A question I received: You said in a recent lesson that we must enjoy this life. That is confusing, because as we grow in Kabbalah we find a certain distaste for pleasures. How then do we balance this within our work? Are we supposed to use every encounter in our life to do dissemination and use that as the source of our pleasure? I used to love to build furniture and rebuild motorcycles, but now it seems all I do is study and work and do what dissemination I can. Is this the correct way of going about things?

My Answer: Most probably, it is. However, you should not force yourself to do anything, but just do what comes naturally. The most important thing is your aspiration to the Creator, and all the rest will settle down without coercion and according to how it has to be.

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A question I received: In the posting, “Use Each Instant Of Your Life To Move Aheadת” you wrote that a person must demand an award from the Creator for each of his deeds in order to accelerate revelation of the Upper World. But how can I develop this demand if I don’t have it?

My Answer: No one initially has the desire for the Upper World because the Upper World is opposite to us and therefore we cannot feel it. A desire develops only after we “taste” something and then lose that sensation. We then feel the need to run after it. Intensity of this aspiration for the desirable is called a desire (passion).

In Kabbalah this law of development of desire is formulated as “The expansion and disappearance of Light.” This is what creates a desire for it.

So the most important question is: How do we draw the influence of the Light upon us? The answer is: Through the environment – the teacher, the books, and the group.

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Questions I received about the fate of the physical body:

Question: In what body will we exist in eternity? Will it be the one from our last incarnation or a body from a previous incarnation? Or can it be a totally different body?

My Answer: “Body” in Kabbalah means the correction of desires, and our physical body is not a subject of discussion at all. It only appears to exist to us.

Question: What does Kabbalah say about cremation of the body instead of burial in the ground? I happened to see on one “Kabbalah” site that it is prohibited, and that one would only rise half a person with great penalties.

My Answer: At the level of our world, burial is the norm. At the same time, Kabbalah does not consider our bodies to be sacred, as religions do. Kabbalah just does not take them into account.

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A question I received: Your goals are beautiful: Happiness, freedom, consciousness of the people and harmony in the world. Am I right?

My Answer: Yes, you are,

Question cont’d: Your methods for reaching these goals are very effective: You use people’s ego to make them free from their ego and illusions. Am I right?

My Answer: Yes, you are.

Question cont’d: The consequences are exactly what you want them to be: People are attracted, the circle of your followers grows, and your power and influence grow too. Am I right?

My Answer: Yes, you are.

Question cont’d: Don’t you think that for the sake of creating more power sooner, you might have become slightly distracted from the true goal? Don’t you think that your followers are somewhat distracted too?

My Answer: Even if you were right, we still don’t move on our own. We are moved by the Light, and therefore we can never tell ahead of time what it is “to be distracted” and what it is “to go straight,” because we are move in a desert! See Baal HaSulam’s letter, “The Path to the Creator’s Hall, page 63.”

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The Creator is an all-encompassing law of the universe. By demanding correction, we are not addressing someone, but we are preparing our desire for change from an egoistic desire to receive, to an altruistic desire to bestow.

As soon as we desire this, it will change! This will happen due to the Creator, the general law of the universe, immediately influencing our desire. The Creator is a spiritual field of bestowal and love in which we shift as the desire in us changes.  The Creator, however, is at a specific point in this field, relative to us. Initially we are opposite to it, and because of this, we are situated in the most external circle of this field, which is called “this world.”

To the extent that we desire to move closer to the center, towards the Creator’s qualities of love and bestowal, we cause this field to influence us, and it is able to move us. We can see that the Creator does not act on a whim, and we have no reason to wait for special treatment from Him.

My respect for the law of gravity will not change its effect on my body. In the same manner, if we follow the spiritual laws, we enter the spiritual world, and if not, we remain outside.

There is no protection, and it is useless to play up to and fawn over the Creator. The Creator is a force which reads my innermost desires rather than listening to my words. I advance to the extent that I correspond to this force.

The science of Kabbalah examines the laws of the spiritual world. It is spiritual physics, not lyrics. We exist in Nature; the Creator is Nature, and His laws are the laws of Nature.

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A question I received: Who am I to demand correction from the Creator?

My Answer: You are a created being, just like everyone else. The Creator purposely created us from one great desire to receive pleasure by being next to Him. Then He broke this desire into pieces and lowered them to the lowest, most distant degree from Him, called “this world.” Each one of the pieces is in each of us.

Now the Creator is waiting for each of us (men, women, smart, stupid, righteous, and sinners) to turn to Him, wishing to return to His level. The desire to return should be the greatest desire of all our desires. This means that it should not just be a request that arises in us, but it must be a scream of despair and a demand to the Creator to raise us to His level.

We are here precisely so that we can demand correction, and this demand is pleasant to the Creator! After all, if we wish to become similar to the Creator, this means we value His state and realize His greatness. On the contrary, if a person does not wish to become similar to the Creator, then he does not respect Him.

We are comprised only of the desire for something that is greater or better. Therefore, only after thousands of years of development does our ego begin to understand that the best thing is to be similar to the Creator! Like children, we have the right to demand this from our parent!

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We have gone through a long chain of reincarnations, with previous incarnations being more difficult than what we are experiencing today. Compared to the suffering we’ve previously gone through, our current incarnation is a like a nice walk in this world.

However, our existence in this world is now special, since after thousands of years of egoistic development, we have been awakened to exit out of this world and enter the Upper World; to make a spiritual breakthrough.

Every person has a nucleus of perception of the Upper World called “the point in the heart,” which relentlessly pulls and pushes him. The matter in which we exist is the spiritual field, the Creator. There is no matter and there is no world.  The only thing that exists is the spiritual field that contains all the souls in an unconscious, sleeping state. Some of them, however, get inspired to wake up and reveal their own true state.

But since spirituality is perfect (complete), our desire to perceive it must be also perfect or complete. You cannot, therefore, listen to any arguments against spiritual development. If one’s soul awakens, then a person should listen to it and to no one else! In fact, the Creator Himself presents a person with the possibility to hear Him and a person must then pursue this no matter what.

Obviously, a person has to provide his family with all their necessities, respect his parents and help them when they’re old, but no one has the right to tell him to him how to deal with his own soul. Parents, family, and the entire world only accompany us in this world, but we exist here in order to enter the eternal and perfect world.

The reverse is also true in that we should not force anyone else in this world to engage in the revelation of the Upper World. However, if people around us demand that we give up the development of our souls, then we need to make the decision to either give up our souls for their sake or give them up for the sake of our souls.

This decision is made with the knowledge that the Creator is giving us a chance to attain the Upper World.

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A lesson is therapy for my desire, a means that allows my present desire to be changed and made equivalent to spirituality. The more therapy I receive through my attendance at Kabbalah lessons, the higher my chances of recovering and changing my nature.

However, simple visits aren’t enough. I have to understand why I make the visits and what their results will be. Thus, the main thing at the lesson is that I must have the intention to change my nature.

If I come to the lesson just to listen, with no intention to change, then nothing will help me to attain the Upper World, neither an excellent teacher, nor a strong environment. A lesson for me must be a conscious participation in the recovery of the broken soul.

The teacher gives me the correct direction and the environment supports me on my path to the goal. However, I must absorb the importance of the goal provided by the environment.

It is absolutely unimportant if I understand the studied material, the same as I don’t need to understand how the drugs prescribed to me work in order for them to work.  Doctors label illnesses and drugs with obscure names that don’t tell me anything. I just know that I feel bad and need something to help me feel better.

The same situation exists in the healing of a soul. It is enough for me to feel sick and to know that during the lesson, I will receive the remedy. There is a spiritual healing mechanism that works on my request, and I need to correctly prepare myself for the healing.

I expect the healing of the soul to occur during the lesson and therefore I prepare myself beforehand in order to be able to accept the cure.

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A question I received: I was reading in the “Introduction to the Book of Zohar” in Item 221 that “The smallest soul is equal to the sum of all the souls. There is nothing in spirituality that is be bigger or smaller than something else. Moreover, if one is against all the rest of the 599,999 souls, this one is equal to all the others. This is a marvelous property of the spiritual world.”

Does this mean that one soul with the aim of being corrected, influences all of the other souls that are not aimed at correction, and thus helps to correct them?

My Answer: Undoubtedly, all people are interconnected both in the good and the bad and everyone depends on all. But only today is it beginning to be shown at its full strength. The full revelation of this is still ahead.

Soon everyone will feel that each person in the world holds the valve to their oxygen supply, and that the valve can be shut if someone chooses to do so!

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A question I received: What’s the difference between the books written by the Kabbalists of the past and the books written by modern Kabbalists?

My Answer: Baal HaSulam says that Rabbi Akiva certainly knew more than Rabbi Shimon, since he preceded him – he was his teacher. However, the level of Kabbalists before Rabbi Akiva was higher still.

It goes without saying that Baal HaSulam knew less than Rabbi Shimon and less than all the previous Kabbalists. However, in order to take care of us, he was given an opportunity to learn and express his degrees. This is what he writes about himself.

We evaluate a Kabbalist based on his books,“This is an amazing book! I understand everything in it! He is a great Kabbalist!” But if I understand his books, then maybe he is not so great after all.

In other words, we rate a person based on how close he is to us and to what extent he can descend to our level, not according to his elevation, but according to his ability to be a teacher. And in order to become our teacher, it is not necessary for him to be great.

Along with the historical development of egoism in each person and in society as a whole, the level of Kabbalists is becoming lower.

During the “times of the Temple” (the Temple is the soul of each person in the state of bestowal and love, and the fall of the Temple is the descent into relationships of hatred) people clearly perceived the spiritual, meaning they felt love and commonality, lived as one man, and were similar to the Creator. They understood and felt these things on their own.

We cannot imagine what that means. It is written that compared to them, we are like donkeys next to people. This is not an exaggeration or a beautiful expression; they had a completely different mind, vision, and sense.

(From a lesson on the article “The Essence of the Wisdom of Kabbalah,” from 10.28.09)

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