Kabbala Toons

Kabbala Toons http://www.chabad.org/article.asp?aid=530191 "Give me one minute, I'll give you cosmic consciousness" Copyright 2009, Chabad.org - Chabad-Lubavitch Media Center, all rights reserved. Sun, 15 Nov 2009 12:00:00 EST Sun, 15 Nov 2009 12:00:00 EST http://www.chabad.org/article.asp?aid=1037281 Alefbet Unplugged http://www.chabad.org/article.asp?aid=1037281 Some people think the world is made of things, and words describe those things. In Hebrew, the world is made of words, just that those words look like things. You see, G‑d spoke and the world came into being. Words isify the isness. So really there is nothing else but words. Which explains a lot. Like why Jewish people spend so much time reading words. We have a tribal ritual three times a day when we read Hebrew words out loud together. Then we study Torah, reading all the words out loud—even when we are just sitting there studying all on our lonesome. Then we say blessings on food and drinks—out loud. Everything seems centered around reading, and reading out loud. Weird, isn't it? Not once you consider that really there's nothing more powerful in the entire universe than words. Cuz that's all there really is. Well, not so fast. After all, the words we say are not quite the words the world is made of. They don't need a medium of air or any other substance, for one thing—since it's those words that create all mediums. They don't exist within time and space, either—since they isify all time and space. So what do our words have to do with those words? So here's the system: The words we say are really those original words, but as they have fallen down into a created world. It would be as though you had one of those text-to-speech programs where you talk and the words appear on the screen in front of you—except, imagine that you are an infinite, timeless being and the screen is your finite creation. Well, at least imagine that you could imagine that. At any rate, now these words are here, fallen from the world of the Creator into the world of the created and we have to get them back to their original source, so as to set up lines of communication. But it's really far from here to there. Like, infinitely far and yet further. So we need help. For help, we enlist the angels. Their job is to grab those words we say, retrofit them, polish them up so they're super-spiritual and carry them yet higher. But they need our help, too. Commensurate to the degree of soul power we put into those words, that's how high those angels can carry them. With enough enthusiasm, ecstasy and awe, they can get to The World of Formation. Or may even The World of Creation. Or if you're a little kid, your words get an instant pass direct to the highest of worlds, The World of Emanation. What happens with those words once they get there? Basically, they become freight cars, stuffed with light and blessings, ticketed to carry it all back down to this world again. Which means that according to the kind of words you send up, that's what you'll be able to get back down. So you want to put lots of heart, mind and soul into those words, so they can get real high up there where the good stuff comes from. And you want to say them good and clear, so as not to give the angel guys too hard a time, and make sure your freight cars don't leak on the way down. But the big picture is, hey, look what we're building here: A complete highway system between heaven and earth, Creator and creation, spiritual and physical. Until everything all networked together as a single cosmic shtetl. Sun, 15 Nov 2009 12:00:00 EST http://www.chabad.org/article.asp?aid=1020939 The Mighty Mezuzah! http://www.chabad.org/article.asp?aid=1020939 How does a mezuzah work? How can such a tiny device, with no electronic parts, protect an entire household of people wherever they are and whatever they are doing (certain high risk activities may be excluded)? True, it's not the mezuzah that provides the protection, it's the Master of the Universe Himself (you can find His name written on the backside of every mezuzah: Shin Daled Yud). He says, "Put up a mezuzah on your doorway and I'll protect you when you're inside and out." But still, why a rolled up parchment device? And why on the doorway? And why any device at all—couldn't He just say, "Trust Me, and I'll take care of you"? To answer this question, we have to first escape our nanobrain, subjective boxes and view matters from a cosmic perspective. The entire cosmos is His masterpiece of architecture. But He doesn't really live within it until there's a mezuzah on the door. The mezuzah is something like the artist's autograph, so that anyone looking will know who did this. The problem is, a whole lot of critters in this universe don't want to recognize Who did this. They don't want to recognize that anyone did this at all. They just want to be left alone in the universe as though it were always here and they can do whatever they like with it. Those are the critters you gotta watch out from. So we put up a mezuzah, effectively signing His autograph onto His masterpiece. It needs to be written by a scribe with an awe of heaven and care to the finest details of the Divine law—so that it corresponds in detail to the Grand Autograph Above. What is that Grand Autograph? The original words of thought by which you were conceived: The story of a being called Israel who loves G‑d with all its heart, speaks words of Torah wherever it goes and translates that Torah into mitzvahs. Every nuance of every letter in the mezuzah has something to do with your life down here. It goes on the doorway, because doorways are the interface between one world and the next—which cosmically speaking would be the sefira of Malchut (Dominion), a.k.a. "The Shechina" which is all about His presence in this world. By doing so, our homes are transformed into scaled down versions of His own cosmic home (the universe). The world we live in becomes effectively a different kind of world—one in which those nasty critters don't belong. But you do. For some heavy-duty Kabbalah on the mezuzah, see <co:link aid="379639">Doorways and Shady Characters - The Zohar</co:link>. Sun, 1 Nov 2009 12:00:00 EST http://www.chabad.org/article.asp?aid=970947 1 + 1 = Word http://www.chabad.org/article.asp?aid=970947 Common sense has it that one plus one equals two. As is common, common sense is commonly wrong. There are two opposing laws to understanding how the universe works. One is entropy. The other is synergy. Entropy says that two divided by two equals zero. Synergy says that one plus one equals three—the third thing being something completely new. In the language of Kabbalah, that's Tohu and Tikun. Tohu is how things fall apart. Tikun is how they're put back together again. When they fall apart, the essence-light vanishes and you get entropy—a movement towards chaos and eventual nothingness. When you put them together, a new light emerges as if from nowhere and you get synergy—the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. There's a simple reason things are this way. It's because, when the universe was first conceived, it was conceived as a single whole. In the beginning—the beginning is the sefirah of chochmah (wisdom), the yud, a single point that includes all. Only then comes, Elokim created—the sefirah of binah (understanding), the letter hey, an unfolding of the point. And then, the heavens—the six sefirot of tifferet (beauty), the letter vav, descending downward as a line—and the earth—the sefirah of malchut (dominion) and the final letter hey, the expanse of all creation, so that the initial single point becomes all the creations of an entire universe. <table border="1" cellpadding="5"> <tbody> <tr> <td> In the beginning</td> <td> chochmah</td> <td> point</td> <td> yud</td> <td> י</td></tr> <tr> <td> Elokim created</td> <td> binah</td> <td> expanse</td> <td> hey</td> <td> ה</td></tr> <tr> <td> the heavens</td> <td> tifferet</td> <td> line</td> <td> vav</td> <td> ו</td></tr> <tr> <td> and the earth</td> <td> malchut</td> <td> expanse</td> <td> hey</td> <td> ה</td></tr></tbody></table> Then the whole thing blows to smithereens. The result: Our messy world. It's like an author sat down with a single idea and developed a story around a single theme with a single plot, with every detail, every word wrapped around that one singularity—and then someone came and threw all the letters of his book up in the air, to be scattered to the four winds. The letters are still there, but the story is gone, the plot is gone, the concept is gone. And the author can no longer be found in his words. That explains why whenever we put two things together in harmony in this world, something new and unexpected always emerges. Atoms becomes molecules—and suddenly, chemistry emerges. Molecules become organelles and biochemistry emerges. Organelles become cell and life emerges. Then microsystems, then organs, then supersystems, then individuals, then social groups and societies and finally a whole world—with each step, an entirely new wisdom appearing, as though ex nihilo, as we approach the whole. Yet that whole is not the ultimate whole. The real wholeness of it all is metaphysical. It is the harmony that exists between created and Creator, finite and Infinite. And that only emerges once all the King's men (and women) put all the words of the story back together again. See <co:link aid="675598">World Puzzle</co:link>. Sun, 18 Oct 2009 12:00:00 EST