Question: Various events and all kinds of actions take place around you. How do you distinguish between what belongs to the material world and what belongs to the spiritual world?

Answer: Everything people do in our world beyond what is minimally necessary to sustain themselves ultimately works to their detriment. It all counts as a loss. Consequently, it returns to them in the form of all kinds of suffering. But they cannot do otherwise, because they are not yet capable of determining how they should relate to the world correctly.

Those in whom the point in the heart awakens are brought to Kabbalah. They hear all kinds of advice: “Stop wasting your time on empty pursuits in this world. Immerse yourself completely in the upper world, and deal with this world only to the extent that is necessary. Then everything will be comfortable and good.” But even this, a person does not hear.

For example, we have many students who consider themselves our friends and, supposedly Kabbalists, yet they are involved in high-level business, dealing in and earning many millions of dollars a year. They hear these things, and at the same time they do not hear them. Such is human nature.

Therefore, it takes a vast field of activity and many years before something begins to break through within a person. And even then, it depends not on the person himself, but on the surrounding society, the group, and the study, in other words, solely on the influence of the upper light upon him. Then he will hear.

Question: But how can the upper light influence a person if he is not in it?

Answer: But is he connected to it in some way, or not at all? That is the real question. Does he participate in our community through his actions, through his substantial financial support, through disseminating together with the group, or through some other form of assistance?

But if he disconnects from it and exists only nominally, merely bearing the name, then that is it, he has gone on to the next reincarnation. He will simply pass through this life to the end, live out the remainder of it, die, and then be born again. At some point, he will once more receive the “point in the heart.” It is unknown how it will pierce him, at what stage of life, or in what way.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. The Difference Between the Material and the Spiritual” 9/25/10

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