Kabbalah of Rabbi Ashlag taught by Yedidah Cohen

Many of us suffer from feelings of emptiness in our lives. On the surface, our lives may seem smooth, but inside there is a void. The all-pervasive screen  may cover our inner desolation for a while, but the emptiness comes back. It is trying to wake us up, trying to tell us that we have a soul, and our soul is desperate for us to get in contact with it. 

Answer: Learn to connect with the soul!  

The wisdom of Kabbalah, the innermost aspect of Torah, teaches us how to connect with our Soul. 

When we buy a new gadget, we read the instructions. 

Living our lives without knowing what our  purpose is, is like trying to live without reading the instructions! 

This is why we feel disconnected with ourselves. 

We experience a sense of alienation and emptiness.

We repeatedly fall into the same negative patterns

Week One

Welcome: How to Approach our Learning: What is Kabbalah

In this lesson, we will discover that Kabbalah reveals how Divinity manifests to us. We will find that the Creator's purpose in Creation is to bestow ultimate goodness upon us— an experience of the Divine. Our human intelligence and empathy play a crucial role in recognizing the part the Creator plays in our lives.

We will understand the importance of our approach to learning, acknowledging that it is not purely intellectual, but involves a connection with our soul. To enhance this connection, we may find it beneficial to start each session with a short prayer or meditation.

The lesson is divided into three videos each accompanied by downloads, plus work in a multimedia dynamic journal in which you can record your own responses to the classes and keep as a record of your journey 

• Introduction and Welcome
• How to Approach Our Learning
• What is Kabbalah?
• Meditation/Prayer of the Holy Ari Before Learning Kabbalah (for those who wish
• Experiencing Divinity in our lives (dynamic workbook) 

Week Two: What are we?

In this lesson we will discover that our true essence is eternal.  We call our essence "the soul," or "the still small voice." It is the Divine within us. 

Our soul manifests as our impulse to kindness, our basic happiness, our creativity, our conscience. 

In this lesson we will also look at faith in the benevolence of the Creator as a dynamic way of life. We discover how faith enables us to respond to difficult events in our lives with optimism and hope, breaking the delusions fostered by the rationality of the ego.

Lesson two is made up of two main videos

• Can We Know What Our Essence Is?
• Faith
• Meditation/prayer
• Discovering our Essence (dynamic workbook)

Week Three: The One Soul that Unites us All 

In this lesson we will learn the underlying message of the story of the creation of Adam and Eve— that the Creator created only one soul. Although, following the sin of the Tree of Knowledge, this one soul fragmented into the myriad souls that make up the human community, past, present, and future, nevertheless we still together comprise the one soul of Adam.

This engenders in us the realization of our interconnectedness and the understanding that we all have a shared destiny.  In the second video of this lesson we learn about the work of the group as the first place to start in realizing our interdependence. We discover the value of mutual help in working against our inbuilt egoism.

• The One Soul that Unites Us All
• The Love of Companions
• Meditation/prayer before learning
• The One Chain of Humanity (dynamic workbook)

Week Four: Getting to Know the Creator Through Looking at Creation.

Is it important how we think about the Creator? It turns out it is. How we think about our Creator defines how we think about ourselves.  How we perceive the Divine significantly influences our behavior toward both ourselves and others

When we go inside ourselves we may find we have old images that no longer serve us. 

We also look at how we experience the  role the Creator plays in our lives. 

We follow these two videos looking at how we can build a truer connection with the Divine within us through the opposite poles of prayer and of blessing.  

Videos we will see 

• Knowing the Creator Through  what comes forth
• The Divine Providence: How we perceive God’s involvement in our lives.
• Putting the wisdom of the Torah into Practice via Prayer
• Blessings
• Making a Relationship with the Creator (dynamic workbook)

Week Five: Knowing the Purpose of Creation Helps us Co-operate With its Process

Any CEO know that if the staff understand the purpose of a project they are working on they can contribute creatively and with enthusiastically to the success of the project. 

Similarly, when we know the purpose of creation and understand the process we are involved in, we can become active partners with God instead of unwilling or unconscious participants.  Our lives transform, becoming happy and worthwhile.  

 We  examine what separates us from ourselves. from each other, and what brings us close. 

We look at the tool of self-inquiry as a practical tool to help us progress.

In this lesson we have three videos:

• The Purpose and Process of Creation
• Our Vessels (dynamic workbook)
• What separates us from ourselves and from the Creator? What brings us close?
• Self-inquiry
• Discovering Affinity of Form (dynamic workbook)

Week Six: Where Evil Comes From; The Power of Coming Back to our Soul 

In this week we ask what constitutes evil and where does it originate? Why does the Creator allow it in the world?  What purpose does it serve?  We discover we are not powerless at all, but we have a great capacity to influence not only our own small circle but beyond.

Instead of despairing when we look at our own mistakes we discover the power of restoring the Name of God within us.   This has the power to turn even our worst mistakes into powerful forces for good.

 In this lesson we have two videos:

• The Nature of Evil and Where it Originates
• We are Not Powerless (dynamic workbook)
• Restoring the Name of God Within Us 
• Restoring the Name of God within us Restores the World (dynamic workbook) 
• Meditation/prayer before learning
• Where Does Evil Come From? (dynamic workbook)

Week Seven: Body and Soul; Male and Female; Giving and Receiving

Dealing with the opposites in our lives is an especial challenge. In this lesson we look at what these opposites consist of. We explore ways whereby dealing with opposites becomes a source of strength and reconciliation, forging a new path forward.

 In this lessons you will find: 

• The Origin of Body and Soul and their Divergent Paths
• Male and Female;  Giving and Receiving; Soul and Body
• Physicality and Materialism   
• Reconciling Opposites in My Life (dynamic workshop)
• The Right Hand Line and the Left Hand Line
• Meditation/prayer before learning

Week Eight: The Torah and its Great Gift to Us

We cannot know our soul directly, neither can we know the Creator directly, but the Zohar tells us that the "Torah, the Creator, and the Soul are One."  Thus the Torah acts a gateway to both the Creator and the Soul. 

There are many garments to the Torah, in all of which resides the one light of God. We need to approach the Torah through the garment that is most suitable for us. For many of our generation, this garment is the Kabbalah. 

• The Torah as a Bridge to the Soul
• The Torah: From Concealment to Revelation
• Finding the Torah within Ourselves  (dynamic workbook) 

Week Nine: Free Will

We often find ourselves feeling that we are somehow trapped in our situations, or powerless. Learning the true boundaries of our free will, where it truly lies, releases us and allows us to make choices in line with our soul.

• The Three States of the Soul.
• The Way of Consciousness or the Way of Suffering

TWO BONUS LESSONS

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In this lesson we will look at why the actual practice of loving our neighbor as ourslelf is so important for any real progress in our spiritual lives.  It is only when we try to put the our learning  into practice that we begin to truly understand who we are. It is when we try and fail that we being to understand the true nature of our selfishly orientated being and thus we can develop a true vessel for the light of the Divine. This manifests as a deeply felt need for contact with the Creator.  

• The Mitzvot (Good Deeds)  as Opportunites
• The Mitzvot and the Incarnation of the Soul
• Loving our Neighbor as Ourselves  (dynamic workbook) 

Bonus Lesson Two: Dealing with our Thoughts

This is something we all struggle with.  In this lesson we will learn where our thoughts come from, (yes the bad ones too!) and how to handle them. We look at the difference between thought and feeling and examine which precedes which. We see how increased awareness of our thought is a key to our life.

• Are Our Thoughts Ours?
• Quieting the Mind: A Meditation from the Holy Rabbi of Piacezna, Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira