We are all made of the desire to enjoy – a material that cannot do anything on its own and is entirely dependent on the Light that created it. All the changes that happen to the desire to enjoy are performed by the Light.

Our development starts with the initial stage, where the Light influences the will to enjoy and causes it to mature. From the state of maturity onwards, the Light ceases developing the desire and waits for it to want this of its own accord, and then to ask the Light for it.

Today we are at the transition phase leading to our independent development. The Light no longer develops us, but waits for us to ask It to develop us further. However, our request has to correspond to the program of the Light’s future actions over us. On every stage, we have to ask the Light to do Its work.

If we desire for the Light to perform a specific action to us – to correct us from reception to bestowal, and if our desire is an exact match to the Light’s program, then the Light immediately performs this action. Thus we advance forward, traversing 1/125th of the path of our development.

Therefore, our entire work lies in understanding what exactly should we be asking for, what is our future state, and what do we have to attain on every stage? Then our desire will become the same as the desire of the Light, the Creator.

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson - No Comments →

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…

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson - No Comments →

When reading a Kabbalistic text, it’s important to understand that it is only talking about spiritual processes that take place inside a person, rather than about different characters and external actions. Everything that is described in a Kabbalistic text is inside a person.

For instance, the entire Torah talks only about how a person discerns different desires and qualities within: which ones belong to bestowal and which – to reception, which are fit for correction and which are unfit for it; and how a person experiences an inner world through these qualities, which is the only world that actually exists. A person then discovers that he perceives our world inside him as well, and there is never anything on the outside.

The way to enter the new world is by expanding your perception of your internal desires and qualities and by taking care to use all of them for the sake of bestowal. This is how one realizes oneself to the fullest.

A person contains all the characters of the Torah – the whole world to the fullest is within him. Kabbalah explains how a person can arrange the entire sum of all his desires within, and thereby reveal a new world.

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson - No Comments →

A question I received: Would you be kind enough to explain the reason that the Creator created us in this form, with only the will to receive. Why do we have to go through this process at all? Why couldn’t we be created more like the Creator? Doesn’t the whole creation look like a game to you?

My Answer: You are perfectly right: the whole of creation is the Creator’s game with which he plays with His creation! The purpose of creating us in a quality that is opposite to the Creator is exactly for us to remain creatures that are different from Him, so that when we attain Him and become equal to Him, we will not vanish into Him.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: The Creator Is the Corrected You
Laitman.com Post: Life Is A Game
Laitman.com Post: The World Is A Playground
Laitman.com Post: The Only Point Of Freedom Is Your Reaction To The Creator
Baal HaSulam Article: “The Freedom”

Filed under: Spirituality - No Comments →

In the News (from MSNBC News): “Antidepressant use doubles in U.S., study finds” Use of antidepressant drugs in the United States doubled between 1996 and 2005, probably because of a mix of factors, researchers reported on Monday. “Significant increases in antidepressant use were evident across all sociodemographic groups examined, except African Americans,” Dr. Mark Olfson of Columbia University in New York and Steven Marcus of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia wrote in the Archives of General Psychiatry.

My Comment: Because people are feeling a new, unearthly desire, which is impossible to fulfill in this world, they are experiencing an incurable state of depression and melancholy that they are trying to suppress with drugs or other addictive substances. However, this desire can instead be fulfilled with the desired pleasure by revealing the Upper World, using the method of fulfilling this new desire, the soul. This method is called the “Wisdom of Kabbalah.” Kabbalah is translated from Hebrew as “reception or fulfillment.”

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: We Must Rise To A Higher Level Of Consciousness To Solve Our Problems
Laitman.com Post: Crisis And Resolution
Laitman.com Post: Comments About Depression, Seeming Egoistic To Others, And Parenting
Attaining the Worlds Beyond: “Suffering Sent As Absolute Kindness”
Kabbalah Revealed: “The Dark Before the Dawn”

Filed under: Depression - 1 Comment →

A question I received: You often mention that everyone has to attain the quality of bestowal. But when someone’s giving, it means that someone else is receiving, doesn’t it?

My Answer: Yes, but the person that receives does so in order to give, in order to please the giver with his reception. The balance you speak of remains, but on another level, free of reception.

I am taking from you because my action gives you the opportunity to show your love to me. In that case, my response is not called reception, since I am doing it for your sake.

The spiritual system works according to the principle where you don’t receive anything from anyone; all you can do is give. You give to everyone. You fulfill them and they are pleased to receive from you, because that way they can demonstrate their quality of bestowal to you. When a person receives in this case, he is actually giving. That is to say, he offers others an opportunity to give to him.

In our egoistic world, family members who love one another can establish a similar kind of relationship, where each one indulges the other by acting the way the other one wants.

But that’s still a small, animate level. In the spiritual world, however, such relationships make us similar to the Creator, because we bestow and are able to boundlessly receive from others in a reciprocal relationship.

Then each one of us and all of us together become “conductors” of endless information and energy through the entire creation.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: The Purpose Of The Universe
Laitman.com Post: Let Us Open The Faucet Of Love For Each Other
Laitman.com Post: Our Only Prayer Should Be To Have The Correct Desire (Advanced)
A Hidden Guide to the Hidden Wisdom of Kabbalah: 4.”The Recognition of Evil and the Revelation of Good”
Attaining the Worlds Beyond: Chapter 13.”The Desire To Receive Pleasure”

Filed under: Spirituality - No Comments →

A question I received: Kabbalah says that there are 230 years left until the end of the world. Will babies still be born in 231 years – in the world to come?

My Answer: We think of time in terms of our perception of reality and therefore we can’t grasp the way a person alters reality by changing his or her attributes. Reality is what I feel within. By changing my inner attributes, I discover a different picture of the world.

Take a computer screen, for example. When you press a button, you change the pictures that appear on the screen. That is how you are now living in different pictures, jumping from one movie into the next.

The 230 years that you are talking about, and babies that are or aren’t born, are not real issues. That is because when you rise to the spiritual dimension, you will suddenly sense that everything you used to perceive, all these bodies, people, men, women and children, this entire world, including you who eats and drinks, simply don’t exist.

You will suddenly realize that what you saw before was just an image on the screen, while in reality this picture was drawn by the two real forces standing behind it all – the will to receive and the will to bestow. The “reality” you sense now, simply does not exist. It exists only on your screen.

What does it mean to give birth, to build a house, and to live in this world? It is a certain combination of these two forces, which create such a picture for you. And that’s all! So, you don’t have to wait 230 years to experience the sequence of images that will come one after another.

What does it mean to live in the world? Is it my body that lives? I exist in a specific form of the will to receive, until I complete all of my corrections, whereby I will attain the will to bestow.

I have to rise from the lowest point, called this world, until I reach the highest point, adhesion with the Creator. Then, at the last stage of the correction process, the Lev HaEven (heart of stone) will also be corrected.

What happens after that? The picture changes, altering everything along with it: all the attributes, awareness and comprehension. If you ascend spiritually even a little bit, you will already begin to sense that this world is what you feel within. The sensation will shift, and something different, more internal, will emerge to take its place.

Everything takes place inside your desires. This is why it is written: “I saw a reverse world.” And that is why there won’t be anyone left in 230 years that will still perceive the world the way you do today.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: In Spirituality, Preparation Is The Most Important Time
Laitman.com Post: The Nonexistent Movie Of Our Reality
Laitman.com Post: Will Bodies Be Necessary After the Full Correction?
The Path Of Kabbalah: “The Attributes Of The Light”
Shamati #98: “Spirituality Is Called That Which Will Never Be Lost”

Filed under: Spirituality - No Comments →

Why can’t I attain the sensation of spirituality directly? Well, say I am not very knowledgeable in some profession, for example, I don’t know anything about economics. If I start working at a bank, then I will understand the importance of economics. Then, when someone tells me that some stock rose 0.1 percent, this will be a really big deal to me. But right now, I don’t feel anything since I just don’t understand it, even though it may be something really important!

How do we grow? We teach our “will to enjoy” to be more sensitive and to discern the finest of details. We teach ourselves, just like people train dogs or raise a small child. In our world, in the material, egoistic system, this happens directly. The Light acts inside this system as well, but in a concealed manner, and we don’t have to ask the Light to create any special sensations inside us. If, however, besides the material system we want to reveal one more system – the spiritual one, then we cannot develop our sensitivity to it directly, because we don’t feel it at all. We simply cannot increase our own sensitivities in order to start feeling it. We need the Light to build the new sensations inside.

No matter how much I desire spirituality, I cannot attain it directly; I cannot make it “come out of the fog.” In the material system, I already have a desire, even if it is very coarse and undeveloped. All I have to do is develop it by influencing it with a “painful rod” or a “sweet candy.” That is how I develop and refine my sensation. But when it comes to spirituality, I don’t feel it in any way at all. Even my point in the heart is opposite to this system, since this point is the reverse side of holiness. This is why I need the Light so much, because it will carry out my correction from Above and reveal this system to me! This action requires an additional force.

In the material world, however, we don’t need the Creator. In fact, the more people develop and the more they perfect their culture (their feelings) and science (their mind), the less they believe in God and religion. It’s because people reveal that they don’t need an Upper Force. They can accomplish things, understand and feel everything on their own. This is why people delve deeper into the arts and sciences, leaving religion behind. This is natural, because people don’t need the Upper Force for egoistic development.

If, however, we want to develop spiritually, with the help of the science of Kabbalah, then everything happens in the opposite way: we need the Upper Force to create a new desire in us. Initially we don’t have this desire, so we can’t develop it and feel the spiritual system inside it. The point in the heart gives us the only the opportunity of a place to start. But it will have to go through an inverse transformation in order to turn into “a drop of semen.” In the meantime, it is not a drop of semen, but just a black point.

This is why you need the Upper Force through every step of your development, and the way to connect with It is by building yourself. This Force is what sustains your existence in the spiritual world, so if It doesn’t give you the quality you need to reveal this system, you won’t feel it. The Creator is all the spiritual qualities that you have within. He is the spiritual system, the Force that fulfills you. All of this is Him alone.

The more you develop, the more you develop the Creator within you. In Hebrew, the Creator is called “Bo-reh,” which means, “Come and see!” This is what distinguishes one’s development using the science of Kabbalah. You reveal the Upper Force clearly, inside you. You then see that it is a system that governs everything and that you are inside this system and thereby establish a mutual connection with the Master of this system.

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson - No Comments →

In the News (from The Independent): “Just 96 months to save world, says Prince Charles” Capitalism and consumerism have brought the world to the brink of economic and environmental collapse, the Prince of Wales has warned in a grandstand speech… Charles’s speech was described as his first attempt to present a coherent philosophy in which he placed the threat to the environment in the context of a failing economic system…

Charles said that without “coherent financial incentives and disincentives” we have just 96 months to avert “irretrievable climate and ecosystem collapse, and all that goes with it … If we don’t face up to this, then Nature, the biggest bank of all, could go bust…”

My Comment: The ecosystem doesn’t depend on us, but the economic system does. However, the way to change it for the better is not by trying to influence it directly, but by correcting our intentions from “reception” to “bestowal.” How can this be done? It is only possible by drawing a spiritual force from above, the force that created our egoism and that can change it, turning it into the opposite quality, that of bestowal and love. The wisdom of Kabbalah tells us how to draw this force of correction.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: True Bestowal Is When We Come Out Of Ourselves
Laitman.com Post: Can The World’s Problems Be Solved Without Kabbalah?
Kabbalah, Science and the Meaning of Life: “The Giving Force and the Receiving Force”

Filed under: World - 1 Comment →

In the News (from The Guardian): “Atheist camp to give children ‘godless alternative’” An atheist summer camp for children is to be held in the UK for the first time this year, offering a “godless alternative” to similar religious events under canvas… The purpose of Camp Quest UK, which has been praised by the atheist and skeptic author Richard Dawkins, is to encourage critical thinking and provide children with a summer camp “free of religious dogma”…Camp Quest UK’s website says its counselors and volunteers will lead activities teaching eight to 17-year-olds “about science, free thought and humanist principles. Activities cover critical thinking, science, history, human rights and ethics”.

My Comment: The religious view of God as an angry or an all-forgiving persona originated from ancient human fears of Nature and our desire to safeguard and secure ourselves.

But the complete negation of a higher world (which is impossible to perceive using our egoistic desires but which we are in a position to perceive if we change our desires in the opposite direction) also restricts a person to the physical world without giving him an understanding of “science, free thought and humanist principles.”  In fact, the denial of religion gives birth to yet another religion.

Kabbalah explains that this world consists of two forces. Our world is based on the force of the will to receive. But an opposite world is possible, an anti-world, which is based on the will to bestow. Kabbalah is the method for the revelation of this other world to man.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Today, Religion Is Being Replaced By Kabbalah
Laitman.com Post: Religion Is A Harbor For People In Times Of Crisis
Article: “The Difference between Kabbalah and Religion”
Baal HaSulam Article: “The Essence of Religion and Its Purpose”

Filed under: Education - 1 Comment →