“You are coerced to be born, coerced to live, and coerced to die.” This is the way it happens in our world. But all that happens in our world is the result of the events that take place in the spiritual worlds. There is, however, no direct analogy or likeness between the two realms.
We experience the past, the present, and the future in the present. In our world, all three are perceived in the present, but as three distinct sensations. These are produced as a result of our minds arranging these notions in accordance with their own internal time charts and, thus, yielding an impression of tense.
In the language of Kabbalah, this is defined as the difference in the effects of the “Light-pleasure.” The pleasure that is felt at a given moment is considered to be the present. If its internal, direct impact on us has already passed, if the pleasure is gone, gleams from afar and is sensed by us as being distant, then we perceive it as “in the past.”
The fact that we ask the Creator for spiritual perceptions, but do not ask Him to solve the various problems in our daily lives, indicates how weak is our faith in the omnipotence and Omnipresence of the Creator. It also signifies our lack of understanding that all of our problems are sent to us with one purpose only: for us to try to resolve them ourselves.
At the same time, we should ask the Creator to help in resolving them, believing all the while that every problem is sent to us to strengthen our faith in His Oneness. If we truly believe that everything depends upon the Creator, then we must turn to the Creator, but not in the hope that the Creator will resolve our problems.
Instead, we should use these problems as opportunities to become dependent on the Creator.
In the course of our lives, we are forced to alter the external clothing of pleasure because of our increasing age or because of our community. There is no word in our vocabulary to define pleasure. Instead, there are words describing the form, the garb, and the objects from which we receive pleasure: from food, from nature, from a toy. We describe our striving for pleasure according to its type, as in “I like fish.”
The preferred pleasure of those who study Kabbalah can be determined by the question: is it Kabbalah that is important to the person, or is it the One who Gives the Kabbalah? Is Kabbalah important because it emanates from the Creator? Is it the Creator who is important, or is the observance of the spiritual laws and the reward ensuing from that observance, the most important thing?
There are two opposite forces acting upon us: the altruistic force, which professes that living the Will of the Creator should be the ultimate purpose in this world, and that all should be for His sake; and the egoistic force, which maintains that everything in this world is created for human beings and because of them.
Although, in all cases, the higher altruistic force prevails, there exists the long path of suffering. However, there is also a short path, known as the path of Kabbalah.
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