The Zohar talks only about the desire and what takes place within it. My friends are also my desires; they are aspirations to connect with each other and with me in order to reveal the Creator. The desires that work against that are called my enemies.

This is how I divide all reality. There is no such thing as “this world” or “the world to come,” but only one desire. We have to get used to these definitions and stop seeing the world in other ways. We have to get rid of the habit that we have from birth – seeing the world as a structure that exists outside us. We have to feel that we have had enough of that false perception and we want to return to the truth. We don’t want to live in this illusion anymore.

I want to understand my desire and reveal the force that operates within it. This force is attained through its actions. This is why The Zohar explains how my desires are connected with each other and how they influence one another. By learning what’s going on between my desires, I begin to understand this force.

This force cannot be revealed on its own, but only through its actions inside the desires. For example, how do we recognize a magnet? We do it by seeing how it moves pieces of metal. In order to identify it, you have to be smart and understand the sequence of cause and effect. If you show it to a child, he’ll think that you are performing miracles.

We perceive phenomena through cause and effect, through the reaction of matter as well as the consequences. We can’t see an electric current, but only the resulting effect, such as a moving or rotating object. Thus, we only perceive the manifestations of something, but cannot grasp the essence, even if it’s our own essence. This is why The Zohar explains all phenomena to us inside the general desire.

The problem is that Kabbalists do not have words at their disposal other than the words that belong to this world; that is why they use the language of branches. They use words that describe things in this world to depict things in the spiritual realm. It’s a true blessing that this language exists, as it allows us to enter spirituality independently and voluntarily, by learning to understand it from the outside in.

How can we find out about spirituality if we are on the outside and we don’t know or understand anything about it? In relation to spirituality, I am like a newborn. The difference is that a baby develops instinctively, pushed ahead by nature (the Creator), whereas we have to ask Him to give us the strength to advance towards Him. Yet, by doing so, we exercise our freedom of will – the freedom to become similar to the Creator.

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A question I received: How can someone without spiritual attainment find a true Kabbalist in order to study with him?

My Answer: How can you find a true Kabbalist? Well, what is a true Kabbalist? Baal HaSulam writes that a true Kabbalist is someone who strives only toward the Creator and toward nothing else, such as anything related to this world or himself.

The only means that makes it possible to reveal the Creator, the Upper World, and the quality of bestowal is a Kabbalistic group. The group is a connection among people’s aspirations to reveal the quality of bestowal among them. This quality is called “the Creator.”

You aren’t trying to learn a Kabbalist’s earthly habits from him. What you learn from him is how to cancel yourself, where “cancelling yourself” means to cancel your egoism in relation to the goal – the attainment of the quality of bestowal. You have to accept this goal without any resistance to it, with full trust and no criticism, as if you were a baby.

Criticism and verification have to take place before you accept the teacher as your instructor. However, if you have a point in the heart, then you have nowhere to run from an instructor who is showing you the truth.

But what is “the truth”? It is the force of bestowal, deemed the Creator, and it becomes revealed inside your love for friends and then for the whole world. If you see that the other students and the teacher are trying to accomplish this, without considering anything besides the Creator important, this means you have found the right place to study.

Yet, this still doesn’t give you any guarantee that you will attain the goal. From here on, everything depends on you; this is where your freedom of will starts. But at the very least you have found a teacher and a group, which is the place where the Creator can be revealed.

A teacher is not the flesh and blood person you see in front of you, but attainment of the Creator and experience along this path. What you should be absorbing from him is not the earthly things, but his connection with the Creator.

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All of our actions in this world are carried out because they are dictated from Above, except those in which we are free. Our freedom of will consists only of growing higher and correcting the soul in similarity to the Creator. Everything else in and around us is dictated from Above by the laws of the Upper World.

If our will doesn’t exist in anything corporeal and everything is controlled from Above, then there is no punishment and no reward for any actions in life! After all, none of it was done by us; it was done through us from Above.

Therefore, it is written that we are all like animals until we become similar to the Creator. To the extent that we are similar to Him, we are called Adam, “similar” (Dommeh in Hebrew). Similarity to the Creator begins from a point of desire, an aspiration to Him, which is called “the point in the heart.” If this point has been revealed, a person will undoubtedly come to Kabbalah since this point will lead him to it.

The point in the heart is like a drop of semen from which we have developed. However, the only way we can develop the spiritual body, the soul, is through our own effort. This is the only action we can perform using our freedom of will (see Baal HaSulam’s article, “The Freedom”).

Push the whole world onto the back burner and begin to develop the point in the heart, thus elevating yourself into the Upper System. Be willing to reject everything just to stay there. This is the only choice and action that can be made. The reward is the life of the soul!

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The right environment can provide beginners with a new platform and a fresh outlook on life. It can help us discard our old views, concepts, attitudes, and values and instead take on a new form, as if fitting a square peg into a round hole. We have to reshape ourselves in order to fit into a new world and take on its properties. These changes take place slowly, but steadily. It takes constant work that results in new attitudes and values.

For example, if you wanted to know about a visiting alien’s home planet, you would need to show interest in learning about his home so that he would take you with him when he returned to his planet. If you did not show the willingness to learn, and did not make the effort to learn, he would not take you with him.

In order to transform your sensations, thoughts and desires, spirituality has to become infinitely important to you, while the material things must be limited to necessities, or what is required to maintain a sensible lifestyle. We have been given every opportunity to reveal the higher, eternal and perfect existence, but we aren’t using them. Thus, we are not utilizing our freedom of choice. We seem to be waiting for something, but the fact is that we have to come to this revelation ourselves. No one can do it for us.

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A question I received: Why do we need the material world and corporeal bodies if the spiritual desire (Kli) is not inside the body?

My Answer: What other reality would you live in before entering the spiritual world? Precisely this illusory reality gives you freedom of will. This imaginary reality is extremely important because every time we fall, we ascend into spirituality precisely from within this reality. We enter spirituality “from nothingness,” similar to “Yesh Mi Ain,” a new creation.

Spirituality (or a connection with the Creator) has to be entered from outside, from “nothing.” Man is the only animal that is not governed completely by Nature. Nature allows man to make mistakes and leaves an “empty space” inside him, giving him freedom in order to enter the spiritual world “from nothing,” or from a negative state.

If we were completely governed by nature, then we would not have any questions. Everything would be predetermined ahead of time. But because we have been granted a certain degree of freedom, it makes us aspire to and be able to feel the beginning of the spiritual desire (Kli), which is opposite to ourselves.

If we were completely controlled by our egoistic nature, then we would never be able to feel the nature of bestowal. But since egoism’s control over us leaves us this empty space, by feeling it and not understanding ourselves, at that moment we begin to feel the beginning of the altruistic nature. That is how one enters that nature as “something out of nothing.”

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A question I received: Why doesn’t the point in the heart awaken in all people? Why does one person feel it at 20, while another feels it at 50?

My Answer: This is not our business, and we shouldn’t think about it. We have no freedom of will in this regard – everything depends on the common system, the enormous system of souls that needs to advance.

This is like our bodies which consist of billions of little cells. Each cell needs to develop, and they are all connected to each other.

Therefore, each person depends on the other in their correction – first one advances, then another, or two of them advance together.

It is the same kind of system as that of an embryo developing in a mother’s womb, where the head, the arms, the legs, the ears, the nose, and so on, develop in a certain order.

This is a very complex system. So how can we begin to ask why we were awakened only now and not ten years ago, given that we have limited understanding of anything in our material lives, and even less in the spiritual?

Do you know what part of the soul you belong to, and what part you are destined to carry out?

If however, a person strives to understand, he begins to feel where he is being led. Our freedom of choice lies in figuring out what work is placed upon us and then doing that which is dependent on us.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: How To Aim At A Worthy Spiritual Target (Advanced)
Laitman.com Post: Make Your Life A Dialogue With The Creator
Laitman.com Post: Spiritual Life Is Felt Through Your Connection With Others
Laitman.com Post: Spirituality, Freedom And Bestowal Are The Same
A Guide to the Hidden Wisdom of Kabbalah: Chapter 3.”In Search of Freedom”
Baal HaSulam Article: “Freedom of Will”-Lessons

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A question I received: Why doesn’t the point in the heart awaken in all the people? Why do some people begin to feel it in their 20s and others in their 50s?

My Answer: This is none of our business and we shouldn’t even think about it because we don’t have any freedom of choice about it. It all depends on the greater system of the souls which has to advance.

This can be compared to our body, which consists of billions of little cells. Each cell has to evolve, but all of them are interconnected. This is also why they are dependent on one another when it comes to their correction: one advances first, then another one, and so on, or they may do so in pairs.

It’s the same system as an embryo developing inside its mother’s womb. Its body parts develop one after the other, for example ,the head, arms, legs, nose and ears. Their growth has to happen in a specific order.

It’s a very complex system. Meanwhile, we lack the basic knowledge of our material life, let alone spirituality. So how can we ask: why has someone been awakened now instead of ten years ago? Do you know which group of souls you belong to and what role you are destined to perform?

On the other hand, if you aspire to understand this, then you’ll begin to feel where you are being led. That’s where our freedom of choice lies: to find out what task we’ve been assigned, and to carry it out.

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A question I received: Why isn’t the Creator happy when people enjoy the material life and are content with it?

My Answer: The Creator isn’t happy with it because it’s not the pleasure that He intends to give us. From the beginning He created a state where we are completely filled with Light, but we don’t realize it because we’re unconscious.

All of the spiritual worlds are degrees of concealment of that state, and we are in the lowest state, the final concealment. The World of Infinity is here and we are inside it, but separated from it by multiple layers, like wrappings that hide the state in which we exist.

We are like a person who is lying in bed unconscious. We exist in this world in a state that can be called life, but our senses don’t perceive anything. This is our state today. But the Creator can’t just leave us in this unconscious state, where all we have is a spark of Light keeping us on life-support, but we don’t realize this and are willing to settle for corporeality.

However, it’s very difficult for an unconscious person to wake up. And the people around him also have a hard time making him come to consciousness. But one thing is clear: the plan of creation has to come to fruition. We don’t have a choice about this. Our only choice is whether we will reach our goal by way of suffering or by way of the Light, consciously. We can choose between the two.

We start progressing in order to avoid blows. But then, having gained a little bit of consciousness, we continue the path willingly, because we begin to value the final goal above everything else.

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A question I received: Today people no longer have to drive or walk to the Kabbalah classes in the rain. They can just turn on the TV. But is each person who watches our broadcast lessons granted the freedom of choice?

My Answer: The freedom of choice doesn’t depend on how one connects to the lessons, but on one’s point in the heart. If the point in the heart is ripe, then one has free choice: the choice to establish a connection with the environment that will help him draw the Surrounding Light – the Light that Reforms. When a person feels the need for such a connection with the environment, this is called the free choice.

This may happen a few years after a person first starts attending our lessons. Gradually one realizes that he won’t attain spirituality with his mind. Knowing the terminology, actions, and structure of the worlds won’t reveal the Upper World to him. But it takes some time for a person to realize this.

I’ve seen many people who spent years studying the science of Kabbalah with their minds, trying to learn more. They took great pleasure in doing this and to this day they still don’t sense a need for real sensual attainment.

And I’ve seen others, who sensed such a need, but they still didn’t realize that attaining spirituality means reaching the attribute of bestowal, that attainment and bestowal are the same thing. Some people need years to understand that it is precisely the connection to the inner desires of the friends in the group (where the Creator has brought him) that constitutes the means through which one reveals the attribute of bestowal.

Nevertheless, in the interim their time does not go to waste. A person undergoes constant changes under the influence of the Light, and eventually reaches the understanding that he must obtain just the attribute of bestowal.

The freedom of choice begins from the moment a person begins to understand that a connection with all the rest of the souls, or with their points in the heart, is necessary to reach the attribute of bestowal. After all, this is what spirituality is.

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A question I received: Why doesn’t the Creator awaken all the souls simultaneously and give everyone equal freedom of choice?

My Answer: Every soul receives freedom of choice according to its root. When each person corrects himself, he will see that he has nothing to complain about and that everyone is equal in the general corrected system of souls.

However, everyone differs by their individual correction; some souls are higher and others are lower. However, all the differences fade when everyone unites in love and mutual bestowal at the end of correction. In the meantime, however, during the process of advancement, there are differences between us, and they are necessary because there would be no movement otherwise.

Creation advances because people build a higher system within. We build our similarity to the Creator, and this can only be done as long as there is a difference among the inner parts, the souls.

The Creator created 613 desires with the help of 613 Lights. This means that right from the start, creation includes a multitude of different qualities. Otherwise, inside our egoistic material, it would be impossible for us to attain bestowal, love, and a feeling that the Creator’s quality is important.

At the end of correction, we will connect all the individual souls or qualities, and we will then reveal one perfect system – the Creator (HaVaYaH). However, the reason we are able to attain this one system is precisely in virtue of all the numerous clarifications that led up to it.

Within this One, there are no longer any differences between the parts of Malchut. The differences were necessary only to comprehend Him and become like Him.

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