A question I received: What makes a woman truly happy? And is such a thing even possible? After all, every pleasant sensation passes, and is replaced by another. What change is needed for someone to feel happy? And how would a woman experience it?

My Answer: Happiness lies in fulfillment: the Light fills the vessel, and the vessel thus experiences happiness. Fulfillment by reception immediately disappears, leaving behind even greater emptiness. Perfect and eternal fulfillment is possible only through bestowal to and love for the one whom you fulfill, and this is what fulfills you. Therefore, “love your neighbor as yourself” is the rule for personal happiness!

Related Material:
Article: Love, Deciphered
Article: It’s All about Pleasure

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A question I received: You hold interviews with famous people who have found their place in life. They take up important positions thanks to their high level of egoism. However, you’re using their popularity to disseminate and advertise Kabbalah. I don’t understand: How can you combine Kabbalah and a person’s career? Can a person aspire to have a high position in society and study Kabbalah?

My Answer: I think that in the future, humanity will still need to work in different trades and sciences. If we do this with an intention of love, to benefit people, it will then only bring us even closer to the Creator.

Filed under: Kabbalah Study, Q&A, Society, Spiritual Work - 2 Comments →

A question I received: I had an acute, spontaneous, mysterious experience. Can you help me understand why this happened to me? What was the purpose of it? I was in this light and love for almost fifteen minutes, completely unaware of my body. I simply lived it all.

My Answer: Such an illumination comes to many people. It’s like an invitation to attain the Upper Light constantly and clearly. You felt just a micro-glow of this Light. With Kabbalah, you have the chance to attain a sensation that is billions of times greater, and feel it constantly!

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“Love your friend as yourself; this is a great rule (also collective) in the Torah.”

The word “collective” points to a sum of elements that, when put together, form that collective. Hence, if we say about the verse, “Love your friend as yourself,” that “it is a great rule (collective) in the Torah,” we must understand that all other 612 corrections of the will to receive are the details of the correction, “Love your friend as yourself.” [Read more →]

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Two questions I received in response to my post “On Love”:

Question 1: When I do not feel that my relationship with my friends is based on love, is it because my attitude towards them isn’t as it should be?

My Answer: Of course, it depends only on you.

Question 2: If love is only possible between the Creator and man, how is it possible to know when the Creator is among the creatures’ relationships?

My Answer: You discover it through your love for Him.

Related Material:
* Practical Advice by Rabash

Filed under: Kabbalah Study, Love, Q&A, Rabash - 2 Comments →

A question I received: Looking at Bnei Baruch, it’s clear that you practice “love for thy neighbor.” However, you do so only inside your group, and not toward the whole world. Why? Isn’t that similar to a cult?

My Answer: The Kabbalists of the past, our great teachers, provide us with strict and detailed instructions on how to arrange our studies, our life, and our attitude to ourselves, our friends, society, and the world. Naturally, we study and need only their advice, because besides them, no one else understands the Creator, the world in which we live, and the path that we are to walk.

And about the accusations that we’re a cult: some people benefit from it, and are thus ready to tar our reputation in any way possible. These are especially people who feel like they’re losing their stable grounding, because they’ve discovered that regular religion is inadequate, but they are still unwilling to replace it with Kabbalah.

Today, people aren’t the simpletons they once were, and as such, the attitude displayed by our critics only shows their ignorance in understanding the Creator’s Plan, and their rejection of the Torah as the method to correct man’s egoism. Could you show me anyone, besides Bnei Baruch, who also explains the necessity of “loving thy neighbor as thyself” as the main principle of the Torah? What other society have you seen that educates people according to this principle?

As for displaying an attitude of love only for our friends – we have the same attitude to anyone who’s moving toward the same goal; this is what makes a person our friend. And as much as every person will want to move toward the same goal, then anyone who wants to will be included in this principle and in our attitude of love!

Baal HaSulam. Igeret (Letter) 49 (1927). Pri Chacham: Igrot (Fruit of Wisdom: Letters).

I am giving you assignments, obligating you to carry out all my instructions in the observance of Torah and Mitzvot [1] properly and with dedication. I direct you to dedicate all your strength to loving others as yourself, to suffer when your friend suffers, and to feel happy when your friend is happy.

As for the love between you, I am talking precisely about the love between friends in our Kabbalistic group, since it is written, “to love thy neighbor.”

[1] Baal HaSulam considers love for one’s friend, for the sake of attaining love for the Creator – to be the main precept in the observance of Torah and Mitzvot.

Filed under: Group Work, Kabbalah Study, Kabbalistic Sources, Love - 2 Comments →

A question I received: Why did the Creator create earthly love between a man and a woman? What does it teach us? What are we supposed to do with it?

My Answer: It’s is a result of a relationship in the Upper root, ZA (Zeir Anpin) and Malchut of Atzilut, which we need to attain. In reality, we are all wives in relation to the Creator, or in other words, we all desire to receive pleasure from Him.

Related Material:
* On Love and Marriage – discussion between M. Laitman and Kabbalah Academy instructors Michael Sanilevich and Eugene Litvar.

* Relationships – by M. Laitman, Kabbalah on the purpose of creation, man and woman, a woman’s nature, family, upbringing, drugs and love.

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A question I received: How can you empirically prove that this faith (Emuna) is the right one? For example, you know that the sun exists because you see it up in the sky.

My Answer: You’re confusing faith as it’s understood by people in our world with faith as defined by Kabbalists. Faith (Emuna) is the quality of bestowal, which enables you to see a different world. It’s a different sense of perception, where you perceive outside of yourself, above your personal calculations. This is the reason why people who have faith change completely.

On the other hand, you are defining faith as believing in something somebody said. In other words, you believe that what you heard is a fact. Since it is a science, Kabbalah denies such an approach. In Kabbalah, you accept something in order to test it yourself. To acquire faith means to acquire a screen, the ability to feel, define, and measure sensations that are tuned to bestowal and love.

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A question I received on my post Our Planet Is Only as Big as a House!: In the U.S. there are a great multitude of cultures and ethnicities living among one another. Though each is obviously interconnected and relies on a certain level of interdependency for collective survival, racism (particularly between European descendants and African descendants) is very much a strong reality here. This can be seen in the topics that repeatedly emerge in the midst of this presidential election. How does Kabbalah interpret this? What is at the spiritual roots of this corporeal tension between lighter and darker people?

My Answer: People dislike those who are different from them. This is the way our egoism is. There is a law of similarity in nature according to which similar objects are attracted to each other, regardless of their properties’ level of similarity. Only by correcting egoism, and making full use of it, will we reach the point where people will stop noticing the differences between various properties and objects. This is because the correction of egoism lies not in its elimination or replacement, but in using it differently – where everyone can express themselves to their fullest, and the only change is in the aim of their expression. Instead of aiming their expression at themselves, they aim it at our common goal of adhesion with the Creator – the quality of bestowal and love, above our nature. When such a change happens, people no longer have anything to complain about: the past opens up to them and they see that there was never anything that depended on them… they see that “love covers all sins.”

Filed under: Kabbalah Study, Love, Spirituality - 2 Comments →

Every person’s soul is like a mirror reflecting sunlight.

A light beam descends, reflects off a soul, and withdraws into space.

Humankind, the civilization of egoists, is like a vast mirror array, reflecting light in different directions, making a sea of chaotic light.

However, merge the reflective light beams to be as segments of one immense parabolic source, and what do you have? At first, it looks like all beams are aimed differently, but as a whole, the light beams aim a common light at a common center. Their correct merger sparks a critical temperature, brings about a new substance – plasma – and bursts into flames.

And this is how each person’s light arouses the fire of love among friends. Their unity with one another, together with their aim at a common goal, produces a new state that’s unimaginable and unreachable using our common sense: adhesion with the Creator, an ascent to the Creator’s level. Such a state is unimaginable prior to achieving it, because it’s created only when everyone unites.

According to legend, Archimedes also set enemy ships on fire by aiming polished bronze mirrors at them. His contemporaries were so stunned by this phenomenon that even today, thousands of years later, people still talk about it.

Filed under: Kabbalah Study, Love, Spiritual Work, The Creator - 1 Comment →