A question I received: How can we imagine human life in the spiritual world, completely devoid of suffering?

My Answer: We are unable to picture this since anything that we would imagine would be egoistic. The notion of the spiritual world is finding pleasure and inspiration in bestowal, in love for the others. However, it’s not for personal pleasure or inner peace, but for the greatness of the action itself.

So how can I feel the greatness of bestowal? I plead that the Light will let me feel it since I am incapable of doing it myself. However, I am even incapable of wanting it and asking for it. So what do I do? The environment can compel me to do this; it can force me to have a desire for something that is unnatural and generally opposite to me.

The environment can oblige a person to do anything. A person is even ready to commit suicide in order to look great in the eyes of the others. Everything depends on the environment. It can instill desires that are against a person’s ego, and his ego will go along with it.

This is due to the fact that the human degree within us is higher than the animal degree, and in order to achieve one’s desire on the human degree, to satisfy one’s ambition, a person is willing to kill the animal in him. An animal is incapable of this, yet man is. It’s because within him, there is a human degree upon which influence can be exerted. It is completely dependent on the environment.

The environment needs to influence each person in such a way that he will desire to ascend above his egoism. By influencing each other in this manner, they both will ascend constantly.

From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/21/10, Article “Peace in the World”

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A question I received: What specifically should I do when I feel a “hardening of the heart“?

My Answer: Without extra emotions, try to clarify this state: Who does this, why, how does He control you and organize your environment? Don’t fall; try to be in control of the situation that you are in so that you are able to create a point of contact with the Creator. Also, as the Creator told you, “Let’s go to Pharaoh because I hardened his heart,” now you may demand from Him. Now is precisely that moment when you may demand help from Him. After all, this is why He brought you to Pharaoh.

The Creator will never answer you while you are in a state where you feel well and everything around you is illuminated. You will not receive anything in such states! After all, while you are in such states you do not need Him. You can thank the Creator for His kindness, but all this is just complete egoism.

When will the Creator hear you? He will hear you precisely during your bad states (the Gate of Tears, Shaar Hadmaot). Otherwise, at present, why does He exist and why did He bring you to such a state? Only in such states do you really need Him! They are all given to you only in order for you to grab onto the Creator’s hand. You are small, and you stand beside Him and say, “Did you harden his heart? Now help me! I am scared! I don’t want this! I don’t know what to do! Have pity on me!”

And what does the Creator say? He says, “I hardened his heart because I wish to be revealed to you. I want you to see My greatness. I will become great through Pharaoh!” The Creator can be great in your eyes only under the condition that you are afraid of your ego, Pharaoh. You don’t know what to do with it and you are subjugated by it. Then, if the Creator can rescue you from this state, you will begin to respect and value His power and greatness. In this manner, we learn who the Creator is.

Pharaoh gives us the measure of the Creator’s greatness and power. For example, Pharaoh weighed you down with a weight of 20 lbs. and the Creator released you from it. Then you evaluate the Creator’s strength to be 20 lbs. directly against Pharaoh. After all, the Creator, the Light, has no form. Your desire (Kli) gives Him form. This is how you advance. Therefore, only such states are positive.
[12402]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/7/10, The Zohar

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Two questions I received that relate to a soul’s age:

Question: Why do innocent children have cancer, AIDS or other incurable diseases? Is this not injustice from the Creator?

My Answer: The same souls are present in all  people. In addition, the souls have no age.

Question: What is the purpose of a baby dying or having a severe disease? Does the soul gain experience from it and is there any meaning in it?

My Answer: A soul has no age. All souls have been born together in the shattering of one soul. This is why only bodies have different ages, but there is no preference given to a baby over an old man.

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A question I received: How can a person avoid suffering?

My Answer: Ask yourself: who inflicts all the problems and suffering on you? If you felt that they all come from the Creator, you’d already feel better.

It’s similar to a surgeon who operates on you: even though it’s a painful process, you know that what he is doing is good for you. In fact, if you have enough understanding of the gravity of your illness and the efficacy of the treatment, then you won’t feel pain at all. If you understand that the operation will make you get well, you will even ask the surgeon to perform the operation sooner!

Thus, it’s because we do not have this sensation that we feel suffering. The feeling of suffering is not caused by the pain itself, but by the fact that we don’t feel Who inflicts the suffering upon us.

If you could feel that the pain comes from a surgeon rather than a criminal, then you wouldn’t experience it as pain, and you would even be grateful to the one causing it, instead of trying to fight what the criminal is doing to you.

So, what you lack is not a disconnection from the pain or from the act itself, but the revelation of the Creator, who is the one responsible for the act as well as its aim. Only then will you sense pleasure instead of suffering.

It is a psychological problem, really. Even scientific experiments show that the suffering and pleasure felt inside a body stem from the same processes. Pain and pleasure are just surges of sensations in two different directions. For the body, they are the same thing, and it’s only later that our mind discerns them as different. The body, however, feels them as the same thing.

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Suffering is pushing man towards entering a higher dimension and to waking up from this sick, deformed dream where he feels himself as existing in a shattered reality.

He can look back and understand that by causing harm onto others he was only hurting himself. If he only knew then what he knows now!

He looks back and sees that those parts of reality that appeared foreign to him and which he only wanted to exploit, are in actuality, close to him and more importantly, are parts which he considers as himself.

He will see that the part which he sensed as his own “I,” in actuality, isn’t at all important. This is because the force of desire that is revealed in his external parts is many times more potent, and they become most important to him.

He sees that everything was deception and that by hating and exploiting all that surrounded him he was only harming himself. It was all a big mistake.

These revelations help him advance until he reaches full equilibrium with the entire universe being revealed and he begins to identify with it.

In coming to know that he belongs to this vast universe and that the universe belongs to him, he reveals the Upper force which fills everything.

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A question I received: You have said that in our generation, egoism has grown so big that the common soul had to divide into seven billion parts in order to be corrected more easily. Then how is it possible that a war could eliminate a large portion of the population? According to the first point made, one survivor could not handle the egoism of several souls.

My Answer: Because of the suffering they will feel, a small number of souls will be able to make greater efforts. In addition, when people suffer, they are more willing to unite. This is why during periods of suffering, there is no need for a large number of souls, and people die. We, however, confuse the cause with the effect…

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A question I received from my student: What are you supposed to say to friends who are gathering when one asks “How do you feel?” or “How are you?” while you are feeling half dead with the flu (or any illness)? Is it better to avoid the group when I am feeling weak so as not to bring them down?

Poor health has plagued me for my entire adult life, and there are others like me who really, really need to understand health issues in a little more depth than being told it is a problem caused by “ego,” because most of us have probably been given all sorts of more specific, yet conflicting, advice spiritually, psychologically and medically. I have been with Bnei Baruch for a couple of years now and I think that Bnei Baruch can be marketed to the chronically ill as a target group if we have more articles discussing “remedies” or reasons.

My Answer: There is only one answer – this comes from the difference between us and the Creator. The specific differences become revealed depending on one’s level of correction, because correction includes the sensation of being different from the Creator as well as its subsequent rectification.

You don’t have to parade your differences from the Creator, which manifest as illnesses, in front of the friends. But the friends have to know about them in order to ask the Creator for correction and healing on your behalf.

Why do the differences between a person and the Creator manifest differently in different people? Why does one person experience this externally, in the form of an illness, and another – in the form of personal problems or other manifestations? You will find the answers to all of this as you correct yourself. In short, start working on yourself!

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Nature’s goal is to reach globalization. Along with all humanity, Nature develops toward globalization according to the principle of self-organization, in line with predetermined laws of development. This is also how a fetus develops in a mother’s womb. As the fetus grows and develops, it builds increasingly complex systems, which evolve and reach greater levels of harmony and interconnection with each other.

The law of development necessitates a process where things become increasingly more complex, more integral and more interdependent. Ultimately, the result is that all subsystems are incorporated into one whole. However, these processes are revealed gradually and they become clearer over time.

A person, however, is influenced by his natural egoism, and thus he does not want to take part in this process voluntarily. Yet, under the influence of various factors, such as the global crisis, a person will be forced to participate, until he will reach the realization that instead of being forced, it’s better to do this voluntarily. He will realize this because he will see the inevitability of the law of development.

Thus, the suffering that comes along with the global crisis will cause us to voluntarily realize that our lives are global. At first we will agree to this reluctantly, and later we will understand it and accept that it is the best thing for us.

This is how today, Nature is beginning to show our future state to us. Kabbalah, however, enables us to understand this in advance, and thus to lessen the suffering that’s coming our way. Kabbalah allows us to study and understand the reasons for the blows in a timely manner, before the blows actually reach us.

And that’s all there is to globalization!

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A question I received: I am from Uruguay and I am 17 years old. My question is this: people often talk about the environment as if it is something that exists alongside us. How it is possible to make people understand that the environment isn’t something that exists alongside us, but that we are in it and we need it? Uruguay is a very small country, but even here, we encounter a whole gamut of environmental problems because there are so many factories in the country and even more are being built.

My Answer: There are two things that can cause people to adopt a different attitude to themselves, to others and to nature: 1) suffering or 2) the dissemination of Kabbalah. We’ll keep trying to make it happen through the second path.

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A question I received: Let’s say that a blow befell me. I was fired from my job – I feel horrible. Should I still adhere to the Creator?

My Answer: This is precisely what is happening to the world today – the world is receiving blows, and there will be many such blows. All of this is necessary in order for man to reach a state where he will agree to reject his egoism.

By annulling his egoism, a person discovers that he needs to receive only a little bit from the Creator – that which is necessary for life.  This is similar to the cells and other parts of the body which exist for the sake of the whole body and hence feel its general existence. In much the same way, we feel the common eternal and perfect life of the infinite and unbounded Universe.

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