A question I received: Lately there’s been a dramatic rise in domestic violence in my country. Every day women are murdered by their husbands or boyfriends, and it seems that men hate women. My colleague’s daughter was murdered by a man whom she dated for just two months. This happened after she decided to break up with him. In comparison, it’s very rare for women to murder men. Why is this violence toward women happening?

My Answer: From the beginning, a man feels that a woman is inferior to him. This feeling is enrooted in him by nature. Allegorically speaking, we can understand this from the story about the downfall of sin: from the spiritual root, the woman’s correction depends on the male part of the Kli, and this is reflected in our world as our sensations and the woman’s dependence and need for help to give birth and raise her children – even though this is accredited to the husband. The only thing that can correct this relationship in our world is the realization that in order to advance toward the Creator, they have to be partners, and moreover, the woman’s help and desire have an enormous role, which makes the women necessary, valuable, and indispensable for men who desire to reveal the Light.

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A question I received: Dear Rav Laitman, could you please explain how does Kabbalah treat marriage and differences in perception between husband and wife? Kabbalah has already explained a great deal to me. Does Kabbalah treat a relationship between husband and wife as a sacred one or is it up to one`s desire to decide whether to follow the path? Thank you for helping us to understand what was considered “a secret.”

My Answer: “Sacred” is the quality of bestowal, which we acquire under the influence of the Light of Correction (Ohr Makif), when we correctly study Kabbalah (the books of Baal HaSulam). There is no other sacredness! It’s written: “There is no coercion in spirituality.” In corporeality, coercion originates from egoism. But it cannot exist in the spiritual world and in spiritual actions.

Every person has his own path and his own time to come to the Creator, and therefore you don’t have the right to force anyone to do this, including your husband and children. You can only tell them about it without pressuring them, “by the way,” gently, without threatening them, and evoking love for this topic in them. And no matter what the result, you should continue with your family life just like before.

Uniting with everyone who aspires toward the Creator will give you the strength and the desire to attain Him. You should view your relatives as bodies that are related to you, and as souls that are foreign to you.

Related Material:
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eBook: The Path of Kabbalah – Revealing the Hidden Wisdom
Purchase the Book: The Path of Kabbalah – Revealing the Hidden Wisdom

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Questions I received about the Creator

Question: What is the Creator? Does He have desires and feelings?

My Answer: The Creator is the general force of Nature that incorporates everything. His quality is bestowal (love). This is His only force. From His quality of loving and bestowing, He created creation in the quality “to receive” – to receive what He desires to give it. But even though He created creation in the will to receive, He is leading it to acquire the quality of bestowal, to His state, which is boundless, unique, and perfect.

Question: In the article “The Revelation of Godliness (Matan Torah)” Baal HaSulam writes that the first condition is that “No one acts without a purpose,” and “There is a Creator in the world who created everything with a purpose.” What does “the first condition” mean?

My Answer: The first condition is the basic law of nature.

Question (continued): Do I have to accept this as a fact, even though I don’t have the notion that the Creator is real?

My Answer: You should accept it in order to test it on yourself, to reveal the Creator within you, within the property of bestowal you will acquire. It’s just like a scientist who receives news about someone else’s discovery – he accepts it and then tests whether it is correct. If a person attains the revelation of the Creator’s actions, then to the degree he reveals this, he justifies Him and hence he himself is then called “righteous.” That is to say, in Kabbalah one tests everything in practice, and every person does this within himself!

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A question I received: I participated in a Kabbalah seminar in Tallinn, Estonia on the 15th of June. At that meeting, I expressed my resentment of the following statement: “During a descent, one can progress even more than during an ascent, since at that time a person only uses the force of the group, which is always greater than his own force. One’s friends in the group were selected by the Creator Himself. If you will love them, then He will love you.”

I am used to moving forward and achieving things on my own. Maybe this is wrong, but that’s how it is for the time being. People singing together, holding hands, and singing songs – I feel that not only do they fail to see or know the text, but they even sing without any spirit – so what should I do?

I put more spirit into writing a letter to a woman I love or looking into her eyes. I can’t let myself be part of a group yet. Maybe I’m not ready for a group yet and I have to work on my own, as long as the group is foreign to me. On the other hand, talking to individual people at that evening in Tallinn was a pleasure. But when it came to singing and hugging, I wanted to leave!

My Answer: Everyone is repelled by this at first. Some people are social by nature, and some are loners. Personally I belong to the latter, so I understand you very well. What should you do? You should participate as much as you can. And after that your life will direct you, because when you make efforts and don’t receive a result, you will understand that there is no way out, that our correction lies in the union of souls. You don’t have to hug others or have a good singing voice. You should study and disseminate, and the rest will come in due time. Don’t force yourself.

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Three questions I received on requesting from the Creator

Question: Does one pray to G-d or to the Creator? You have said that it’s written that the Creator hears no prayer other than to be able to bestow, because He is the quality of bestowal and this is the only thing you can ask of Him. And what about the “kibbutsnikim” in the Negev?

My Answer: Back then the desires of the “kibbutsnikim” and the Creator were the same. But in general, the Creator hears everything and everyone, but He reacts only to that which leads to the goal, to Him, to adhesion with Him. And He definitely hears and reacts to one’s requests for correction, for equivalence with Him. The Creator is a system of forces surrounding us. The Creator (Elokim) = Nature (HaTeva). We need to understand that He does not change His goal and action – at every single moment, everything is directed at reacting to our actions, in order to influence each and every person in such a way that they will be directed precisely toward the goal. This is how the Creator – this system of forces – reacts to our desires, thoughts, and actions. This is why Kabbalah says that He does not change. In other words, He does not change His influence on us, which directs us precisely to the goal.

Question: About the “kibbutsnikim” who asked for rain: How is it possible that they received something just by asking for it? I’ve asked for things a thousand times, and the most I received was a reason to regret the fact that I asked.

My Answer: Their requests did not contradict the Creator’s plans to have people settle in these lands. They were (egoistically) united with each other as one whole. They asked for the necessity and gave it everything they had. And it worked temporarily. But when they lost the desire to be united, they became opposite to the system of governing forces, and the Upper Forces evoked their disintegration.

Question: As I understand, a prayer is a person’s deepest and most real desire. So why is there is a custom to pray at certain times rather than when one feels like it? After all, one receives a response only to a real prayer. And what does prayer give a person, in principle?

My Answer: Religion does not deal with correcting the soul – changing one’s intention from “for the sake of oneself” to “for the sake of others and the Creator” in all of one’s actions, but rather it only trains one to make physical actions – the commandments of our world. Therefore, in religion to pray is to read at specific times something that was written for you by other people (by the sages of the Great Assembly, 2,000 years ago). One does not receive a response to such actions, and we see that religious people do not become corrected, but vice versa – as time goes by, their moral descent is becoming more and more apparent. However, such mechanical actions hold people within certain boundaries, and as such, during the period of the Creator’s concealment (from 0 until the 20th century), the religions had the role of providing life’s boundaries. This was established by Kabbalists, to last until our time, when “the point in the heart” surfaces in people and they begin the path of individual spiritual development.

Related Material:
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Chapter 7.1 from the Book The Path of Kabbalah: Prayer
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Three questions I received on fitting ourselves into the the spiritual puzzle

Question: I am a bisexual man, and I always play the men’s role in my relationships with men. But in general, since I became interested in Kabbalah, I’ve lost almost all interest in both men and women. Can I study in a group?

My Answer: Please write to us describing how you view men in general when you are next to them for an extended period of time, when you study together, work together, travel together, drink together and hug each other, sing and dance together with men. What do you feel when men look at you and hug you? Once you respond, we will examine your situation further.

Question: I’ve never felt as bad as I do now. I want to change for the better, but the state I’ve been in for three days already is unbearable and horrible, ranging from the question “What’s all this for? Why do I live?” to “I don’t want to go on living.” I have Kabbalistic books, music, and lessons, and without them I wouldn’t be able to continue. But I don’t want my life to be based on the feeling that I’m being lowered into an abyss of my own dirt, and I’m trying to break out of it!

My Answer: There is nothing besides a person and the Creator – so turn to Him. Your appeal to the Creator will be more effective if you make actions of studying in a group and disseminating.

Question: Every soul is a piece of the general puzzle. Men collect their pieces together to form a Kli. When one person loses the connection and falls out of the general system, then there’s a “hole in the boat,” there’s no Light. This seems clear enough. But how does the female soul fit into this puzzle? I feel like I just don’t belong.

My Answer: This female feeling of being defective (not according to Freud, but according to Kabbalah) will accompany you (as well as all the men who are correcting their Malchut) throughout the entire path until the end of correction. You receive the Light from above through the global men’s group, the same way every man does. And just like the men, you insert your piece of the puzzle, your soul, into the common soul of Adam! You are the same as the men in every way, except for the fact that they attract the Light. The men (the male parts of the common soul) unwillingly accept your desires, and they go out to hunt and to work, in order to attract the Upper Light for everyone.

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A question I received: My whole life is like putting out one fire after the next! Bad things just keep happening to me, and I feel like all I’m doing in my life is trying to live through them and keep surviving. Why is this happening to me? And what should I do with these situations? I want to point out that I’m not really interested in the question “What’s the meaning of my life?,” that I’m more interested in the question, “Why is this happening to me?”

My Answer: They are the same question. It’s as Baal HaSulam writes, in item 2 of the “Introduction to Talmud Eser Sefirot“: “What’s the meaning of this suffering?” and “Who needs it?” Studying Kabbalah will help you understand everything. Why precisely Kabbalah? It’s because Kabbalah is the only wisdom that explains the one source of everything in existence. At the moment, you are experiencing this source in its negative, but you can change the way it treats you.

Again, the Creator is the one and only source of everything happening to you, because He governs everything in existence. By studying Kabbalah, you can discover the reason why He treats you the way He does at every single moment. Your question about the meaning and source of suffering is a Kabbalistic one: it marks the beginning of one’s discernment of oneself as a human being, i.e. as one who begins their relationship with the Creator.

Related Material:
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Lesson: Introduction to Talmud Eser Sefirot (12-10-2007)

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A question I received: I’ve heard you say something like no civilizations of the past are seen in the “revealed.” Does it mean that everything scientists are now finding (in support of a theory of the earlier civilizations) appears in our senses as a reality that we ourselves are demanding? In other words, the external forces react to our demands by creating more new “decorations.”

My Answer: You’re absolutely right! As a result of the descent from spirituality, when the desire created by the Creator reached its lowest level, it perceived within itself what we feel as “me” and the world surrounding us (as external to “me”). The processes and the internal changes started being perceived as time, space and movement (again, external to “me”). This is how a person perceives that something had already existed before he appeared. But who actually sensed it? Without senses, nothing exists. Everything exists in our imagination, in our senses. Read the article “Preface to the Book of Zohar,” item 34.

Related Material:
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A question I received: You say that Kabbalah is a science. That’s fair. The two forces of nature, bestowal and receiving. All of nature is nothing but bestowal, and man is the only element in nature that disrupts the balance, he creates disbalance, and this is why we suffer.

Everything is fine until we get to this point. But finally, when we get to the point where we need to fix the balance, you say: Ohr Makif. Hmm… Some light comes out of nowhere and corrects me. And what confuses me the most is that this light comes from a book. Could you please explain or define what “light” is in a practical and clear manner? I thought that Kabbalah was a science about forces, nature, desires, etc. In my perception Upper Light is not a scientific term and directly refers to something esoteric. Maybe you could make this notion more reasonable and comprehensible? What is this force that corrects us? Is this the force of bestowal? Then why is it called Ohr Makif? How can this “light” able to help prevent suffering on our path of development? Is it in any way related to the corporeal light?

My Answer: If I were you with your love for sciences, I would study “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah” (Pticha) or maybe I would even start studying Talmud Eser Sefirot! These texts explain several spiritual notions in a scientific language: 1. desire, 2. correction of intention from “for one’s own sake” to “for the sake of the Creator,” 3. fulfillment by the Light, pleasure, the Creator, to the extent of the corrected intention. There is nothing else in Kabbalah.

Ohr Makif is a force that influences us from a more corrected state, which we aspire toward. It responds to your aspiration in the following way: it pulls you to a higher, more altruistic state to the same extent you aspire for it. This is an interaction of two vectors of desires. The same mutual influence of forces also exists in our world, when a person aspires for any new thing. The difference is that when it comes to spiritual aspiration, this force that pulls you to a new state is referred to as Light, because it doesn’t just pull you through its influence upon you, but it also changes you, making you become like the new state, one that is spiritual and altruistic. The difference between this force of Light, and the force that pulls you toward a new state in our world is that, the force in our world doesn’t need to change you to pull you to something. Check it out for yourself to eliminate any doubts.

Related Material:
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Laitman.com Post: Will God Want to Repeat the Act of Creation?
Laitman.com Post: The Irrationality of Kabbalah

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Two questions I received on whether it is the Creator who is in control, or the person

Question: What comes first? My desire to advance along the path towards the goal, the understanding that everything happens for the sake of correction, without feeling the Creator and His intention to correct creation, or does one first gain the understanding that the Creator does everything in order to do benefit us through different means, and we want to fulfill His desire?

My Answer: This contradiction, “Who comes first?” or “Who governs?” will always remain with you, until the very end of correction. Who determines your thoughts, feelings, and actions – you or the Creator? This contradiction will disappear only once you merge with Him into one whole!

Question: I’m willing to accept the idea that I have to correct myself, but it’s difficult for me to accept the idea that everything is done by the Creator. When I experience a descent, then the Creator is doing this for my correction. When I experience an ascent, then the Creator gave it to me. However, I don’t feel that everything is predetermined. What should I do?

My Answer: Try to feel that everything that happens in your thoughts and feelings, and everything that happens around you – everything comes from the Creator! When you study Kabbalistic materials (Baal HaSulam) and make efforts, then during the study you attract the Light of Correction (Ohr Makif – Read item 155 in the “Introduction to Talmud Eser Sefirot“), and gradually, as if out of a fog, this Light will reveal the Creator to you!

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