An Opportunity Given from Above

The desirable path of spiritual ascent is the path of Kabbalah. The path of suffering awaits us only if there is no other way to prompt us to reach perfection. The path of Kabbalah is an opportunity given from Above to each of us to create in ourselves the desires necessary for spiritual growth, demonstrating through spiritual ascents and declines that the spiritual Light is pleasure and its absence is suffering.

In this way, we begin to desire the Light and spiritual ascent and the perception of the Creator. Without first receiving the Upper Spiritual Light and then having it taken away, we cannot feel a desire for the Light.

Drawn by Pleasure or Pain to Spirituality

The greater the Light initially sent us by the Creator, and then “taken away,” the greater will be our desire to receive that Light once again.This path is known as “the path of Kabbalah,” or the path of the Light. But there is also “the path of suffering,” when one searches for a way to escape from unbearable suffering constantly in one’s life, and not from a desire to have lost pleasures restored.

With the path of Kabbalah, there awakens a desire to become filled by the spiritual Light as the vitalizing Source of redemption. Both paths lead to one goal, but one draws by the pleasure and the perfection that lie ahead, and the other pushes from behind, prompting an escape from pain.

Accepting the Advice of the Kabbalists

In order for a human being to be able to analyze external factors and internal sensations, two means of perception are given: the bitter and sweet—perceived by the heart, and the false and true—perceived by the intellect.

Spiritual attainment cannot be appreciated by the heart, since it is absolutely contrary to the heart’s true nature . This is why this attainment is always perceived as bitter, while any personal pleasure is perceived as sweet. For this reason, work on oneself in redirecting one’s desires is considered to be the work of the heart.

The work of the mind is of a completely different nature, because we cannot rely on our own minds and logic to analyze the surrounding events. In such a case, we are forced, in spite of ourselves, to rely on the egoistic, natural mind.

We are unable to break away from it because each of us was created in this manner by the Almighty. That is why there is only one path: to completely turn away from the typical inclination to analyze one’s surroundings and instead to accept the advice of the sages, expounded in the books of Kabbalah and explained by teachers who have reached the spiritual level of awareness.

A Higher Understanding to Be Had

If we are capable, with the Creator’s help, of making even the slightest attempt to analyze through faith, rather than by reason, and to discern with our hearts the bitterness of egoism, we will immediately be sent a spiritual understanding of the attained level, which comprises both spiritual Light and strength (screen).

The Creator then reveals the next lower stage of egoism, which was previously hidden because if we immediately grasped the entire extent of our own egoism, we would not have had the strength to overcome it. Instead, we would surely have become despondent from the overwhelming task lying ahead.

However, we should realize that this mountainous ego was always there within us from the beginning, but was hidden and is revealed gradually, as the Creator gives us the ability to correct it and the strength to do so. That is why those who ascend the spiritual levels, gradually overcoming “our own” reason, feel increasingly more perplexed and dense in relation to the guidance of the sages in the Kabbalistic books and of the Kabbalist instructors.

But to the degree that we diminish the significance of our “own” understanding, we are granted a higher understanding. In the end, rather than becoming more baffled by turning away from this world’s egoistic logic, we become incomparably wiser.

Advancing by the Path of Kabbalah

If we have not yet reached a higher understanding, or altered our way of analysis, begun to feel the sweetness, rather than the bitterness, of non-egoistic thoughts, or have not begun to see the truth of faith compared to the falseness of the intellect which is bound by the nature of our world, we can still progress through an already amended method of analysis derived from our teachers, by listening and following the example of the teacher in all things. Therein lies the counsel of the sages: If only a single Kabbalist, possessing the true spiritual understanding of the mind and heart, leads humanity, everyone can reach the goal of creation not by the path of suffering but by the easy and painless path of Kabbalah!

“The Two Paths to Spirituality: Which Are You On?” is based on the book, Attaining the Worlds Beyond by Dr. Michael Laitman.