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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We feel that we are in a world, which we separate into “me” and the people around me, and we try to use everything for our own benefit. This is how we act in accordance with our inner nature, and other people around us act the same way.

However, once a new desire awakens in a person, it cannot be filled by anything available in this world. This causes confusion, as a person wants something, but doesn’t know what it is that they want.

This small new desire haunts a person. It grows and brings him to a place that contains an answer. This is how a person discovers the wisdom of Kabbalah.

One doesn’t understand right away what it is, but an instinctive feeling keeps him holding on to these books and to a new society. He studies, like a child that is just imitating grown-ups.

This is how a person advances until, after some time, he begins to understand that the goal is to reveal another world in addition to the world he currently perceives.

In this second reality, everything is different. Both the person himself and the world are new.  The new desire that awakens in him is the beginning of his new “I.” When this desire develops, he discovers himself in a new world.

This is like changing the channel on a TV. A person is watching one channel and sees an image of the world. He changes the channel and suddenly finds himself viewing a completely different world. A person changes along with the new world that is revealed to him, and he begins to understand what is being revealed through the science of Kabbalah.

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A question I received: Despite the numbers and facts you believe that the world economy is not getting out of the crisis, and this is the opinion of Kabbalah?

My Answer: I am not an economist and Kabbalah doesn’t do market forecasts. But here is my personal opinion:

We observe rising oil prices, rising market indices and rising stock prices. That’s why people talk about the end of the recession and the beginning of world economic growth.

However, it is not a reflection of real economic growth,  but an artificial stimulus of demand and new market speculations as a result of the infusion of government funds into the economy. Speculation in the oil market has caused a rise in oil prices, triggering a rise in prices on other goods. So new bubbles are being created, which will eventually burst and thus bring a new economic collapse.

The governments have provided funds to stimulate consumer demand and thus trigger economic growth. However, these funds have landed in the banks and instead of generating economic growth, layoffs continue, which in turn causes further decline in demand.

Governmental debts of the world’s leading economies are higher than their annual GDP, military expenses are on the rise, and the printing of money doesn’t stop.

Conclusion: We are in the next stage of the same crisis and we are heading towards the bursting of an even bigger bubble.

1. The cause of the crisis lies in the fact that we have reached the limit of our egoistic development through many centuries and we have now formed  a global, integral system.

2. The law of behavior of such a system is based on the common inter-connectedness of its elements. It is like the organs of the body, where each organ is working to support the whole system, and by this, insuring its own existence.

3. But in order to form such a connection (to love your neighbor as yourself), there must be a very evident revelation of our interconnectedness. Only in this scenario, will our personal egoism allow the possibility of taking the concept of caring for the whole system into account, .

4. Out of all doctrines, philosophies and religions, only Kabbalah talks about the revelation of the global connection between people – the Upper World, and not about suppressing the ego. Only the revelation of the concealed connection between us (which is the same as revelation of the Creator) will bring us to prosperity, according to His thought and our desire!

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Every person receives precisely the capabilities he needs in order to correct his soul. We are not created by the whim of chance. All of your desires and qualities, all the situations you have gone through, the place you were born, the upbringing you received – everything has been set up for you in the optimal way for the express purpose of developing your soul.

Therefore, there’s no use complaining that you need different conditions in this material world in order to develop spiritually, or that you lack sufficient health, money, education, intelligence, talents, abilities, or sensitivity. All your qualities and all the conditions that are provided for you come from the particular qualities of your soul, which has to go through correction. Your only job is to ask for this correction to take place.

Therefore, there is no need to correct the external world. We have to live in the world just like everyone else. This world is a level that does not become corrected until the very end of correction. You may ascend as high as the level of Rashbi, who wrote The Book of Zohar, but you will still have to take care of your physical body, your family, your job, pension, and medical service – everything a person needs.

Like all people, when you’re sick, you will still have to go to a doctor, receive medicine from him, pay him money, and take the medicine according to the doctor’s instructions. You will have to do everything the doctor told you to, but when you are healed, you will thank the Creator for it. Why?

It’s because you did everything needed of you in the conditions that the Creator has organized for you in this theater of life. You treated this theater correctly and carried out all the necessary actions – and then you felt better. You thus corrected yourself on the level of this theater, and now you thank the Producer for everything that has happened. He set up this entire world and your illness for you, and you dealt with it on the same level

However, if He gives you a point in the heart and waits for you to come closer to Him, then you have to relate to Him on the level of the point in the heart. You do not throw your qualities out the window, be it envy, passion or pride, but you use them all in order to connect with others above these qualities, for example, by envying how they are advancing in the spiritual world.

Your pride pushes you to advance at least as much as they are advancing. You thus use all your natural qualities in order to awaken the true prayer inside you. And if you properly use all the means that are given to you, then you will end up attaining all your goals.

You have to clearly differentiate between the material level, which you cannot correct, and the spiritual level. You thereby connect the two levels.

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A question I received: What does it mean that “an inner change creates a new state”?

My Answer: The science of Kabbalah explains that everything occurs inside us, inside the desire to receive pleasure that was created by the Creator. There is nothing outside of this desire. Everything occurs inside the same matter of creation relative to the same Malchut of Infinity, including the actions of restriction, the creation of the screen, the descent, and the distancing from Infinity down to our world.

The descent of creation from the World of Infinity can be likened to a person who is slowly losing consciousness, and who gradually loses the understanding of where he is. It seems to him that the world and the situation outside is changing, while actually, the only that changes is him.

Therefore, it’s because of the inner changes that happened in us that instead of the World of Infinity, our inner state appears to us as the Worlds of Atzilut, Beria, Yetzira, Assiya, or this world. This is how we “descended.” Now we have to “rise” along the same degrees of perception from below upward. All the changes of perception occur only inside a person.

Each of our inner states is called a world. Our present state is called “this world.” If we change it, it will be called “the World of Assiya,” then “the world of Yetzira,” then “the world of Beria,” and so on.

How do we change our state? We do it by changing the relationships between us. We are given an opportunity to return to Infinity, due to the fact that each of us feels that he exists separately, distant from the others. We are separated by the “thickness” of our desire, hatred, egoism, the feeling of rejection from others, pride, and lust for power.

However, if a person understands that by uniting with others, he will return to the state of Infinity, and that he has to return there in spite of these new difficult conditions, in spite of our rejection of one another, then he begins to work. He begins to create a connection with others in spite of his egoism. He does not destroy his egoism, and in fact, he doesn’t do anything with his ego. He simply builds a connection with others above it. This is called building a screen over the desire. That is how the desire turns into a Partzuf.

The rejection between the souls remains and grows constantly, but a person builds bridges over it, creates connections between the souls, which become higher and higher. It’s precisely due to the growing Aviut (thickness) that a person raises himself to higher spiritual degrees every time – above the evil. This is how one ascends along the 125 degrees of connection between all the souls.

As a result, a person achieves a perception of the World of Infinity, which is 620 times greater than before he descended to this world. “Six hundred twenty” does not refer to the quantity, but to the level of realization, understanding, perception, and sensation of life and existence. We acquire this understanding and perception in the World of Infinity instead of our initial state, where we felt like a mere drop of semen and had no opportunity to do or perceive anything.

However, now, when we return to that same state of Infinity, and our sensation is 620 times deeper and stronger, we feel that we are on the same level as the Creator, the Upper Force, which created us and all of creation.

Therefore, our inner changes in regard to others create a new state in us, which is called a new world. All the worlds are within us, and we feel them to the extent we go through inner changes through our connection with other souls.

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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.”

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There is nothing but forces in the spiritual world. But the connection between them is determined by your perception (world-year-soul in a ready-made reality). And the Creator is also a detail of your perception. He is something outside of you. That is to say, from within your inner reality, you deduce something that provides and sustains it, and you call this part, “the Creator.” It is you who distinguishes and “depicts” Him inside your qualities.

The same thing is true regarding the rest of the picture (world-year-soul). When you are in the spiritual world, you reveal the spiritual matrix of forces, “world-year-soul and a ready-made reality.” You then reveal a different order of forces that influence one another. They contain an inner part (the soul) and an outer part (the world). And you understand some of the forces, seeing them as cause and consequence; this is the year. They contain an Upper Thought and a force that leads the process; this is the ready-made reality.

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There is no sense in trying to correct anything in our world, as it is a world of consequences, which descend from the spiritual roots. However, if we can somehow affect the upper roots, we will also  be able to change the material world.

The roots cannot be affected by separate individuals. It is only by uniting together that we can achieve a connection with the root, since we do not exist there as individuals. In the roots, we are all united as one system.

Therefore, if we wish to change our reality, we have to unite. When we have this desire, it will draw the Light upon us, which will correct everything here in this world.

We will then truly “correct the world.” But if we try to correct the externality – the external actions, behavior, or religious commandments – then it is pointless, since there is nothing to correct here. All of these all merely an imprint on the inanimate matter of what happens Above.

This is like trying to hit an image that’s projected onto a wall using light, or kissing it and asking for forgiveness. That is what our actions are like, but we think we can change something this way.

Only a person’s inner corrections can influence the material world. This is why we disseminate Kabbalah instead of encouraging people to correct the ecology, the crisis, and finances.

Nevertheless, a person is always more willing to “correct” the material things, especially if he knows that his efforts will be seen and valued by others, or if he can be proud of his own actions, society will support him. In this case, a person is willing to do anything, and this drives him to carry out such actions.

Inner, spiritual work is difficult precisely for this reason: it isn’t valued by the people around us or even by our own egoism. However, the true work occurs only inside a person, and it does not depend on his body or the physical actions he makes.

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Preparation
I can feel empathy for someone in the material world, but this will only be a measure of my participation in his suffering. It won’t be pain that I myself feel.
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Part 1, on Baal HaSulam’s Letter 23
The spiritual world is not a theory. Actually, it is much more real than the “reality” we are familiar with now.
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Part 2, on Part 12 of Talmud Eser Sefirot, “Inner Observation”
All the corrections are made by the Light. So if a person acts on his own, he is acting inside his egoistic desire.
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Part 3, on “Introduction to Talmud Eser Sefirot,” Item 142
Reality is something that you have in common with the Light. You gradually perceive one more part, and then another one, and so on, but you always perceive only the things you are ready for.
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