A question I received: One who does not feel emptiness will not be able to reveal anything. The approaching blows will give people this emptiness. Is there another way?

My Answer: Of course, there is. We know that the appetite is stimulated during a meal or by watching others eat.

Why is this? First of all, you are influenced by society’s opinion. Second of all, Kabbalah explains that desire appears from within (from the Reshimot and Aviut from the Kli) or that desire (appetite) is roused in a person from outside (from the environment, the Aviut from the Light).

If we receive the desire from the Light (“the Light that reforms”), we will come to the goal by the most correct path.

Therefore, if we reveal the cause of even the smallest of blows to the world, it is by understanding their cause that we reveal the Light that comes to us from the corrected state. We then see this corrected state and how wonderful and immense it is compared to our current state. This entices us to move ahead toward the goal, and we will no longer need to be pushed ahead through suffering!

There are two paths: the path of Light and the path of suffering. This is why it is necessary to give the world the explanation of the suffering!

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Two questions I received about the purpose of the blows we receive from the Creator:

Question: Why do we need all these blows if it is entirely not obvious that they have to do with the connection between people and love for one’s neighbor?

My Answer: This is not obvious only for those who have not yet discovered the connection between everyone and between all the parts of the world in general. Only 0.1% of the people on the planet are saying that the current economic crisis is meant to reveal the connection between people. Everyone else is still unaware of the fact that people’s relationships in particular influence the economy, the outbreaks of epidemics, and of the  tsunamis, earthquakes, and other calamities of Nature.

However, if the connection between our relationships and our suffering becomes evident, people will have no choice but to reject their egoistic relationships.

Question: So then why doesn’t the Creator deal the finishing blows of suffering on us, so that we could realize His plan?

My Answer: There is no doubt that if the cause of tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes, and the collapse of financial institutions was revealed to us as being clearly dependent on our behavior, we would change out of necessity. Even so, this change would not come willingly, but rather under duress. We would make the necessary changes merely to save ourselves from destruction and not for the purpose of coming to the realization of the greatness of bestowal and love for our neighbor.

It would be an animalistic escape from death, rather than a free choice that is made to rise above one’s nature to become similar to the Creator, even though the Creator could have created us this way right from the start.

In order to fulfill the Creator’s plan for us, we must undergo the gradual development that will bring us to the realization of the greatness of bestowal and love for our neighbor.

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A person always thinks that he is right. He expects that only good things are going to happen to him, and never the bad. Today all of humanity looks at life this way. The world is suffering through one crisis after another, more and more problems befall us, but no one stops to consider that perhaps there is a purpose to it all. Everyone thinks that all of these events are accidental.

In other words, we are not learning from our experience. We are not cognizant that we are the reason for these events.

In our current state this problem is revealed more and more acutely: from this point forward, the only way we can progress is by uniting together as one.

And this is possible only by drawing the Upper Force—the Creator. That is why it is so important to disseminate the knowledge of how to utilize this upper force of Nature. Only then will every person be able to learn about good in what first appears to be bad.

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We have to try to inform people – especially in America, Russia and Europe – of the fact that there is a solution to all our problems. Why is that?

Like everything in nature, humanity has the structure of a pyramid, comprised of the still, vegetative, animate and human levels. The human level is at the top of the pyramid and influences all the levels beneath it. However, to be “human” means to understand the thought of creation and the process of evolution. Only this kind of person influences the entire pyramid of humanity from above downward.

Nevertheless, even though such a person’s attainment and perception of reality place him at the top of the pyramid, the pyramid itself is driven by those who are at the very bottom, on the still level. They put the pyramid in motion by their reaction from below upward (by raising MAN). Yet, these people are only influenced by the suffering they feel in their lives, rather than by an awareness of the purpose of creation or a vision of the future.

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In the News (from The Washington Times): The global economy, already hammered by plunging production, collapsing trade and its worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, now faces a swine flu outbreak that threatens to become a pandemic.

Last year, the World Bank estimated that a flu pandemic could shave 4.8 percent off world gross domestic product. The World Bank projected that a “severe” outbreak could cost $3 trillion by afflicting the tourism, transportation and retail industries and by slashing productivity and raising workplace absenteeism.

My Comment: What other “Egyptian plagues” does Nature have in store for us because we keep being stubborn and reluctant to correct our egoism? If we are going against the law of Nature, then we shouldn’t expect anything but more “plagues” for our noncompliance!

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Humanity has existed in this world for many thousands of years, and all the reincarnations we have gone through were necessary in order for us to finally realize just one thing – that the egoistic desire we always strive to satisfy, to which we devote every moment of our lives, reincarnating over and over, can never be fulfilled.

Human beings have been coming closer and closer to this discovery over the course of their lives, from one generation to the next, just to be disappointed every time, to realize, “Every time I pursue something, I enjoy it for a mere second, and then the pleasure fades.” This experience builds up in every person, and in our generation we have reached the conclusion that there is nothing left for us to pursue! This is why people are depressed, there is terrorism, divorce, and general disillusionment. All of this comes from people’s inability to fulfill themselves.

And today we are discovering something else in addition – that we cannot be fulfilled through our connections with each other. The improper connections between us do not allow us to engage in trade or business. In fact, they make it impossible for us to satisfy even our basic material needs. Today the problem is not even a lack of pleasure, but a lack of the essentials necessary for survival, for life. This is where our development has brought us.

All of this forces us to conclude that it is not worthwhile for us to work for the sake of our egoism. It only leads a person to disappointment, in order to make him ask, “What is the meaning of my life?” And if this doesn’t do the job, then greater suffering, such as famine, will help people reach the right conclusion.

In any case, the emptiness a person feels inside his desire to receive pleasure is the initial point from which he can begin his spiritual development.

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Questions I received on suffering:

Question: If Kabbalah is the only remedy that reveals the cause of man’s suffering and provides the method of correction, then why did Kabbalists conceal it for so long?

My Answer: They waited for our egoism to mature.

Question: Is it really true that only Kabbalah can remedy us from depression?

My Answer: This is true in cases where depression is not a medical condition, but comes from a lack of meaning in life.

Question: We feel pain and suffering in order to be corrected. What about animals? Don’t they suffer too?

My Answer: Everyone suffers as a part of the common created desire. However, correction is possible only in the part of the desire called “man,” because this part has consciousness – the sense of one’s neighbor (the environment, the group, the Creator).

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In the News (translated from CloudWatcher): Over the last few decades, not many were interested in seeing themes of solidarity and mutual help on TV. The media wanted glamour, blood and violence. But today, because of the crisis and its influence, the most in-demand, urgent topics are none other than mutual help and self-sacrifice.

My Comment: The crisis cleanses people. One Kabbalistic text says, “Meat is cleansed by salt, and people’s desires are cleansed by suffering.” But there are two types of suffering:

• Involuntary suffering, which lasts for a long time, making people wise up against their will in order to avoid the suffering. But gradually, people start to recognize the reason and purpose of the suffering,

• Conscious suffering is when a person learns about the qualities of the Upper World by studying Kabbalah and compares himself with these qualities. He then suffers because he is not similar to these qualities. And as soon as he feels this kind of suffering, he is immediately corrected and filled with goodness.

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A question I received: What should my attitude be towards the Holocaust? Also, being that the “Introduction to the Book of Zohar” says that all of the nations could become Nazi regimes if Israel doesn’t fulfill its duty, and also given that everything in this world is pre-determined, how am I to feel anything but fear and hatred towards the Creator?

My Answer: See Baal HaSulam’s article “Matan Torah (The Revelation of Godliness)”: Kabbalah (the authentic Torah, Torah Emet,) was given to us in order to correct the egoistic desire “to fulfill only yourself” into the altruistic desire “to fulfill others.” Since the entire system of souls is built as a pyramid, similar to our physical body, the correction isn’t done by all the souls at the same time, but happens in a specific order. This order depends on the souls’ desire to break free from “pursuing things in order to receive.”

This concealed desire to reveal the Creator is called “the point in the heart.” The heart is all of a person’s desires, and the point in the heart is the desire for the Creator. This is how parts of the souls unite together and – within their unity – reveal the Creator. This is referred to as the “Reception of the Torah” (revelation of the Light, the Creator).

Also, see Baal HaSulam’s article “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”: Receiving the method of correction (Torah or Kabbalah) is only the initial stage in the general correction of all the souls. Hence, the corrected part must fall into the common egoism, intermix with the uncorrected part – the rest of humanity, so together they can become corrected.

In addition, see Baal HaSulam’s article “Introduction to the Book of Zohar (item70)“: When egoism becomes revealed as evil in the world as a whole, this is the beginning of the period of the revelation of Kabbalah, the method of the entire world’s correction. But because this method is still in the possession of the group of people who have used it – the people of Israel, they must master it and pass it on to all the nations of the world. The destiny of the people of Israel and of the entire world depends only on this. When the method is not passed on in time, then all kinds of problems appear in the world – aggression, wars, extermination, and so on, including the Holocaust.

You cannot justify the Creator because the degree of the righteous (one who justifies the Creator) is still far above you. Therefore, I can understand what you are feeling, though I do not feel the same way.

Related News Story (from Associated Press): Israel’s chief rabbinate severed ties yesterday with the Vatican to protest a papal decision to reinstate a bishop who publicly denied that six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust.

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News Report (from The Independent): “Year of the hungry: 1,000,000,000 afflicted” One billion people will go hungry around the globe next year … despite a second record worldwide harvest in a row. … The main reason has been that high food prices have priced the poor out of the market.

My Comment: As we can see, the problem is not a lack of food, but our inability to distribute it correctly. This is a result of our egoism, which controls us and does not allow us to consider others as we consider ourselves. Similarly, all the problems of our time will show us that they cannot be solved unless we do away with egoism.

There are two ways to correct egoism:

• Through suffering so terrible that one is willing to stop thinking about himself, because thoughts about self make him suffer, or

• Through connecting with others by bonds of love, above one’s egoism, and thereby revealing the joyous fulfillment of the corrected egoism.

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