The Inner Dimension: A Gateway to the Wisdom of Kabbalah and Chassidut | ||||||
HOME | What's New |
Glossary of Terms |
About Gal Einai |
About Rabbi Ginsburgh |
Contact Us |
Online
Shop Books & Tapes |
|
Basics
in Kabbalah The Powers of the Soul to Experience God |
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
"Love" Ahavah is the spiritual state associated with the sefirah of chesed. Ahavah is the essential power of "growth" inherent throughout reality. God created the world with love and sustains the world with love. The experience of ahavah begins with a sense of attraction and being drawn to another, a sense which continues to grow and expand until it virtually encompasses one and one's beloved in their clinging to one another. Love is an attractive vector force. There are thirteen such vectors (ahavah = 13), corresponding to the 13 spiritual states associated with the sefirot:
Our love for God expresses itself in three growing stages: "with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might" (Deuteronomy 6:5). These three stages reflect themselves at all of the above levels (the full spectrum of 13 love vectors manifesting their five general origins). The verse, "and you shall love Havayah, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your might," possesses 39 letters (as does the whole verse which contains the following phrase possessing 13 letters: "and you shall love your neighbor as yourself"). 39 = 3 times 13 (the three stages of each of the 13 loves), which equals Havayah (26) Echad (13)--"Havayah is One" (Deuteronomy 6:4).
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||