Kabbalah and Psychology
Part 21 Meditive Prayer The next two stages of ignoring evil are justified by the assumption that the essence of the Jew's Divine soul is unaffected by the weaknesses of his animal soul. Thus, it is possible for a person to rectify his overall psychology by emphasizing his Divine side and ideally enabling it to assume full reign over his personality. Since secular psychology cannot recognize the existence of the separate, Divine soul, it is only to be expected that many schools of psychology disapprove of the apparent evasion of dealing directly with these manifestations of the lower urges we are about to detail. The art of meditation is the means by which the soul acquires the wings of consciousness necessary to rise above and beyond the confines of one's lower self with its milieu of negative thoughts that plague one's consciousness. One of the basic forms of meditation taught by the Ba'al Shem Tov is to visualize oneself ascending from world to world. This means to comprehend and understand higher and higher levels of bitul ("selflessness"). First one must remember the initial descent of the soul upon birth from the heavenly heights to the depths of this world, and then, with the surety of faith that this is for the sake of a greater ascent, begin to climb the ladder of meditative prayer. Jewish meditation does not suffice with mere forms of visualization. Rather, it has to be part and parcel of prayer to G-d, doing it in His presence and asking Him to elevate you. Every element of creation has its higher spiritual origin to which it is capable of ascending with the aid of meditation. In the Perek Shirah prayer, every facet of creation sings its own particular song of praise to G-d. The Jew has a Jewish channel, the non-Jew has his own channel, and so forth, throughout creation. This is predicated on the innate recognition that the individual has a higher spiritual source. This is one's innate separation. Everyone is a stranger in a strange land. One of the functions of the Jewish soul is to awaken this reality throughout creation. This is the sub-phase of separation within separation. A new chapter is both uploaded to the web and sent out every week via the Inner Dimension (free) weekly Torah message email list. Click here to subscribe now!
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