Question: How is it possible to transform the desires of the general public from materialistic needs to spiritual ones?

Answer: First, we need to explain to people that in any case we are looking for inner fulfillment. Even when we just buy some object or organize something for ourselves, for a friend, or for the family, we still experience pleasure. It is possible to measure it, perhaps in the amount of means or in the form of efforts invested, but it is always in feeling.

Therefore feelings are the main thing. We work for them, make efforts, live, and raise children. These are feelings of the self, of life, of success.

Second, all of us are under the influence of an environment that obliges us to measure success in life through material attainments: a car, an apartment, clothes, a prestigious home or vacation spot. But basically all of this is required only to feel some kind of fulfillment within me. After all, a person doesn’t stuff the house, clothes, or car into himself, they bring  a feeling within himself through which he wants to be fulfilled.

So we need to create possibilities for fulfillment like these for everyone so that they will be supplied with what is necessary. Together with this, they will not suffer if others are better off, pursue something unimaginable and ephemeral, or constantly reproach themselves because the neighbor’s grass is greener.

People will feel self-satisfaction. They will be released from the influence of the masses. Someone’s external success will stop poisoning life for him, and he will stop the pursuit of unnecessary frills.

We must explain to people that a person’s ideological mechanism depends upon his feelings, and we can control them. This means that we teach everyone how to be satisfied in every situation.

I will reveal a little secret. There is no spiritual world. To the same degree that we agree completely with what is happening with us, this world becomes spiritual.

We become Hafetz Hesed, meaning we want nothing for ourselves and attain the characteristic of Bina. Through transforming this to bestowal, we attain the level of Hochma. And Hochma and Bina together give us the level of Keter, the highest level, Olam Ein Sof (the world of Infinity). So it is not the world that surrounds us that is changed, rather our feeling of the world is changed. This is because the Light is at absolute rest and everything depends only on our correction.

To a person who is entangled in his materialistic problems, we explain that in principle he can be happy every moment of his life because our sensations are desires. And if he will fulfill them in the right way (we teach him to do this), then he will be happier than the most powerful, richest, famous, and successful person in the whole world.

We give him the possibility to be fulfilled. And this is the wisdom of Kabbalah, the wisdom of fulfillment. Basically, our method amounts to this: that the moment a person begins to be satisfied with collective fulfillment instead of personal ones, he will immediately begin to feel himself in the upper world.
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From the Conversation at Sochi Convention 6/9/14

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