A question I received: Why is it that during the period of concealment, you feel as though you’re in a dark room, receiving punches from every direction? It’s as if the Creator is waiting for you to fall into frenzy, or apathy… And all this happens in spite of all the work you’re doing in dissemination and the group. Is this, as the Russian proverb says, “Love her like your soul, punch her like a punching bag” (meaning, “those we hurt the most are often those we love the most”)?

My Answer: That’s absolutely correct, “I love her like my soul, so I punch her like a punching bag,” because your egoism has to be punched out of you, or you punched out of your egoism, so that you’ll want to part with it no matter what. The unpleasant states are precisely the states that push us out of the common egoistic swamp, to the Creator.

“The Creator spares no blows for those He loves” – this is widely explained in Kabbalah, and no Kabbalist hides the fact that “the true path to the rose is through the thorns” (through the thorns to the stars), and not through buying a fifty dollar red string or through meditating in order to relax.

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A question I received: You hold interviews with famous people who have found their place in life. They take up important positions thanks to their high level of egoism. However, you’re using their popularity to disseminate and advertise Kabbalah. I don’t understand: How can you combine Kabbalah and a person’s career? Can a person aspire to have a high position in society and study Kabbalah?

My Answer: I think that in the future, humanity will still need to work in different trades and sciences. If we do this with an intention of love, to benefit people, it will then only bring us even closer to the Creator.

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Two questions I received in response to my post “On Love”:

Question 1: When I do not feel that my relationship with my friends is based on love, is it because my attitude towards them isn’t as it should be?

My Answer: Of course, it depends only on you.

Question 2: If love is only possible between the Creator and man, how is it possible to know when the Creator is among the creatures’ relationships?

My Answer: You discover it through your love for Him.

Related Material:
* Practical Advice by Rabash

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A question I received: Looking at Bnei Baruch, it’s clear that you practice “love for thy neighbor.” However, you do so only inside your group, and not toward the whole world. Why? Isn’t that similar to a cult?

My Answer: The Kabbalists of the past, our great teachers, provide us with strict and detailed instructions on how to arrange our studies, our life, and our attitude to ourselves, our friends, society, and the world. Naturally, we study and need only their advice, because besides them, no one else understands the Creator, the world in which we live, and the path that we are to walk.

And about the accusations that we’re a cult: some people benefit from it, and are thus ready to tar our reputation in any way possible. These are especially people who feel like they’re losing their stable grounding, because they’ve discovered that regular religion is inadequate, but they are still unwilling to replace it with Kabbalah.

Today, people aren’t the simpletons they once were, and as such, the attitude displayed by our critics only shows their ignorance in understanding the Creator’s Plan, and their rejection of the Torah as the method to correct man’s egoism. Could you show me anyone, besides Bnei Baruch, who also explains the necessity of “loving thy neighbor as thyself” as the main principle of the Torah? What other society have you seen that educates people according to this principle?

As for displaying an attitude of love only for our friends – we have the same attitude to anyone who’s moving toward the same goal; this is what makes a person our friend. And as much as every person will want to move toward the same goal, then anyone who wants to will be included in this principle and in our attitude of love!

Baal HaSulam. Igeret (Letter) 49 (1927). Pri Chacham: Igrot (Fruit of Wisdom: Letters).

I am giving you assignments, obligating you to carry out all my instructions in the observance of Torah and Mitzvot [1] properly and with dedication. I direct you to dedicate all your strength to loving others as yourself, to suffer when your friend suffers, and to feel happy when your friend is happy.

As for the love between you, I am talking precisely about the love between friends in our Kabbalistic group, since it is written, “to love thy neighbor.”

[1] Baal HaSulam considers love for one’s friend, for the sake of attaining love for the Creator – to be the main precept in the observance of Torah and Mitzvot.

Filed under: Group Work, Kabbalah Study, Kabbalistic Sources, Love - 2 Comments →

A question I received: You once said: “Egoism’s growth doesn’t allow for romance. Today, romance no longer exists and it isn’t going to come back. Instead of a husband, today’s egoism demands the Creator!” Here lies a serious problem. In order to start a serious relationship with a woman, one has to as if, skip something. In the past, a man would meet a gentle and fragile girl who brought out the strength within him, and whom he wanted to take care of. These instincts kicked in automatically. Today, we don’t meet “gentle women.” The women today have turned into aggressive hunters. How does one develop a desire to fulfill a woman?

My Answer: It’s time to shift your attention to the Creator, since as you can see, women no longer need it.

Filed under: Kabbalah Study, Love, Man and Woman, The Creator, Women, Women's Spirituality - 2 Comments →

A question I received on my post Our Planet Is Only as Big as a House!: In the U.S. there are a great multitude of cultures and ethnicities living among one another. Though each is obviously interconnected and relies on a certain level of interdependency for collective survival, racism (particularly between European descendants and African descendants) is very much a strong reality here. This can be seen in the topics that repeatedly emerge in the midst of this presidential election. How does Kabbalah interpret this? What is at the spiritual roots of this corporeal tension between lighter and darker people?

My Answer: People dislike those who are different from them. This is the way our egoism is. There is a law of similarity in nature according to which similar objects are attracted to each other, regardless of their properties’ level of similarity. Only by correcting egoism, and making full use of it, will we reach the point where people will stop noticing the differences between various properties and objects. This is because the correction of egoism lies not in its elimination or replacement, but in using it differently – where everyone can express themselves to their fullest, and the only change is in the aim of their expression. Instead of aiming their expression at themselves, they aim it at our common goal of adhesion with the Creator – the quality of bestowal and love, above our nature. When such a change happens, people no longer have anything to complain about: the past opens up to them and they see that there was never anything that depended on them… they see that “love covers all sins.”

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Every person’s soul is like a mirror reflecting sunlight.

A light beam descends, reflects off a soul, and withdraws into space.

Humankind, the civilization of egoists, is like a vast mirror array, reflecting light in different directions, making a sea of chaotic light.

However, merge the reflective light beams to be as segments of one immense parabolic source, and what do you have? At first, it looks like all beams are aimed differently, but as a whole, the light beams aim a common light at a common center. Their correct merger sparks a critical temperature, brings about a new substance – plasma – and bursts into flames.

And this is how each person’s light arouses the fire of love among friends. Their unity with one another, together with their aim at a common goal, produces a new state that’s unimaginable and unreachable using our common sense: adhesion with the Creator, an ascent to the Creator’s level. Such a state is unimaginable prior to achieving it, because it’s created only when everyone unites.

According to legend, Archimedes also set enemy ships on fire by aiming polished bronze mirrors at them. His contemporaries were so stunned by this phenomenon that even today, thousands of years later, people still talk about it.

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Report: One of our newest discoveries is the ability to directly affect the heart function of millions of people! In a newly published academic paper, computer scientists in the U.S. have shown that pacemakers can be hacked. Moreover, the results of such hacking can be potentially lethal.

My Response: If only people would recognize that they have a direct impact on each other’s souls and destiny! Then how would they behave? Would they live in total fear of inflicting harm on one another, or on the contrary, would they try to inflict as much harm as possible to anyone they could? Or, would they try to reach an agreement for everyone’s safety? We still haven’t been able to recognize that we are completely dependent on one another, and as such, our only solution is to achieve absolute love! So why aren’t we discovering our mutual dependence, when it’s precisely how we are all connected? We aren’t discovering it because it would force us to love each other. Love, however, needs to be free, unconditional – independent of its outcome, return or response … Love needs to be free!

Lecture: Unconditional Love

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