“How Do I Find My True Self?” (Quora)

Dr. Michael LaitmanMichael Laitman, On Quora: How do I find my true self?

Our substance or matter is a desire to receive pleasure, and our physical body is nothing more than an animal. We sometimes feel our desires through the physical body, i.e., those for food, sex and family, and sometimes through a more inner body—desires for money, honor, control and knowledge.

The first group of desires (food, sex, family), are individual desires belonging to our physical body. Our social desires for money, honor, control and knowledge follow them. They involve interaction with others, yet still differ from an even higher level of desire that we have yet to come to terms with.

The latter desire is spiritual. When it surfaces, we feel attracted to a new unknown “something,” on one hand, and that all the previous levels of desire fail to ultimately fulfill us, on the other hand.

In the wisdom of Kabbalah, the spiritual desire is called a “point in the heart.” It is characterized by questioning the meaning and purpose of our lives, why things are the way they are, what is our “true self,” and whether we can influence our fate.

The point in the heart creates new poles of positive and negative, plus and minus within us. Where we once lived, survived and thrived solely according to our individual and social desires—picturing fulfillments at levels of food, sex, family, money, honor, control and knowledge as the “positive” pole of our lives that we aspired to—when the point in the heart emerges, we naturally feel that as much as those desires can fulfill us, they cannot fulfill a deeper and more internal part of us that demands meaning and purpose. We thus feel their transient fulfillments as a “negative” or “minus” pole in relation to our newfound spiritual aspiration that demands something more meaningful.

The wisdom of Kabbalah was made for fulfilling the deeper and more inner spiritual desire. It defines the spiritual goal, the true self that we emerged from, and that we are headed toward, and it provides a method for how to attain it. By spiritually advancing using the method of Kabbalah, we learn how to simultaneously take the reins of a new positive/plus pole in reality—the spiritual quality that we can gradually attain likeness to, which is where we learn how to access our true self, the soul—as well as the negative/minus pole in reality, our constantly growing desires to receive pleasure.

By taking these reins, we learn how to create a positive/plus level, and develop our connection with our true self—the soul that is in likeness to the source of our lives—more and more above an increasing negative/minus. This adds a whole new level of depth to our perception and sensation of reality, all the way up to a point where we feel no end to our fulfillment and exist in a consciously-attained eternity and harmony.

Based on the Virtual Kabbalah Lesson with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on March 13, 2016.
Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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