Question: Does the feeling of happiness come only after feeling misery?
Answer: Unfortunately, this is so. A feeling of happiness [1] can be built only on a prior feeling of misery. That is also what is said in the Torah: “And it was evening and it was morning, one day” (Genesis 1:5). Everything begins from evening and from night because without feeling bad, you don’t understand what good is. We were created, and so we can attain something only through the contrast between light and darkness and other mutually opposite states.
Therefore, only a wise person, already wise in life experience, understands it is necessary to go through states opposite to happiness, so that the misery will help us feel happiness. It happens this way only in our world. In spirituality it is enough for us to gradually to begin to clarify between us how much we are separated and opposite in our material egoism in order to build spiritual states above it.
What this means is that we don’t need to experience negative spiritual states. It is enough to feel negative physical states—poor communication between us, material hatred, and other ugly relationships between each other—to build the correct spiritual states together.
We are in such a unique state here, seemingly not in our world, and we clarify all the bad qualities in our world through this. Above them, we can build the upper world [2] without entering into its negative states.
The negative states of the upper world are called Klipot (impure forces). We do not have to enter them. We have enough in this world to build above it. So all of our material development in this world is given to us to build the upper world above it.
Question: To feel a higher level of happiness, must we feel total suffering [3]?
Answer: We don’t need to feel negative spiritual states to attain positive spiritual states. We constantly need to rise from this world. All problems are solved and can only be solved on condition that one makes the right connection in a group. If you are feeling bad states, fall into them and cannot do anything with them, the only option is to become integrated into a group. If you don’t become integrated with it, you will suffer anyway. You will fall and your fall and suffering will be uncontrolled.
[194300]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 6/19/16
Related Material:
What Is Happiness? [1]
My Economics Of Happiness [4]
The Main Problem Of Humanity: Lack Of Happiness [5]