Kabbalah Mysticism for Spiritual Awakening: The Path of Consciousness

By Guy Berchik

Kabbalah means “a receiving” and in our context, a receiving of a higher conscious experience that ultimately leads to spiritual awakening, which is a permanent state of mind where the emotions awaken to a higher experience of consciousness while the fabricated self that the mind creates surrenders as a consequence.

Along with a discussion about what happens in enlightenment or spiritual awakening, and how to develop the mind using the path of Kabbalah, this book also discusses the meaning of God, an explanation of the Infinite as it applies to one’s own personal experience, the question of Will, and the Male and Female parts of the Godhead, along with elucidating some difficult concepts and stories of the Bible and applying them to the Sphirot of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life.

Lastly, this book provides some advice on how to raise children to be mystics and how to recognize a suitable mate or Shiduch using the Sphirot system of the Tree of Life of Kabbalah.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Mar 7, 2024
• ISBN: 9798823023245

Guy Berchik

Guy Berchik was born in Israel and comes from the spiritual traditions of Judaism and Kabbalah. He attended Yeshiva in Jerusalem and has continued his studies independently to the present day. He also attended business and law school in the US and later the theoretical part of medical school in Europe. Later he moved to Russia for a number of years and presently lives in Slovakia and Italy. As a single parent, he has raised two children with spiritual traditions and considers this experience to be his richest and the most profound in his life. It was through explaining concepts of enlightenment to his son that he was shaken by his own realization that triggered his awakening and ultimate surrender after many years of preparation. He travels throughout Europe and Israel and is available to seekers who are interested in spiritual awakening.

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© 2024 Guy Berchik. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 02/29/2024

ISBN: 979-8-8230-2325-2 (sc)

ISBN: 979-8-8230-2324-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2024904723

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Dedication

Introduction

What is God

What is Spiritual Awakening

The Question of Will

Raising Children to be Mystics

Kabbalah and Shiduchim

The Male and the Female of the Godhead

Dedication

To the great teachers of the past

Who left us a great puzzle to solve

Not only to understand their teaching

But to provoke our own awakening.

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Introduction

In our system of thought, Kabbalah means the reception to a higher conscious and emotional experience that ultimately leads to spiritual awakening. Spiritual Awakening or enlightenment is a permanent state of being where the emotions open up to a higher experience of consciousness while the fabricated self that the mind creates surrenders as a consequence.

Mysticism means limiting our knowledge to what we can experience rather than calling any idea mysticism. Thus in our teachings of Kabbalah, we limit ourselves to the purpose to developing a more conscious and emotional mind, which is the essence and origin of any experience.

Kabbalah is an ancient path that started not in the middle ages with various fantastical and borrowed ideas to reconcile between philosophy and religion, but with the Bible itself, and further elucidated in the Tree of Life diagram, both of which are the original texts of Kabbalah.

There are various schools of Kabbalah since Biblical times and many of them claim to be the true and authentic teachings and on the other hand, many teach Kabbalah as if anything can be thrown into this so called philosophy with fantastical answers and ideas about everything. Our Kabbalah however deals with the development and awakening of the mind, which renders most of what is today understood as Kabbalah as irrelevant and oftentimes misleading.

The Kabbalah of the Middle Ages to the present day where the Zohar is considered to be the main text has answers for everything. Our path is not to have answers for everything in our complex existence, but to develop purpose to awaken the mind. We do not find great value in theories that do not affect our development of our being or that are of no real practical use. Indeed, the pain of the human being is not because one does not have an answer for everything, but because one experiences the suffering and dissatisfaction of having no conscious will and no awakened emotions and a fabricated self that creates almost all of our problems. Moreover, this fabricated self prevents the development that may lead to the permanent state of enlightenment.

The human mind needs to complete itself and before that can happen, there is the suffering of frustration, stress and dissatisfaction that leads to other sufferings of the psyche and even physical problems. It is also the source of ignorance because before one awakens permanently, we are always looking in the wrong direction for answers that do not satisfy or that are not even relevant.

We assume that the pain of not being awakened can be replaced by various opinions about anything and everything that are outside of our experience. Such an approach may satisfy the intellect temporarily, but sooner or later one realizes that nothing is solved and the suffering of emptiness persists. Of course social support can numb that emptiness for some time, but the serious mystic needs more than that. A philosophy regardless of how logical or even beautiful cannot replace the experience of awakening the mind to its completion and when that happens, most of what we try to solve with philosophy becomes irrelevant.

The pain of the incomplete human will that has not awakened the emotions and the consciousness cannot be replaced by an explanation about for example who or what and how the universe was created. Before spiritual awakening happens, the aspirant is always looking in the wrong direction from a state of being that is incomplete and thus distorted, the most classic is to force some logical sense about the universe and how it was created at the expense of almost completely ignoring the suffering self and making sense of that. This is in fact the nature of not being awakened. It is always suffering and being irrelevant about how to solve this suffering. Of course we are not even talking about the even larger population that has no interest in higher matters.

Nothing can be understood properly without the experience of awakening because the answer is not understanding this or that, but a more complete and real experience of an awakened mind. And since real understanding arises from direct experience, our understanding becomes more accurate and relevant when awakening occurs. Moreover, the psychological mechanism that is searching in the wrong direction gives up in spiritual awakening. Only then can we see and experience what is so simple and immediate and as a consequence, real understanding and satisfaction results. In yet other words, trying to have theories to irrelevant questions does not satisfy for long. One may ponder interesting questions even if irrelevant, but not at the expense of making efforts for spiritual awakening, which is the real answer and solution for the suffering mind and for making real sense of life, even if that sense is simply the blissful satisfaction of not needing and not pretending to know everything.

The needs of an enlightened person seem to be different from the point of view that one does not aspire to have an opinion about irrelevant matters, whereas the student of mysticism is still trying to solve all problems of existence as if knowing about how stars were created could solve the problem of an undeveloped, suppressed and less than conscious emotions and having no will to maintain a conscious state of being. There cannot be a deeper and long lasting satisfaction, let alone a deeper wisdom, without a complete awakening. Moreover, real issues that deal with purpose and morality become more natural and obvious as opposed to trying to convince ourselves of them.

The usual Kabbalah that we have seen elsewhere tries to have an intellectual answer to all of existence and the student is supposed to believe these various and oftentimes interesting solutions, while we are trying to reduce Kabbalah to what we can experience for the sake of spiritual awakening. Anything else is from our point of view poetic non verifiable ideas, most of it useless and irrelevant, at least in the context of more advanced psychological development. And to reduce Kabbalah to first of all awakening the mind is in our humble opinion the true and authentic Kabbalah. Again, mysticism is not about philosophy, but higher states of mind, and Kabbalah is a path to get there and make those higher states of mind our permanent state of being.

There is nothing in the Jewish part of the Bible about belief or trying to know everything about existence. This is in direct contradiction to some of the teachings of Kabbalah as expounded since the Middle Ages and to the present day. Abraham was wise not because he developed a thorough philosophy about God and the universe, but because he was sincere, humble and awakened. And even though this may sound overly simple, it is and has been profoundly rare in human beings.

Enlightenment is first of all awakening the consciousness and the emotions, and as a consequence, burning out the fabricated self that desires to constantly assert and maintain its control over the mind by looking in the wrong direction. When that fabricated self surrenders, real wisdom and humbleness results. Or in other words, the deep desire to awaken is fulfilled at the expense of a fabricated self that prevents awakening and thus there is no need to look for external intellectual solutions. One also becomes less naïve about what can be known and what is perhaps a beautiful theory or idea, even a possibility, but not necessarily facts that we can count on as the basis of our reality that must be accepted as a prerequisite to mind development.

As a result of conscious and emotional awakening, one becomes more selective in choosing ideas that are more relevant and ones that are not. One becomes more realistic in pondering even things that are to some degree beyond our experience, such as life after death. We do not need to believe a detailed account of what exactly happens, but it is possible to know from a deeper state of being about the broader picture of life and the direction of where we are going and most importantly, develop one’s conscious state of being which is the only thing that can survive the death of the physical body. Moreover, one can better take various symbols and stories and make better sense and use of them, without a forced personality acquired by others that we must believe everything as literally true since we do not have the intuitive depth to see more clearly for ourselves. We can better apply the teachings to our own experience and mind development as opposed to collecting beliefs about things that are external to anyone’s real experiential knowledge.

We are also not denying everything as an excuse not to think. Any idea that we cannot verify may or may not be true. We are simply limiting ourselves to the study of mysticism which is about developing the mind for a more awakened experience and thus any idea or theory or belief that does not help our pursuit is deemed more or less irrelevant.

Moreover, enlightenment is not against discussing anything, but on the contrary, awakening deepens any discussion and makes it more relevant and useful. There are many assumptions in peoples’ ideas and beliefs and one of the most is that it is relevant to what they are truly seeking. For the serious mystic, the answer for the suffering and ignorant mind is first of all to try to be more conscious, and the answer for the awakened person is to enjoy the awakening as a living answer. Then of course we can discuss anything as a type of entertainment or philosophical endeavor.

It should also be emphasized that any intellectual answer becomes deep enough only when it becomes deeply emotional and even beautiful. Indeed even a chemist, physicist or mathematician finds beauty in their seemingly cold realizations or