everything – Divine Grace will move with, in and through us, and will come to manifest as us; all in the Risen Messiah. Hallelu Yah! Amen.
Of Adonai Yeshua Messiah we proclaim, “AGLA – Atoh Givor Leolam Adonai; You are mighty for the world, O Lord!” And we shall pray: Adonai, empower us that we, also, may be mighty for the world and bring glory to the name of Eheieh, El Elyon. Amen.
In this we pray to be empowered to take up our cross and follow in the Way of Yeshua Messiah as we are called by the Holy Spirit; but what this means we must each look and see for ourselves – then, taking up our cross, surrendered to love, Divine Grace will accomplish it.
In closing we can say this: Although there is a deed to be done that cannot be asked of us, for if it were asked of us it would not be an action of love but of compulsion; nevertheless the Holy Spirit can reveal it to us if we ask God to show it to us – it is in this way that Master Yeshua knew what was to be done.
(BTW: There is an open secret about Gimel. As the number three, Gimel represents the Holy Trinity: Father, Son and Mother Spirit!)
Blessings & shalom!
_________________
Tau Malachi
Sophia Fellowship
Ecclesia Pistis Sophia"
**
Source: Forum Thread -- Gimmelprints in the Abyss at the Sophian Gnosticism Forum.
Wholeheartedly,
Kirtanman
PS- If interested, I go into the Kabbalah view on Moses and the view from atop Mt. Spine-I, in my blog.
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Edited by - Kirtanman on Jan 05 2010 11:01:57 PM |
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The Essence of Kabbalah
