Living To Escape The Question About Meaning
We are in a reality where we have developed over thousands of years. At first we were savages, not knowing what for, how, and why—real animals. Then we started having human relations with one another, formed a society, and started developing technology.
And thus, gradually, through all of these events, we are discovering a process that was goal-oriented from the onset. New facets of desire were always revealed in humanity, continuously pushing us to a new turn in our development in order to fulfill ourselves. However, once we achieved a specific state, a specific level of development, we started experiencing desires that could not be realized in our world.
Man is suddenly contemplating things that you cannot find here. Food, sex, family, money, honor, and knowledge, in different variations and combinations—this is the entire selection. It would seem: What else can there be? And yet, one sunny day, man starts having new questions: about his root and about the reason for existence. Suddenly he notices that every object has a reason, a process, and a result—a beginning, development, and end. Apparently, I am not an exception?
This question no longer belongs to the animate level, but to the human in us. Until it appeared, creatures having the form of humans did not ask about life, or if they did ask about it, then they were satisfied by different methods of self-appeasement. But we are talking about a person wishing to know, “What am I for? Why am I here? Where did I come from and where am I going?” So how can he receive answers to his questions?
First he has to uncover the actual question because it is not simple. Any person can ask it, but the entire matter here is the depth of the question, its direction. After all, a question is a vessel, a Kli.
In the end a person becomes completely confused. Besides, by our nature we aspire to self-appeasement, which we accomplish by means of all sorts of actions, customs, and habits. I do something and I feel good. So let’s establish customs that will help us receive psychological compensation and fulfillment. That is how we lull ourselves, not wishing to reveal our question in its entire depth and to use it to develop, to get down to the truth. We don’t care about the truth, but about comfort.
Stated differently, I am not happy about the emergence of this new vessel or new desire in me, which sends me off to search for something, forces me to make an analysis, and evokes inner suffering. Ideally I should be enjoying it because that’s how I develop, and development is more important than transient sensations. However, what do I need this for if I’m able to fulfill myself and dampen my ardor without it just as well? What I have is enough for me.
And soon after, I am overcome by fatigue and vexed by life’s difficulties. Old age is creeping on and a person agrees to the small instead of the great.
Thus, our problem, and a great obstacle for us lies in rising from the regular level of development to the spiritual level —the human level.
From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/6/11, Matan Torah
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I totally agree with this. I think we go through the motions everyday of what we aquire and want to obtain out of this world, cell phones, cars, vacations, salaries, positions in work and public, connections, etc. We do all of this stuff day after day and when we finally reach a point of being fullfilled, some are psychologically fullfilled with less and some more. We ask ourselves, what else out there is going to give me pleasure, because I have received pleasure from all of these corporeal things and it is not enough, what else is there? I also think many years or old age, allows us to see this eventually, even if we don’t ask that question we eventually see it at some point.
The key questions is whether or not there really is anything higher than what Rabbi Laitman calls “psychological compensation and fulfillment,” whether there really is a such a thing as what Rabbi Laitman calls “rising from the regular level of development to the spiritual level.” All the spiritualities and religions assert that these things are real, and provide means to attain them. But I guess you have to experience it to know, and yet, it seems we have the paradox that we on the outside have no way of knowing whether those who experience this higher level are just having nothing more than “psychological compensation and fulfillment” of an extraordinary kind.