Question: What is Gehenna (Hell)?

Answer: Gehenna depends on how a person defines it. There are those who suppose that Gehenna is when everything that they had in this world disappears and they regret that life passed by without any benefit.

There are those who suppose that Gehenna is not here in this world from an emotional point of view: good or bad, with all kinds of observations. Rather, it waits for us in the future, after the body dies. They think that after the body dies, Gan Eden (the Garden of Eden, heaven) or Gehenna waits for them.

In Kabbalah, what is called Gehenna is the most undesirable state. Through our study and work in a group, we strive to reach a state where values are changed so that hell and heaven take on a different identity in comparison to what is conventionally accepted. Regular people think that when the body dies, some kind of door opens to hell or heaven for a person.

But is this wretched beast at fault for having died or because it was alive? This is speaking about life or death of the desire to receive in the same situation when we have free choice. This illusion that I am found in a physical body and feel this world is intentionally given so that I will leap above it and see myself as alive and existing only in a spiritual Kli (vessel) in relation to Light.

It is very good and beneficial to imagine hell Gehenna and see it in a different form all the time. When I am under the control of the desire to receive, which doesn’t let me bestow, this is called hell. Then we have such a Gehenna!
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/30/14, The Zohar

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