Mirach

- the home of the practical kabbalist

The Ten Steps

Step 01 - A Person's Duty in the World

The first step on any journey is to know where you are starting from - where are you now? - and know where you want to eventually be. The section on Basic Kabbalah describes our present universe and the role that mankind has to play within it - this is our starting point.

Our ultimate goal should be to more closely align ourselves with the Creator's will.

The very act of creation imposed this as a duty on mankind. The Creator's wish is that humanity should strive to achieve closeness to God. As each individual attempts to climb this steep slope towards perfection, all of creation is raised as well. However, if people use their free will to ignore this wish or decide to actively work against the Creator's desire then the whole of creation is degraded.

The first step along this path is observance of the instructions governing human behaviour laid out in the Torah. For the Jew these are the 613 precepts. For the non-Jew, we are governed by the seven Noachide Laws :

• The Noachide shall not commit idolatry
• The Noachide shall not commit blasphemy
• The Noachide shall not murder another human being
• The Noachide shall not indulge in improper sexual relations
• The Noachide shall not steal
• The Noachide shall not eat the limb of a living animal
• The Noachide shall establish courts of law

These Laws are God-given and we are obliged to observe them.

By observing these rules we are starting to align ourselves with the influences flowing from the Divine.

Paradoxically, by choosing to restrict ourselves to a regime constricted by the Noachide Laws we are actually moving towards a freedom that most people can not even begin to envisage. Much of our life is "controlled" by habit and external impositions. For example, we have to work to earn money, to eat, to have the energy to work - but how many of us actively choose to follow this cycle and how many are simply trapped in a mindless routine which has no obvious escape route.

Once we start taking control of our lives by actively choosing to follow the Noachide Laws what appears to be a never ending circle of tedium suddenly offers opportunities to exercise free will and thus develop ourselves. The ever-repeating circle becomes a never-ending spiral stretching from the depths to the heights - we have to decide which way we are going to travel!

Mirach assumes that the majority of its readers are actively working towards a higher reality and are, thus, helping to raise creation to a higher level of existence.