Question: How can one become righteous in the family?

Answer: Make an agreement with your wife, and she will turn you into a righteous. I am speaking quite seriously. If the wife wants to, she will systematically influence her husband in every matter, in every action, and he will involuntarily correct himself.

Question: We learn that everyone goes through ascents and descents. Presumably, a woman does too. She may not always be able to influence her husband. What should be done during these moments of decline?

Answer: Of course, mutual effort is necessary here as both want to make their family correct and righteous so that their children become the same.

Therefore, go ahead and act, and you will succeed.
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From KabTV’s “Man and Women” 5/14/24

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People differ from animals in that in addition to desires for food, sex, shelter, and procreation, they also have so-called social desires for wealth, power, and knowledge, which can be satisfied at the expense of the surrounding society.

These additional social desires called the human desires of our world can be either directed toward subjugating society, suppressing it, being above it, or toward raising oneself, one’s development, in the likeness of nature, in adhesion with the environment, in connection with society for its benefit.

And here a paradox arises: when I act for the benefit of society, I begin to feel everything that is in it, inside me, and I enrich myself internally. And if I exploit people around me, then I do not rise above them, but on the contrary, being on my animal level, I suppress human qualities in them.

This is where the difference appears in what a man spends his additional desires on. He does it either to improve his corporeal life—create comfort for himself, supposedly take care of the environment, develop engineering, technology, and so on—or none of this simply matters to him.

For him, only internal development matters—how to realize himself. After all, how many years does he live on this earth? Anyway, his body will rot, his house will fall apart, etc. Why should he think about something that is transitory? He should think about the eternal! About what he can develop in himself and what he really can achieve the next stage, his eternal state, which is realized only in our world.

Precisely in contrast to his preferences: “What should I turn myself into: for the benefit of others or for their detriment? For the benefit of my animal or spiritual state? So that I reach the Creator and become similar to Him through love for my neighbor or so that I love myself and indulge myself in everything until the last moment of my life? This is the choice!

But the choice is precisely in relation to the desires that are beyond necessities. Nobody talks about how much I should eat or sleep. I should not live in a cave. I must have a family, normal food, and clothes. That is all. Nothing more is said about this. It is said: “Where are you heading other than this?”

Man’s freedom of will consists in preferring the choice of activities. This is what determines whether he is a spiritual or an earthly person.

People who strive for spirituality feel haunted by the question about the meaning of life. A person must answer it; otherwise, he feels no point in living. In other words, there is no point in using one’s qualities to become rich, powerful, or even smart. So what? I will die and that is it. Why waste my life on this?

And many do not want to. They either fall into depression, drugs, and even alcoholism, or they are still looking for a way out.

And here comes a kind of luck, a quality of fate that leads them to the method of revealing their correct realization.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. The Dead-end Path of Human Development” 1/24/12

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Question: The Midrash Rabbah says: “She went and married a wicked man, and she turned him righteous.” Why can a woman make one righteous and another wicked?

Answer: This is not really a question for me. The point is that in the end, everything depends on the woman. If she wants, she will control her husband in such a way that he will become a righteous man.

Question: Does the woman decide for herself, or does the Creator direct her this way?

Answer: We do not know that. It is not important. The main thing is that the husband sees her instructions.

Question: What if he does not see her instructions?

Answer: This means that she does not act, does not put pressure on him. Every woman can influence her man. We believe that the man is the leader in the family, that he is in charge of everything, but this is only how it seems to us.

This can be compared to a very beautiful car the appearance of which everyone admires but no one looks at the engine inside. A woman is such an engine

Question: Can a man somehow influence a woman if he also wants to become a righteous person or if they want this together?

Answer: If they want it together, then maybe. There are many different tricks here. But basically, this is the prerogative of women.

Question: So you need to adapt to “her voice”?

Answer: You cannot say that you need to adapt. That is just how life works. But if they both decided to become righteous, then mutual work certainly takes place between them.
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From KabTV’s “Man and Women” 5/14/24

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And they had no sons. He said, “We do not bring any benefit to the Creator” (Midrash Rabbah, Bereshit 17).

Question: Is it possible that if there are no sons, then we do not benefit the Creator? For example, there are two daughters in our family. Why are daughters of no use to the Creator?

Answer: They are, but not completely. You are not considered to have fulfilled the commandment “be fruitful and multiply.” But you are still young, so go ahead!

Question: Still, I want to understand what the sons bring that pleases the Creator?

Answer: According to Kabbalah, a son means a special quality, power, and a daughter is something accompanying, less important than a son.
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From KabTV’s “Man and Women” 5/14/24

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Comment: You once said that old material is not worth listening to.

My Response: No, there are very good things in the archive. It is just that in subsequent explanations, the presentation of the material becomes more professional as more precise words are found. An accessible explanation is a profession after all.

For example, Baal HaSulam had a very good, unique language—academic, precise, and polished. But in the same era, there were many great Kabbalists, such as Rav Kook, whose works no one understands despite him having written an enormous number of books.

The greatest Kabbalist Baal Shem Tov did not write a single book at all. He deliberately did not want to write. And there were many like him who could or could not write and did so better or worse. For instance, Chaim Vital, who received spiritual heritage from the Ari, eventually collected and published these works at the end of his life, and his son and grandson continued his work.

All this is done gradually because the adaptation of materials to our world is carried out according to the souls that descend here. Can you compare the people who sat before me fifteen years ago and those today? They are completely different people.
[329501]
From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Old stuff” 2/1/10

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Question: When I participate in workshops, a revelation of evil occurs in me. I see some flaws in every friend: this one says the wrong thing, that one speaks softly, this one falls asleep, etc. These are the pictures drawn in front of me. How do we act correctly in such cases?

Answer: The advice is simple: be like a small child who sits between the big ones. Open your eyes and mouth, and take it all in like that. That is the best thing to do.

Give yourself completely to the general flow. What the friends say is good. Do not criticize them, even if they speak incorrectly. Take their words as kind, good, and true: “I want the same, and I am with them.” You will see how you come out after the workshop.

Question: Is there a point in working with the evil inclination? Is the main thing to be together with everyone in the process?

Answer: Of course! What kind of evil?! The evil is only in you. And the fact that you see it in others and criticize it is how you shoot yourself in the foot.

The Creator holds these paintings in front of you so that to the contrary you will annul yourself even more and try to penetrate them. All that you see that is bad in them is all in you.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson 2/16/20, “Questions and Answers”

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Question: When I see imperfection, I pray to the Creator and instantly feel perfection. This filling of perfection simply extinguishes all my questions and queries. How do I stay in prayer all the time?

Answer: This happens because all your actions are for yourself. If they were for filling others, you would not feel fulfilled.

You would act to fill them, and you would feel the perfection of the Creator in creation, and yourself—only so that this perfection is revealed to others.

And then this state would be permanent, eternal.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson 2/16/20, “Questions and Answers”

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The Creator created one desire, which underwent development and then broke into small parts. Starting with the shattering of the common desire into separate particles, egoism arose between them, a mutual rejection from each other, and they began to feel themselves placed in our world.

All the inanimate, vegetative, animate, and human desires that we began to feel, we began to see outside of ourselves in the form of the surrounding world. Our desires for each other consist of four levels we call still, vegetative, animate, and human, or 0, 1, 2, 3, 4.

Our job is to get off the egoistic degree because by staying on it we do not even feel where we are.

Egoism initially closes us inside ourselves—each and every one. While in it we feel nothing but our world. That is the lowest, most insignificant, and most broken part of the Universe. Therefore, we do not know who we are, what we are, what we are for—absolutely nothing! Perhaps we feel overwhelmed. And then, even this truth we do not feel.

But we are given the power that develops us. Gradually, more and more upper light descends on us, the quality of bestowal, which allows us to feel the need to unite with each other.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson 2/17/20, “Preparation for the Convention”

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The Creator has made man unable to help himself. …The Creator has made the hardening of the heart, so that man will be unable to overcome the evil in him and will need the Creator. By this, man will need to be rewarded with the NRNHY of Neshama (Rabash, Article 1, 1989, “What Is the Extent of Teshuva [Repentance]?”).

The Creator did everything so that a person cannot reveal the upper world and the Creator, but one will feel a need for Him and turn to Him with a request that obliges the Creator to help him or her.

That is the “hook” that we must make. On the one hand, we yearn to attain the Creator, to reveal Him; it seems possible, and we rush forward headlong. On the other hand, we stumble, fall, make mistakes, and become increasingly convinced that we cannot do it on our own.

When a person reaches the greatest devastation, the greatest disappointment, and raises one’s hands because he realizes that one has no way to reveal the Creator, but on the other hand, a person still cannot leave it, he must comprehend Him—these are the two opposite forces, properties, sensations, and passions that begin to form in him and it is the vessel in which the Creator reveals Himself.

Thus, a desire to attain the Creator and a disappointment in the impossibility of doing it reveal within a person. Then, between these two forces, the Creator is revealed.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson 2/16/20, “Questions and Answers”

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