Two questions I received on love:

Question: What is “the suffering of love”?

My Answer: There is no love in our world. What we call love is the aspiration for pleasure, or to be fulfilled by pleasure. In other words, corporeal love is one’s attitude to that which gives one pleasure. It is measured by the degree of one’s fulfillment from the source of love.

Spiritual love works differently. It’s when a person rises above his egoism and no longer depends on it. He then begins to perceive the desires of others as his own, and unites with the entire desire that was created by the Creator (with the common soul, Adam).

Once he acquires this property of bestowal and concern for fulfilling desires outside of him, he then finds the Creator – the general quality of love, inside this common desire. In this case, “the suffering of love” is when one suffers because he still doesn’t love the Creator, or in other words – because he is not inside the property of bestowal completely.

Question: If spiritual love can only be felt toward one’s neighbor, then it is probably impossible to love those who are not part of my close environment (spiritually speaking)? And when we say “love for others” this means that we understand the egoistic nature of others and realize that these egoistic qualities are temporary?

My Answer: That is absolutely correct. But in addition, it’s also necessary to provide them with a way to become acquainted with Kabbalah in a form suitable for them, and to put it in front of them discretely, so that as soon as their “point in the heart” (a desire for something other than this world) will surface, they can immediately discover the means to fulfill it.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Don’t Look for Love In This World
Laitman.com Post: Love Your Neighbor As Yourself – That’s Your Reward!
Laitman.com Post: Spiritual Labor Pains and the Future of Kabbalah (Advanced)
Lecture: Unconditional Love
Chapter from The Kabbalah Experience: “Spiritual Work”

Filed under: Crisis, Economy, Love, Mutual Guarantee, Prayer and Intention, Q&A - No Comments →

Questions I received on pity, being judgmental, dreams, and the love of fairy tales:

Question: Why do we feel pity for puppies, kittens, elderly people, the crippled, and so on? What is pity?

My Answer: Always start at the beginning, from the initial premise – we are egoists. Therefore, our pity is egoistic. It’s one’s sensation of suffering, or the fear of suffering.

Question: I often get into the situation where the minute I’m judgmental of someone and say “I would never do what they did,” things suddenly take a turn so that I end up doing exactly what I thought I’d never do. When I’m judgmental of others, I end up in the same situation as them.

My Answer: It is written: “Don’t judge others until you are in their place.” You are being shown who you really are. You should learn about yourself from others, since you only notice all the negative things in them because you also have the same properties.

Question: Dear Rav, what happens to the thoughts, desires, and especially the will during the hours when the physical body rests?

My Answer: They are uploaded into the system in one’s brain that sorts them, and then into one’s memory. At this time one may experience them in the form of dreams, which are removed from reality and therefore the situations in them are fantastical.

Question: Are there people who meet and stay together forever? Does one have to realize something very important to deserve such happiness?

My Answer: We are becoming more and more egoistic. In our time people are realizing their inability to love and be faithful. This is happening so we will realize that it’s necessary to correct egoism, and then we will deserve happiness. Two people with a well developed egoism can meet and stay together forever only in our dreams.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: A Woman Can Love Others – Egoistically
Laitman.com Post: What Is Pain, and How Can We Stop Feeling It All the Time?
Laitman.com Post: Are Dreams the Life of the Soul?
Talk: Perception of Reality
Chapter from the Booklet “Relationships”: Concerning Love

Filed under: Kabbalah Study, Love, Perception, Spiritual Work - No Comments →

A question I received: You said that men are polygamous by nature and are always looking for new sensations. In the past every man had several wives, and he would buy a new wife whenever he wanted one. There was no love involved in this, and sometimes men and women did not even know each other before being married. This is also the reason why men today cheat, get divorced, and find new wives.

On the other hand, you speak about spiritual marriage – man, woman, and the Shechina between them. How is it possible to attain the presence of the Creator between a man and a woman in the spiritual marriage if the modern man always needs new experiences with different women (today this is called cheating).

This is very painful and difficult to accept. Please help us, women, understand men’s behavior. Why is it so difficult for us to accept the fact that men are always attracted to other women? Do men do this because of some anomaly? Or is it just natural for them to constantly need new women, and it’s us, women, who are so uncorrected that we simply cannot understand their needs?

My Answer: This is the curse of egoism, which we fell into from the spiritual level. God said to the woman: “Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.” So my advice to you is: Don’t look for truth, justice, loyalty, and love in marital relationships. They aren’t there from the beginning, and they can’t be there – the Torah warns you of this. Quit trying to resolve the mess in the physical world, and instead aspire toward correction. As a result of it, your relationships will be corrected as well.

You have to understand that egoistic nature cannot be changed, and everyone suffers from it until they rise above it. You should transfer your worries from the corporeal level to the level where you realize “Why did the Creator do this?” It is in order to push you toward correction!

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Polygamy – a Matter of Culture
Kabbalah Today Article: ” Man, Woman and the Snake Between Them”
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Article: “The Spiritual Root of Cheating”

Filed under: Body and Soul, Crisis, Economy, Internet, Love, Q&A, Spiritual Work - 2 Comments →

A question I received: What do you think about disseminating Kabbalah to the masses through Christianity and Islam? Applying the method of Kabbalah to the study of the Gospel yields tremendous results. You begin to understand that you’re not reading fairytales about magic tricks, but about attempts to change something in the spiritual world, and you want to explain this to everyone who doesn’t yet know or understand it. I think that you should explain this to your Christian students, especially since the Old Testament is a major part of the Bible. Once they understand this, once they feel the bliss of true attainment without having to be detached from their culture and religion, then perhaps they will take it even further.

My Answer: Religion is not connected to Kabbalah in any way, but is actually opposite to it. Religion was given to humanity to be a framework for life in the time of darkness, before the revelation of Kabbalah. And this is why religion is dying out in our times, although this process is lengthy and it’s possible that there will still be religious wars in the future.

We do not approach religious Jews, and we disseminate Kabbalah only among the secular public. There’s nothing new about showing religious people that the Torah contains a deeper meaning. However, they’re not interested in this, because it knocks out the foundation of their faith – the egoistic principle of our world, “Do certain actions and you’ll receive a reward.”

Kabbalah, on the other hand, contradicts egoism, and tells you that you won’t receive anything for your actions (you won’t receive anything into your egoism, that is). Your entire reward lies in being corrected by the Upper Light, in loving your neighbor as yourself.

This is something you can only say to people who have already gone through all the egoistic desires and have a “point in the heart” – the desire for the Creator or the meaning of life. People who are still satisfied by faith do not have a “point in the heart” yet, and therefore we cannot talk to them for now. Kabbalah reveals the law of spiritual development to a person, but this development can only happen when it’s free and non-coercive – and that’s another aspect that’s fundamentally opposite to religion.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Where Is Jesus Christ In Kabbalah?
Laitman.com Post: Religion and Kabbalah Are Opposite
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Filed under: Crisis, Egoism, Health, Love, Q&A, Spiritual Work - 1 Comment →

Two questions I received on whether spiritual correction requires observance of physical rituals:

Question: You say that it’s possible to attain spiritual correction without physically observing the commandments of Judaism. Maybe you’re just saying this out of your concern for Kabbalah’s dissemination around the world? Or maybe what you really mean is that people can’t understand these commandments by simply reading them? If you can’t publish the answer on the blog, I would like to receive a private answer.

My Answer: The Creator created the will to receive pleasure with an intention “for one’s own sake,” and this is how we find ourselves in this world. We were created this way in order to correct our intention to “for the sake of the neighbor or the Creator,” on all of our 613 desires. This correction happens under the influence of the Upper Light, Ohr Makif, which descends during the study of Kabbalah.

This bears no relation to the observance of religious rituals. A person can attain correction and spiritual attainment without physically observing the commandments, or rather – the traditions. This is true for both Jews and the nations of the world. Moreover, every person can keep his religion, because religion is no more than a nation’s cultural framework. Kabbalah only teaches us about the intention “for the sake of the neighbor,” how to love and bestow to others – and nothing else.

Question: You’re all about spirituality and the love revolution. But what about connecting the root with the branch? After all, the still, vegetative, and animate levels are also levels of the will to receive. You always speak about the internality without any externality, and this confuses me. Baal HaSulam writes at the end of the “Introduction to the Book of Zohar” that the internality should be preferred over the externality. But it looks like Bnei Baruch gives 100% of their attention to the internality, and 0% to the externality! This is difficult and confusing. Why not make a small change and pay a little more attention to the externality? Why not combine both parts? Dedicate 90% of your attention to the internality, and 10% to the externality. This will really help everyone! What do you think?

My Answer: We at Bnei Baruch actually do this – we follow the traditions. But do you really think that all the people in the world – who are now approaching correction – have to observe the physical commandments of Judaism, even if it isn’t their tradition? In the article “The Future Generation” Baal HaSulam writes that every person can keep his religion!

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Religion and Kabbalah Are Opposite
Laitman.com Post: Look Forward, Only Forward
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Filed under: Baal HaSulam, Egoism, Love, Perception, Q&A, Quora, Spiritual Work - No Comments →

I had a conversation that was recorded on the topic of love. I spoke with Oren Levi, manager of our Hebrew publishing department.

We analyzed how the spiritual property of the Creator, “love for creation,” is expressed in action – “bestowal and fulfillment.” However, since creation is egoistic and opposite to the Creator, it interprets this as love for fulfillment and reception. Creation aspires to use and humiliate others, in order to feel more fulfilled than them. In other words, its love manifests in a completely opposite form than the spiritual quality of “love,” yet we refer to both of them with the same word, according to the law of “root and consequence.”

However, when creation attains equivalence of form with the Creator (when it acquires the aspiration toward the property – “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” which is attained only through the influence of the Upper Light that descends during the study of Kabbalah), it begins to comprehend the true meaning of the Torah’s words and of Kabbalistic notions, including “bestowal” and “love.”

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Is It Possible to Love Everyone?
Laitman.com Post: Love Thy Neighbor as Yourself
Laitman.com Post: Does the Creator Have Feelings?
Laitman.com Post: On the Revelation of Godliness
Laitman.com Post: Love Her Like Your Soul, Punch Her Like a Punching Bag
Laitman.com Post: Love Covers All Sins
Laitman.com Post: On Love
Lesson: Unconditional Love
Kabbalah Today Article: Love, Love, Love
Kabbalah Today Article: Love, Deciphered

Filed under: Crisis, Economy, Love, Spiritual Work - No Comments →

Two questions I received on handling relationships

Question: What do I need to do to stop seeing only those things that separate me from other people? It is difficult for me to see the good deeds that people do; I get stuck on their bad deeds, even though I realize that this disconnects me from my friends in the group. I must mention that this mainly happens in relation to men, including my husband. Even though this also happens with women, but when it comes to women I manage to find balance. What should I do?

Question: In one of your talks about relationships, you said that when a couple has a disagreement about something, the best thing to do is keep quiet and not argue, and this silence will lead to a new understanding of one another and a new level in your relationship. You will also set an example for your partner. Can you please talk about this some more? This is a sore spot in my relationship, and I think that there are many couples going through this.

My Answer: Staying silent in an argument, compromising, causes your partner to react in the same way. Compromising leads to union and understanding, an understanding that we need to unite over our egoism. In such a way, we develop respect for one another, even for each other’s weaknesses, and understanding of each other’s nature, and this, in turn, leads to love, regardless of the obvious uncorrected properties of each partner. It says in King David’s Psalms: “Love covers all sins!” That is, the sins still remain, but the two of you learn to rise over them and unite there.

Related Material:
Article: Relationships – The Purpose of Creation
Article: Relationships – Man and Woman
Article: Relationships – A Woman’s Nature
Article: Relationships – Family
Article: Relationships – Upbringing
Article: Relationships – Concerning Love

Filed under: Education, Egoism, Love, Spiritual Work - 1 Comment →

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.

Filed under: Kabbalah Study, Love, Perception, Q&A - No Comments →

A question I received: Whenever I recommend Kabbalah to someone, I do it on the basis of my personal sensations and experience. I feel a loss for words because I’m talking about sensations that can’t be put into words. The more I study, the more I realize that this is such an intimate path, and that this inner path can only be explored by someone asking “What’s the meaning of my life?” – one who has come to strongly feel that there’s no fulfillment in the material world. I find my meaning only from sensing clearly that this world has nothing more to offer. So how can I spread this to the entire world?

My Answer: Many people feel that the world has nothing more to offer them, so help them!

(Continuing the question) I think that the only thing I can do is give people the exalted words of Kabbalists, and nothing more than this – that they’ll touch whoever they touch. I understand that this is something we need to do, but I don’t know what to do about not being able to say anything about it.

My Answer: Imagine that you’re speaking to the person’s point in the heart, their desire for spirituality.

Another question I received on the topic of dissemination: I understand the “top of the pyramid” concept, where the smallest minority of people in the world have the highest quality of desires, i.e. those for spirituality. But at the same time, all the other levels of the pyramid are needed too. So what is the purpose of dissemination? Is it only for personal progress past the Machsom?

My Answer: In our era, personal progress is impossible without all souls moving toward unity as one whole. The entire pyramid has to be pulled upward. When you acquire the property of love and bestowal, then you disseminate for the sake of those whom you love.

Filed under: Dissemination, Kabbalah Dissemination, Love, Q&A - No Comments →

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

Filed under: Kabbalah Study, Love, Q&A, Rabash - 2 Comments →