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First US edition of Kabbalah Today - articles in Spirituality ·
Dreams


People get way too obsessed with dreaming and trying to find deep meaning in every little thing they see when they close their eyes. They honestly think dreams are some kind of cosmic life coach that’s going to solve all their problems, but let me tell you, from the perspective of Modern Kabbalah, a dream is nothing more than a basic biological function. It’s got absolutely zero connection to the soul or anything spiritual.

When you're out cold, your brain is just busy sorting through everything you dealt with during the day, processing those random impressions and filing them away into memory. That’s literally all there is to it—it's just mental housekeeping.

And don't even get me started on people who bring up dreams mentioned in sacred texts like the Bible or the Zohar to try and prove me wrong. Those holy books are strictly about spiritual reality and how the soul evolves; they don't give a damn about mundane, worldly events. When those texts talk about "dreams," they aren't talking about what happens in your head while you're sleeping; they’re describing profound spiritual insights occurring within the soul itself.

Take the term "awake" in Modern Kabbalah, for instance—that refers to someone who actually feels the Light of God within their soul, whereas "asleep" means that Light has departed from them. Once the soul is refilled with that Light, that's when the person truly "wakes up" to a new day.

I'll say it again: sacred texts describe the spiritual states of a Kabbalist's soul, not the physical body or some dream dictionary nonsense. A Kabbalist can experience a state described as "dreaming" while they are wide awake and physically conscious. There is no link between the soul and the physical body; they are completely separate entities.
First US edition of Kabbalah Today - articles in Spirituality ·
If you want to dig into more articles from this same publication, just head over to the "Philosophy" subforum.

Enjoy the read.
First US edition of Kabbalah Today - articles in Spirituality ·
Kabbalah isn't philosophy

Listen, back in the day, Kabbalah was what actually inspired the heavy hitters looking for actual meaning, but then this whole branch called "philosophy" just veered off into a completely different direction

People probably picture Kabbalists as these antisocial types hiding away in dark, candlelit rooms scribbling down magic spells, and honestly, until the end of the 1900s, Kabbalah really did stay under wraps. That secretive vibe created all these fairy tales and legends about its nature, and even though most of that junk is totally wrong, it still trips up even the smartest thinkers out there.
But look, Kabbalah wasn't always some secret club. The early practitioners were actually pretty open about what they knew and stayed heavily involved in their communities—I mean, many of them were straight-up leaders! Out of all those big names, King David is probably the most famous example of a massive Kabbalist who also happened to be a legendary leader.
Because these guys were so plugged into society, they helped lay the groundwork for what we now call "Western philosophy," which eventually became the bedrock of modern science. With that in mind, check out what Johannes Reuchlin—this huge humanist scholar and expert in ancient languages—writes in his book De Arte Cabbalistica: “My teacher, Pythagoras, the father of philosophy, took his teachings from the Kabbalists... He was the first to translate the word, Kabbalah, which was unknown to his peers, into the Greek word philosophy.... Kabbalah doesn't let us live our lives in the dust; instead, it lifts our minds to the heights of knowledge.”
The problem is, philosophers weren't Kabbalists. Since they didn't study Kabbalah, they couldn't possibly grasp the sheer depth of that knowledge, so they ended up mishandling and misinterpreting stuff that was supposed to be treated in a very specific way. Once that knowledge migrated to other parts of the world where there weren't any Kabbalists around, it just took on a completely different evolutionary path.
So basically, humanity took the long way around. Even though Western philosophy absorbed bits and pieces of Kabbalistic knowledge, it ultimately went in a totally different direction. Western philosophy spawned sciences that focused on investigating the material world—the stuff we perceive with our five senses. But Kabbalah is the science that studies what's happening on the other side of what our senses can pick up. Shifting the focus like that sent humanity in the exact opposite direction of the original knowledge the Kabbalists uncovered. This detour led everyone down a path of total delusion regarding what Kabbalah actually is.
First US edition of Kabbalah Today - articles in Spirituality ·
Kenneth Peterson5 said:Brian Foster3,
Welcome Back!
(even though, you never actually left)

Thanks so much, Kenneth Peterson5, you're too kind. 😉

If you want to dig into more articles from this same publication, just head over to the "Spirituality" subforum.

Enjoy the read.
First US edition of Kabbalah Today - articles in Spirituality ·
I felt like I was looking at a total upside-down version of reality. I was digging through some old texts the other day—you know how I get when I start falling down those rabbit holes—and I ended up looking at the Babylonian Talmud, specifically that Pesach treatise, and it just blew my mind all over again!

What even is reality anyway? I mean, how do we actually perceive any of this stuff? Does the world even exist if we aren't around to look at it, or is everything just some mental projection cooked up inside our own heads based on our own internal baggage?
Look, reality is obviously everything right in front of our faces—the houses on our street, the people we bump into every day, the entire damn universe stretching out forever. It’s what we can actually see, touch, hear, taste, and smell. That’s reality, plain and simple. Or is it?


It’s morning. You open your eyes, stretch, and look out at the sunshine and hear the birds chirping like everything is just fine, but deep down in your gut, you just know something is off. It’s one of those days where you wake up on the wrong side of the bed, and honestly, the last thing you want to do is actually get up. I mean, it’s infuriating because it’s not even that long ago that you had one of those perfect days—you know the ones, where you wake up feeling like you're going to crush it and you just glow all day long—but today? Today is a total wash and you can barely even find the strength to move.
So, what exactly changed? Did reality itself shift under our feet, or is it just you people who have gone completely off the rails?
According to Kabbalah, this entire "world" we think we're living in isn't even real! It’s just some phenomenon that humans perceive, basically acting as a mirror that shows how much our own personal traits actually align with that massive, abstract force out there—the force of nature.
So, what exactly is this force of nature that's constantly surrounding us? If you look at how the Kabbalists describe it, they see it as this pure quality of absolute love and constant giving. They basically argue that once we reach a certain level of equality between our own inner qualities and the qualities of nature itself, that’s when we finally start to perceive what we call the "world."
What does that even mean? Look, let's use a radio as an example because I'm tired of people overcomplicating things! Radio stations are constantly blasting their programming out there, but we only actually hear anything when we dial in to a specific frequency. How does the radio "catch" the broadcast? It’s simple: the receiver generates its own internal frequency that matches the sound waves traveling through the air around it. So, the radio isn't magically grabbing something that wasn't there; it "catches" the signal only after it shifts its own frequency to match, even though those waves were floating around us the entire time!
The Kabbalists tell us that we all perceive reality through the exact same lens—it’s entirely dictated by the "frequency" we generate deep inside ourselves. Basically, the entire world surrounding us is nothing more than a direct reflection of our own inner qualities. So, really... It’s just her—she’s the only one who can actually change things!

A person's entire life is contained right there inside them!
Think about how we actually experience reality—it’s basically like we're all just trapped inside a sealed box with five little slots poked through the sides: our eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and hands. Those are our five senses, right? Sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. Everything we think we know about the world around us is nothing more than a filtered version of reality dictated by those five sensory inputs, so every single sound you hear or sight you see is entirely dependent on how those specific organs perceive them.
Look, just take a second to think about how our hearing actually works because it’s honestly wild! First off, you’ve got these sound waves hitting your eardrum and making it vibrate like crazy, and then those vibrations get passed straight to the tiny bones in your middle ear, which sends all these signals racing to your brain. Then, your brain has to step in and translate those raw waves into actual sounds or voices so you can make sense of anything—that’s basically how we hear, it's this whole massive process happening inside your head right now! I just can't get over how everything feels like it's being squeezed tight lately, like there's this constant pressure building up from every single direction! Look, it’s just us. Every other single one of our senses works exactly the same way.
Every single signal hitting our senses gets funneled straight into the control center of the brain, and honestly, it’s wild how it works! Once that raw data arrives, the brain starts frantically cross-referencing everything against the stuff we already have stored in our memory, and based on that comparison, it spits out this entire perception of the world sitting right "in front of us." It creates this total illusion that we’re actually occupying some physical "place" out there, when in reality, that whole sense of location is just something happening deep inside our own heads!
So, what are we actually perceiving here? Just... nothing. It’s honestly infuriating how we let every little thing that happens to us—every single external trigger—completely hijack our internal state like we don't have any control over ourselves! I was sitting in traffic on the I-95 the other day, just losing my mind because some idiot cut me off, and it hit me how much we let the outside world dictate our inner peace instead of just handling it.We don't actually see what's out there in the real world. We’re all just trapped inside our own little mental boxes, so how can we honestly claim to know anything about what exists outside ourselves?
Our perception of reality is nothing more than a byproduct of how our senses work and the data already hardwired into our brains. I was reading about this a few years back—science actually proved that if you hit the brain with specific electrical impulses, you can trick someone into feeling like they’re standing in a completely different place or caught in a totally different situation!
Look, any actual scientist worth their salt already knows that different creatures perceive reality in totally different ways! It’s common sense, really. Take cats—they can see in the dark about six times better than we can. Or dogs, whose hearing is so much more acute and sensitive than ours that they pick up on sounds way before we even realize anything is happening. The thing is, the human eye is just hardwired to a specific wavelength between red and violet, which is exactly why we’re basically blind to light waves shorter than violet, like ultraviolet. But bees? They can spot those UV waves perfectly fine and use them to track down different kinds of flowers. We're all living in different worlds here!
It just goes to show that if we actually had different senses, the way we perceive reality would be completely unrecognizable!

It was all just a damn dream.
The Kabbalists claim that we actually perceive reality on two distinct levels, and honestly, it’s pretty clear to me that how we experience either one depends entirely on our own damn inner qualities!
Look, at the most basic level, we’re all stuck with this massive egoism that just flies in the face of how nature actually works. This selfish streak we've got running through us makes us feel totally disconnected from everyone else, and honestly, it even gives us this twisted little kick when we exploit people to get ahead. It’s exactly why our entire perception of reality ends up being this endless cycle of war, constant struggle, poverty, and nothing but pure corruption.
Look, if there's one thing life eventually beats into your head, it's that living solely through your own selfish lens is a total dead end because you're never actually going to touch that kind of lasting, continuous bliss.
When you step up to that next level, our core essence becomes nothing more than pure love and selfless giving—it’s exactly like the raw power of nature itself! People who actually get how the world works can see that we're all just moving parts in one massive, interconnected system, all working together to create this endless loop of total satisfaction.
According to Kabbalah, this whole existence we're stuck in right now is nothing more than a temporary phase we have to grind through, and honestly, its entire purpose is just to give us the chance to finally take control and choose to shift how we perceive reality ourselves! People who study Kabbalah and actually figure out how to flip that switch on their perception define our current state of being as nothing but an "imaginary life" or some kind of "imaginary reality."
And then you've got these people who claim that this corrected, whole, and absolutely perfect version of existence is what constitutes "real life" or "true reality." They look back at all those selfish, narrow-minded perceptions we used to have and just dismiss them as nothing more than a dream!We were basically just a bunch of dreamers wandering around without a clue. Psalm 126:1
It basically means that true reality is being totally hidden from us right now! We can't even feel it because we’re out here perceiving the world and ourselves through this lens of our own internal qualities, which—let's be honest—are nothing but pure ego at this stage. We don't feel that deep connection where everyone is part of one single whole, mostly because that kind of unity actually repels us. This selfish urge buried deep inside our guts just isn't interested in those kinds of bonds, and that's exactly why it won't let us see what reality actually looks like!
If we could just take all that selfish energy we carry around and flip it into something resembling the actual harmony found in nature—you know, like actually loving people and giving back instead of just taking—we’d start perceiving everything around us in a completely different way, noticing things that were totally invisible to us before! Everything we thought we knew would suddenly look different, too; it would all feel whole, eternal, and perfectly purposeful. That’s exactly what the Kabbalists are getting at when they quote that line from the Babylonian Talmud, the Pesach treatise, about seeing an "inverted world."

Take a look and see for yourself.
The whole point of Kabbalah is that we aren't meant to just sit around stuck in this tiny, pathetic little existence we have right now—it’s actually about clawing our way out of these limitations to reach some kind of true, eternal reality!
How the hell are we supposed to actually pull this off? Honestly, the only way to finally shake off this selfish, narrow-minded perception we all cling to is to actually plug ourselves into the reality that exists outside our own heads. To even stand a chance, we need to get our hands on those original Kabbalah texts, because they were written by people who actually managed to see the true picture of the world and reality as it really is. In their writings, these Kabbalists talk about this perfect reality that is, de facto, sitting right here next to us if we’d just stop being so blind! We basically just need to shift our internal frequency so we can finally "hear the broadcast" of what's actually being transmitted.
When we start reading about what reality actually looks like, it’s like this fog over our senses finally starts lifting and we actually begin to feel things for real! Honestly, those who study Kabbalah explain that just sitting there trying to wrap your brain around a text won't do a damn thing to change your inner state. Even if you don't get a single word of what you're reading, that raw desire to actually grasp it is what aligns your perception.

“Even when they don't fully grasp the material, that intense longing and massive craving to understand what they're learning awakens the lights surrounding their souls... So, even if someone doesn't have the right vessels ready, by actively engaging with this wisdom and speaking the names of the lights and vessels in relation to their soul, the lights immediately shine upon them to a certain extent....”
Baal HaSulam,
"Introduction to Talmud Eser Sefirot"

The gap between how we experience life right now and the kind of life we could actually be living is absolutely massive! If you try to put words to it, the Zohar compares it to the difference between a tiny little candle flame and infinite light, or like comparing one single grain of sand to the entire world. But look, if you really want to know what I'm talking about, the Kabbalists say you just have to go out and prove it for yourself..

“Taste and see that the Lord is good.”
Psalm 34:8
First US edition of Kabbalah Today - articles in Spirituality ·
The Ripple Effect

When you talk about economic globalization, you're really talking about tying every single local market to the entire damn planet. Look at what's happening right now—the dollar is tanking because of shifts in the Chinese market, which just goes to show how much of an illusion "independence" actually is for local markets.
We thought we finally figured out how to play the game within this massive connected web, but honestly, is there any better blueprint than looking at nature? It’s the ultimate master of perfectly integrated systems.

They almost took home the big prize

Myron Scholes and Robert Merton had everything a scientist could ever dream of: they held the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, they had prestigious chairs at the top universities in the world, and they were absolute celebrities. But all of that went up in smoke after they took one specific opportunity back in the mid-nineties. Some high-profile broker saw their genius and decided he wanted to put it to work to make a mountain of cash.
Scholes and Metron were convinced that trading on the stock market was basically just like rolling dice; they thought you could measure the probability of every outcome using simple math. Their whole strategy rested on predicting the market through intense statistical studies.
So, these two scientists assembled a powerhouse group of math and economics professors. Then, teaming up with that ambitious broker, they launched a private investment fund designed to squeeze profits out of the market regardless of how things were looking. They called it Long-Term Capital Management. This fund built its entire investment policy around mathematical models, set up shop in a fancy suburb right near Wall Street, and just started rolling.
In just four short years, this fund became the object of pure envy for every single banker and trader on Wall Street. Even the old-school sharks, the real legends of the exchange, couldn't wrap their heads around how this fund was pulling in staggering 40% annual returns without a single loss or even a tiny bit of fluctuation. It looked like these scientists had cracked a magic code by finding patterns within the chaos of the world. In plain English, they found a way to print money.
Even the investment bankers—who are famously skeptical of anything in the business world—were totally floored. Seriously, they were so impressed that they offered to back the fund with $100 billion in credit without even asking for the usual collateral! Before long, the fund was financially tied to every major bank on Wall Street, creating this insanely complicated chain where every single link affected the entire structure.
LTCM seemed invincible until that one catastrophic night in September 1998. The bubble burst. The disaster kicked off from something that seemed totally insignificant—the crash of the Thai currency, the baht. That triggered a massive sell-off across Asian and Eastern European markets, and that snowball just kept rolling until it slammed right into LTCM. The fund completely imploded, sending shockwaves through every economic system across the globe.
It felt like the markets were heading straight for a point of no return. In a desperate move, the legendary Chair of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, forced the top bankers from Wall Street and Europe to have an emergency meeting behind closed doors. In the end, it was nothing but the prayers of economists and some incredibly expensive decisions to bail out LTCM that kept the world from falling into an even deeper economic abyss.

Collapse is contagious

Watching the dollar slide right now brings back memories of what caused the LTCM collapse. While the dollar has been slipping for a while, the most dramatic drop is being driven by shifts in Chinese policy. China is playing it smart and focusing on its own economy, starting to distance itself from the dollar and redirecting investment payments into other currencies. As the echo of that decision rings around the world, countries like Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Venezuela, Sudan, Iran, and Russia have all started looking at ways to ditch the dollar in trade just to protect their own economies.
We saw this exact same pattern play out during the recent sub-prime mortgage meltdown that kicked off right here in the States before spreading like wildfire across the entire globe. Honestly, the fallout from that absolute disaster is still being felt today. The biggest waves hit everything from Europe and Asia to Canada and Australia, and it wasn't just banks—it trashed corporations, manufacturers, marketing firms, and even high-tech giants.
It feels like every few years, some new "global economic crisis" crawls out of the woodwork, and frankly, all those attempts to predict market trends have been a total joke. Now we’re stuck asking the million-dollar question: how on earth do we build an economic system that actually works and stays stable?
Systems Among Us
The answer is actually pretty straightforward if you look at the wisdom of Kabbalah. And look, you don't need to be some genius economist to get this. You just have to realize that we—and everything we do, including the economy—have to follow the laws of the universal system we call nature.
Kabbalists explain that the overarching plan of nature is to bring all its parts, including us, into perfect unity. In terms of human society, that unification means that everyone's work serves the whole group.
Think about cells in a living body; they are the perfect example because they are all interconnected and give to one another just to keep the whole body functioning. In that flawless system, the body provides the cell with everything it needs, so the cell is totally dedicated to the well-being of the entire organism. In his article “Building the Society of the Future,” the Kabbalist Baal HaSulam writes that “…nature obliges every member to receive needs from society and to contribute to their surroundings through their own labor.”
The artificial systems we've cobbled together in human society are the exact opposite of nature's plan. At the core of human behavior sits the ego, which is what drives these broken systems. Our egos prefer selfish, narrow interests over the good of the collective, constantly chasing wealth, status, and control—often specifically at the expense of everyone else.
This ties directly back to the economy. In our ego-driven economic mess, the main priority for corporations is simply the self-interest of capital and investors. Even when companies claim to be helping society, you really have to wonder if it's just a cheap stunt to get their names splashed in the media for more publicity and a flashy reputation.
Globalization + Ego = The End of the Dead End
After thousands of years of purely egoistic development, we finally find ourselves backed into a corner: the harder we try to profit off one another, the more we realize how deeply interconnected we actually are, just like those cells in a living body I mentioned earlier.
The collapse of Long-Term Capital Management about a decade ago, the current credit crunch, and the ongoing slide of the dollar all prove just how intertwined our systems have become. A tiny tremor in a local market can trigger a massive earthquake in the global economy.
What's more, every single thing we do as consumers ripples through the entire hierarchy of other systems. It's like the "Butterfly Effect"—this "Consumer Effect" works exactly the same way.
When some lady from the suburbs goes to buy something at the local shopping mall, she is significantly impacting lives all over the planet. The products she picks up could decide if a factory stays open, if a family has to pack up and move, or if a child is saved from starving. When some old guy at home flips through the channels on his TV, he's hitting the entire advertising market. One click of a remote can influence jobs and the lives of thousands of people.
Globalization has made our world so incredibly fragile that even the smallest crack can cause a total meltdown. Local events like the mortgage crisis here in the United States, a natural disaster, a terrorist attack, or even just some rattling of weapons in the Persian Gulf, directly impact international trade prices and threaten the stability of the entire global economy.
Where's the exit
“It’s honestly wild how nature acts like some shrewd judge, punishing us based on how much we’ve actually grown. You can see it right in front of your eyes: the more humanity tries to advance, the more pain and suffering we have to endure just to stay afloat.”
Baal HaSulam, "Peace"

The wisdom of Kabbalah gives you a massive, much broader perspective on this whole mess we're in. It basically explains that we're all just kids playing in a sandbox called Earth. Nature is basically raising us like a parent—as we grow up, the expectations placed on us just keep climbing.
According to Kabbalah, humanity is caught between two parallel tracks. On one hand, nature is shoving us toward unity, trying to get us to act like a single, cohesive organism. On the other hand, our individual egos are exploding at an insane rate. The fact that these two things are happening at the exact same time is absolutely no accident.
One way or another, we’re going to be forced to flip the script on our egoism and start acting as one body. But instead of waiting for nature to beat us into submission, Kabbalists suggest there's a way we can actually take the wheel ourselves.
They argue that through our education systems, we could actually raise human consciousness to realize that humanity is essentially one multi-faceted body where everyone is interconnected. By studying the vast systems of nature and how they work, people would finally grasp exactly what kind of changes need to be woven into our social structures so they actually align with the laws of nature.
If we actually lived in harmony with nature, we’d thrive in every single part of our lives, even the economic side of things. Luckily, we already have the science that maps out nature's actual blueprint. We call that science “the wisdom of Kabbalah.”
First US edition of Kabbalah Today - articles in Spirituality ·
Honestly, I’m so sick of people acting like we’re the only ones who need to care about the environment when it feels like every massive corporation in this country is just pumping out filth while we struggle to recycle our damn coffee cups! It's exhausting watching everyone preach about saving nature like it's some trendy hobby instead of a literal fight for survival, and frankly, I'm tired of the hypocrisy.

When Al Gore stood there accepting his Nobel Prize, he went all out with this massive, dramatic declaration that we’re facing a legitimate planetary crisis—something he claimed was a deep-seated moral and spiritual test for everyone on Earth.
But once the curtain finally dropped on that glitzy awards ceremony, it left me staring at the ceiling wondering: does all this sudden, trendy obsession with being "eco-friendly" actually do anything to stop an environmental meltdown, or is it all just expensive showmanship?


If we ever want to actually get a handle on this environmental disaster, we have to stop running in circles and start looking at how nature actually works and why its systems are falling apart in the first place!
Researchers studying the complex systems within physics, biology, chemistry, and all those other sciences have finally proven what anyone with half a brain should already know: everything in nature exists in this constant, delicate state of equilibrium. All these elements are so deeply intertwined and dependent on one another that if you mess with even the tiniest little piece of the puzzle, you risk knocking the entire damn system completely out of whack.

Honestly, monkeys just get it better than anyone else.
Nature stays in balance because everything actually gives a damn about everything else, and honestly, if humans could learn even half of that, we wouldn't be such a mess. You see it everywhere in the animal kingdom—from ants and bees to monkeys and elephants all looking out for one another—and it goes all the way down to those tiny microbes living inside us that basically team up just to help find iron. It’s wild because researchers have found this same sharing behavior in plants, and apparently, even inanimate particles engage in these little mutual actions just to keep the whole system from falling apart!
Jane Goodall spent her entire life out in the wild studying chimpanzees, and she really nailed what it means to actually live in nature when she said that she found a sense of peace that’s just impossible to put into words—basically, if we want to find any kind of peace in this crazy world today, we have to start by finding it deep inside ourselves first.

Man vs. Nature—it’s honestly a losing battle if you ask me. We keep trying to bulldoze everything in our way like we own the damn planet, but Mother Nature always finds a way to kick us right in the teeth eventually!
Unlike every other living thing on this planet, humans just can't stop messing up the perfect balance of nature. We strip the earth bare, get some sick kick out of watching others suffer, and basically build our own little empires right on top of everyone else's wreckage. Honestly, half the time we don't even realize what kind of mess we're making, but that doesn't matter—in nature, "I didn't know the rules" isn't a valid excuse to dodge the consequences.
Whether people choose to wrap their heads around it or not, we are fundamentally part of nature. When we act like selfish jerks toward our own environment, just trying to squeeze every last drop out of it for ourselves, we’re basically triggering a massive imbalance in the entire system—it's common sense, really!
Because of all this, nature does whatever it takes to force the system back into balance. It’s an automatic response, really—kind of like when the pressure under the Earth's crust builds up so much that the surface just can't hold it anymore, and you get a massive volcanic eruption blowing everything apart.
While minerals, plants, and animals just follow their instincts to keep everything in balance, we humans actually have this incredible, one-of-a-kind shot to step up and find our own equilibrium with nature through... Free agency is such a joke, honestly. I was sitting there watching the news about those contract negotiations earlier and I just lost it—it’s absolute chaos out there!Look, this is basically man's specific purpose within nature. If we actually had the guts to decide on our own to get ourselves back in sync with nature, we’d finally level up to this whole new plane of existence and actually experience that perfection that nature just hands out for free.

The whole ecological crisis is nothing more than a symptom, honestly. It’s just the tip of the iceberg when you look at how broken everything else is.
All these ecological disasters we're dealing with? They're nothing more than surface-level symptoms showing that we’ve completely lost our balance with nature. If we actually want to fix this mess, we need to stop playing around and finally learn the laws that govern nature so we can actually start implementing those same principles into how our society functions.
Basically, we just need to start following the universal laws of nature, you know? Look, let's just talk about this on a human level for once.It basically boils down to this: we need to start actually living by those natural principles of reciprocity and just looking out for one another, you know?
So, are we actually supposed to believe that people should just step up and care about one another? Please, that sounds like some straight-up utopian pipe dream to me. Honestly, in the world we’re living in right now, everything except genuine human connection seems to be considered totally normal—we’ve basically normalized violence, crime, the drug epidemic, depression, suicide, poverty, and segregation as if they're just part of the daily grind. Don't get me wrong, I'm not out here cheering for any of that garbage, but it feels like we've all just collectively accepted these horrors as unavoidable side effects of modern life, haven't we?
Wrong. Honestly, everything you just laid out is completely unnatural.
Nature is flawless and operates in perfect harmony, period. Every single mess we deal with on this planet stems from us being totally out of sync with the laws of nature. Because we’re too dense to realize we’re actually part of nature itself, we fall into this trap of thinking our selfish attitudes toward one another have nothing to do with things like the climate crisis. But let me tell you, in the real world, every little thing we do ripples through every single level of nature, including the ecology.
The way we neglect the environment is just a direct reflection of how we neglect each other. You can't just pretend you're trying to fix our relationship with the earth while simultaneously ignoring the people standing right next to you.
Now, Al Gore's heartfelt plea for the world to wake up and face these environmental challenges is definitely important. But if we’re actually going to make it happen, we need a real method—something that lets us see the big picture of nature and helps us find balance with all its elements, ourselves included.
Kabbalah today has laid out exactly that kind of method in their books. They describe a step-by-step path toward actual, positive change. It starts by fixing how we treat one another and eventually leads to perfection in every single aspect of our lives.
First US edition of Kabbalah Today - articles in Spirituality ·
Q&A with Michael LAITMAN from his interview with New Jersey "COURIER POST"


P: Why on earth are you people calling Kabbalah a science instead of just labeling it a religion? It’s driving me absolutely insane how everyone keeps mixing these things up!

O: It’s called science because it actually *is* a science, plain and simple! People act like this stuff is some mystical fairy tale, but the wisdom of Kabbalah kicked off about 5,000 years ago back in ancient Babylon. Back then, humanity wasn't fractured into these tiny, selfish bubbles we live in now; everyone was connected, acting like one single, cohesive nation. But then this massive wave of egoism started crawling into people's hearts, driving everyone apart until we hit that legendary breaking point at the Tower of Babel. The only real fix for that disaster was a method uncovered by a man we know as Abraham. He figured out the literal blueprint for reconnecting people despite that growing selfishness, and let me tell you, his method was purely scientific. It’s all about using scientific tools to dissect our own internal mechanics—which is exactly what we call the wisdom of Kabbalah today. Honestly, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam showed up way later down the road and don't even have a direct link to Kabbalah.

P: Can someone actually study Kabbalah while they're still out there practicing a religion?

O: Look, anyone can dive into Kabbalah if they want to. It honestly doesn't matter if you’re deeply religious or just some totally secular guy living your life without any spiritual baggage at all. The wisdom within Kabbalah exists entirely outside of all that noise! It isn't tied to what you do for a living or whatever belief system or ritual you happen to practice—it stands completely on its own.
P: Is there actually any real difference between authentic Kabbalah teachings and the way some big-shot celebrities like Madonna try to play around with it? Honestly, it feels like such a joke sometimes!
Look, there is a massive difference here, plain and simple. If you actually want to dive into authentic Kabbalah, you can't just pick up some random paperback off a drugstore shelf; you have to go straight to the source. We’re talking about the five foundational pillars: the writings of Abraham, the Book of Genesis, and everything Moses passed down through what we now call the Pentateuch—you know, the Torah, those first five books of the Bible. Then you've got the Zohar, the Holy Aria, and finally, the teachings of rabin Yehuda Ashlag from the 20th century. Honestly, if you ask me, Ashlag's work is the only thing that actually makes sense for our generation; it's perfectly tailored for us.
Look, let's get one thing straight: Kabbalah is a field of study, plain and simple, just like any other serious science you'd find at a major US university. People go crazy thinking it’s all about red strings, holy water, fortune-telling, or some weird mystical charms and amulets, but honestly, none of that nonsense belongs to the original Kabbalah—not even the meditation stuff. It is nothing more than the pure, unadulterated study of reality, designed to sharpen your perception so you can actually get a grip on your own life and the world around you.

P: But seriously, does it actually exist on a spiritual level?
O: Look, spirituality isn't some mystical thing you can just touch or smell with your basic five senses—it’s a whole different layer of reality that most people are completely blind to. Honestly, studying the wisdom of Kabbalah is like finally getting a pair of high-definition glasses for your soul; it sharpens how we perceive everything around us and hands us all these incredible tools we'd never even dream of having otherwise.
Just like physics hands us a specific set of tools to make sense of the world, Kabbalah gives us an entirely different toolkit to work with. Honestly, you need all these various sciences working together if you ever want to grasp the full, messy picture of reality, because Kabbalah is what actually pulls back the curtain and shows us what’s happening behind the scenes.
Think of it like a tapestry or a woven rug. You look at it and see this gorgeous, intricate picture—maybe a field of flowers or something equally stunning. But if you flip that thing over, all you see is a chaotic, messy web of tangled threads. If we actually want to understand how that beautiful flower on the front even exists, we have to learn how those individual threads are knotted together on the back. That’s exactly what Kabbalah is about; it teaches us how to connect all those hidden threads behind the scenes.

P: How does Kabbalah actually change a person's life? Honestly, I’ve seen people go through hell and back, thinking they’re just stuck in some endless loop of bad luck, until they finally get a grip on these concepts and everything just shifts under their feet. It’s not some magic trick, but it completely rewires how you see the world and your own ego, which is usually the biggest thing standing in our way.
O: Once you finally start seeing those underlying forces we’ve been banging on about, everything just clicks—you'll realize how every single thread in your life is actually tangled together, and you'll finally see exactly how to fix those connections so you stop making the same damn mistakes over and over again.
It basically puts every single part of your life back in order! Take family, for instance—it stitches those bonds together; when it comes to school or parenting, it helps you actually get your kids and helps them finally understand you; it even stops disasters like drug abuse or crushing depression before they start because you actually begin to grasp the world around you and live in sync with it. Look, the "world" isn't just trees and dirt; the world is the people surrounding you and, more importantly, it's you. Kabbalah gives you the power to change things on a personal, social, and even global scale.
I mean, look at us today—it’s no secret we’re drowning in a massive global crisis. You see it everywhere, from the insane weather patterns to the way everyone is spiraling into depression or sickness; we are facing a total meltdown in every corner of our lives. But Kabbalah offers an actual way out because it pulls back the curtain on what's really happening behind the scenes and shows you how to make a difference right there. Honestly, right now, more than any other time in history, tapping into Kabbalistic wisdom isn't just an option, it's a damn necessity.

Q: What does it actually feel like to connect with the Creator?
A: It’s a deeply personal connection. It’s like you finally stop obsessing over yourself and start experiencing the thoughts and struggles of everyone else. You become connected and feel everything outside of yourself. And it’s not just feeling it—you actually step outside of time, space, and movement. In a way, you become eternal because you gain a perception of the infinite. It drives you to a point where all you want to do is give and give.
Q: Is that why you want to share Kabbalah with others, just so they can have that same experience?
A: Yeah, absolutely. Once you feel that harmony between nature and reality, you just want to pass it on. And honestly, it’s not even a privilege; it’s more like an obligation, because humanity as a whole has to reach a point where everyone feels that same sense of harmony. Truth be told, the crises we’re slamming into right now aren't happening by accident. They are here to force us to actually think about life and feel this desperate need to build some harmony within it.
Heartbreak in Spirituality ·
Charles White11 said:I honestly think the question itself is framed incorrectly; it needs a total overhaul to make sense.

Let’s play a little game, just the two of us.
We'll call it;
“A little from me, a little from you”
I’ll go first, then it’s your turn.
Like this;

Try to step into the shoes of the very source of all creation.
I know I'm asking for a lot, but that's the nature of the beast here.
Now, give it your best shot: try to answer the question—why?

While you’re busy pondering and trying to crack the code, I’ll give you the full answer as to who is doing the nailing;

Every single one of us is holding a nail. We nail things to the “cross” through our own malice—you, through your narrow-mindedness and petty grievances, and me, through my arrogance and envy; or perhaps by a frenzied mob, thirsty for excitement, intoxicated by the scent of blood.
... ”stand with us on the tank and we will charge uphill, unstoppable; beneath our treads, pigs will squeal while the hot blast from the vents melts our boots. We’ll fire at the rooftops where bad actors set their ambushes, lighting fires here and there... (T. Bajsić)”

The heart finds its fulfillment on the “cross” because that is how it burns away its own malice.
Whatever the Heart touches will catch fire in sheer ecstasy, whether it be good or evil.
Only when every trace of spite and wickedness has been burned away without a remainder does it finally make sense... when, in the moment of greatest triumph, they gaze upon the open heart, smiling.
The Heart doesn't care about your past; to a pure Heart, everyone is dear and beloved.
The Heart is the pure face of God who loves, a smiling face head-over-heels in love.
Anyone touched by the ganuće knows this is the absolute truth.
That is simply how the Heart is... who cares otherwise?

PS... even if it’s a complete coincidence and this probably won't mean anything to you—maybe you'll just smirk at what I'm writing—it is quite interesting exactly when you decided to ask that question.

Just go ahead and do it. Seriously, don't even hesitate.
Let's play a game, just the two of us.
It’s called ;
It’s always one for you and one for me—fair shake for everyone involved!
Alright, I'll go first, then it's your turn.

Oh man, seriously?! This is just pure games! 🙂
Look, here's the deal;
Just try to wrap your head around it for a second—try to actually step into the shoes of the source of all creation itself.
Look, I know I’m probably overthinking this and asking way too much, but honestly, that’s just the core of the damn question.
Alright, give it your best shot then—try to actually answer the question: why?

What's the point of this whole creation anyway? If I were actually the Source, why on earth would I bother making a Creation in the first place?
I mean, seriously, why on earth would the Creator design it so that an open heart only finds its purpose through the cross?

To me, the Source is nothing less than the ultimate, 100% pure act of giving—just total, unadulterated love for everything the Creator made. I’m talking about a raw, overwhelming desire to pour out joy to all of Creation without even a single shred of selfish will or the slightest urge to take anything back for yourself. It is this unconditional, absolute outpouring that stays constant, motionless, and eternal, unchanging through everything. Just total Love. Honestly, for us mere mortals, it’s practically impossible to even wrap our heads around that kind of existence, though deep down, I think we already know the truth. 🙂 At best, we’ve only ever caught a few fleeting, sporadic tastes of what that actually feels like, and honestly, those were some of the sweetest moments of my entire life—those rare seconds where you finally get a real sense of what it truly is. It’s just more real. Life, just this endless, exhausting grind we deal with every single day.
Look, the whole point is that the Creator made this entire Creation just to flood it with absolute bliss by handing over everything He has to give, making sure He only does good for His Creation so He can lift us all up to His level until the whole Creation becomes exactly like Him.

While you're sitting there overthinking everything and trying to crack the code, I'm just going to lay it all out for you and tell you exactly who's responsible for crucifying him.

We all carry our own little devil on our shoulders. We nail our darkness to the cross—you by being narrow-minded and petty, me through my sheer arrogance and envy, and then there's that mindless mob, just a raging crowd thirsty for chaos, absolutely intoxicated by the scent of blood.
"Look, just hop on the tank with us and we’ll charge uphill without anyone being able to stop us! We’ll be rolling right over those pigs under our treads while the scorching heat from the engine melts the soles right off our boots. We’re going to be picking off the cowards hiding on rooftops trying to set up ambushes, and every now and then, we'll light a little fire just for the hell of it..." (T. Bajsić)

Alright, look. Why on earth are we stuck holding these nails—this pure malice, this arrogance, this narrow-mindedness, and this sheer cruelty? Why do we even need all that nastiness just to nail our hearts to the cross so that something actually happens? Are you telling me that we actually *need* all that evil just to reach some kind of ultimate fulfillment for the heart later on?

The Heart finds its purpose on the cross because that’s how it burns away all that inner malice.
Whatever the Heart touches is going to go up in flames with pure ecstasy, whether it’s good or bad.
Only when every last bit of spite and wickedness has been completely incinerated does it finally make sense... when, at the peak of their triumph, they gaze into an open heart that’s smiling back at them.
The Heart doesn't care about your past; to a pure Heart, everyone is dear and beloved.
The Heart is simply the face of God who loves, a smiling face head-over-heels in love.
Anyone whom ganuće has touched knows that’s just how it is, period.
That’s just how the Heart is... for those who actually care.

Really beautiful and inspiring stuff.
But hey, since you're asking, I do care. 🙂
If I’m following you correctly, the Heart exists to cleanse us of our own darkness. Honestly, we carry all that evil inside us and act on it from within, which is why we have broken hearts—and because our hearts are broken, we see a broken world outside ourselves, when really, it’s just our own twisted perspective reflecting back at us.
And ganuće would be the correction for that brokenness. It’s that sudden insight into the pure power of the heart which grants us the ability and the actual desire to do good, and once we do that, we start seeing a clean, good world "out there." Basically, if you want the world to be pure, kind, and full of love, you only have one thing to fix: your own damn heart.
PS... even though it’s a total coincidence and this probably won't mean anything to you—you might even just laugh at me for saying this—it’s pretty wild what time you posted that question.

There is no such thing as a "pure coincidence," and there’s no such thing as luck. 😉
And I am definitely not mocking your posts because I can feel the intention behind them. Honestly, it’s a genuine honor and a pleasure to talk to you.
Why does the timing of 03:09 seem significant to you?
Is it the 93? Like 3 representing the Trinity, so 3 times 3 equals 9? How exactly did you interpret the significance of that specific time?
edit: oh, wait, I just noticed you replied at 03:10 🙂 🙂
Heartbreak in Spirituality ·
Charles White11 said:The heart only truly becomes the Heart once it has been nailed to the cross.
That is where it is realized; anything else is debatable.

Quite simple, really.

🙂 I get what you're saying.
But who—or what exactly—is doing the nailing?
Heartbreak in Spirituality ·
Charles White11 said:The heart isn't found in Yoga meditation, nor in Yiva or Shiva
It isn't found in magic, nor in Kabbalah or the Upper world
It isn't Bhakti, and it certainly isn't Shakti
The heart isn't what Carlos Castaneda meant when he spoke of the "path with heart"
Nor is it that idea of "the whole world conspiring to make our deepest desires come true"
The heart isn't the heart being synthesis of 4 great systems, nor an occult revolution, nor the Age of Aquarius
The heart isn't some self-sufficient hermit brooding over bitak or the meaning of existence
It isn't that sudden rush of excitement when we feel we finally "get" someone
It isn't Baba mi Kevalam, it isn't Omkara, and it isn't IstaMantra
The heart isn't located in the East
And it doesn't undergo some mystical rebirth in the West
It isn't Cosmic Consciousness, and it isn't Eckhart's all-pervading love
The heart was my Mother, who always looked out for me
And my sweet grandmother, who told me stories at bedtime whenever I was afraid of the dark
The heart is my hardworking Father, who spent his entire life providing for me
The heart is mine, and I will pass it on to my son
Because...
You cannot truly possess the heart if you don't give it away to someone else
Tadija discovered the truth of the heart when he wrote:

When in the crimson dawns
Or in the clear mornings
I wander
Through verdant fields
Where a youthful breeze sways the heavy heads
Of high yellow grain,
Suddenly I stop;
And lo!
My heart, overflowing with joy, beats loudly
Like a golden watch.

Exactly! Look, kabbalah isn't the heart itself—it’s the actual tool you use to build a massive, all-encompassing heart, you know? It's about developing this deep love for the entire Creation, that feeling you only catch in those tiny, fleeting moments when everything just seems to click.
You can't claim to have a heart if you're just waiting for someone else to hand it to you.

That is the absolute truth right there.
And once you actually have that massive heart, you give it all away to Everything.
But honestly, who actually possesses that kind of heart?
Heartbreak in Spirituality ·
The heart is the boss, and the mind is just its errand boy.
Whatever the heart craves, the mind makes it happen.
At its core, the heart is just one thing: this raw, driving hunger to take, to grab pleasure, to soak up enjoyment.
The only real difference is the "outfit" those pleasures wear and how big they feel, which is why we trick ourselves into thinking there are different kinds of hearts.
When a heart is focused on sucking up pleasure for itself, it’s corrupt, dark, and totally selfish—it just breeds misery and leaves you feeling stuck with some cheap, fleeting high.
But when the heart shifts toward giving that joy away to others, that’s when it becomes pure, bright, and powerful; it generates real love and taps into an endless, lasting bliss. That right there is what a true human heart is supposed to be.
The Philosophy Crew in Philosophy ·
🤣 Honestly, that’s hilarious.
We need way more people like this in the philosophy scene, so I am totally here for it.
Seriously, what’s even the point of tackling life's deepest mysteries if you can't crack a joke about them once in a while?
It reminds me of what old man Frederick used to say:
"I live in my own place,
never copied anybody else,
and to any master who lacks
the grace to laugh at himself - I laugh!"
Patandjali IV, 15 in Spirituality ·
Ryan Wilson2 said:Fine, I suppose I'll get eight different answers to that. But let me ask just one more thing: is it actually necessary to neglect the mind and the other senses in order to develop the soul?

Look, just find a way. You've got Steiner and his exercises to lean on, but honestly? It all boils down to having actual, raw desire. Only the people with an unshakable, relentless drive actually make it through. Because while you're out there grinding and pushing with that intense will, those subtle energy bodies start getting charged up by your effort, and the surrounding light—you know, that stream of info from the spiritual realms—starts building up new vessels and receivers within you. Once those are ready, boom, you'll suddenly start picking up everything effortlessly.
Patandjali IV, 15 in Spirituality ·
Ryan Wilson2 said:A single, simple question keeps forcing its way into my mind: through which organ do we actually perceive reality?

Because if we strip away our senses entirely, what are we left with? We are left with a brain—an organ incapable of feeling pain or touch—that is perfectly content floating inside a skull. If we remove all external stimuli, do we encounter nothingness? Or is it perhaps only in that absolute void that the faculties required to experience true reality begin to develop? After all, we know that when deprived of external information, the brain is capable of "inventing" things itself, driven by an innate hunger for stimulation.

It’s through the soul, obviously! And let me tell you, the soul isn't just one single thing; it’s made up of several different "organs." Steiner actually goes into detail about this. For instance, nature has already developed four higher chakras to a certain point, but you can actually build them up even further so they start pulling in information from spiritual realms. Think of it like a classic old-school radio setup—you've got the transmitter and then you've got the receiver. The transmitter is blasting signals out constantly, but if you haven't built a receiver that matches the resonant frequency, you'll sit there thinking the air is empty. It feels like nothing is happening, but trust me, it's all right there.
Patandjali IV, 15 in Spirituality ·
casualtiger2 said:vastusamye cittabhedattayorvibhaktah panthah

Since what is "objectively real" (vastu) is actually just one thing—any divergence between two observers happens simply because their "perceptual foundation" (citta) differs.


The differences we see in how people act can be explained by their varying capacities for perception—basically, the difference in how refined their perceptual foundation (citta) is—rather than some lack of a single, unified reality for any given object.

Translation and commentary — Zoran Zec
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Reading this morning and wondering: why are so many people so obsessed with being right? Why is winning an argument so vital to them, especially when we know our "perceptual foundations" are bound to be different?
It’s also funny how everyone claims to have their own unique life or spiritual path, yet they still constantly insist—either subtly or not so subtly—that *their* way is the only correct one.

Over time, I’ve learned not to take my own opinions too seriously—even though I still try to build them on the best, most precise info available and defend them clearly. At the end of the day, an opinion is just one possible lens for viewing reality, even if it feels like a powerful tool.
It seems like a huge issue to me. I see so many relationships—especially between partners or parents and kids—where, even when people are convinced by other sources (emotional ones, usually), they still end up clashing in these pointless power struggles over who is "right."
Maybe that obsession with our own mental constructs explains a good chunk of the conflicts we see in religion and spirituality, too.

Don't get me wrong—I'm not saying we should accept everything blindly. There's always room to critique systems, groups, or individuals. But if others aren't hurting anyone and are genuinely trying to move forward on a path of love and light, they deserve at least some understanding, if not full support.
Even when aiming for the same goal, different systems use wildly different methods. It makes you wonder where the line is, and what the point of all this "right vs. wrong" friction really is. To what extent does criticism from one school of thought actually matter to someone in another?

How do you guys handle your own opinions, and how do you deal with people who are trying to grow spiritually in a way that’s totally different from yours?

It’s just a fragile ego, honestly—people cling to their little "intellectual frameworks" like their lives depend on it because they’ve tied their entire sense of self to being correct.

People also constantly harp on the idea that everyone has their own unique life or spiritual path, yet you see these folks insisting, either subtly or not so subtly, that their specific way is the only valid one!?!

They aren't entirely wrong, though; their views and their paths *are* the only ones that make sense to them based on how they've grown up. The real mess starts when they try to force those narrow ideas onto everyone else as if they were universal truths.

It seems like such a massive issue because I see it everywhere—in relationships, between parents and kids, you name it—where even when people are convinced by other emotional perspectives, they still end up grinding each other down in these useless power struggles just to prove who's right. Maybe this obsession with their own mental constructs explains a huge chunk of why there's so much fighting in religion and spirituality too?!
Mozda se tom opsednoscu vlastitim misaonim konstrukcijama moze obasniti i dobar deo sukoba u oblasti religija/duhovnosti ?!

Absolutely.


How do you all handle your own opinions versus people who are trying to grow spiritually in a way that's totally different from yours?


By comparing notes, finding common ground, and most importantly, just showing some damn respect. At the end of the day, I'm going to pick my own circle—the people who actually help me become the person I want to be.