Two questions I received about pleasure and suffering:

Question: Why does the Creator make us suffer?

My Answer: It follows from the rule, “the greatness of the Light is seen from darkness.” For example, soccer fans can’t be fully satisfied with a game unless their favorite team goes through difficulties. Research showed that fans of a winning team that had gone through negative emotions due to a risk of the team losing had keener and more positive feelings about the match. Negative emotions play a key role in positive sensations.

Question: I have a question which has bothered me for a long time and thus hindered me in my acceptance of Kabbalah. Why did God want to please Himself (by pleasing His creation – since we are one); why not just maintain His perfection? That must have meant that He also had an egoistic desire to bring pleasure to Himself.

My Answer: You reason this way because you do not understand the quality of bestowal. You think that it includes some kind of reference to oneself, but it does not.

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All our troubles in life are caused by the Upper Light that influences us. We feel it as darkness instead of Light inside our egoistic desires (our uncorrected Kelim), and we find ourselves asking, “Why do we feel so bad?”

In essence, we are asking about the reason for our state. To find the answer, we have to reveal that the reason is the opposition of our qualities to the Upper Level (the AHP of the Upper One). As we advance spiritually, our question gradually changes until we finally ask the Upper One, “Show us what to do!” And we accept any conditions He gives us.

Today, for the first time in history, we have become connected inside one global egoistic connection, which has made us opposite to the Creator. Prior to this, each of us developed individually for thousands of years and we weren’t opposite to the the Upper Level (the AHP of the Upper One), because He (the Governing Force) is one and indivisible, whereas we (those who are governed) were disconnected from one another.

Now however, having become connected as one system, we are revealing our opposition to the the Upper One (or the AHP of the Upper One). He is one, and we have also became as one, but opposite to Him. He is an expression of our corrected form, which we are seeing against our uncorrected, egoistic form. It is because of our opposite nature that we feel the crisis and suffering.

It’s up to us to desire to change and ask the Upper One to correct us and make us similar to Him. We will then be filled with a sensation of the Light (a feeling of bestowal and love) and will rise to the level of the Upper One.

Our success on this path and our ability to make it quick and pleasant depends on how meticulously we keep in mind that everything that is going on in the world is the Creator playing with us; a game of the Upper with the lower.

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Each soul is connected to the World of Infinity by a chain or a ladder of spiritual rungs that gradually weakens the Lights and Kelim. I awaken this system the moment I establish a connection with Infinity. Actually, this whole system is inside me; it only seems external to me.

There are two entities in the universe: man and the Creator. Man has to feel that he exists outside of the Creator in order to understand the meaning of “being separated from the Creator.” He has to learn what opposition to Him is and what it is to be close or far from Him in order to then be able to experience adhesion with Him.

This is why I was deliberately created with a perception of reality that is divided into what is inside and outside of me. This makes it easier for me to understand what the Creator is and what I am, what the breaking and the adhesion are, what a state of unconsciousness (concealment) is as opposed to the state of being close to Him and merging with Him into one whole.

The Creator tosses outside everything that I feel inside me, and as a result, my perception is divided into two parts: internal (which is everything I receive), and external (everything that I give, but without the correct intention).

The external world is my Kelim that are purposefully portrayed to me as foreign in order for me to understand what bestowal means. If I begin to relate to them as to parts of me, then I will understand how far I am from bestowal, and how opposite and undesirable it is for me. I will then see that loving my neighbor as myself is not that simple; in fact, I cannot do it. And that means I cannot bestow or come close to the Creator.

“But hold on,” you are thinking, “I want to be close to the Creator!” Well, if you want it, then you need to show it, and bestowal is the only way to do that.

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The Zohar: “Who is that rising from the desert like pillars of smoke?” (Song of Songs), at the time when Israel walked across the desert.

A person on the spiritual path goes through states of darkness, emptiness and various problems, and he must constantly rise above all of this by acquiring the quality of bestowal.

The Shechina walked ahead of them, and they followed it.

If a person asks for help so he will have something to follow, and if he chooses to follow the Creator instead of his egoistic nature, then he sees a “pillar of fire” and “clouds of greatness” – signs that help him ascend up the spiritual ladder.

“The Shechina walked ahead of them” means that their only thought was about how to unite together into one gathering of souls, called Schechina.

The Shechina walked accompanied by all the clouds of greatness. And when the Shechina ascended, so did Israel, as it is written, “When the cloud rose above Sinai.”

When the Shechina ascended, the cloud rose to the highest peak. And all those inhabiting the world saw and wondered, “Who is that rising from the desert, like pillars of smoke?”

The desires that are able to follow the Shechina do so. And those that aren’t yet able to follow her are called “the nations of the world.” However, they also receive a revelation, and when everyone ascends, these desires also advance with them.

This is how a person advances by clarifying which desires within him are called “Israel” (straight to the Creator), “the nations of the world” (the desires that he is unable to correct for now), “Klipot” (desires that are completely unfit for correction until the end of all corrections). A person continuously sorts his desires and sacrifices them, causing the sacrificial smoke to rise, which means that he changes their use from “for my own sake” to “for the Creator’s sake.” Smoke (“Ashan” in Hebrew, also translates as “world, year, soul”) is the Reflected Light.

If a person works on himself in this manner, sorting his desires and attaching them to the Creator, then He attains similarity to Him. Thus, he raises the Reflected Light and opens the way to his next degree. In other words, he constantly reveals a new world, a new year, and a new soul.

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A question I received: Why does spiritual work always have to be done joyfully?

My Answer: Joy is a sign that you are acting for the sake of bestowal and that you are not doing it by coercion, because you have no other choice or because you are afraid of bad things happening to you. We know how happy a mother is when she succeeds at feeding her child well, because she receives pleasure from this. Bestowal that comes from love, like with the case of the mother, always comes with joy. Joy is a sign and a consequence of good deeds (bestowal).

However, if a person is under the power of his ego, he feels tense and is angry at the Creator. Therefore, the force of kindness and faith is expressed through serenity, rejection of oneself in the face of the Upper Force, a willingness to receive its influence and its correction, which will change your qualities to bestowal. Then the Upper Force comes and gives you strength, and all of this is accompanied by joy.

A true plea to the Creator cannot occur without joy. If a prayer is heard by the Creator, it is called “the gate of tears” (Shaar ha-Dmaot), which means that a person wishes to be similar to the Creator (from the word “Dommeh” – similar). Therefore, he “cries,” meaning that he really wants to become similar to the Giver. However, these are not tears of sorrow; rather, a person feels joy because he has reached this great desire.

An appeal to the Creator cannot be sorrowful. If you cry, it means you blame Him for arranging all of this for you and are unhappy about your path, which you follow out of hopelessness. Then you cannot be righteous. Therefore, if a person does not feel joy in every state that comes to him (be it the greatest state imaginable or the worst possible state), this means that he is in his egoism and has no way to appeal to the Creator.

A person has to ascend in order to always remain in joy. Then he won’t care what is happening to him, since his only request is to acquire the force of bestowal. In that case, he will receive it.

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In spirituality, when I complete my work on a certain degree, I receive more than I earned. Let’s say I corrected my desires on the still level; is this really enough to make the qualitative leap to the vegetative level? This is where you find something extra, a kind of a “bonus” that is necessary for you to have the strength to advance.

We do the same in our everyday lives by “filling” a child ahead of time with different knowledge and abilities, which he will need at a later time. Likewise, we begin our spiritual development at the lowest, worst degree, and this is why I am entitled to additional strength, since I could never manage without it.

It seems like I receive it for “free,” and later I return my “debt” as I correct myself. The Creator created the evil inclination, and we ask Him for help with our correction. However, wasn’t it Him who put us in this situation? So why then do we have to ask Him for this?

The thing is that by asking for help, we organize ourselves and begin to understand the kind of correction that we need, what an intention for the sake of bestowal is, and what we need in order to come to the next stage. Thus, we are compelled to turn to the Creator and thus establish a connection with Him.

“I am listening,” He says. “I need to correct this,” you say, “But I can’t do it on my own.” Thus, you become a “supervisor” of your own construction, and through this you begin to understand the Creator’s actions, mind, program, and His quality according to the principle: “I shall know You through Your actions.”

It turns out that your appeal to the Creator forms the future you – and He will do all the rest.

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The science of Kabbalah is the method of developing the soul. However, while developing my soul, I don’t really understand the process. I don’t know what is good or bad for its development, what kind of desires should increase in me and to what extent. It’s as if I wander aimlessly between egoism, disdain and self-sacrifice.

Here we need to obey a simple rule: love for the Creator will come after love for others. I will attain Him exactly inside the connection between myself and others. Our entire study is devoted to this.

At first thinking of others seems like the most repulsive thing to me. I am sick of it, and I would prefer to just study and work on myself, but not depend on others. However, I soon discover that there is no other way to go.

Although we are not familiar with the program of our development, we can still try to establish an interconnection among us. But the fact is that the Light does all of the work. It reveals various properties inside us, revealing them individually in every person depending on the root of his soul. Therefore, one person advances in huge steps while someone else advances by small steps. Someone reveals anger in himself and someone – apathy. There are no exact templates and standard rules.

The thing Kabbalists explain to us are what belongs to everyone with no exceptions – what is the goal we all have to reach and how to exert efforts on the path to the goal. Kabbalists reminds us time and time again that no matter what is happening, we shouldn’t forget to push on the gas, always strive to accelerate and always move straight ahead.

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We start out advancing to the goal egoistically. Because we don’t see any other way out, we unite like soldiers in the army in order to attack new frontiers. But then, as we work internally and yield to each other, we become more sensitive and find that we don’t have the property of bestowal. We realize that we would be happy to unite with our friends, but we are unable to.

In regular life, we find the strength to unite and reach the desired goal together because the goal is egoistic and we see mutual benefit. But the spiritual goal is opposite to the familiar egoistic unity. There is a contradiction between the set goal and the separation that rules among us. We gradually reveal that we are not joining together, but, on the contrary, we hate each other. That is how we reveal the evil inside us, which we did not notice before.

As a result, we are left helpless, not knowing what to do. From then on, we come to a state called “prayer,” where we begin to cry and entreat with the Creator to give us and our friends strength – the strength to unite.

Because of this, three elements come together: I, my friends and the Creator, who links us together and provides the connection between us and the Light, which starts to fills us. That is when the spiritual world opens up to us.

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In spirituality, an action is valued by its strength and the help rendered. For example, a mother takes care of her child, trying with all her strength to fulfill the child’s desires. The same happens in a group: I am trying very hard to unite with my friends in order to fulfill their desire.

By doing so, I will feel that the friends also lower themselves before me. They have a great spiritual goal, and they are willing to step on themselves for the sake of it and to help me as much as they can. The goal compels them to do so the same way as love compels the parents.

From this we can understand how we can begin attaining the Creator. Initially, we do not reveal Him as great, but as small. This is because He intentionally lowers Himself to help us attain the spiritual advancement. A child also sees in his mother as “a maid,” since she puts herself at his complete disposal.

This is also how we reveal the Creator. But then we gradually begin to understand that the Creator intentionally expresses Himself modestly to us and lowers His greatness to teach us how to bestow.

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When I reveal the wicked forces of the spiritual worlds, called Klipot, and the forces of goodness opposite them (as it is written, “The Creator made one against another – wickedness against holiness), then I attain a level of existence inside these parallel systems of good and evil worlds. Thus, I feel heaven and hell opposite to one another. It’s impossible to feel one without the other.

Let us hope we will attain all of this and become the “sinners” of which the Torah speaks. To be a sinner means to exist opposite to your “righteous” state; it is when you toddle between “sinner” and “righteous,” alternately becoming one and then the other. By “zigzagging” in this manner, one advances higher.

All of this refers to the system of the spiritual worlds that we are facing. There is nothing there resembling the colorful pictures of heaven and hell that religion has frightened us with. We have to free ourselves from all these primitive superstitions and realize that nothing can happen to our body after death besides disintegration, since the body is no more than a protein-based matter.

We have to understand that there are only two forces acting inside us – reception and bestowal. However, they can be called by many different names. Everything consists of them and everything exists only in us.

A name is a desire (HaVaYaH) with the Light (Ohr Pnimi) in it, which was attained by a human being. A holy name refers to a property of bestowal, and a wicked name refers to a property of reception. Even the name of the worst villain described in the Torah refers to a revelation of the Creator, but from the opposite side; it refers to the property of egoism inside a person. All the good names refer to the revelation of His “face,” goodness, the property of bestowal inside a person. All of this talks about the revelation of the Creator inside man.

All the good and evil forces acting “above this world” are the revelation of the Creator’s forces either from His front side or His reverse side, as Moses was told, “And you will see My back but will not see the face.”

Nothing exists besides the creation and the Creator, and the Creator can either be concealed or revealed to creation. Our task as creation is to reveal the Creator – the only acting force in the universe. All the rest that we now perceive as an “external world” is also inside us, but in our desires that have not yet been revealed.

This is the picture we have to imagine. We have to understand that nothing is worse than our current state, the state of complete separation from the Creator. Namely, our world is the worst of all worlds (states).

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