The true meaning of ten commandments eludes us in this world, and it is common to refer to them simply as God’s instructions for human morality. However, the ten commandments mean something else entirely.
The ten commandments are limitations that we apply to the use of our nature, the desire to enjoy, which in the wisdom of Kabbalah is called “Malchut.” In the language of Kabbalah, these limitations are a “Masach” (“screen”) and “Ohr Hozer” (“reflected light”) placed on Malchut, which in short means applying an intention to love, bestow and positively connect to each other and to our common source. When our desire to enjoy, Malchut, accepts these limitations, it becomes the place for the dressing of the ten Sefirot, and so it is called “the Ten Commandments.”
A commandment, which in Hebrew is “Dover,” stems from the Hebrew root of the word “utterance” (“Dibur”), which is born in the Peh (mouth) of the Partzuf (spiritual entity), known in Kabbalah as the “Peh de Rosh” (i.e., the place in our soul where we act on our decision to resemble the spiritual quality of love, bestowal and connection, and which receives the ability to love and bestow according to the strength of the intention to bestow). These actions are performed in the world of Atzilut, the highest of the spiritual worlds that is closest to the pure quality of love and bestowal, the Creator’s quality.
We receive the ten commandments only after connecting to each other “as one man with one heart” in order to rise above the raging egoistic desires that resist connection, and which make us hateful of one another. That massive egoistic quality is represented in the Bible story by Mount Sinai (“Sinai” from the Hebrew word for “hatred” [“Sinah”]). If we fail to positively connect to each other in order to rise above the ego that divides us, then we also cannot discover or observe any of the ten commandments. We have to be on a spiritual level of attainment, namely the level of “Bina,” one of the ten Sefirot which represents the pure quality of bestowal, in order to have the ear (Bina is the spiritual root of our sense of hearing) to hear the ten utterances from Mount Sinai. In other words, we need to attain a certain level of equivalence of form with the Creator in order to observe the ten commandments.
We can reach a spiritual level where we will discover and observe the ten commandments by first undergoing a preparation period in this world, where our main emphasis should be to achieve connection “as one man with one heart,” and only then will we observe the commandments. Otherwise we will lack the ability to understand them. In short, “love your neighbor as yourself” is the foundation of all spiritual attainment and ascent to a spiritual level.
Based on the first part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson on June 3, 2014, Shamati 66 “The Giving of the Torah.” Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman. Photo by Clint Adair on Unsplash.
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