We can start simply, by the origin of the word. Kabbalah comes from the verb Lekabel, which in Hebrew means "to receive." (לְקַבֵּל)
The Bible, in the Old Testament, tells us that Moses received the 10 commandments and the Torah on Mount Sinai, and then transmitted that knowledge to the elders, to the prophets, to the temple priests, to all the people of Israel , and from there to all the nations of the world.
For this reason, many understand that Kabbalah is the mystical study of the Bible. The idea would be to reach the knowledge of the Creator, of the plan of creation, through a mystical study of the Old Testament, of the Torah.
But Kabbalah goes much further. It is precisely from the mystical study of the Bible, or from the classical Kabbalistic texts such as the Sefer Yetzira and the Zohar, a new sense awakens us, and we begin to realize that the world around us is much more complex and multidimensional than we thought.
In a time of polytheism, in which lots of gods were worshiped: a god of rain, a god of fire, a god of day, a god of night, for example, Moses understood that there was only one God .
Moses is recognized as the patriarch of the three great monotheistic religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
And we know what monotheism has meant for the world, for better or worse.
That was the first knowledge that Moses transmitted, and that is written in the prayer, in the Shema: Listen, Oh, Israel! Your Lord, your God, is One.
It is not just that there is only one God, the Kabbalists go further, and they understood that the message also says: The Lord is One, is the whole.
That is, that everything is One, that the universe we know is a body, is an emanation of the Creator, of the force, of the energy, of the light of creation, which Kabbalists know as the Ein Sof, the infinite light .
The universe is a whole, a One, is unified.
We see it fragmented, for lacking that additional sense that we can awaken through Kabbalah.
From study and work, we can unify ourselves with the whole. The wisdom that Kabbalah gives us is how to connect with the Creator, with the origin, with the source from which the matrix in which we develop comes, with the energy that keeps the Cosmos running.
Kabbalah teaches us how to match in form with the Creator. That allows us to reach fullness, happiness, perfect balance ... here and now, in this life.
That is the knowledge that teaches us the wisdom of Kabbalah. and that is the path that we will continue to develop in these posts.
I invite you to listen to my podcast on the wisdom of Kabbalah, whose link I leave here below.
Shalom!
Óscar Reyes-Matute / מתת
C&K # 1, What is Kabbalah (Spanish)
