A question I received: How are things measured in Kabbalah?

My Answer: In the science of Kabbalah, we learn that there is no such thing as an absolute, true system of measurement. Rather, everything is perceived depending on a person’s senses. This is why everything is measured in relation to the person who attains reality. There is a Kabbalistic verse that says, “There is no Creator without a creation.”

This is why it’s important for us to understand that everything that is said by the authors of The Book of Zohar, by King David in the book of Psalms and other sources about the Creator is referring to the quality and depth of the reader’s attainment.

A person is judged in accordance to his position on the ladder, and he perceives the Creator according to where he is positioned on that ladder. It appears to a person that the Creator changes, but this is only because a person evaluates everything according to his own desires and qualities.

The Creator does not change; He is good that does good and He is at absolute rest. In a person however, many Reshimot are awakened at every moment and according to this, he judges the Creator as great or small, good or evil.

This is why we are only able to understand Kabbalistic texts once we have risen to the level of their authors.

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On the spiritual degrees, the difference between opposites is much less bearable than in our world. After all, everything comes from the initial state, where the Creator, who is Good and Does Good, created egoism – the desire to receive pleasure, which is opposite to Him.

The Creator is inside this desire, which he manages. The desire to receive and the desire to bestow are outcomes of a single force, the Creator. We are incapable of withstanding the manifestation of these opposite desires from a single source until we reach Final Correction.

But when we do, we will see that these two opposites can be together, because then, in that point which was created as “something from nothing,” the material from which it was created – the absence of the Creator – becomes annihilated. This point then becomes completely bestowing, like Him.

This is why the existence of opposites is the reason for all of creation’s development until its final correction.
(From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson)

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A question I received: Why is it that when a point in the heart awakens in a person, he still has a long and difficult path to go before reaching spirituality?

My Answer: Why do you think the path is difficult? I look at the world and see so many people struggling to get money, power, fame, and knowledge, all to eventually experience a tiny pleasure. They waste their years on empty worries and false values.

When you engage in spiritual development, however, then even if you don’t move as quickly as you would like, but you still want to advance toward the goal, you will make progress. Isn’t this better than how the entire world is living?

Today, there are more and more people awakening to spirituality. It is impossible to even compare the number of students learning Kabbalah now to a mere few years ago.

When Rabash told me that the general awakening of the world would begin in 1995, I found it difficult to believe him. Who could have thought that the world would change so quickly? But suddenly, we do see that people are feeling empty and are experiencing a global crisis, including crises in nature, education, science, politics and economics.

It doesn’t matter that the media is lying and trying to hush up the crisis by assuring us that everything is alright. I am speaking of what is being revealed to us by nature.

Besides, it is understandable that people want to spruce up the situation. Everyone is instinctively trying to lessen their suffering and pain. This is why they close their eyes to the problems and tell themselves that everything is OK, that there is no crisis.

In the meantime, everything is crumbling and people continue to be laid off. But man is built in such a way that he does not want to see the truth.

The fact is that the Creator (Nature) is revealing to us that we are at a very advanced state. And this is all happening just twenty years after the general awakening has begun. Yet, you want to receive everything now, like a little child. You simply can’t understand what a huge, in fact – infinite desire we are dealing with, and how quickly it is changing.

The development of our desire dragged on gradually for thousands of years, but now it’s changing day by day. All you need is a little patience.
(From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson)

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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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A question I received: How can a person avoid suffering?

My Answer: Ask yourself: who inflicts all the problems and suffering on you? If you felt that they all come from the Creator, you’d already feel better.

It’s similar to a surgeon who operates on you: even though it’s a painful process, you know that what he is doing is good for you. In fact, if you have enough understanding of the gravity of your illness and the efficacy of the treatment, then you won’t feel pain at all. If you understand that the operation will make you get well, you will even ask the surgeon to perform the operation sooner!

Thus, it’s because we do not have this sensation that we feel suffering. The feeling of suffering is not caused by the pain itself, but by the fact that we don’t feel Who inflicts the suffering upon us.

If you could feel that the pain comes from a surgeon rather than a criminal, then you wouldn’t experience it as pain, and you would even be grateful to the one causing it, instead of trying to fight what the criminal is doing to you.

So, what you lack is not a disconnection from the pain or from the act itself, but the revelation of the Creator, who is the one responsible for the act as well as its aim. Only then will you sense pleasure instead of suffering.

It is a psychological problem, really. Even scientific experiments show that the suffering and pleasure felt inside a body stem from the same processes. Pain and pleasure are just surges of sensations in two different directions. For the body, they are the same thing, and it’s only later that our mind discerns them as different. The body, however, feels them as the same thing.

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A question I received: I often try to justify the Creator, but still continue to feel very bad. Is this considered justifying the Creator?

My Answer: No. How is this even possible!? Someone beats you up and you go and kiss his hands, or you cry bitterly, but your mouth is saying: “I’m enjoying this! These are tears of happiness!” That’s simply impossible!
(From Part 1 of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson)

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Questions I received about marriage:

Question: If Eve’s condemnation following the sin is that man will rule over her, what can we do in this world to adjust to this condemnation without conflict or suffering?

My Answer: There is no submission. Instead, there is the proper realization of common natural qualities. This is why you have to study Kabbalah, realize it together and aspire together to reach the third one – the Creator.

Question: What if a man does not know if he wants to stay married, and a lot of issues from the past come up?  What if the woman does not want to divorce and neither of them are in a religion?

My Answer: Go to your common goal which is the Creator, instead of both of you retreating into your shell.  Only then will everything turn out all right.

Question: I partially understand that marriage is part of a man’s correction. However, I have very few corporeal merits that would make me remotely appealing to the opposite gender. I am poor, bad with money management, own no house, have no car, and am only concerned with one thing, which is Kabbalah. Should I divert time from my studies and work in the group to make myself more corporeally fit for marriage? Do I really even need to be married?

My Answer: Continue doing what your heart aspires to, since this is the reason man was brought into this world. All the rest will follow and the group will help you find your match.

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How do I study the Creator’s actions? I repeat them like a baby, while looking at what the Creator is doing. The Upper Level descends to the lower level, which means that the Creator gives me an example to follow and shows me what to do, and I then repeat after Him.

Granted, I do it with His help, by virtue of His force, but I myself try to do the examples He sets before me. Just like we teach babies, that is how we acquire His mind.

The Creator shows me what I need to do, how to do it, and the order in which it has to be done. I receive absolutely everything from Above, because I myself do not know anything. I simply copy these actions and mechanically repeat them, because I do not have a mind yet.

This technique is called, “I attain You from Your actions.” I repeat all of His actions and acquire His Mind at the end.
(Excerpt from the Daily Kabbalah Lesson on Baal HaSulam’s article, “The Acting Mind”)

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All that the Creator created, all of matter, is a desire. By acting like the Creator, I am essentially researching myself. It seems to us that there are many things existing in the world. However, the world is actually a person’s inner perception: it’s his inner state.

The matter of which I am made, the desire to receive pleasure, is organized within me in such a way that I call it, “my world.” Within this matter, I discover everything at the inanimate, vegetative, animate and human levels of nature. My entire desire is the reality within which I exist. All I have left to do is to uncover it completely and see how it is structured, what are its constituent parts, what forms each of the parts takes, and what are the various connections between the forms and parts.

This is how the Creator teaches me to identify His actions, and I increasingly study Him within myself. In the end, He is the one who acts and manages everything, while I am the one who becomes His creation by uncovering it all. How do I complete an action? I do it by uncovering the Creator within that action.

The Creator and I are both working on the same thing – my desire. With the help of my point in the heart, I can come out of my matter and study it from the outside. I can relate to it like the Creator does. In this case, He and I are together above this matter, above creation, and I can acquire the Creator’s mind and the Thought of Creation.
(From Part 3 of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson on the article, “The Acting Mind”)

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A question I received: In the last edition of “Ask the Kabbalist” there was a discussion about dreams. You told us about your dream, which later came true. You explained that this is realized only during the instant, where something occurs before us, and it is as though we flow after this instant in time. Does the phrase “déjà vu” have any connection to this? Is déjà vu, in fact, a dream that a person once saw?

My Answer: Everything is inside of us. There is no time, but only a shifting in our desires. The present is also a dream, just like all other sensations until we begin to perceive the Upper World, rise above ourselves and our desires, and see them from the Creator’s side, so to speak.

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