Malkuth | מלכות
The Qlifa of Malkuth is to believe that only the physical, matter, exists, and this is a widespread belief today. And this is not only on the level of substance, but also on the level of values: The material occupies the first place in the hierarchy of values and economic reason is invoked as absolute. There are many who, when they hear about the illusion of the physical, think that they have overcome it because they claim to believe that there is some kind of beyond. But if those same people who discuss being called materialists behave in their objectives, worldview and concrete actions as if nothing else exists but the physical, then they have not existentially overcome the illusion.
This illusion paralyzes the spiritual life. Devoid of "soul" man is nothing but what he possesses and the greater the number of possessions the more objective value is achieved. One tends to the accumulation of possessions. And so, avarice or greed is the first vice that corresponds to Malkuth.
But the above should not be understood as a plea against matter or the corporeal. Anti-materialism or spiritualism to the extreme participates in the same illusion of the physical, only in reverse: from giving all value to the material, we go on to deny it any kind of validity. It is necessary to see if behind it does not hide some form of escapism to avoid conflicts, because the spiritual also has its pathologies. To consider the material as intrinsically bad or sinful is illogical and also a denial of the Divine in the last instance.
To put the material in its place it is necessary to exercise much discrimination, the quality of Malkuth. The physical plane carries much weight, it is compelling. In Malkuth nothing appears as it is, it is a plane of concealment. The very matter that seems so solid to us is mostly emptiness. To discriminate is to distinguish, to differentiate (good from bad, true from false, appearance from real, cause from effect). It's all very mixed up. It is clear that a good dose of discrimination is necessary to be able to take control of our evolution, and not to let ourselves be constantly carried away by the forces of habit and propaganda.
Illusions have gross aspects, easier to detect, and other subtle ones. If only the physical is valuable, we will want to accumulate. A vicious circle is created: the hoarding of material goods makes the illusion of the physical even stronger. The subtle aspect of greed can be related to the accumulation of knowledge, academic degrees, experiences, relationships... these aspects being more related to "quantity" than to integration in one's being to produce an evolution. Both gross and subtle factors have in common that the person's energy is put into the conquest of something external to the being.
Spiritual experience is the Vision of the Holy Guardian Angel, the opening to the spiritual dimension. It is putting Malkuth into perspective: there is a spiritual power guiding and directing me. Realizing that makes one overcome the physical and helps to understand that the material plane is there to learn, to have experiences that favor the development of spiritual qualities. For this, a good dose of discrimination is necessary.
Everything material, being denser, has a great deal of inertia, understood as the resistance to move, to change habits in a stagnant life. Physical systems are closed systems that, once constituted, tend to automatically repeat patterns. We all know how hard it is to break the force of habit, and also how difficult it is to start things and the resistance that must be overcome.
The antidote to overcome inertia is to apply discipline. Without it, the enormous force of gravity of the physical ends up engulfing, like a black hole, all good intentions. Also, to know when and where to discipline oneself, it is necessary to discriminate goals and paths or techniques. Discipline must be applied with common sense, since it is a means to an end.
The way to discrimination is to keep silent, the command of Malkuth. To learn, it is sometimes necessary to know how to be silent before the facts of life, to observe, to let things speak for themselves, questioning conventional theories and points of view, no matter how socially accepted they may be. And this also applies to oneself. To overcome the specific weight of the physical, to open oneself to an inner dimension, to turn inward, it is necessary to learn to recollect oneself, to isolate oneself and to keep a receptive silence. This is a sine qua non condition for the spiritual to manifest itself.
The commandment of this Sefira is "thou shalt not covet". Coveting makes one be in lack and generates frustration. The commandment asks not to measure oneself by what others have or are, but to discern one's own goals. "Let do and do your own thing" is a good maxim. The commandment is not a call to conformism, in the sense of consecrating an existing social order (not inspired, by the way, by spiritual values, among which are solidarity and justice) or to pretend that we do not aspire to have more for ourselves, if this favors spiritual development. Rather, the commandment is a call to discern the meaning of one's own life, leaving others to live theirs according to their own coordinates. It is necessary to discriminate one's own objectives and to set in motion to achieve them through personal effort. If we look at ourselves in the mirror of what others have, we will find ourselves in a state of absence, and that is the door to negativity, because inner fullness (the opposite of emptiness) is the characteristic of the divine.
When a being is identified with Malkuth he is like a child who only wants to receive.
The sanctification of matter is the true virtue of Malkuth. Matter does not exist simply to accumulate it, but to develop with it some ethical modification of reality and to be happy with what one has.
What good are my possessions to me, and my money? All this physical world will remain for our heirs and, in turn, they will accumulate for their heirs. In the end, we accumulate for no one because even our heirs will die. All our structural finiteness (our death) makes excessive material accumulation relative. We cannot accumulate to feel secure or to feel great in front of others. The virtue of Malkuth is to achieve the awareness that I can help a lot with very little.
Tikum olam is the rectification of the world: how can I rectify this world even partially? If I help a person with his food, by providing him with a job, by creating a school, etc. I do not help, then, for my own personal exaltation or to elevate the negativity of my personal ego, but I help to fulfill the meaning for which that wealth was given to me, to fulfill a special ethical function.
It is said that the divinity grants wealth to the rich in matter, to know how he will use it, and that it grants poverty to the poor to know, also, what use he will make of it. Each one does not necessarily have what he deserves, but he possesses materially according to what he is going to do in the ethical transformation of this world to achieve redemption. If matter does not have a messianic relationship as a function, that is, if matter does not act for the ethical transformation of people, it is disconnected from its energetic essence and, therefore, tends to disappear. Matter, as concentrated energy, is gathered in a dense point to be used in the right way.
Who can take their money to the grave? Many times, material accumulation bears an imaginary relation to our own immortality.
Now, we have the Qlifa of Malkuth by excess, as in the case of materialism, but we also have the Qlifa of Malkuth by default. This is the case with the shirker of matter. Radical spiritualism demonstrates the strength of materialism. The radical spiritualist who runs away from material reality, what he does is to conclude that all matter is bad by itself. Matter controls the materialist, because the materialist wants to dominate matter and, in reality, it is matter that dominates him. In the case of the spiritualist (not the spiritual man) matter also controls him, because the spiritualist wants to flee from matter, and this flight demonstrates the force that matter has over himself, because the spiritualist does not have the capacity to balance himself against the material factor.
The materialist has an unbalanced relationship with matter, as does the radical spiritualist. For as we have mentioned, the use of matter may be right or wrong, but matter is not essentially negative.