Kabbalah For Dummies

The placement of each sefirah on the Tree of Life gives insight into its nature. For example, Keter is on the top of the chart, and Malchut is on the bottom. This placement makes sense because Keter is known as the sefirah of connection, the primary connection between God and the world, symbolically coming from above, and Malchut is the primary connection between humans and the world and is seen as the final sefirah, a summation of all the others. One can picture Keter pouring down from above through the crown of each person. Malchut, on the other hand, is on the bottom because it’s the goal of creation, the physical universe and all that’s contained within it.

Malchut can be seen as the fruits of all one’s labor. Whereas Yesod is the sefirah that corresponds to the penis or phallus (see the preceding section), Malchut corresponds to the feminine form of the divine. The connection between the Yesod and Malchut is a kind of cosmic sexual union that ultimately gives birth to all the activity in the world.

Keter doesn’t refer to a human body part but rather refers to a royal crown sitting on top of a head. This depiction offers a hint at the meaning behind Keter.
Keter is often referred to as the divine will and the source of all delight and pleasure. Keter contains all the other sefirot in it, and it’s often said that Keter activates the soul from above. Kabbalists suggest that one should picture God sending divine light and power down through the top of the head, infusing the entire body with all of its abilities and qualities.
Keter is considered to be the link between the infinite world of God and the finite

Keter is often referred to as the divine will and the source of all delight and pleasure. Keter contains all the other sefirot in it, and it’s often said that Keter activates the soul from above. Kabbalists suggest that one should picture God sending divine light and power down through the top of the head, infusing the entire body with all of its abilities and qualities.

For the most part, angels are beyond human comprehension. Most of what people know about angels comes not from their perceptions but rather from tradition. As one of my teachers put it, “There is no way to grasp an angel.” Nevertheless, Kabbalah teaches that throughout history there have always been certain individuals who live on a higher plane of consciousness and therefore have access to information and vague perceptions. Those individuals, by sharing their visions from higher planes, help us to grasp the unknowable.

The problem lies in the fact that God isn’t CEO of the universe but rather is infinite. In fact, Kabbalists often refer to God as “the Infinite, blessed is He” (see Chapter 17). In the nature of infinity, nothing is closer or farther away than anything else, and nothing is larger or smaller; against the infinite, everything is of the same proportion. Therefore, when people, as finite individuals, make even a slight gesture with their little fingers, to God it is of the same proportion as the largest cataclysm.
By seeing God as infinite, Kabbalists understand that God is aware of everything — from the largest cataclysm to the smallest gesture. The great Kabbalist and founder of the Hasidic movement Rabbi Israel, known as “the Master of the Good Name,” is known to have said that not even a blade of grass moves without God being aware of it and, in fact, allowing it to happen.
While this might seem impossible or beyond our grasp, One can look to the invention of the personal computer to begin to see that such a notion is not an unreasonable at all. After all, we are really just at the very beginnings of the development of the computer, and yet a small computers sitting on a desk is able to keep track of billions and billions of pieces of information. That being case, it does not seem unreasonable at all to imagine that the Creator of the universe can do the same, and far more.

Everything Has Meaning — Everything

To put it simply, Kabbalistic tradition teaches that everything has meaning. Every thought, every inclination, every gesture, every word, and every action has significance in the universe.
One way to look at this concept is to see life as a scale in which each act that you do can tip the scale one way or the other. If the next thing you do or think is positive, the scale tips in the right direction. In the same way, if what you’re about to do or think is negative, the scale tips in the wrong direction. The sages teach that this awareness of meaning must be kept in one’s mind at all times.

One of my teachers offers an excellent analogy for people who feel that even if there is a God, then certainly God isn’t interested in “little ol’ me.” After all, why would the Creator of this vast universe be interested or even aware of one small speck? Surely if there is a God, He (or She) must have far better things to do than to be concerned with one individual on a small planet in the vastness of space.
My teacher points out that the reason this line of thinking is in error is because people too often think of God and His universe in the same way that they think of the CEO of a huge corporation. Using this model, you can be fairly certain that a busy CEO is hardly interested in which pencils an assistant in one of thousands of offices is purchasing. The CEO has far more important things to focus on and almost surely

You may not be happy about this, but God knows everything that you do. Yes, everything. (Kind of makes you cringe, doesn’t it?) And everything you do creates angels — good angels and bad angels. In this chapter, you discover why people give birth to angels and how this impacts both present lives and future incarnations.
In addition, you look closely at the eternal question of why suffering exists in the world. There are two main reasons for human suffering:
Suffering is the result of people’s misdeeds, the karma they create.
God gives people suffering deliberately to test them and to provide them with the lessons that they learn from that suffering

How can I live a life that insures the least amount of bad karma?
A Kabbalist’s life is a conscious life. Every moment a person needs to be awake and aware, and must try with the greatest efforts to integrate the wisdom that has been acquired into life’s activities, all in order to avoid the negative consequences that follow from misdeeds (see Chapter 9).

For a soul, learning how to do things properly isn’t easy. The fact that it’s a lifelong pursuit is the reason study is so important to the Kabbalist (see Chapter 13). Kabbalists study every day in an effort to do the following:
Understand the spiritual ideas that Kabbalah teaches
Apply these basic principles to improve behavior