Comment: Scientists believe that the mantra “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” is very accurate and correct. Seventy percent of the world populations agree that everything that happens to them in life makes them stronger.

Answer: All the afflictions we undergo do make us stronger, invigorate us, raise us, and move us forward. This is a precise Kabbalistic principle! I am very glad that people are finally coming to the correct conclusion. Now the question is how can we use this feature in a realistic, meaningful, and productive manner.

When I encounter a series of problems I should know how to benefit from it, just like in the Eastern martial arts where you use the force, energy, and weight of the opponent in order to overpower him. We have to learn how to do that in everything we encounter in life.

A person should actually take advantage of the negative situations in order to rise above them. If you want to get rid of a negative impact, you should ascend above it correctly, and then you begin to realize that this is a clear Biblical principle: The evil that you encounter is help against, which means that the evil was sent to you and you use it as help. Thus a person can ascend in spirituality because he can use all the negative experiences he has in life in a positive manner. This is how we quickly ascend above ourselves.

Question: Can we apply this to our careers or to our relations with relatives and family?

Answer: Yes, with all negative experiences! This means that I actually ascend everyday above everything that happens to me in life, above tens or hundreds of feelings, negative experiences, and blows,

Question: What does it mean to ascend above them?

Answer: To ascend to the Creator who is the source of everything we experience. He is calling me to ascend above them and to get closer to Him by sending me all the negative experience, and thus I reveal Him.

Question: Does this mean that the Creator is actually found in the negative experiences?

Answer: Yes. His thought is in these blows, and if I solve them and use them correctly, I discover Him. It is a very simple rule, ascend!
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 3/20/16

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Question: What is the correction of the 613 desires and does it refer to the 613 Mitzvot (commandments) in the Torah? Can you explain what corrected desire number 35 refers to, the one about preparing the special oil for anointing the great priest and the king?

Answer: The great priest and the king are not human beings but a special spiritual level. When you ascend to this level, the structure of a king or a great priest will be formed in you and you will be able to perform an action called drawing of the Light of Hochma.

The Light of Hochma is the oil and the Light of Hassadim is the water. By using the oil (the Light of Hochma), you can make a special “solution,” i.e., a special system for correction, elevation, and proximity in order to ascend to the level of the king or the great priest. These are all our internal attributes that we have to arrange and to correct.

Thus, any Mitzva is the correction of our internal desires, but on different levels. Man is a small world and everything exists inside him. This means that only I exist and you are all inside me, in my consciousness, in my feeling. It seems to me that you are external to me, but in fact you are inside me.

Question: What does it mean to find the priest inside me?

Answer: A priest is a desire on the level of Keter, the highest desire in a person that works in absolute bestowal without any egoistic impurities. But a person must prepare himself for this. One of the acts of preparation is Mitzvah number 35. When a person ascends the spiritual levels, regardless of whether he was born a Jew or not, a Cohen or a Levi, he has to undergo all these levels and attributes.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 1/24/16

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Question: How can we make the right decisions at the right time?

Answer: We have to make every decision in life as if we were throwing a hook toward the ultimate goal, wanting to catch it and bring ourselves closer to it.

This is how we should cope with all the minor decisions we have to make along the way, like eating, sleeping, studying, work, educating our kids, our relationship with our spouse, etc. This means that every decision we make in life, starting from the smallest things to the largest, should first be tied to our ultimate goal and then carried out accordingly.

It is like in sports, for example, if you want to win an Olympic medal, all your actions should be aimed at that goal. In the wisdom of Kabbalah the ultimate goal is the revelation of the Creator, and so all our decisions should be made accordingly.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 1/17/16

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Question: The wisdom of Kabbalah is based on the principle, “And you shall love your friend as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18), but how can a person love himself; is it possible to love others without loving yourself?

Answer: The assumption of the question is not correct. I don’t need to hate myself to love others; rather, this principle is given to me as an example. Just as I am concerned about myself at any given moment, so I must relate to others as well. I must be concerned about their comfort, their welfare, that they are safe, warm, and satisfied just as I am concerned about the necessary and simple, basic things for myself.

Moreover, if I understand that this is not the main thing in life, that besides satisfying myself with the minimal and normal necessities, I want to relate to higher, eternal and perfect states and begin to unite with Him, I am ready to explain the same thing to other people so that they will understand what kind of unique opportunity we have in our world to transcend it toward the upper world and begin to exist in it in a state of eternity and perfection.
[176756]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 12/27/15

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Question: How is it possible to feel and see the poor as rich, the fool as wise, and the sick as healthy if a person understands and reflects that all the evil that is around him are his uncorrected characteristics that are intentionally given to him by the Creator for his advancement, and also connects every action that happens in his life with the one and only Creator?

Answer: All of this is discovered along with the feeling of the Creator because it belongs to the full perception of the world that was created by Him.
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Question: How much does it cost to acquire the sixth sense? I don’t refer to money of course.

Answer: It depends on the attribute a person’s desire is in, on the society he is in, and on the circumstances under which he studies Kabbalah and implements it. So it is impossible to say how we can measure the intensity he has to put into it in order to enter the upper world or even to correct himself.

When a person studies the wisdom of Kabbalah, these measuring units are revealed to him, the units of effort, and then he begins to realize how many such units are needed in order to reach each level. The numbers of these units differ from one person to another.

It is the same in our world: Even if we studied in the same school, the same university, or worked together, each of us would have to make a different amount and quality of effort in order to accomplish the same task.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 1/17/16

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Question: How must a person direct himself toward the correct perception of what is happening with him?

Answer: This is spoken about in the most important article about man’s spiritual work, “There is None Else Beside Him.” Beginning in the morning, you must constantly direct yourself to feel that you are in a world in which the one and only power and will that builds and manages it is the Creator.

And along with everything that you absorb and in spite of anything that may happen to you, you must only strengthen your inclination and yearning within the consciousness that everything that is happening to people and what is around them, including what is happening with you, all is the intent of the Creator. He is the first, and after Him are all the characteristics and features of our world that influence and act upon you.

You must examine yourself constantly, do not begin to lose and divert your attention from your inner intention that everything happening within you and around you is derived only from the single upper force. And despite the internal and external changes, the reason for everything that will happen is that I will not change my attitude toward the Creator as the only reason for everything.
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Question: Does critical thinking help a person ascend the spiritual ladder, or does it stand in his way? Should get rid of it?

Answer: Everything in a person was created for a reason. There is no need to destroy, humiliate, delete, lock, or hide anything. On the contrary, open everything up, but only so that it will help you advance spiritually. Eventually, you will see that it is a wonderful, extraordinary opportunity to use all of the nastiest, terrible natural or acquired impulses about which it is shameful to speak. You will fell how right and necessary they are. You suddenly will be able to fulfill them in a sublime, spiritual manner.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 1/10/16

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Question: What is the mechanism for searching for answers to the questions that I have inside of me?

Answer: I will never find answers to the questions inside of me—never. Who am I that I should have ready-made answers? I only ask questions, and in order to find the answers to them, I must follow the instructions carefully.

The wisdom of Kabbalah reveals the influence of the upper force on me. So, I must use this wisdom, and then I will be able to discover the upper force and find the answers, but only I will find them, and no one else.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 1/10/16

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Question: How is the thirst for knowledge and spiritual attainment related to the tree of knowledge, and how is the tree of knowledge related to the tree of life?

Answer: There is only one tree, the tree of life. It is a schema according to which the Upper Light descends from the Creator.

It goes through a system of different filters that weaken the Light. The filters disassemble the Light into many different forms of bestowal, which gradually weakens it until it reaches our world as a big, open hand-held fan, and it affects all of the atoms and the most elementary particles.

This is how we begin to feel this bestowal a bit in our world. First, we only feel that we exist in this world, then that we grow like plants, then we move like animals, and finally we feel it as human beings in the connection between us. This is how the Light develops our ego.

The egoistic point begins to develop its own tree under the influence of the Light from the bottom up, which is opposite to the tree of life that descends from the top down. The tree that grows from the bottom up is called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

The two trees complement each other and become a man. A system called man is created, as it is written, “For is the tree of the field man.”
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 1/10/16

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