A question I received: Why is it that when I’m home alone, I can’t make myself open a Kabbalah book and I spend my time watching soap operas on TV instead? But when I come to the class and study there, I wouldn’t trade a lesson even for the best film.

My Answer: When you leave the classroom, you find yourself in the midst of material life, an unconscious state relative to the spiritual one. It’s our will to receive playing with us and making us burn our lives in order to interfere with our spiritual progress.

On the other hand, it helps you by showing how your time is wasted, and how all the pleasures you receive disappear without a trace. You then realize that only the environment can help you. If the people around you think about supporting each other, then you won’t be able to watch soap operas when you’re at home because of the importance of spirituality that they will transmit to you. You will feel that this action is a fall, as if you’re reverting to being a child and building a house out of blocks.

You are not to blame for spending your time in front of a TV. Your only fault is the failure to build an environment around you that will influence you so you just couldn’t waste your time without a purpose.

It doesn’t mean, however, that you have to make yourself turn off the TV. Kabbalah is against this kind of coercion. A person has to work, study, and live life just like an ordinary person. You shouldn’t try to change anything about yourself forcefully, but only by receiving the sense of spirituality’s importance from the environment.

There’s no coercion in spirituality! You can’t bind yourself by the hands and feet and consider yourself righteous. This is not correction!

You will correct yourself only when you change your desires and rise above that TV series. The Light has to correct you, rather than intimidation or threats with the fire of hell after death. The science of Kabbalah is not a religion, and it speaks only of correction. The only means to do this is by increasing the influence of the environment on you. This is the only free choice you have and a necessary condition for spiritual advancement.

Now you can go and watch TV…

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Spiritual advancement is built upon descents: as they become corrected, they serve as the material for the spiritual Kli. If you turn your sensation of being far away from spirituality into a spiritual ascent, you will thereby build your soul.

Think of an electronic converter that straightens out an oscillating, off-and-on current, making it constant. The oscillating current enters the diode bridge where the positive phase passes through one contour and the minus phase passes through another. As a result, a constant current is produced at the exit. This is very much like the spiritual processes, where the descents turn into ascents.

The Light acts as the positive phase, and the Kli is revealed as the negative phase, and they work together. Practically speaking, I affect my environment and the environment affects me. I project two feelings onto the environment: the feeling that it is important, and that I am worthless. In response, the environment impresses me with the feeling that bestowal is important and reception is worthless.

If I take care of these four channels, then I will receive strength. When I am in the state of ascent and I have a lot of strength, I have to give to the environment. And when I fall and have no strength, I receive strength from the environment.

This works in exactly the same way as the device that straightens out the oscillating current: sometimes I give to them, and sometimes they give to me. As a result, I always have strength.

In fact, this is why the soul was separated into two parts: me and everything that’s outside of me. It was to enable me to treat others like myself.

Everything outside me is also mine. It’s just that I work with it in this oscillating manner – sometimes I give strength, and sometimes it is returned to me. However, what I receive is many times greater than what I put in.

In virtue of the darkness (the new Kli) that is revealed in me, I am able to receive enough strength from the environment to turn to the Force (the Light) of Correction. I am then always able to move forward, like a constant current that is always being straightened out. And thus, I rise higher and higher.

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There are two forces leading us to our goal. One force is our desires and the desires of the environment, which develop us in this world. But the second force does not pertain to this world; it pulls a person toward the unknown and brings him to a special, spiritual environment – a teacher, a group, and Kabbalah books.

If one connects with them properly, then he builds the spiritual world for himself, which is his future world. One’s body remains in the material world, while one’s soul becomes born in the spiritual world. This is the only realm where a person has freedom of choice.

A person is always inside the field of these two opposite forces, and he has to balance them out. However, he shouldn’t try to replace one with the other; one needs his life and the desire to enjoy in this world also.

On the spiritual path, one always finds oneself between two opposite forces. By balancing them within oneself, a person uses his free choice to build his “self” between these two forces. He does this freely and independently.

A person receives everything else from Above: his desires, mind, strength, and examples, but he builds himself on his own. It turns out that he creates a creature out of himself, becoming equivalent to the Creator!

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A question I received: How can I check to see if the Light is really correcting me?

My Answer: There are three specific signs indicating that a person is advancing:

1. A person begins to understand the material better, not just “dryly,” with his mind, but with his feelings. What’s important isn’t to study and memorize the material mechanically, but to feel it. It is written: “The way to understand is with the heart.”
2. A person begins to understand how important the environment is, because it is the only place where he can attain his spiritual goal.
3. A person understands that he has to use all the available opportunities for advancement. He then tries to better organize his studies, until he finally begins to reveal spirituality through his environment.

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It is written, “A person is like a tree in the field.” A tree can be planted in a field that is blessed by the Creator, where it will be watered by rain and warmed by the sun whenever it needs. Or the tree – the person – can be planted in infertile, dry land, where the person will not be able to grow. Or, even if he  grows, he is like a wild tree that does not bear fruit.

When it comes to spiritual development, a person determines his own place. His attitude to the books, the teacher, and the friends is able to change the soil and the sun, the moisture conditions, and all the other conditions needed for his growth.

A person starts by receiving a “point in the heart” – a spiritual seed, and he must then decide where to plant it and how to absorb the force from the environment needed to grow his seed into a tree. If he chooses the right environment, he will be able to demand from it the force of bestowal – “rain.” This force will allow him to grow from the material world upward. His intentions of bestowal will sprout“from the soil up.”

We have to care for our “tree,” which means that we must choose desires that can be corrected, and then organize them properly so they will grow and shape us into the right form – one that’s similar to the Creator. This is all of our work.

So, on one hand, it appears as if the tree grows on its own. However, starting from the time it is a seed, there are many actions that depend on us. The tree cannot grow independent of us, but only in virtue of our desire.
(From Part 3 of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson)

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Presently we’re looking at the picture of this world as though it were a television channel. We’ve grown accustomed to it and cannot even imagine the existence of another channel.

Suddenly a desire (point in the heart) to change the channel appears in us. Before this we could not even imagine that this was possible, and now we begin to learn how it can be done and how we can transition to the new channel.

I begin to realize that I can change the channel if I truly have the desire to do so, and that my desire is that very button that can change it. In other words, I need the understanding of what I am I am changing and my purpose for doing so.

To that end I am given the right books, a guide and an environment of others, who are also striving towards this new channel. After all, my desire is tiny, and the right environment can increase this desire in me, impart to me its desire to watch this new channel, and the strength to make the change.

In the new society towards which we are striving, everyone will talk about bestowal,  the global interconnected network where everyone works for the benefit of society and the collective desire to change over to the new channel. Gradually, I also become filled with this desire.

With this desire I come to the lesson and demand Light, which is  the force of that very new channel towards which I strive. This force will evoke new qualities and discernments within me, and when I am ready to perceive the channel correctly, it will switch on automatically.

I desire this new understanding and the ability to discern this new world. This is what the Light teaches me. Otherwise I will not be able to see anything there.  It is  just as a baby looks upon the same painting as an adult, but instead of admiring its beauty, the baby tries to stick it in his mouth, because that is how he perceives the world.

The moment I am ready, the new channel will be switched on automatically. But the old channel will not disappear.  The new channel will simply be added to the first, and I will see the old channel against the context of the new one. This is how both worlds combine within me to form one unified harmony. I will see how all the parts of reality are connected and see reality itself not as matter, but as forces that set matter in motion.

Mankind is bored to death with the old channel, which is why societies are plagued with drug use and depression. It can no longer watch the same old picture of the world on the television screen; it longs to change the channel.

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What is the result of all our material development, which people value so highly? What have we achieved with all of our hard work, our “Egyptian labor with clay and bricks,” as one Kabbalistic text says about the Egyptian slavery, the exile from spirituality? The result is that we are now nearing the revelation of the spiritual world and are opening our eyes to the fact that people have been doing absolutely nothing of value in this world! People are doing things that are absolutely unnecessary to anyone! Yes, they invent all sorts of crafty gadgets, but could we really not live without all these things?

The more people develop, the more time they spend on useless activities, and the more they go beyond the bare minimum necessary for life. Today, if we reverted to spending time only on the things that are vitally necessary, most of us would be left with nothing to do. Only five percent of the population would have to work in order to provide all of humanity with the necessities. Alternatively, each one of us could allocate five percent of his time to provide for his livelihood.

All the leftover time would be dedicated to our spiritual development. And why not? You don’t get any benefit from spending all your time on material things. In fact, all you are doing by this is damaging the environment.

There is nothing more for a person to do in this world other than to work on his spiritual correction. Otherwise we would have the problem of what to do with the elderly who need to be provided for.  What would be the point of taking care of them if we believe that only the actively working people are of any benefit?

Indeed, our lives must follow the opposite principle. All we need is to give every person the method for his internal correction, and then there will be a place for everyone. Every person will carry out work for the sake of infinity, because the soul has no age. And it is precisely the elderly who will make some of the biggest corrections.

The more time we spend on “clay and bricks,” the more we advance toward reaching the realization that we are in slavery. And the weight of this realization will make people cry out to the Creator and thus rise to the “human” level. And that is the only benefit that we will get out of all our material development.

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Two questions I received about how to deal with the erroneous ideas and imprints we receive in life:

Question: When people begin to study Kabbalah, they often bring their baggage of erroneous ideas, and they can get lost in the authentic concepts. What is the quickest and best way to sort out this inner mess?

My Answer: We must accept the student the way he is. The only thing that affects spiritual progress is the inspiration received from one’s environment, which is then aimed at the Creator. Besides, we don’t understand the value contained in false methods, as per the law “the rind protects the fruit.” This will be revealed to us at a later time.

We come to Kabbalah burdened with a myriad of misconceptions and stereotypes received in childhood and over the course of our lives. Everything we heard in childhood forms the foundation of “facts” within us. Then, the person is guided by these “facts” and unable to rise above them.

Until he acquires new qualities, which act within him with the same force as those “slogans and facts” that he naively heard and believed in as a child, he will not be able to feel the Upper world. But he is unable to rid himself of the old conceptions on his own, because they need to be replaced by the new – and this can only be done by the Light, which descends from the next degree of attainment.

Question: To what degree does everything we took in as children limit us?

My Answer: When a person receives the spiritual power of bestowal and rises above the corporeal, and begins to see his corporeal self from the side, he is astonished by the incredible amount of utterly baseless stereotypes that he is filled with. These are just things he had once taken on faith. It had entered his childish mind and left a non-erasable imprint, which he couldn’t do anything about.

That is why anyone can come and start studying. And only as time goes by, gradually, i.e. under the influence of the studied material, will he rid himself of false stereotypes and beliefs. The conceptions one had acquired later in his life are easier to part with; it’s the things that he had absorbed in his childhood that are the most difficult. Nevertheless, step by step, man peels himself of all this “rind,” until he begins to use the spiritual fruit when it truly becomes ripe.

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Question: How can we educate children today, when they are surrounded by so many temptations? How can we help them avoid the influence of the environment on their small egos, and give them an education that will make spiritual development become the most important thing in their lives?

Answer: This is much easier than it seems. If we give children the right examples, then they will copy them onto their relatively pure matter. It’s written that educating a child is like writing on a clean sheet of paper, since he is still not damaged by all the social “garbage,” confusion and egoistical calculations, as is the case with adults.

Obviously, children are also egoists; they want to deceive one another in order to succeed. They make calculations very quickly and act for the sake of self-interest. But their behavior is natural and, therefore, it appears different than ours. With the same natural ease, they absorb our explanations about the system they exist in, about the world and the correct kind of relationships. Such explanations penetrate deep into their feelings, and thus you are able to build their inner system.

It can be compared to a computer system. By itself, the PC is nothing but a piece of metal that is incapable of doing anything. But when you install a program into it, the program determines how all of the computer’s components will connect and how they will function. If you install another program into the computer, then it will cancel the previous one and instruct the components to connect differently.

In the same way, when you install a new program into the child’s “hardware,” he will live according to the program’s instructions. This is called “raising a human being,” and the outcome depends on the spiritual level of the adults that are raising the child.

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A question I received: Why is it that people who have millions of dollars and have seemingly achieved tranquility and complete well-being, immediately seek the next million? Why is it that even subconsciously the question about the meaning of life doesn’t arise in these people?

My Answer: First of all, the question about the meaning of life isn’t at all related to how many millions you have. There are billions of people in this world who are not even remotely interested in knowing the reason behind their existence, although many of them are in very difficult circumstances. A person’s lifestyle has no bearing on whether or not the point in the heart has awakened in him or her.

Each one of us has his own purpose in this life. One person is born smart, and another stupid. Someone will become president and someone will sweep the streets. A person does not choose his profession, or his purpose in life, or whether he will be rich or poor.

The point in the heart awakens in a person the moment he begins to reveal the evil of his normal existence. This happens depending on one’s development. A person begins to understand that at some point he will die anyway, and all the millions he spent his whole life chasing were just there in order to service the society, which imposed its values on him.

If the society he is part of does not consider him a human being unless he has ten million dollars in his bank account, then this will definitely influence him. He will strive to do whatever his environment dictates to him.

And likewise, if someone travels to India and climbs a mountain to meditate, then he won’t need much more than his daily bowl of rice. This is how a person is influenced by his surrounding society. Regardless, in both cases, the point in the heart may be awakened.

This depends on a person’s function in the general system of souls. If his time to wake up has come, then it is due to the fact that he belongs to a subsystem that is now due to perform a correction in the system of souls. Thus, he will begin to ascend spiritually. His material or social status bears no relation to this.

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