Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Does everyone have bad thoughts?“

Everything that awakens within us stems from the upper force of bestowal and love in nature that creates and sustains reality, which in Kabbalah is called “the Creator.”

However, we receive awakenings in our egos and they thus becomes revealed as the opposite form of what was sent from the upper force.

How does this work? The upper force is absolute altruism, constantly bestowing pleasure and delight upon us, but we receive that influence in broken egoistic desires that wish to enjoy for self-benefit alone.

The egoistic desires receive everything that comes from the perfect upper force, actualizing that influence in an opposite and negative manner.

That is why, unfortunately, we all have bad thoughts and bad desires, and we will continue having bad thoughts and bad desires until we correct ourselves.

What does it mean to “correct ourselves”? It means that we invert the intention upon our desires so that instead of wishing to enjoy for self-benefit alone at the expense of others and nature, we would instead wish to benefit others and nature over our own personal egoistic benefit.

When we correct ourselves, we would come to feel ourselves as existing in a single whole with everyone and everything in nature, and we would thus be happy to serve and act for the benefit of that whole as if it were our great self.

Based on “Ask the Kabbalist” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on August 7, 2008. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Why is there so much confusion in the world?“

A new desire is emerging in humanity today.

It is appearing in more and more people, but only as a seed of a desire, not a fully clarified one.

What is this desire for? It is a tiny spark of a desire for a state of absolute love, bestowal and connection.

As a result of the emergence of this new desire, confusion is rising due to people not knowing how to fulfill it.

Unlike the desires that developed within us to date, i.e., corporeal desires for food, sex, family, money, honor, control and knowledge, there are no examples in our midst of how to fulfill the new desire emerging in us. It is because this new desire is not corporeal, but spiritual, and it requires a shift in how we perceive and sense reality.

What shift in perception and sensation do we need in order to realize this new desire emerging in us?

Our natural inborn egoistic desires make us want to receive maximum benefit for ourselves alone. They constantly try to absorb fulfillments into themselves. That is our clear inner self-organization through which we currently relate to the world. Instinctively, at every moment, we try to receive the most fulfillment possible, and we act in a way that our inner system considers necessary and most beneficial for ourselves at any given moment.

In our egoism, we more or less know how to work with others by pushing for what we want to receive, to take and to give, pay and buy, and so on. We interact with each other in such a way using a wide variety of means: guile, deception and politics, to name just a few. In our world, we know how to act despite all the venality and lies that we grow up with.

Now, however, another condition, force and quality emerges, a new desire that we previously did not feel: a tiny point of a desire for love, bestowal and connection.

Such a desire is rooted in nature itself, which at its core is a desire to love and to bestow. In other words, love is the base law of nature. Likewise, the more we develop today, the more we experience nature’s rawest form drawing closer to revealing itself to us.

What is the expression of nature’s rawest form drawing closer to revealing itself to us? It is that we start finding ourselves becoming more and more complexly interconnected and interdependent globally.

That is how nature’s quality of love, bestowal and connection manifests itself in the corporeal world: in addition to the egoistic force, there is also an altruistic force, and it increasingly reveals itself to us through our becoming globally interconnected and interdependent. Likewise, until we shift our attitudes to each other from egoistic to altruistic, then we will feel more and more confusion enter our lives like a dark cloud increasingly descending upon us.
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Based on KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Internal Work” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on September 3, 2011. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
Photo by Martin Fu on Unsplash.

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Question: How do you determine who has a point in the heart and who does not?

Answer: As a rule, if a person has a point in his heart, he does not leave us. He cannot leave!

But if it is still in a minimal, undeveloped form in a person, then he must somehow lead himself through several circles of development: in business, in religion, in some other society. But if this is a normal point in the heart, he will not leave us because it will not receive nutrition anywhere else.

It all depends on what the point in the heart requires, because it is the highest, most ardent desire. It requires a source of nutrition—someone who will feed it and fill its desire. A person can only find it here; therefore, he will not leave. But only a small number of people are classified as individuals with a point in their heart. In any case there cannot be many of them.

Question: How do you determine the presence of a point in the heart? Do you look at a person and understand that this one has a point in his heart and that one does not?

Answer: Yes. But this still does not mean anything because a lot depends on the person himself: the way he can realize himself, join the group, find contact with me and with the books.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Determining The Point In The Heart” 10/17/11

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Why is the path to truth difficult? Is it necessary to seek the truth? Why?“

Finally in this dull, secluded village to find him gone. In the ramshackle hut by the fire sat true.
He had never seen a more old and ugly women.
– You – Really?
Old, wrinkled hag nodded solemnly.
– Tell me, I have to tell the world? What kind of message to convey?
Old woman spat into the fire and said:
– Tell them that I am young and beautiful! – Robert Tompkins, “In Search of Truth.”

This allegory states that we seek the truth, and if it is the truth, it can often appear as an old hag, while if it is a lie, then it seems beautiful. And so the question emerges: is it really necessary to seek the truth?

Yes, we need to seek and strive for the truth. The truth could indeed be very ugly, but it is the sole higher truth, above everything, and this makes it unique and worthwhile.

Can the truth be beautiful? If we see it as such, then it is a sign of blurry vision on our behalf, that we cannot see normally and we simply sell ourselves to it.

When, then, do we feel the truth? In order to feel the truth, we need to rise above and detach from our inborn egoistic qualities, which make us wish to enjoy for self-benefit at the expense of others and nature. We can then draw closer to the truth, discover it, and what we find would be our only truth.

Rising above our inborn egoistic qualities means rising above our ideas of ugly and beautiful, and where we will evaluate what we find enjoyable and unenjoyable according to completely different values.

In our egoistic desires, “enjoyable” is that which momentary fills us with pleasure for self-benefit alone, and “unenjoyable” is when we cannot receive the pleasure that we wish for ourselves. The different values that we can discover above our egoistic desires are the contrary: that “enjoyable” becomes the ability to give contentment to others and nature, and “unenjoyable” is that we do not or cannot give contentment to others and nature.

How, then, can we accept the truth?

We need to rise above ourselves in order to view the world from a higher level. We then need to understand what we seek, where we are and where this truth we seek should be.

Likewise, we require much courage to seek and not deviate from the path to truth. According to our egoistic nature, we run away from such a search, and we thus need to feel a certain compulsion in order to embark on the path of truth, and to stay directed at it.

And what truth do we seek?

It is the meaning of life.

We can discover, achieve, reveal, understand, evaluate and feel the meaning of life if we rise above ourselves.

What does it mean, to “rise above ourselves”? It means first that we stop evaluating everything based on our personal tastes and understandings, the myriad evaluative systems we have in our egoistic intellect and sensation.

The difficulty in achieving the truth is thus due to the need to rise above our very selves, the “I” of the person. If we fail to do so, then we will always be under the thumb of our egoistic desires, which feed us with constant lies and which hold us at an infinite distance from the truth.

Yet despite the incredible difficulty in attaining the truth, more and more people feel an attraction to it and are willing to undergo various searches and efforts in order to find it. We have to be prepared for the fact that the truth is an old ugly hag though, according to the above allegory. And we can agree to that precisely because it is the truth.
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Based on KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Semion Vinokur on July 17, 2023. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
Photo by Sinitta Leunen on Unsplash.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Does love require constant work to keep it fresh?“

There is a saying in the wisdom of Kabbalah that “our whole work is to discover love among us each and every day.”

Love is the general inclusive force of nature, and it is written that reaching the love of others as ourselves “is the greatest rule of the Torah” (see Kabbalist Yehuda Ashlag, “Matan Torah [The Giving of the Torah]”).

Today, in the age of globalization, we are discovering our global interconnectedness and interdependence. The force of love is bringing us closer together from the side of nature, but we are opposite to it, in a state of hatred toward one another. In other words, nature is an altruistic force and our nature is egoistic, a desire for self-benefit at the expense of others and nature. We are thus opposite to nature, and such an opposition is the cause of our every problem.

Our main problem is a lack of love. In love, we discover a life of eternity and perfection.

So why do we have to work for love? Doesn’t everybody already want love?

Indeed, we all have a desire to feel love, but how do we realize it not in a transient and involuntary way, which is how we generally feel love in our world, but in a way where we can grow the love? We realize it by inviting the force of love that dwells abundantly in nature into our connections. About drawing the force of love into our lives, it is written that “I created the evil inclination, I created the Torah as a spice, because the light in it reforms.”

The light is the force of love that can enter our lives and correct our intentions so that we genuinely want to love others as ourselves. The more we connect to sources that explain the foundations of nature—both human nature and the general inclusive nature—how we can attract the force of love in nature into our connections, and by doing so, achieve a happy and harmonious life the world over, then the more we attract the force of light and it works on correcting us.

Based on “Ask the Kabbalist” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on August 28, 2008. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
Photo by CHUTTERSNAP on Unsplash.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Why is the Rosh Hashanah important?“

Before discussing the importance of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, it is important to understand that the Jewish holidays are not the tradition of one particular nation or people. They are rather symbols of unique spiritual states where we attain a common quality of love and bestowal in higher levels of our connection among each other and with nature.

If we attain a certain level of unity that is latent in nature, then we celebrate such an event. When we rise a little further to the next level of connection among each other and with nature, then we again attain a new degree of a unified perception and sensation of nature, and celebrate such an event.

Our own decision making plays no role in determining the holidays. Instead, we celebrate the attainment of certain levels of equivalence of form that are omnipresent in nature. We thus cannot change these holidays.

Nature is an interconnected and interdependent network of altruistic forces. It is a unified system where its every part is completely interlinked. We humans, on the other hand, are the only parts of nature that oppose and resist it with our egoistic desire to benefit ourselves at the expense of others and nature.

If we—humanity or at least a critical mass within humanity—will start undergoing a process of changing our egoistic quality into an altruistic one that is similar to nature’s, then we will approach nature’s unified form.

A key step in such a process is called “recognition of evil.” It means that we need to first reach a recognition of our inborn egoistic nature holding us back from experiencing the wholeness that exists in nature. In order to then change our egoistic nature into an altruistic one that is similar to nature’s force of love and bestowal, we require a deep inner scrutiny, which is called “prayer.” In Hebrew, to pray (“Lehitpalel”) means to “incriminate” (“Lehapil”) oneself. That is, we must incriminate ourselves, and such a confession leading up to Rosh Hashanah is called “the month of Elul.”

During such a scrutiny, we view our current low egoistic state in comparison to the exalted and whole altruistic state of love, bestowal and connection, which we wish to reach. The immense chasm between those two states give rise to a prayer, where we judge ourselves and express a great desire to change our egoistic intention into an altruistic one that is similar to nature’s.

We find how our egoistic nature turns us into criminals together with the discovery of an overpowering and much greater force above our egoistic powers, the altruistic force of nature, to which we wish to advance.

That state is called “Rosh Hashanah,” the beginning (“Rosh”) of our change (“Shinui”). It is the beginning of a new cycle of states through which we progress in order to become more and more like the loving and bestowing force of nature.
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Based on “A New Life” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on September 14, 2014. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
Photo by Igal Ness on Unsplash.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “How do teachers effectively manage individualized instruction?“

Effectively managing individualized instruction is indeed a problem in modern education. Nonetheless, we have to check what suits the children’s characteristics.

There are many instances of dividing the students into classes according to topics, but it is usually when they have grown up a little. In elementary school, we can also see children have their own inner direction, which becomes clearer with age, but we need to help them make their clarifications.

I think that teachers should be able to discern each student’s attitude to reality, their inclinations, interests and inner structure. Accordingly, I would group the students according to distinctive characteristics, such as sensitivity, intellectual aptitude, affinity for nature or technology, and more. By doing so, teachers can tailor their teaching methods to resonate with each group’s preferences and learning styles.

We can discerning students’ unique qualities by employing multifaceted teaching approaches. Instead of adhering to a single teaching style, we should explain concepts from various angles and provide examples from different fields. Such an approach lets students grasp the material in a way that aligns with their individual learning styles.

I recall my own school days when I sometimes struggled to comprehend a concept presented by a teacher. However, when my mother explained the same concept differently, using examples that resonated with my learning style, I gained a deeper understanding. This underscores the importance of flexibility in teaching and the potential of using relatable examples that cater to each student’s preferences.

When it comes to perceiving the uniqueness of every student, especially from a spiritual perspective, we, as teachers, can greatly benefit from inner preparation. I suggest that teachers view their role not solely as instructors of young children but as facilitators of the development of humanity to its final, perfect and eternal state of complete connection. In other words, the more teachers are aware of the way in which nature develops us all toward states of greater connection, then the more teachers can align their methods in a way that leads the students to increasing balance with nature. Recognizing that each student embarks on a unique journey in their development to a greater state of connection with others and nature can help us connect with our students on a profound level.

By considering the teaching process as a means of guiding the students to more balance with nature, we can transcend conventional notions and acknowledge the inner essence within each child. This shift in perspective empowers us to discover the distinct qualities in our students and offer a more profound level of fulfillment.

Effectively managing individualized instruction in teaching is a multifaceted task that demands sensitivity, adaptability and an understanding of each student’s uniqueness. By grouping students based on their characteristics, employing multifaceted teaching approaches, and adopting a spiritual perspective, we, as teachers, can navigate this challenge more effectively. Ultimately, our goal is to provide tailored education that enables every student to thrive on their unique path of learning and self-discovery.
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Based on “Ask the Kabbalist” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on September 11, 2008. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
Photo by Kenny Eliason on Unsplash.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “How do I overcome my gambling addiction?“

The attraction to gambling stems from a strong feeling of lacking connection with fate.

What is a lack of connection with fate? It is a lack of a harmonious connection between people and nature, or to a pathway to such a goal.

At the basis of all of our desires is a desire to connect with the source of our lives, the force of love, bestowal and connection that created and sustains us, and which can fulfill us completely.

We are on a developmental course to discover that force, but we do not all know about that goal or about the process we are in toward its attainment.

We thus wish to know our fate, the process we are in, what is rooted in nature and the plan by which nature operates.

Accordingly, by gambling, we feel like scientists in a lab. We express our desire to reveal the formula by which nature and humanity operate.

I understand and feel gamblers, even though I am not a gambler myself and I have never held any attraction to gambling. My wife, however, an adult lady, has an interest in playing various gambling-style games. It stems from searching for the force of fate that works on us and if we will bring people an opportunity to meet that force, then they will feel it.

It might seem as if an obsessive gambler just wants to make money fast, but it is not about the money. They can happily lose and win money, so it is not about losing or gaining. Rather, internally, the gambling addict seeks connection with the upper force that is operating on us at every moment. There is a spiritual aspect to it, as there is with all games.

What is the spiritual aspect to games? Games are actions in which their players rise from one level to another. When we play games, we do not know their outcomes. That is how life is. In such a sense, we could say that a scientist conducting various experiments or research is a kind of gambler.

We behave likewise in many areas of our lives. If we wish to progress on safe grounds, then we need to detach ourselves from the idea of fate and enter into a gamble.

In terms of overcoming a destructive gambling addiction, then it is written that the Torah heals everyone. I recommend that anyone addicted to gambling open and read the books of Kabbalah. The method of Kabbalah provides a process of gambling, i.e., undertaking risks, experiments and searches to find and feel a certain spark that exists within us. It leaves us on the edge of our seats, so to speak, in that we could either lose that spark or increase its intensity at every moment. By applying ourselves to the Kabbalistic method, we gain a lot of fulfillment while acquiring more knowledge, awareness and wisdom about our lives, and we regularly engage in a game to progress ourselves to greater and higher levels of perception of reality.
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Based on “Ask the Kabbalist” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on September 18, 2023. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
Photo by Kenny Eliason on Unsplash.

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Explain to me please, how can intelligent, thinking, educated people agree that a woman is made of a man’s rib, that snakes can speak, that there are magical apples in a paradise and you can eat them and know the truth, and many, many other things like that on every page of the Bible.

Where does our reason disappear? We clearly see that there is no such thing in nature. Why do we agree? This is why I am an atheist since I cannot agree with this. How do you, an intelligent, educated person, explain this to yourself? (Oleg)

My Response: I explain it to myself very simply. I just delve into what the Bible says, sink my teeth into it, and dig into it. There I find completely different explanations, different layers that amaze me. They do not simply satisfy me, but amaze me with their explanation and depth.

I discover such continuous, consecutive findings that I see that for those who do not want to attain them, our world, even without a biblical or some other interpretation, remains a mystery and worthless anyway. But the one who digs into this text and understands its allegory, really reveals the upper world for himself.

Question: In your program “Secrets of the Eternal Book” you explain this a lot. But for those who are asking now: What is this surface layer for when they write “snake,” or when they write “a woman is made of a man’s rib”? Why confuse humanity? Can they just say, “Let’s look inside” and to describe what is inside?

Answer: People looked at the root of the action, at the root of the problem, and therefore described it this way.

Question: So, they look at the root of the problem and write “serpent.” What problem do they see?

Answer: They see that from all our world, a similarity to this action can produce an image of a serpent.

Question: What action are we talking about?

Answer: That it lies, that it thinks only of himself, slanders, and so on. The feeling of the inner forces of the world leads them to such a language. Basically, when they were writing it, they felt these inner forces and desires.

Question: Can we say that this is behind every word of the Torah?

Answer: Absolutely everything is like that! Behind every word.

Question: What is the Torah about? Let’s say people do not know. They think that this is really a body of laws, that it is such a historical book that talks about the history of the people. It actually is there.

Answer: All of it is also there, of course.

Question: The commandments are also there: what to do, what not to do, let’s say. In general, what is the Torah written about?

Answer: It is about a person, about his place in nature, about his history, and his future.

Question: When you say “about a person,” is it about every person?

Answer: Yes.

Question: So how should I look at it; is it an external text or is it about me?

Answer: It is about you.

Question: Is this how I should start reading?

Answer: Yes. In general, this book itself is a guide for you and the world in which you exist.

Question: “The world,” do you mean this world in which I live now? In which we live with you?

Answer: Of course, yes.

Question: This book that was written 3,000 years ago, is it about today’s world?

Answer: Of course.

Question: What does it say? What is it really calling me to?

Answer: It urges you not to stay in a limited vision of this world, but to try to reveal it more deeply.

Question: What will I see?

Answer: The forces that control you and the world around you. Then you will see, discover, reveal, and get acquainted with a single force that is concealed behind the manifestation of these various forces.

Question: Does it mean that this book leads me to this single force? The more I look into it, remove the layers, the closer I will come to this single force. Is that the purpose of this book?

Answer: Yes.

Question: So, are we talking about the Creator?

Answer: Of course.

Question: The last question then. Oleg asks. He looks at it, of course, the way he sees everything around. He says: “We do not see this in nature.” This is his opinion. Such a single-layered opinion so far. But still, please tell me, what is the “Garden of Eden”? What kind of force is this?

Answer: The Garden of Eden, paradise, is a state of a person when he attains all the layers of nature in depth. This is the feeling of a person. The fulfillment he receives at that time is called “Garden of Eden,” a “tree of good and evil” and so on.

Question: What does it mean that a woman is made of a man’s rib? Eve was made out of Adam’s rib.

Answer: A man and a woman here represent two parts of the universe. The woman is more lively, intelligent, and I would say insidious. But at the same time, she fulfills the program of creation. She pushes the man to be more active. Which, in principle, is true up to our day.

Now it is still difficult for us to understand where the role of a man is here and where the role of a woman is here. But, in principle, they are interconnected in such a way as to reveal in all the actions of nature, the force, role, plan, and purpose of the Creator.

Question: Then what is called a “rib”? What is it?

Answer: A rib is that part of the desire of a person, of a man, which can be combined with the desire of a woman and correctly coexist with her. That is the part in a man that can become the basis of a woman.

Question: When you say “man,” what do you mean?

Answer: The quality of bestowal. And a woman is the quality of reception.

Question: The last question is a serpent; what is a serpent?

Answer: A serpent is a cunning one, I would say, in which the Creator hides, through which He shows a man and a woman how compatible they can be only in a certain connection with each other. Therefore, such a connection of a man and a woman with the help of a serpent is the beginning of life.

Question: When you say “serpent,” is it a force, is it a desire? What is it?

Answer: It is the force of desire.

Question: Why is he whispering to a woman? Here he comes to her and whispers: “Come on, do the forbidden, tell him…” Why is he egging on if the Creator is within it, as you say?

Answer: Because you cannot do this in a direct way, but only through deception, as it were.

But deception is actually a holy deception. Not in the name of deceiving and stealing, profiting, taking possession of something else, and in someone else. Because the very nature of creation is false, and it is necessary to deceive it. It is necessary to bring a person from a state of evil to a state of good, so the serpent does a big serious work.

That is, our world directs to evil in order to come to evil, and here it directs to evil in order to come to good.

Comment: It means that the serpent performs a great function.

My Response: A serpent?! It is the basis of life.

But to this day we are experiencing these problems and cannot understand where this serpent is, how to pull it out of us, remove it, and how to get rid of it. It surrounds us and is inside us. It rubs with us all the time.

Question: What is the future for the serpent and for us? Is it going to whisper like that, are we going to follow it like that? Will everything keep happening like this?

Answer: No, we have to reveal the true picture of the world, and then we can correct the serpent.

Question: What is the true picture? What should we reveal?

Answer: We must all together grab this “serpent” that is between us and hold it until it agrees to work together with us, and act together with us. When it says: “I agree,” we will believe it. And the world will suddenly become different.

Question: You say: “So that it would work with us,” and then where would we come with it, all together?

Answer: To reveal the truth, which is in being in the serpent’s wisdom, but for the sake of others.

Question: What did you mean by “serpent’s wisdom”?

Answer: This is wisdom.

Question: Why did you call it the serpent’s one? It sounded very beautiful!

Answer: Because the serpent has it. It is located between all the elements of nature and is ready to connect everything in order to take the best that each part of the element of nature has for the sake of others.

Question: Is this the serpent? So, is it something high?

Answer: There is nothing higher than it.

Question: Can the serpent be called something else? We called it strength and desire. What else can you call a serpent?

Answer: It is the upper wisdom.

Question: Why is it said that “it should crawl on the ground”? When it sinned, whispered to Eve, it was told: “From now on you will not walk, you will crawl on the ground and eat dust,” and so on. Why?

Answer: Because it told the person what the cause of his suffering was, and showed the person the correct solution.

Comment: It should be praised for this, but instead…

My Response: The fact is that the serpent must. The Bible does not seem to say this, but it must tell and show a person, reveal the future to a person, that is, bring Adam and Eve to the Garden of Eden. To the same Garden of Eden in which they were born and developed, but in a corrected form.

Question: So, after everything that happened, and there was a fall into our world from this Garden of Eden, do we need to go through this world with all its suffering and wars and climb back into the Garden of Eden? Is this the work of the serpent?

Answer: Yes. Then the Garden of Eden will be revealed all over the earth. Forever.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 8/7/23

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “How does one discover their true self?“

We discover our true self from within what Kabbalah calls the “point in the heart,” a tiny desire within us that attracts us upward to another realm beyond this world.

Today, we live in an era where people despair more and more from living in this world. Rising depression, loneliness, anxiety, stress and drug abuse signal that more and more people wish to separate from our current sensation of life. However, at the same time, a new desire surfaces within us with a spark hope, fulfillment and vitality. This desire’s fulfillment exists in a different place to where we understand and feel our desires’ fulfillment up until today.

If we pursue the fulfillment of the point in the heart, not suppressing it but interesting ourselves in how we can exit our present state and progress upward to discover life’s source—what we live for, why we were put here to begin with, and what is the meaning of life—then such a point guides us to the revelation of our true self.

The more we seek according to the demands of the point in the heart, the more we will be led to discover the source of our existence in the upper force of nature, the force of love and bestowal, which created and sustains all life.

In other words, our true self and the upper force are one and the same. We arrived here in our world by way of descent and stemming down from that upper force, and we can ascend back to that root point of our existence via a path of ascent. The point in the heart, also called “the desire for spirituality,” is what attracts us to that exalted spiritual state.

We were all initially created in what the wisdom of Kabbalah calls “the world of Ein Sof (Infinity).” We descended into our world from the world of Ein Sof through various levels, from a lofty state of love and bestowal down into its opposite egoistic state that characterizes our world.

We exist in the world of Ein Sof in our perfect and eternal state—our soul. We were initially created in such a state, and from there, our soul—the root of each and everyone’s soul—began shrinking, gradually minimizing until we ended up in this world where only a tiny fragmented point of a desire remains in our consciousness of the great big soul we all share.

Our descent from a eternal and perfect state as a single soul into our world was intentional. From our current form of existence, we need to start developing back up to the state we were created in, and to do so by seemingly creating it by ourselves, not just by receiving it with no free choice. We will then attain a much fuller and richer sense of our state as a single soul.

In our original state, we had no real sense of that soul, no sense of life. It is because we lacked feeling the complexity and the purpose for our development. Our soul underwent shrinkage to a tiny point that exists as a small spiritual desire within us, and from the feeling of this tiny point, we can develop this desire up to a sensation of our full soul, and on our own accord.

In other words, by attaining the root of our soul—our true self—through developing and nurturing our point in the heart, we develop, sense, examine and increasingly understand that desire, all the way until becoming fulfilled through it. When we return to the world of Ein Sof, we then live to our fullest extent: in eternity and perfection.

That is our true self, and it is what we have to attain.

In the wisdom of Kabbalah, this state is called “the attainment of adhesion with the Creator,” and it is considered the purpose of our lives, the reason for our creation in the first place. The Creator is the force of love and bestowal that becomes revealed within us, and which fulfills us completely, in such a state. In Hebrew, the word for Creator (“Boreh”) comes from two words “come” and “see” (“Bo” and “Reh”), i.e., “come and see” that you receive every goodness and delight there is to receive in existence.

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Based on “Ask the Kabbalist” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on September 18, 2008. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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