Question: By what can a person determine his state?

Answer: A person cannot assign a definition to his own state. He is not the master of his states. He is only capable of discerning the state he is in, measuring it, and evaluating it.

He can evaluate his state according to the degree to which the Creator is revealed to him. For example, I feel bad. I am immersed in evil, completely absorbed in it. I have nothing in my life. Who am I? What am I? I do not know. I simply feel bad.

Then, suddenly, I remember that although I truly feel bad, this state is necessary because I am going through a certain process, and there is a purpose in my being in it.

Having passed through this bad state, I take a lesson from it, and through that I become worthy of knowing the good. It is precisely in this bad state, in this evil, that I begin to understand more and discern more.

Then, when I enter a good state, I will be able to understand that evil and speak about it from an entirely different perspective. The greater the contrast between the bad and the good states, the more I come to know. The greater the confusion, the greater the understanding and attainment that follow.

So what determines the state I am in? It is determined by the extent to which the Creator is revealed to me within that state. If He is revealed to me just a little more, then, despite the fact that I still feel bad, I open the book Shamati and begin to understand that this is not such a terrible state after all. It is simply a stage on the path that I must go through. Then the state is no longer so bad. It is unpleasant in sensation, but favorable for spiritual advancement.

For example, I am building a house. A shipment of concrete blocks has arrived, and I have to carry them up to the second floor. What do you focus on, the hard work itself or what will ultimately come from it? If you see the goal, then carrying the blocks is not so difficult. But if you look only at the state that you are in now, as an ordinary laborer rather than the owner of the future house, then, naturally, carrying the blocks feels like hard labor.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/20/26, Rabash, “The Creator and Israel Went into Exile”

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