Question: Why does a person who begins to go along the path toward correction continue to suffer? And therefore, what is the difference between the “path of Torah” and the “path of suffering”?

Answer: A person who is going along the path of correction must already discern that the suffering that he gets, which attracts him toward correction, is called sufferings of love.

When I give a child small jobs, he or she is not suffering! These are actions the child must perform, and in this manner he advances toward a better state. If he perceives this correctly, the whole path even becomes a way of discovery for him.
[181851]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 2/14/16

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Question: In the course of human history, there has hardly been a day without war in the world. Even in our day, many cruel wars are happening. Why do even advanced people like Kabbalists suffer from this?

Answer: The Kabbalists suffer even more than others because they feel responsibility toward everyone. They sense the huge mass of suffering that war carries with it. In addition, they also experience a huge mass of pleasure that humanity could get instead of the suffering were it to invest a bit of effort to correct itself.

A Kabbalist in relation to an ordinary person is like an adult in relation to an infant. An infant who is ill only suffers because of the illness whereas the adult close to him suffers much more and is ready to take all of the pain of the infant upon himself.

About this it is said, “he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow” (Ecclesiastes 1:18). Because of this, we must unite, quickly overcome this period of suffering and war, and enter into the feeling of the upper world.
[181860]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 2/14/16

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Question: We say that everything is opposite. Does that mean that the worse I am in the corporeal world, the better I am in the spiritual world?

Answer: One thing has nothing to do with the other. We have to create the spiritual world since it doesn’t exist. To the extent that we create the attribute of love and bestowal inside us, we begin to feel a new dimension that is created inside us called the upper world.
[181505]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 2/21/16

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Question: How can you forgive yourself if you know that you have behaved in an awful, bad, lowly manner?

Answer: This isn’t the right approach. You haven’t done anything by yourself. It is the Creator who did everything through you, because “there is none else besides Him.”

Therefore, you shouldn’t blame yourself for anything, and neither should you blame others around you since they haven’t done anything either. The Creator does everything!

He brings the hidden goodness into the world, which is revealed in our world as evil. If we behave correctly, which means in His name, we will begin to bring humanity the revealed goodness and the world will become good.
[181845]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 2/14/16

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Question: Why should one study the wisdom of Kabbalah if a person can expect only problems? Aren’t there enough problems?

Answer: The problems of a Kabbalist have an absolutely different character—they are problems of love.

The Creator seemingly flirts with a person, hides a little, then is revealed, again hides, and again is discovered so a person will learn to identify and feel Him. In fact, the Creator is in front of one all of the time, but the person doesn’t feel Him. One lacks the possibility of feeling Him.

With the help of the work of courting the Creator, it is up to the person to find Him. Suppose that a person experiences some kind of discomfort. The Creator does this intentionally so that through it, the person will see and feel Him, and sometimes the discovery also comes in pleasant situations.

That is, all problems are designed for the discovery of the Creator on all levels and in all circumstances behind which He stands.
[181445]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 2/16/16

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Question: In your opinion, who can consider himself a spiritual person?

Answer: This is someone who transcends himself with the help of the method of the wisdom of Kabbalah, creating within him a new feeling called a “soul.” A person who does this, perceives spiritual substance through the characteristic of bestowal, meaning not within himself but outside of himself. In our world there are few people like these, nobody recognizes them, they are not revealed to anyone, and don’t teach anyone.

The only organization that is seriously involved with this is Kabbalah La’Am (Kabbalah for the People), which acts as an international Kabbalah Education Center, setting for itself the goal of teaching the wisdom of Kabbalah to other people because it receives this mission from above. We try to create the right conditions so that every person who wants to attain a spiritual state and feel the world outside of him can do this.
[181509]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 2/21/16

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In the News (Harvard Business Review): “Among the old winemakers there is a saying: ‘So that the vine will become beautiful, it must suffer’. Before you get a great wine, they subject the vine to stress, moistening the ground to the limit of the survival of the vineyard. After the vineyard goes through a ‘test’ like this, the grapes produce wines that are complex, delicate and select.

“In the Japanese and Chinese languages, the character for the term ‘catastrophe’ has the double meaning of failure and new possibilities.”

My Comment: This means the use of stress, up to disasters, develops new growth opportunities. It has been said: “Whom the Creator loves He sends hardships.”

Kabbalah explains it simply: because our egoistic nature is opposite to the Creator, the property of love, our goal in life is to change ourselves to similarity with the Creator. The Creator sends us adversity that forces us to change. Otherwise the ego would not budge. It is perfectly observed in the history of Jewish people.

Our methodology of Kabbalah quickly and correctly helps us understand the pressure of the Creator and use it for “new opportunities” of development into a likeness of the Creator.
[179709]

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Question: How does Kabbalah explain “the night of the exodus from Egypt”?

Answer: The night of the exodus from Egypt is a result of all previous development of Jews whereby they brought themselves to the state that allowed them to become a nation and understand that inside them is the ego, Pharaoh, that rips them apart, leads to the conflicts with each other, and makes them feel distant from each other.

Look what is happening around: discords in the family, society, and government. We would do anything in order to suppress an alleged enemy. We need to start feeling our state as Egypt, as the reign of the Pharaoh, meaning our egoism that prevents us from being one nation, one family. Precisely this is called night.

This is why on the Passover night we gather together with our families and consider ourselves as one family, one nation. We want to demonstrate that we are ready to unite, to be together with the aim of rising above our egoism and coming to the freedom from it. This is the exodus from Egypt and the entrance to the land of Israel.

Between them there is a period of 40 years of passing the desert whereby we correct ourselves. By this correction we prepare ourselves for the entrance to the land of Israel as we can’t go straight away from the egoism and hatred to love. After all, love is the same egoism just in a reversed form. And 40 years long periods of preparation represent a distance from the desire to receive to the desire to bestow, from hatred to love.

Egyptian night is a pitch dark, terrible night of an absolute lack of understanding of what is happening and what will happen. People see that because of the mutual hatred, they cease to exist as a nation, as a family. They understand that this dead-end state leads them to death.

But at the same time they don’t see the way out of it because the power of egoism seems to be historically eternal and absolute. In everything the person turns to he sees his egoism, and he feels that he does everything only for his own benefit. It controls our every action: internal, external, our relationships, etc.

Everyone keeps such a distance from another where he would be able to defend himself and to receive maximum from the other. It means that the egoism all the time regulates our relationships with each other, nature, animals, the world, and life.

The terrible state of communication only in an egoistic manner is revealed to us as the darkness of Egypt. Exactly in this state, in the middle of the night a force suddenly appears in us, which leads us forward to the exit from the egoism and gives us a feeling that we can rise from it.

A culminating point of inversion appears and the most terrible darkness suddenly starts transforming into some hope, light: An exit exists somewhere, I have to run! And I run after this dream, after this internal power that suddenly erupts in me. And the light appears!

It is a special night, the night of exiting the egoistic slavery to altruistic eternity and perfection. This is why we celebrate it.
[181801]
From a TV Program “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 4/13/2016

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The Torah, “Numbers,” 33:55, 33:56: But if you do not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you, then it shall come about that those whom you let remain of them will become as pricks in your eyes and as thorns in your sides, and they will trouble you in the land in which you live. And as I plan to do to them, so I will do to you.

We need to alienate from ourselves our own desires, meaning to correct them within ourselves. The desires do not disappear anywhere; it’s impossible to cut them off and to throw them away. There exists an enormous desire created by the Creator, as it is said: “I created the evil desire (evil inclination) and gave the Torah for its correction.”

The intentions for this desire can be either egoistic or altruistic. The desire itself is inert. In its original application it is an absolute zero, but it is given to us in a negative form. Therefore, we need to correct its negative application into a positive one, which can be achieved by changing the intention. This is called driving out the nations that exist within your desire.

Those whom you let remain of them [will become] pricks in your eyes and as thorns in your sides, [that is, these desires won’t let us perform any spiritual actions of bestowal, love, and mutual connection] and they will trouble you in the land in which you live. This reminds very much of our current state. After all, we do not work on ourselves!

Today the so-called nation of Israel are those who were given the opportunity to reach spiritual correction. However, we don’t do anything! Therefore we constantly receive pricks and punches, knives onto our backs and necks—what our neighbors do to us. And that’s because we don’t do our job! There is no need to blame them, only ourselves! We need to find the correct formula in order to change the state that passes only through us.

If we do not follow what Kabbalah says, we will suffer, we won’t achieve anything. We need to do something about ourselves.

We find ourselves at the epicenter of the “potential atomic explosion,” and we don’t understand what we evoke upon the entire world through ourselves. We have to acknowledge our responsibility for what is happening.

Comment: But doesn’t this concealment come from the upper degree?

Answer: Concealment is given specifically so that we can correct ourselves quickly, in connection with others, to feel the upper state and bring it upon the rest of the humanity.

This concealment is for our own benefit. If it didn’t exist, we would function automatically, following the instructions from above mindlessly, with no feeling or reason, as if we were a wound up mechanism. In that case we would be called angels. But man needs to be higher. He needs to rise to the level when he himself chooses to be similar to the Creator and brings His idea into the world.
[180968]
From a TV Program “The Secrets of the Eternal Book”

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Question: How does the ego feel the plagues of Egypt?

Answer: The Egyptian plagues are felt once the ego is built in the form of Egypt and Pharaoh,which is opposite from the nation of Israel and Moses, is created in a person. These blows are needed to tear us away from the ego and to prepare us to break away from it.

Question: I don’t understand how we can ascend above the ego and love it at the same time. We are used to suppressing our ego, to eradicating it in every possible way, so what does it mean to ascend above it?

Answer: It means that you should focus your desires on filling others and receiving pleasure from that.

Question: How can I understand that the ego is evil if the groups don’t talk about it and try to blur it by playing games of love?

Answer: We should talk about it!
[181781]

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