Today a person perceives life only as reception, absorption, consumption, acquisition, and attainment for himself. That is how he goes around until he gets tired of this life, retires, spends a few years in lines at health clinics, and finally dies.

But there is a possibility of raising ourselves to another level of existence: to conduct life through bestowal and not consumption. And this is not through benevolence and charity, where you help the poor monetarily, rather it is life beyond our ego. Life outside of the ego gives a feeling of anti-life, anti-death, anti-world, as it is said, “I saw an upside-down world” (Baba Batra 10b).

There exists another form of life parallel to our world. The wisdom of Kabbalah teaches us how to attain the new form of life. This is an upside down life, not within the ego, which swallows and absorbs everything into it, not within the desire to receive and enjoy, but within the desire to bestow, to love.

This is not the same egoistic love that is familiar to us in this world. Love is when I go outside of myself and am included in the desires of others and then I live within these desires without taking myself into account. A lifestyle like this is not limited by the intensity of pleasure that you can get.

This is not pleasure within the physical body, which cannot eat and drink without limit. In bestowal I am not limited by anything because I go out to others. I am not limited by the life of this biological body, but I am outside of it and that is where I feel my life.

My body remains, but it lives next to me, like a domesticated animal that lives by the side of a human. My inner part that goes out of me and is included in others is called Adam (Man). And that part of me, the biological, beastly body that remains, lives as usual. It lives out its allotted time, going to doctors until it is taken to the cemetery.

Question: But a person struggling with everyday physical problems is not interested in lofty concepts like life outside of the body?

Answer: Every person is concerned about the same questions of life and death. But even normal life is impossible to arrange today without being included in the right network, without balancing our reception and bestowal, and without connecting with each other with the right mutual connections. The wisdom of Kabbalah compels us to organize our lives this way.
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From Israeli Radio Program 103FM, 3/8/15

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The life of the group is first of all the study. But why do we have to study so much? Why do we study for so many years? The point is that it isn’t an ordinary study in order to acquire knowledge. People don’t come to the lesson in order to know more but in order to receive a portion of Light, the influence of the Upper Light that comes through the teacher.

A ladder made of 125 levels descends into our world from the world of Infinity. We are in this world and the teacher is above since otherwise he wouldn’t be a teacher. A teacher is a spiritual leader who leads us upward to the Creator. He doesn’t have to be in the world of Infinity, but he must have spiritual understanding and comprehension, having attained at least the first stages of the path and is on some spiritual height.

Then he shows us how to ascend. In our world I can find my way by myself. But in the spiritual world there is no path before me and I have no idea what to do and where to put my foot down and which way to go.

Moreover, in the spiritual world I not only don’t know how to make a step forward, but I also don’t have the power to do so. After all, this advancement is in bestowal, in giving, and how can I advance in bestowal if I don’t have this attribute at all and only have the force of receiving?

I have to receive the force of bestowal from above first, in order to bestow and to advance. I can receive this force from above only through the teacher who is the channel through which the Light from above, from the world of Infinity, flows into this world to me if I am connected to the teacher. In that case I receive the power, the knowledge, the right direction, and the support from him and can advance.

I have to advance with the friends by engaging in the study and in dissemination, but this cannot work without a teacher. Therefore, the daily lesson in which we all sit together and study is not in order to study another part of TES, or the “Introduction to the Wisdom of Kabbalah,” The Book of Zohar, or articles and letters by Baal HaSulam, but in order to connect and to receive a force through the teacher, which gradually becomes the force of advancement for the students.

If you don’t participate in the daily lesson for at least an hour every day, you won’t advance. You can do it in a different time according to the time zone of the country you live in, but it must be during the specific day the lesson took place. If you don’t have enough time to see the whole lesson, then do it for at least an hour. Without that you can forget about advancing in spirituality.

If you cannot dedicate an hour a day for the wisdom of Kabbalah, then there is no point engaging in it at all since you will only have false hopes that you are gradually advancing, but in fact you don’t advance. You should listen to the daily lesson at least an hour a day no matter how much you understand.

It cannot be that a day goes by and that you have missed a lesson. It is as if you don’t eat for a whole day. It is clearly very difficult and a person will not hold on for long that way.
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From the Convention In France “One For All And All For One,” Day One 5/9/14, Lesson 1

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Question: My acquaintances tell me that it is dangerous to study the wisdom of Kabbalah because you can go crazy. Is it true that it is so dangerous and what should one beware of in the study?

Answer: In the “Introduction to The Study of the Ten Sefirot,” the main textbook for studying the wisdom of Kabbalah, it is written that the Kabbalists intentionally spread the rumor that it is dangerous to study the wisdom of Kabbalah because they didn’t want people to come to study. So the wisdom of Kabbalah was concealed from the time of the destruction of the Beit HaMikdash (Temple) almost until our day.

This had to happen because humanity had to develop and the people of Israel had to go through exile. The exile is also detachment from the wisdom of Kabbalah, from knowledge of the system, and a sinking into darkness. So we were in darkness for 2,000 years and this myth has existed about the wisdom of Kabbalah until today. But it was spread by the Kabbalists themselves to keep people away from the wisdom of Kabbalah until its time would come.

And today everything is precisely the opposite. Just as our entire world has transformed, so has the attitude towards the wisdom of Kabbalah changed. The Kabbalists write that from our day and onward everyone must discover the wisdom of Kabbalah and see what it gives to the people of Israel. This is because we cannot solve our problems nor exist any longer without it.

So there is nothing to fear. It is possible to open the book and study, and there are plenty of books that are appropriate for beginners, men and women.

Question: So it follows that in recent years humanity has reached a stage in which the wisdom of Kabbalah must be studied by everyone? Previously this wasn’t so and there even existed a prohibition on its study. But today humanity is found in such a blind alley that the only exit from it is to learn about life existing beyond these boundaries?

Answer: It is specifically the same outlet that is revealed to us through the study of the wisdom of Kabbalah that takes us out of the blind alley in which we are now found.

Question: What do you mean by “beyond the boundaries of life”?

Answer: This is life beyond the boundaries of our corruption, a life in a corrected world. The world continues to act according to determined laws and nothing is changed other than our attitude. The wisdom of Kabbalah explains to us how to manage the forces and the network of connection between us so that everyone will be connected in the right way.

We reach such a harmony, such a unity, in the relationships between us that we discover a unique force between us that helps us rise above this life that is within the body and only for its sake. We begin to feel life on a higher level, and in this manner we go out beyond the limits of this world, this life.

Question: Doesn’t one have to be a great sage for this?

Answer: This is accessible to everyone. In our house there is a refrigerator, a stove, a microwave; do you know how they work? Even if you don’t it doesn’t keep you from using them.

In the same way there were wise Kabbalists who created the method, like a microwave. And there are ordinary people for whom it is enough only to learn to use it. Each one must learn to some degree, similar to how we need to know how a microwave works, in terms of what buttons to press and how to change its states.
[155430]
From Israeli Radio Program 103FM, 2/15/15

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Question: If I study Kabbalah, will I know about my previous incarnations and my future so as to bring a little order to my life?  Now I am living only for today, for this moment, without knowing what can happen tomorrow.

Answer: First of all, a person learns exactly with what he is given freedom of choice, what its limits are and how much he can influence his fate. He becomes aware of what awaits him in every situation and in every step. He sees two ways before him, and he has the possibility of choosing between a good way and a bad way.

A bad way is a way of suffering in which fate pushes and goads us from day to day through blows and pokes. But we have the possibility of choosing the way of Light in which we can use the forces of nature that are now concealed from us and take ourselves forward, even before the blows reach us.

The wisdom of Kabbalah teaches us to yearn for the next goal constantly, in such a way and manner that we advance more quickly than the blows that come and are rolling along behind us.

Question: Is a person ready to avoid the blows of fate?

Answer: A person is prepared to take himself out from under a blow. This can also be so for an entire people.

Question: Is it possible to understand what the next station is on your road of life, even before reaching it?

Answer: Certainly this is possible because the wisdom of Kabbalah opens and reveals before us the entire program, and with the help of the spiritual forces, we discover in what form we must connect to advance to the next stage, to pass through it smoothly and easily.

The wisdom of Kabbalah makes it possible for us to advance in life as if we had a GPS that constantly tells us what is the best way, when to turn right and when left. It reveals to a person the entire map of his past and future and generally every second in the history of humanity, not only the history of this world, but also between earthly incarnations.

Humanity has now reached a unique state in all of its history as it finds itself in a blind alley. But this is actually a good state because it ultimately obligates us to understand where we are and why this is happening. This critical situation will force us to clarify the question about the meaning of our lives. Then we will discover what we need to do and we will see what rewards we will receive in exchange.
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From Israeli Radio Program 103FM, 2/15/15

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The Torah, “Leviticus,” 25:1 –  25:5: And the Lord spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai, saying, Speak to the children of Israel and you shall say to them: You may sow your field for six years, and for six years you may prune your vineyard, and gather in its produce, But in the seventh year, the land shall have a complete rest, a Sabbath to the Lord; you shall not sow your field, nor shall you prune your vineyard. You shall not reap the aftergrowth of your harvest, and you shall not pick the grapes you had set aside [for yourself], [for] it shall be a year of rest for the land.

At first glance it seems that in the weekly section of the Torah Ba’har we are given laws that tell us how to work the land, grow crops, and cultivate the land. But if we examine this section from the perspective of our inner desires that are divided into the natures of the still nature, vegetative, animate, and speaking (the four levels of the egoistic desires), we can understand how to focus ourselves on correction in our spiritual work.

The desires on the level of still nature, for example, don’t develop or develop so slowly that they don’t feel their development during their existence, which means during a whole life cycle. The desires that keep themselves on a fixed level belong to the level of the still nature. I don’t want them to change but I have to make efforts in order to achieve that.

Let’s say I have to constantly love and care about my friends. That is, my level of interaction with them is constant and non-living because I don’t develop it. But at the same time, the level itself develops because I constantly work on its stability. It thus advances and the mutual relations with my friends change. When we remain on the level of still nature our character doesn’t change, but we ascend to an even higher level. Therefore our mutuality, love, and our incorporation in one another, the understanding we share and the support constantly change.

Question: Does that mean that the mutual relations between the friends become stronger if they rise to an even higher level?

Answer: They become stronger, but it is when I focus all my actions on keeping the stability of the nature of our mutual relations. Imagine to what extent the level of the still nature is actually alive since it belongs to me and not to the external nature that surrounds it.

Question: So what do our desires on the vegetative level vegetative symbolize? The Torah says: You may sow your field for six years, and for six years you may prune your vineyard, and gather in its produce.

Answer: This means that I process the vegetative level of the desire, which means that I include all my independent thoughts and desires in order to keep the relations with the friend in the strongest bilateral unity, in mutual guarantee.

I develop them on the next levels when I raise them from the still level to the vegetative level and then to the animate level and to the speaking level. On these levels I constantly make sure that all my actions belong to the still nature and this is how I keep the fixed level of mutual relations.

The seventh year is a very special action, which thanks to the fact that I have worked on all my six parameters (Hesed, Gevura, Tifferet, Netzach, Hod, Yesod), I receive from Above the next level of ascent.

I leap on it like a number in the counter without any additional exertion on my part. In the seventh year I don’t do anything, as everything comes to me from Above.

In other words, the still level of nature only seems like the still nature to us, since all the other levels stem from it. In order to advance I have to work with the still level first, which is symbolized by the land.

Then I have to work with the level of the vegetative on the land, in order to produce fruit to nourish myself. In order to do so I plow and sow the land with the help of a special type of the animate level (animals) that were created so that we use them in order to develop.

When we receive the fruit of the land we have to use them in order to nourish the land in the form of fertilizer. This is done either by the animate level or by the vegetative level. Then I turn them into food for the vegetative, animate, and human levels.

It turns out that the still level of nature nourishes the whole cycle, and so when I arrive at the seventh year I don’t work because Malchut connects and operates on the Returning Light (Ohr Hozer) and everything that I have done erupts from below. Thus, when I connect the work that has been done I can come in contact with the Creator.

This is the reason that the seventh year is called the year of the Creator. Everything that I have created by my exertion is poured into this year, receiving the power of the Light that raises me to the next level. I cannot rise to it by myself. When I internally fulfill all the efforts on the four types of desire, I complete the work and go on to the next level where the same thing happens but in a different quality and I undergo a totally different experience.
[155165]
From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 7/16/14

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Question: Will the fact that I correct my perception of reality help me succeed in life and be healthy?

Answer: First, it will help us understand the reason we don’t have success. This is a great achievement. However, the main thing is that by correcting our perception of reality to the right perception, we change our entire life. This is what the wisdom of Kabbalah is about. It teaches us how to discover the true reality and a new world. We don’t need anything beyond that because we discover a world of perfect bestowal, full of Light, in which we don’t lack anything.

This correction isn’t meant to change our corporeal life and help us make more money, for example, or to improve our health and our family relationships, but actually to change all of reality from one end to the other. Thanks to the change of our internal attributes, we also change the external world because the world we see is the imprint of our internal attributes.

Question: I come home and my wife begins to yell at me. What should I change inside me so that she won’t yell at me, but rather will welcome me warmly?

Answer: We must change our internal attributes. There is nothing else we should change. Then, we will feel that the same people who treated us badly before suddenly begin to treat us nicely. This is the only correction. We must let the Light work.

Question: How will my wife know that I have corrected my internal attributes?

Answer: It is only up to you. Only you determine how she will treat you. Every person determines how he feels the world. We can feel that we are in the world of Ein Sof (Infinity), the good white Light, by ascending above time and space, like Einstein dreamed. We can do that. It only depends on changing our internal attributes, which can be corrected by a special method, by the wisdom of Kabbalah. The wisdom of Kabbalah allows a person to change his attributes, and then he feels that he is in a world of absolute goodness.

 Does that mean that we learn how to pay attention only to the full half of the glass that is half empty?

Answer: It isn’t a simple psychological exercise that enables us to pay attention to positive things and disregard the negative ones. By changing our attributes, we actually change the world around us. The half empty glass is actually filled!
[155151]
From Israeli Radio Program 103FM, 2/8/15

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Baal HaSulam, “The Last Generation,” Part 2: …in fact, there is nothing more natural than coming into contact with one’s maker, for He has made nature. In fact, every creature has contact with his maker, as it is written, “The whole earth is full of His glory,” except we do not know or feel it.

Actually, one who is awarded contact with Him attains only the awareness. It is as though one has a treasure in his pocket, and he does not know it. Along comes another and lets him know what is in his pocket. Now he really has become rich.

Now when he discovers this treasure, he knows that he has ownership of this and he knows how to use it. Before, he put his hand into his pocket and he didn’t know what kind of treasure was in his possession, whereas now he discovers it in his pocket and he knows how to use it.

Question: So what is this treasure that we have in our possession without our knowing about it?

Answer: We are in a world that is concealed from us. We don’t see more than one percent of all of the reality that surrounds us. Essentially, we see only a small, compressed, and completely distorted world. We don’t pay attention to the treasure we possess.

Question: Does the wisdom of Kabbalah make it possible for me to discover this treasure?

Answer: The wisdom of Kabbalah gradually reveals the entire map to us to the degree that we can use this treasure correctly. In the meantime, only this world is revealed to us, and we are destroying it. So how is it possible to reveal more to us? The wisdom of Kabbalah explains to us where we can develop and what kind of goal we can attain.

Question: And a treasure is waiting for us at the end of the road?

Answer: We discover it gradually. Gradually we are allowed to put our hand in our pocket and use part of the treasure if we know how to use it correctly. If we learn to use it correctly with the powers and knowledge that are given to us, then they become revealed before us.
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From Israeli Radio Program 103FM, 2/15/15

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Question: I grew up in a village, and since then I have been very connected to nature. When you look at a flower or at a cloud in the sky you see that there are no questions; they dwell in tranquility and goodness in their place.

You ask yourself, “So, where am I? Why isn’t there harmony and beauty like this in my life?” Why are human beings, the most developed creatures in nature, at the same time the most miserable?

Answer: The more developed the creature, the more he suffers. Do stones suffer? Their inner force acts to hold them in that form, and that’s all. The plants already suffer, for they are developed. They require rain, sun, and warmth, they suffer from cold, and are subject to all kinds of external pressures.

However, for animals, it is even worse. They need to flee from things all the time to protect themselves and to search after food constantly. Nature doesn’t supply them with everything in abundance. They must be concerned about themselves.

For the human, as it is written, “…his hand shall be against every man, and every man’s hand against him…” (Genesis 16:12). He truly depends upon everything, although he is the most developed of all.

Question: But why is life so difficult for people? My wife works in a kindergarten and says that with every passing year, the children are more miserable. Their lives are so difficult as if already from a young age they suffer, live under constant pressure, relate to each other violently, and nowhere is there a good atmosphere, not at home and not in kindergarten. Why do we live under constant pressure?

Answer: It is to bring us to the goal of creation. We need to ask ourselves difficult questions, live difficult lives, otherwise we don’t attain it. This is especially true in our times, for at the end of the 20^th century we reached such a point in human development about which the Kabbalists spoke: Beginning from the year 1995 and on, humanity has entered the period of the coming of the Messiah. The Messiah (Mashiach) is not a person on a white donkey as many suppose. Rather, it is a force that attracts and brings us out to the next level of development.

Question: Is this the goal of creation about which you have spoken?

Answer: Yes, we need to reach the state of Adam, the level of “Man.”

Today, we live according to the beastly level and not according to the human level as we are concerned only about our bodies and how to build our nest, our home. Do we attain the meaning of life with this? All of the meaning of our existence for us is how to organize our lives, which is also what animals are engaged with.

In comparison to them, in sum, we are more complex organisms, but no more than that. We don’t become happier though this because we haven’t attained the meaning of life. We don’t know why we are born, how to live, who manages us, and what happens after our death.

Question: Is a person born to suffer?

Answer: No, it is precisely the opposite! All of the sufferings that we feel are only the force of nature pushing us to attain wholeness, harmony, happiness, and Light.

Question: Is it important to ask ourselves about the meaning of life?

Answer: Yes, because, during your lifetime in this world, you can exit to the level of the eternal world, as it is written, “You will see your world in your lifetime” (Masechet Berachot 17a).

People who begin to study the wisdom of Kabbalah reach that question, “What is the meaning of my life?” A person must ask about this! Even if everything is good with him, he asks, “So, in all of this, what am I living for?”

He wants to know why everything is arranged like this. He doesn’t have much of an answer, and he doesn’t know how to direct himself. Get up in the morning, go to work, come back home in the evening, and what else? He wants to know that it could be that a more lofty goal exists so that he can justify his existence because it is very difficult to say that I live only to provide for my family and that my children live only for this.

We already have developed to such a state where we must ask ourselves the question about the meaning of life, and find an answer for it.
[155266]
From Israeli Radio Program 103FM, 1/18/15

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Why are we living in this world?—Every child asks this question beginning around the age of five, and this is because within us is found a Reshimo (reminiscence), a spiritual gene that must be developed. It pushes us from within.

This gene, this desire, requires fulfillment, an answer to the question, “What are we living for? What is the meaning of life?” Later, we forget this question, and in our pursuit of life, we no longer return to it since we don’t have time to think about it and regard it as a useless thought.

However, we see that this question constantly draws our attention in all kinds of situations throughout our lives, and considering how many people are in despair, get divorced, need drugs, and require antidepressants, we see that in spite of everything, this question still is very strong.

This gene is planted in us because at the end of our development, our evolution, we need to reach a state in which all of us ask the question, “What are we living for?” Why live?” “What is the meaning of life?”

It is possible to ask this question in another way: “Why does nature, which is so perfect and purposeful, create a person with such great potential, but leave him without an answer to the questions of how to build one’s life,  and what to achieve in life?”

We see what tremendous wisdom is latent in every cell, in every body, in the connection between us, and we see how much information we haven’t yet discovered! However, even from what we have discovered with the help of science, we see such a wonderful wisdom hidden in all of this rich mechanism, and yet, we who are at the summit of this science, at its peak, don’t see any meaning in our lives. How is such a thing possible? Without a doubt there is a purpose to our existence, but we don’t know what it is and we need to discover it.

So, someone who asks himself about the meaning of life ultimately reaches the wisdom of Kabbalah.
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From Israeli Radio Program 103 FM, 1/18/15

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Question: I sent you a table covering the time of Queen Esther. I would like to know your opinion on the correctness of these dates.

Answer: There are almost no dates of certain events in the Kabbalistic sources. Otherwise, we would not have doubts and would have something to rely on.

The fact is that the sages do not tie themselves to earthly dates, and everything that happens in Kabbalah refers to the spiritual world, that is, a person’s inner world. Therefore, I was never interested in historical facts and dates and have not seen them in Kabbalistic books.
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