Question: Do you have a fear of suffering? Suppose you get sick or something else happens to you.

Answer: No, there is no fear. It is unpleasant of course, because it involves pain and disagreeable sensations; in other words, the absence of light within me is expressed in the same way as in others. There is nothing to be done about it; like everyone else, I would prefer to avoid it, but I understand where it comes from, and I do not fear it.

A Kabbalist believes that the plan of the Creator must be fulfilled, and I do everything to align myself with that plan. As for what is intended for my soul, whatever metamorphoses it is destined to undergo, it will undergo. The main thing for me is to prepare myself so that I can be with the Creator in all these transformations even if He performs very unpleasant “surgical operations” on me.

Question: Are you talking about the suffering of the physical body or inner suffering?

Answer: By “surgical,” I mean internal operations. Of course, this could include physical and physiological ones here, naturally.

When Baal HaSulam was asked: “Surely you could make it so that you do not have to suffer before death?” He answered: “I would never allow myself that.” And he indeed had a very painful death. He suffered from cancer, heart conditions, and various other ailments. He endured great suffering. He did not pass away at such an old age, he was around 70. What kind of years are those?

If a person truly understood the extent to which even these sufferings, which serve as a vessel for spirituality, move him forward, and realized that he has the capacity to rise above them, he would not remove them, he would rise above them. But what is meant here is not an ordinary person who simply suffers like a small beaten animal, but a Kabbalist.
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From KabTV’s “I Got A Call. The Sufferings of the Kabbalists.” 10/8/10

Related Material:
What Does A Kabbalist Suffer From?
How Does A Kabbalist Treat Suffering?
Suffering and the Development of the Soul

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