Three questions I received on balancing spirituality with this world:

Question: I heard you say at the children’s lesson that we should envy people who contribute to the group and love others. Should I lie to myself, telling myself that I envy those who contribute even though in reality I envy someone who has a new car, for example? Please give me advice on what to do according to Kabbalah.

My Answer: Continue studying; the group and the lessons will give you the feeling that other values are more important. This is better than surrendering yourself to accumulating things and later finding yourself disillusioned. The Upper World that will start being revealed to you will make you feel vastly more fulfilled than a new car. The car is important to you because society values it. But if your society will value other things, your preferences will change as well.

Question: Sometimes I get angry at the Creator, but in truth I get angry at myself because I ask myself, “Why is the process of correction so lengthy!?” And then I answer myself: “Because I don’t make enough efforts!”

My Answer: You lack the pressure of the correct environment.

Question: I’m having an inner debate: on one hand, I have a new job that’s interesting to me and gives me free time to improving my professional level in order to have a good permanent occupation in the future. On the other hand, I don’t have much energy left after the morning lessons, so I’m thinking of cutting them down, yet this bothers me. What’s the right attitude to have to this situation?

My Answer: You have to finish your professional education so you’ll be able to support yourself and your family, while keeping the study of Kabbalah “on a low burner.” However, in all other respects, devote yourself to the study of Kabbalah. If you keep this balance of time and energy, you’ll succeed in both.

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A question I received: I don’t understand why there is a division into three religions. If God is one, why do we have these differences?

My Answer: The religions were given to us so we would develop during the period of the Creator’s concealment. However, when the Creator is revealed, they will naturally turn into the national traditions, a nation’s culture.

In spirituality, we advance along three lines. These three lines are reflected in our world during the period of concealment as the three religions: Islam corresponds to the right line, Christianity – to the left line, and Judaism – to the middle line.

This also has an affect on how their calendars are structured: The Islamic calendar is lunar (based on the moon), the Christian calendar is solar (based on the sun), and the Jewish calendar is luni-solar (based on both). How did people know what kind of calendar to create? They did it because everything in our world comes from the spiritual roots, and people’s acts are determined by the expression of these roots in our world. (However, a Kabbalist acts consciously in accordance with this, whereas others do it unconsciously.)

As for all the other teachings, they are not considered religions, but faiths or beliefs. There are about 3800 of them in the world.

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Shamati 179: “Three Lines”

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Three questions I received on how to relate to the past and future:

Question: I’ve been studying Kabbalah for six years already. In the last year I’ve started feeling haunted by memories of bad things I did to others in the past. Can you give me advice on how to get rid of this?

My Answer: Everything that happened to you in the past was “set up” for you by the Creator. But from this moment on, you are like a newborn baby. So start with a blank page in “the book of life,” where you will write your desires, thoughts and actions.

Question: If I don’t open Kabbalah books or listen to your lectures for a few days, why do I feel that I’m regressing? Where does everything I “earned” in the past go?

My Answer: Your egoism always keeps growing. This is why you must constantly keep recharging it with the method of correction. Otherwise you’ll regress for sure.

Question: How can we predict our next spiritual state and physical action?

My Answer: The next spiritual level is unpredictable because it will be felt in your new desires and qualities.

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A question I received: I feel repelled by spirituality. I feel that I want to go through my life as a separate person, not as part of a group. I get this picture that the purpose of spirituality is to reject all pleasures. I mean, what is there to enjoy in the spiritual world? I’m not ready to reject my regular life for spirituality. How can I pray for another desire when, in fact, it isn’t my desire at all?

My Answer: The Creator (Kabbalah) won’t make you do anything forcefully. Instead, He forces us by giving us suffering in this life, and it pushes a person forward. However, it’s possible to accelerate our path of development and make it easier by using Kabbalah.

Either way, everyone will attain the goal they were created for: they will become equivalent to the Creator by uniting within one integral desire. This will happen either through The Path of Suffering or The Path of the Light that returns one to the source – to equivalence with the Creator (the quality of love and bestowal).

Right now everyone in the world is revealing a common suffering, which has just one cause – a lack of connection between all people within one desire. But the Creator will force us to unite!

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Three questions I received on souls, death and life after death:

Question: How can I tell whether I’ll end up in hell or heaven?

My Answer: Hell is the feeling of being ashamed for your thoughts and actions. Heaven is a state of being in the qualities of bestowal and love.

After one’s body dies, one doesn’t “go” anywhere. Heaven and hell are felt right here, in this life, with respect to the Creator. They are your attitude to Him, what you feel within your soul.

However, you must first develop your soul through the study of Kabbalah. It starts as a point in the heart and then develops into the five spiritual senses, the five Sefirot of your soul or your spiritual body.

Question: If a person wants to commit suicide, is there free will in this, or does the Creator give the person such thoughts?

My Answer: All aspirations (including thoughts and desires) descend to us from the Creator; He is primary. However, everything depends on our attitude or reaction to what emerges within us. In spite of everything, we should proceed toward adhesion with Him through the path of equivalence of form.

Question: Recently someone close to me passed away. Is there a difference between the reincarnation of a person who passed away naturally and someone who was killed?

My Answer: You have no influence on the souls whatsoever, so relax and forget about them. Worry only about your own correction.

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A question I received: One of my friends is a philosopher studying Egyptian culture. He told me a story from the Jewish religion about a soul that has to confess its sins. When it does, it lays the sins on one side of the scale, and the other side of the scale rises.

My Answer: The Kabbalistic text that will be closest to you (in terms of clarity) is item 110 of the “Introduction to Talmud Eser Sefirot” (there you will also find references to earlier source texts). It states: “We must thoroughly understand what is written in Tractate Kidushin, p. 40: ‘One must always regard oneself half guilty and half pure. If he performs one Commandment, happy is he, for he has sentenced the world to a scale of merit. If he commits one sin, woe unto him for he has sentenced the world to a scale of demerit.’

Rabbi Elazar, son of Rabbi Shimon, says, ‘The world is judged by its majority, and the individual is also judged by the majority. Hence if he performs one Commandment, happy is he, for he has sentenced himself and the entire world to a scale of merit. If he commits one sin, woe unto him, for he has sentenced himself and the entire world to a scale of demerit. Because of this one sin that he had committed, the world and he have lost much good.’”

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Three questions I received on finding contact with me:

Question: Do you have a personal page on the site odnoklasniki.ru (the Russian version of classmates.com)? I’m asking because there are currently two personal pages of yours on this site.

My Answer: I don’t have anything to do with these pages, as you probably suspected. Someone else is writing them using my name. My opinions are stated only on this blog and the official websites of the Bnei Baruch organization.

Question: If people ask you good questions that can’t be answered during the virtual morning lesson because of the time limit, can you answer them on this blog?

My Answer: If the questions are very peculiar, for example, on the construction of the worlds, then they can’t be answered on this blog because the blog is for everyone. However, if the question is general, then I always answer it here.

Question: Someone advised me to speak to a Kabbalist. Is there any time when you take visitors?

My Answer: I don’t accept visitors and I don’t give advice or blessings. According to Kabbalah, the only way to truly change your destiny is to change yourself, because you are opposite the unchanging Light – the Creator’s force of bestowal and love. Hence Kabbalah considers everything else no more than psychological reassurance, which in the long run only exacerbates a person’s illness: his imbalance with the Creator. In other words, it causes the illness (egoism) to be neglected.

Kabbalah gives you the method to change yourself, and the rest depends on you. We always focus on questions of self-correction. Good luck!

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Three questions I received on women’s work in Kabbalah:

Question: What is a woman’s role in Kabbalah?

My Answer: Both in our world and in the society of the future, which will be corrected from egoism, a woman is a full fledged half and more, because all people complete each other in a single system. A woman can feel her own perfection and full value only through self-correction, by becoming loving and bestowing to the entire world. It’s precisely in her corrected state that the female part of the common soul feels equal, or even greater than everyone, because precisely the desire that’s embodied by the female part of the common soul becomes the reason for the revelation of the Creator (the Light).

Question: If Lo Lishma (לא לשמה) doesn’t push a person to attain Lishma (לשמה), then the group has to exert its influence on him. How can a woman elicit this pressure?

My Answer: With her desire, because she depends on the attainment of the Light by the men’s group.

Question: I want to open up a book, read it, and enjoy it. But ever since I started studying Kabbalah I no longer enjoy reading. What should I do?

My Answer: Learn to receive pleasure from the Upper Worlds!

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A question I received: The second part of the film Zeitgeist was recently released. It encourages all of humanity to unite and gives advice on how to build the new world order based on equal distribution of resources, a new education, and mutual guarantee. It also refers to the laws of nature. Are these people our partners?

My Answer: No. In fact, I’m not even familiar with this movement. However, the ideas of unity and globality are already in the air and I’m happy that more and more people are realizing that it’s urgently necessary to implement them in the human society.

However, the correction can only be achieved by the Upper Light, which descends while people study its Source. The description of the Light’s Source is found only in the authentic Kabbalistic books, and in our time, the most effective books are Baal HaSulam’s. That’s why we study them all the time. There’s nothing for me to look for anywhere else because I’ve already proven to myself and through myself that this method is effective.

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Two questions I received on relating to one’s environment:

Question: In one of your lessons in the United States, you said that people who are ready for a new worldview should voluntarily limit their needs to the minimum bodily necessities for food, shelter, leisure and knowledge. What should we do about the rest of our surroundings such as children, spouses, and parents, who are not ready to limit themselves? Is it sufficient to limit myself while giving those around me what they desire, and show them that my path is correct just through personal example? By the way, I have acted this way all my life, and in return everyone around me tacitly hates me and puts me down.

My Answer: If one’s head is “in the clouds,” then he naturally takes no more than the necessities from this world. He does not have to limit himself because this just comes to him naturally. This is the attitude one has when he realizes that the whole world is one family.

If the people around you hate you and put you down, it’s probably because you’re forcing them or prohibiting them from something.

Question: Can one person make another person feel a lack or need (whether spiritual or corporeal)?

My Answer: The environment can evoke or suppress any earthly desire in anyone (see the article “The Freedom”). Moreover, if a person has a point in the heart, the society can accelerate its development.

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