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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A question I received: I would like to receive and share the Light for the sake of the Creator, not me. So, I have been reading your essays, clues, and teachings very happily and thanking you all the time. If you don’t mind, I would like to get your advice on the must-do and must-not-do, or the key works that one must do in order to receive the Light and be a servant of the Creator. I don’t know how many of my 613 (+ 7) egoistic desires have been corrected by now. However, will it be a selfish request if I ask you to help me correct myself and receive the Light and reach the Thought of creation?

My Answer: All of one’s 613 desires become corrected simultaneously. It’s because the soul is always whole and never in parts, just like a drop of semen, an embryo, or an adult always have all the elements of a body.

Your task is to go through the 125 steps of correction. If you ascend to the first step, you will reveal the Creator to the degree designated by this step. I cannot help you do this in the way you are asking me to. I cannot do it for you. I can only nourish you and teach you to grow.

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A question I received: You have often mentioned that man has to bring the entirety of nature to harmony. But wasn’t nature created in harmony?

My Answer: Nature dwells in absolute harmony, but this harmony lacks one element – man’s “I.” This is missing from nature’s harmony because of the egoism inherent to man, which was intentionally created within him. When Nature is seen through man’s ego, it appears chaotic and lacking in harmony.

There is a world and a Nature that are much wider and greater, far more integral and global than what we see. It incorporates the whole system of the universe, where all elements are ideally tied together. And this entire system is governed by forces that we can’t feel or see. The reason why they elude our perception and understanding is our egoism. Our egoism stands in the way and distorts Nature’s perfection.

Thus, we see the immense global and perfect system as imperfect, because it is distorted by our egoism. However, this gives us an opportunity to correct ourselves: Through our efforts toward correction, we become equal to the Creator.

Imagine that I bought a puzzle in a toy store. I bring it home, shuffle the pieces and give them to my toddler son to put back together. Why did I break the puzzle? It was for my son to learn and to realize how to assemble the pieces correctly.

Thus, our entire society, everything man has created throughout the millennia, our entire culture and civilization, are nothing but a game that we must master in order to become like Nature (the Creator). Then, this entire world will disappear from our perception and cease to exist. When we attain the spiritual world, then our entire universe, everything we perceive today through our five senses, including ourselves and the word around us, will vanish. This world will disappear like an old toy.

Instead of it, we will perceive another level of existence, another world, different kinds of interactions, and another layer of reality – one that’s eternal and perfect.

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It is very difficult to explain how to enter spirituality to someone. To do it, one must understand that it pays to be a giver. A person is willing to do anything, to pay any price, including his corporeal life, in order to attain eternal life. And we do see people paying for this with their lives. A person is willing to invest all of himself, to sacrifice everything he has, in order for everyone to know about him and to remember how great he was. He thinks, “I will show them all!”

We feel this way because our egoism is an imprint of the spiritual world. This is why we sense eternity inside our egoism. But when you tell a person to revoke his egoism – his entire foundation, without getting anything in return (in this world or the world to come), then he feels that he will have nothing left. It’s because he was hoping to receive a reward inside his egoism. Therefore, it seems absurd to him to nullify it. He reasons, “If I start bestowing to others, I will disappear. Where will I be then, and what will happen to me?”

The transition point from this world into the spiritual world “the world to come” is the most sensitive, significant, and crucial point in all of reality. It is the point of transition between the two worlds, a switch from reception to bestowal.

In order to draw people closer to it, even a little bit, we have to disseminate the wisdom of Kabbalah in a broad sense. We have to explain these concepts clearly and very professionally. And slowly but surely, we are getting there.

As a result, we will save people many years of suffering. We are thereby speeding up time, giving the world the chance to take a leap and perform the necessary corrections. Instead of going through terrible physical suffering and learning from it (which may drag on for decades), you are giving people knowledge and understanding, so they won’t have to go through the suffering physically, in the corporeal world. The explanation should be given to them with love, out of the realization that it’s necessary, while seeing the whole system and understanding that it is good in the Creator’s eyes. This is how you can do something good for the world.

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In the News (from The Financial Times): “US non-farm payrolls fall 467,000 in June” …the economy shed an average of 691,000 jobs a month during the first three months of the year. Monthly job losses, as measured by the Labor Department, peaked at 741,000 in January. Employers have cut 6.5m jobs since the recession officially began in December 2007. The average workweek fell to 33 hours, the lowest level since records began in 1964, from 33.1 hours in May.

My Comment: Will there be a bottom to this, or is it a bottomless abyss? Clearly, using the old means to recover is not working. Thus, what we have to do is to improve the social relationships, rather than the economic or industrial ones. We have to make them global. Then, all the other relationships will change as well.

There are three issues we have to agree upon:
1) That a commonwealth of all people within a global civilization is a must;
2) That Nature has a force that can correct people from hatred to love for one another;
3) That Kabbalah tells us how to do this.

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In the News (from The Independent): “Just 96 months to save world, says Prince Charles” Capitalism and consumerism have brought the world to the brink of economic and environmental collapse, the Prince of Wales has warned in a grandstand speech… Charles’s speech was described as his first attempt to present a coherent philosophy in which he placed the threat to the environment in the context of a failing economic system…

Charles said that without “coherent financial incentives and disincentives” we have just 96 months to avert “irretrievable climate and ecosystem collapse, and all that goes with it … If we don’t face up to this, then Nature, the biggest bank of all, could go bust…”

My Comment: The ecosystem doesn’t depend on us, but the economic system does. However, the way to change it for the better is not by trying to influence it directly, but by correcting our intentions from “reception” to “bestowal.” How can this be done? It is only possible by drawing a spiritual force from above, the force that created our egoism and that can change it, turning it into the opposite quality, that of bestowal and love. The wisdom of Kabbalah tells us how to draw this force of correction.

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Filed under: World - 1 Comment →

A question I received: The G20 leaders, including Obama, Putin and others, will never reach an agreement, except when they begin to be personally affected by the problems in the most physical sense. So, if the Creator wants them to reach an agreement, why doesn’t He make them suffer sufficiently?

My Answer: The government leaders are simply enacted from above to carry out what the people deserve at a given time, and they are not viewed personally by the Upper Governance. This is why the correction must begin and be carried out from below – the people, rather than above – the leaders.

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A question I received: If the world reaches a point where everyone will have the average living standard and no one will live beyond this standard, then what will drive people to develop further? What will cause people to move forward in their development?

My Answer: If a person feels pleasure from bestowing to others, if he feels that by uniting with others they create a single vessel, inside of which he senses the Upper Force (the Creator), then the ever-increasing attainment of the Creator that he feels will be his goal and reward. When a person builds the “human” level within by bestowing to others, he corrects his attitude toward them, and this makes him similar to the Creator. Thus, he ascends along 125 spiritual steps to the Final Correction.

When he ascends spiritually, he feels satisfaction and fulfillment, and thus comes closer to the Creator. The fulfillment he feels from this is perfect. It is not temporary and transient, but eternal. It fulfills a person completely, leaving no voids. Moreover, one continuously gains new possibilities for even greater types of fulfillment.

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Two questions I received regarding relationships and the spiritual path:

Question: I got married in Peru. After a few years of marriage, my husband left me and our two daughters. Out of despair, I left to go work in Korea. There, I met a good man and we’ve been together 12 years, and have a son who is 9. Is it necessary for me to get an official divorce in order to form a Kabbalistic family?

My Answer: No. No method of registering a person’s marital status invented and performed in this world has any influence on your spiritual development.

Question: I have been studying Kabbalah for almost two years and have been actively involved in dissemination. My partner has also been doing the same. Since I started studying Kabbalah, I’ve come to understand that I want our relationship to be formalized through marriage and that I want to have children. However, he doesn’t feel the same, although he wants to continue living with me. Is my desire proper?

My Answer: You are right to demand marriage and children. Pass my opinion on to him. A person who is working on his spiritual correction has to do everything that regular people do in this world. It is said: “I dwell among my people,” (Be toch ami anochi echevet).

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A question I received: How soon after (or before) the correction will the environment (the eco and bio-systems) return to its original balanced state?

My Answer: As soon as we begin to theoretically agree with its plan, Nature will immediately begin to change Nature is connected to our consciousness and subconsciousness, and even the slightest change in both will cause an immediate reaction. Nature is a precise mechanism and we, not some hypothetical divine court, are responsible for the changes it undergoes.

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