A question I received: Why do we need so much time – 6,000 years – to reach the Final Correction?

My Answer: The whole world is structured like a pyramid that divides into the inanimate, vegetative, animate, and human levels. The inanimate level is our entire universe, which was created about 15 billion years ago. The terrestrial globe with, vegetative life on it, was created 4 billion years ago. The first living organisms emerged about a half a billion years ago. The first human being emerged about 50,000 years ago (depending on who you consider to be a human being). Do you see the proportion of how all of these levels correlate?

The same applies to humans, who also develop through the inanimate, vegetative, animate, and human levels within. On the inanimate level of development, human beings developed for several thousand years, and during that period, there was nothing differentiating humans from animals. Then the period of the “vegetative” level of human development began. And we have continued to exist on the animate level of development until this very day. Our entire inner development occurs due to our growing egoism.

Egoism that is individual or personal is a quality pertaining to the animate levels. In other words, on the inanimate level, everyone was the same. On the vegetative level, egoism began to flourish in people, but they developed as one integral mass, similar to plants that turn toward the sun together, or bend down together due to the wind, or open up together because of rain.

On the animate degree, individual egoistic desires begin to appear in a person, just as they are present in all animals. But when does a person reach the human degree? This is only starting to happen now, in the 21st century! So, just look at how many billions of years it took for the universe to develop, compared to the development of the human being.

You are asking: “We have been suffering for 5,000 years. How much longer do we need to suffer!?” But why don’t you ask about the past 15 billion years? Because you have a narrow, subjective view, which does not grasp the whole process.
(From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson on Shamati #13)

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Two questions I received about earthly love and desires:

Question: What should I do when I realize that love I feel toward another person is the game that the Creator is playing with me? Should I pray for the Creator to give me strength to love only Him and forsake earthly love in order to focus only on the Creator? After all, my love is a force that I feel inside me. Changing one love for another is not as easy as changing currencies. Such prayer too, requires a lot of strength. Can I play with the Creator, through such love?

My Answer: Don’t philosophize. Continue to study and the Light will put everything in its place. Leave it to the light. Above all – don’t leave your studies. That is the only thing that you have the ability to control.

Question: I’ve been studying for six months and would like to ask a question that really bothers me.  If I separate myself from the desire to receive, then who am I? If I am the desire to receive and my individuality is a collection of my Reshimot, what desire should I separate myself from? Do I have to leave only the necessary desires, and if so, how do I define them?

My Answer: You shouldn’t separate yourself from egoism, but instead, just aspire to  connection with the Creator. These are different tendencies! Let your egoism be. To the measure of your aspiration towards the Creator, His Light will act upon you and the Ohr Makif will make all the necessary corrections and changes within you.

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When the point in the heart emerges in a person, he can continue developing further by means of the Light’s influence, since the Light brings forth the quality of bestowal in him. I live the life of my body, and there is only one point inside me that’s willing to unite with the spiritual world, with the spiritual Light. My task is to create a connection between the Light and this point.

Only the Light is able to penetrate inside my egoistic desire (heart) and touch the point in the heart. This is why I have to direct all my efforts at attracting the Light to this point. I don’t yet understand exactly how It works; this is something I will figure out later. For now, my advancement happens by me attracting the Light to my point.

The Creator created the evil inclination, egoism, my heart, and inside it – the point in the heart. It was for the sake of this point that the force of correction, the Light, was prepared. So act in such a way that the Light will work on you. Everything else is not important even one bit.

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By studying Kabbalah, a person begins to reveal that all of reality was organized by the Creator in order for the person to reveal all His actions, according to the rule: “The advantage of the Light comes from the darkness.”

We are thrown into a new state at every moment, and while in it, we have to demand the Light in order to gain a spiritual mind and understanding. The only thing we need is an aspiration toward the Light, above any situations that come our way. A person should think only about how to place himself beneath the influence of this invisible Light, and the Light will, in turn, bring forth a new picture of the world within him.

This should let us understand how important authentic Kabbalah books are. After all, without a book that was written by a true Kabbalist, we can never attract the Light of Correction. So, we have to be grateful to Kabbalists like Baal HaSulam, who left us their books. There is simply no other force which will influence us and allow us to attain spirituality when we study and want to attract the Light.

And the Kabbalistic source does not necessarily have to be a book. You can also study over the Internet at the Kabbalah Learning Centre or watch our TV channel, Kabbalah TV, because all of our study materials and lessons are based on the authentic sources, even if a person does not understand the language that is used. The most important thing is to be together and desire the Light of Correction. It doesn’t matter how much theory you know. What’s important is to strive to enter the material with your sensations.

If a person attracts the Upper Light in every situation he is in, through every thought and desire, then he corrects himself. This is what the speed and might of one’s correction depend on.

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You have to constantly check yourself in relation to the Light, the quality of bestowal. To the extent you do this, you will receive the force of the Light, which will correct you. All our efforts have to be directed at desiring the influence of the Light, which will cause the birth of a new quality – bestowal – inside us. If you focus only on this: drawing the Light of correction, then you won’t get confused or scatter you efforts on unnecessary actions.

We usually try to do everything except drawing the Light of Correction upon ourselves. However, this Light is the only thing we need. It will give us the right intelligence and carry out all the actions for us. We don’t do anything ourselves. Anything that we do without the Light’s assistance is an animate action, which won’t bring us an inch closer to the goal.

Therefore, from dawn to dusk, every thought we have and action we perform should lead us to one question: “Where is the Light of Correction?” Only the Light of Correction should perform the work for us, including the clarification and the action. This is what’s written: “I created the evil inclination and I created the Torah for its correction, because the Light that is hidden in it returns one to the source.” It’s the Light that has to do everything, not you. It has to return you to goodness and correct you.

It is not written that the Light should help you return to goodness yourself. Rather, It does everything from beginning to end. So, if you do anything at all besides drawing the Light, then you will become confused and waste precious moments of your life.
(From Part 3 of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson)

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A question I received: If I haven’t attained the spiritual sensation yet, do I have to perform the physical commandments of Judaism?

My Answer: Kabbalah does not obligate anyone to do this. This science is studied by people of all nationalities, including those who observe religious commandments as well as those who are completely secular. We don’t meddle in these affairs; this is your personal business. We only teach people how they can attain equivalence with the Creator, or in other words, how to correct their 613 desires.

We are nearing the time when all humanity will have to attain the Creator, according to the written, “My house will be called the house of prayer for all the nations.” This means that the entire global egoism will be corrected, and the desire of every person will go through correction.

All the other aspects of people’s lives may remain and carry on in the same fashion, in whatever way people find the most comfortable and the best, if it matches their inner correction. Baal HaSulam writes that in the state of the final correction, every person can keep his religion.

That’s because Kabbalah views religion as a national custom, the culture of a nation, which each nation can keep. Religious observance constitutes external actions that are nothing more than a cultural tradition, an external covering, and the framework of people’s lives, telling them how to behave at home, with their families, and so on. However, this does not affect the correction of a person’s soul.

The most important thing is to attain the correction of you soul – to attain love for your neighbor.
(From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson)

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Every person receives precisely the capabilities he needs in order to correct his soul. We are not created by the whim of chance. All of your desires and qualities, all the situations you have gone through, the place you were born, the upbringing you received – everything has been set up for you in the optimal way for the express purpose of developing your soul.

Therefore, there’s no use complaining that you need different conditions in this material world in order to develop spiritually, or that you lack sufficient health, money, education, intelligence, talents, abilities, or sensitivity. All your qualities and all the conditions that are provided for you come from the particular qualities of your soul, which has to go through correction. Your only job is to ask for this correction to take place.

Therefore, there is no need to correct the external world. We have to live in the world just like everyone else. This world is a level that does not become corrected until the very end of correction. You may ascend as high as the level of Rashbi, who wrote The Book of Zohar, but you will still have to take care of your physical body, your family, your job, pension, and medical service – everything a person needs.

Like all people, when you’re sick, you will still have to go to a doctor, receive medicine from him, pay him money, and take the medicine according to the doctor’s instructions. You will have to do everything the doctor told you to, but when you are healed, you will thank the Creator for it. Why?

It’s because you did everything needed of you in the conditions that the Creator has organized for you in this theater of life. You treated this theater correctly and carried out all the necessary actions – and then you felt better. You thus corrected yourself on the level of this theater, and now you thank the Producer for everything that has happened. He set up this entire world and your illness for you, and you dealt with it on the same level

However, if He gives you a point in the heart and waits for you to come closer to Him, then you have to relate to Him on the level of the point in the heart. You do not throw your qualities out the window, be it envy, passion or pride, but you use them all in order to connect with others above these qualities, for example, by envying how they are advancing in the spiritual world.

Your pride pushes you to advance at least as much as they are advancing. You thus use all your natural qualities in order to awaken the true prayer inside you. And if you properly use all the means that are given to you, then you will end up attaining all your goals.

You have to clearly differentiate between the material level, which you cannot correct, and the spiritual level. You thereby connect the two levels.

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People think that the Creator punishes us similar to how people are punished in this world: you do something bad and you get punished for it. But there is no such thing in spirituality. We create our own punishment whenever we don’t correct our will to enjoy in some respect. The lack of correction, or one’s desire that was not corrected at the level it should have been, turns into one’s punishment on the next level.

For example, say a student in the third grade didn’t study the way he should have, but he was still accepted into the fourth grade. Now, in the fourth grade, he needs all the material that he did not learn in the third grade in order to advance further. Therefore, he experiences difficulties and all kinds of problems in his study, which seems like a punishment to him.

But who set up this punishment for him? It was no one but himself: he brought this punishment along with him. And it keeps accumulating from one level to the next, like a snowball, eventually turning into such a heavy load that it becomes simply impossible to keep advancing with it. But there is no one to blame; all he should do is correct the past.

This is how all of humanity is feeling today. People are carrying the load of neglected corrections, which were not performed in time, and this is why the world is reaching a global crisis. Moreover, this situation has been programmed from Above.

Today, we must begin the correction. It no longer matters what situation we have gotten ourselves into, what we have gone through, and at which point we had been too lazy and neglected the corrections we had to make. Now, despite all the difficulties and heaviness, which only keep mounting, we have to start ascending and correcting the past. Indeed, the only way to correct the past is in the present.
(From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson)

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A person thinks that when his life is over, he will receive a reward in the world to come for having behaved well and being faithful, as well as for having carried out all that was demanded of him by his religion. But what can he receive if he did not prepare his desires for it?

His desires are for the pleasures of this world – pleasures that don’t exist in the spiritual world! A person’s primitive imagination made him decide to collect as much “stuff” as possible from this world in order to take it all with him to the grave.

If we think of the Creator as a king-like character for whom we must work, then we are like the religious people. The Creator is within us; He is the quality of bestowal and love which we have to acquire here and now.

Therefore, we have to work on ourselves in order to correct ourselves, rather than to be rewarded or punished by some contrived powerful ruler. This is Kabbalah’s difference from religion, and the reason why we need the force of correction – the force of Kabbalah, or the Torah. It’s because its Light returns us to the Source – the Creator.

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It is written, “There is not a blade of grass below that has not an angel above it that strikes it and tells it, ‘Grow,’” which means that everything comes from Above. And this general governance from Above is the shared path of the whole world’s development.

However, when we try to attain the goal of creation, we subject ourselves to the individual governance, which operates by a different rule: our desire, our prayer (MAN) from below precedes everything else. It is only afterwards that the Light (correction) descends from Above. That is why any new spiritual state that emerges within us is a result of our desire for it. However, we have no control over the actions that take place; we merely ask, demand and desire for something to happen, and then the Light from Above, from our next degree, performs this change within us and we ascend onto the next degree.

The entire skill of the spiritual work is to understand this, and then to begin to feel and act in this manner. All that is required of us is to investigate, scrutinize and ask for something, and as soon as our request is made correctly, it draws an instant response from the Light.

Therefore, all the changes begin with man, but are carried out by the Creator. The Light remains in the state of absolute rest, waiting for us to demand these changes.

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