4. SUFFERING

The Kabbalah has given its reason for the inter-human giving and receiving together with the conditions for a fracas, but what does it say about Suffering?

Why do we suffer? The answer given is that if God had generated the human vessel just so that He could give and indeed receive from it a perfect grateful receiver response, it would mean that man was almost an inanimate receiver. To prevent that, God peopled it with persons with a spirit which must labor and struggle. This allowed man the vehicle of prayer and study to obtain purification and sanctity.

So we may say that God gave man the capacity to Suffer so that he could work to not suffer and thus be an active vessel and not an idle recipient.

He, God, then we may say created the potential for suffering so that man could work to be a noble receiver, but had the option to not be a noble receiver, falling into Evil ways. We can almost say then, although the Kabbalists must disagree, that God generated the capacity to suffer in order to complete his plan of meaningful God giving.

We cannot say that God might feel good about that, but certainly we could complain that the option to Suffer just because God wanted a better Giving paradigm seems rather perverse.

It does not sound better just because we may decide to declare that God wanted to share with the soul of man the newly revealed phenomenon of the noble Desire to Receive in this boundless, integrated, infinite and endless world known as Olam En Sof.

THE SOULS

There are two distinct souls. The first soul is the Nefesh HaBehamit which actually gives active life to the body and is complete with what we can imagine from the Dharma point of view confusion, greed and aversion, what psychology might call Id, Ego and Super Ego and what the Kabbalah calls an infrastructure of soul powers ranging from intention, visceral pleasure and emotions and intellect.

The soul powers of the Nefesh HaBehamit have the impulse to fulfill the base needs, desires and passions and is completly self-centered.

The second soul is the Nefesh Elokit. This soul is described by Job as “a part of God,” and exists both before its descent into the body and after the ascent from the body.

This is the everlasting soul that Dharma strongly denies.

The Nefesh Elokit descends into this world is to refine the base and the soul powers of nature of Nefesh HaBehamit in the material world. It has its own NefeshElokit is balanced with the Nefesh HaBehamit and they both operate and express themselves within the thinking mind as processes of intention, visceral pleasure, emotions and intellect, but they are Divine and not related to "the self Identity". At birth, according to the Kabbalah, the

We can consider from the Dharma perspective that the Nefesh HaBehamit is a balanced Masculine Principle not yet cut off by stained Cognition and is effectivey a conscious Self Illusion. On the other hand, Nefesh Elokit is the Feminine Principle of the right hemisphere that has evolved the basic unstained Life Force programs.

The Kabbalah walks away from the physiological acceptance as a naturally evolved homeostatic balance to cognition of the left hemisphere and declares that before its descent to the world the Nefesh Elokit is taken to heaven and is shown the subtleties of the Garden of Eden and it is also Hell (Gehinom).

This soul, which is curiously also personified in feminine form, is shown clearly that it is within the human creature upon on a perilous mission full of distractions and enticement, in other words, temptations of cognition.

The soul is made to take an oath that she will remain righteous, and even if persuaded by those around her that she is perfect, she should always deem herself in need of spiritual  improvement and is provided with the spiritual energy required to transform the Nefesh HaBehamit.

There is no doubt you will see interesting correspondence and make your own conclusions or alternatively evolve greater levels of experience.