January 15, 2025
October 2, 2014 at 7:30 pm · Filed under Articles, Books, Free Will
The Unconscious (or Conscious) Drive that Governs Your Life
The human being is created in the image of the Creator. Therefore, knowingly or unknowingly, he or she aspires to have all the attributes that characterize the Creator. For example, the Creator is in a state of eternal and complete rest. Because of that we too aspire for rest, and all our movements are only a means to attain it. The Creator is one and unique, therefore, everyone declares how much he or she, meaning his or her ego, is also one and unique. Our aspiration to achieve things we think cannot be attained comes from our soul, which is a part of the Creator. We in fact aspire for the situation of the Creator, who is actually free. And this is the purpose of our existence. If that weren’t possible, the concept of freedom would simply not exist.
Why Your Only Independence Is in Rising Above Your Nature
Our freedom, our independence, is only possible to the extent that we are freed from our nature and can rise above it. That is because our nature is predetermined. To attain the real and absolute freedom, we have to activate a special mechanism to open the door of the cage of our corporeal world into a spiritual, eternal, and free realm.
We have to fight for our freedom. Our whole life is comprised of struggles for bits of fictitious freedom, which society obliges us to engage in. We try to be as it would have us be, and we are prepared to fill up our lives with empty acts, just to get some recognition and respect.
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October 1, 2014 at 7:30 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
The Big Question: Does Humanity Have Freedom of Will?
In our world, we are almost completely dependent on nature’s providence. We are compelled to be born; we do not choose our time of birth or our family, our talents, or the people we meet in this life. We enter an environment we never chose.
All my characteristics are predefined: the feelings, the aspirations, and the character. Everyone is born with his or her own Mazal (luck). Moreover, it is said that “there is not a blade of grass below [in our world] that has not an angel above [a force from the upper world] that strikes it and tells it: Grow!” So is there any freedom at all?
Both nature and society evolve according to their own laws, and so do all the changes in the universe and the ever- greater catastrophes that happen, hence there is nothing that depends on us. But if everything in humankind is dictated from above, not only our characteristics and inheritance, but everything outside us, including the forces that lead us to the end of correction, to a predetermined state, what kind of freedom can we talk about or even think about?
Predetermination vs. Free Choice
On the other hand, if we just obey nature’s orders, it is unclear why we were created in the first place, not to mention everything else around us. If everything is predefined and there is no freedom of choice, there seems to be no point to the whole of creation. The goal of creation, however, is not that everything will continue the way it has so far advanced, without any reason, but rather to attain completeness, precisely through our gift of free choice. For that reason it is vitally important that we find where and in what our free choice manifests.
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September 30, 2014 at 7:30 pm · Filed under Articles, Books, What is Kabbalah?
The Purpose of Kabbalah
Throughout history, during those times when Kabbalah was concealed from most people, rivulets of the wisdom still seeped through, which gave rise to various erroneous conjectures about its purpose. Even today, most prevalent concepts about Kabbalah are fundamentally wrong. Kabbalah engages neither in improving the human existence in this world, nor in mystical or ecstatic experiences.
The sole purpose of the wisdom of Kabbalah is realizing the desire for spirituality, which in turn leads a person to realize his or her purpose in life. Once that desire surfaces, a person begins to need the Kabbalah; before that, it is redundant.
Why Kabbalah Is No Longer Hidden
In previous generations, when the desire for spirituality had not yet ripened, Kabbalists set up boundaries on the study of Kabbalah, aiming to filter out those with unripe desires. The few whose desire had ripened in them were imparted the method, despite all the limitations. Now that humanity is experiencing the surfacing of the last degree of the will to receive— the desire for spirituality—concealing the Kabbalah is no longer pertinent. The ban on studying it has been lifted and the filtering at the gate of the study is performed in an entirely different way: Being a method to acquire genuine spirituality, the Kabbalah naturally filters out those with other desires, such as for sex, money, or power. It simply cannot assist in fulfilling those desires.
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September 29, 2014 at 7:30 pm · Filed under Anti-Semitism, Articles, Books, Israel
Israel: The Journey from Spirituality to Corporeality
The awakening desire for spirituality is called “the land of Israel.” The people who lived in the land of Israel before the ruin of the Second Temple were in spiritual attainment. This means that the spiritual degree of the people of Israel and its presence in the corporeal land of Israel matched at that time. In that state, the people merited living in the land of Israel. When the people of Israel lost their spiritual degree and yielded to egoistic desires—due to the growth of the ego—the mismatch between their spiritual level and their presence in the land of Israel prompted the ruin of the Temple and the exile.
While the past spiritual fall caused the exile of the people of Israel from their land and their dispersion among the nations, today the situation is reversed: the physical return to the land of Israel preceded the spiritual return. Nevertheless, the match between the spiritual root and the corporeal branch must be kept, and for that reason the people of Israel are obliged to attain the spiritual degree called “land of Israel.” For that objective, the wisdom of Kabbalah is a means for the people to correct themselves.
Why the Israeli Nation Must Develop Spirituality to Secure Their Homeland
When Rabbi Ashlag completed his Sulam commentary on The Zohar, he wrote, “From these words we learn that our generation is the generation of the days of the Messiah, hence we have been awarded the redemption of our Holy Land.… We have also been awarded the revelation of The Book of Zohar … but in both, we have only been awarded a gift from the Creator, but we have not received anything in our own hands.”
The physical end of the exile and the return of the people of Israel to their land is not enough. A spiritual return is required. Baal HaSulam distinguishes between what he calls “a time of giving” and “a time of receiving.” A time of giving pertains to the creation of potential existence by the upper force; and the time of receiving is the actual realization of the possibility.
Until the people are corrected, they will not feel comfortable in this land.
The uncertainty and insecurity of day-to-day existence in Israel is there to prompt its dwellers to rise to the spiritual level called “the land of Israel.” The goal of the upper force is to bring humankind to search for the reason, the root of all processes. All the pressures on the nation of Israel by other countries, and its interior social, personal, and national level crises, exist only to compel people to ask about the purpose of their existence in this world.
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September 28, 2014 at 7:30 pm · Filed under Articles, Books
Why Each Person Must Enter Into Spiritual Correction
Reality can be changed by anyone, so long as he or she is thinking of the Creator. If his or her soul has ripened through all the cycles and its time has come to know spirituality, it is inevitable that he or she will have to enter the process of spiritual correction and learn to manipulate the spiritual powers. It doesn’t matter where we are in the world, there will be torments and catastrophes standing ready for us wherever we go, as long as we do not realize it. In the end, we are at the center of the world, and there is no escape from that.
It’s All about Taking Responsibility for Your Development
We can anticipate that if we do not wake up now, there will be an increase in our troubles. The more we neglect the matter, the stronger will be the force that we will need to put us back on track. It is just like physics: when you throw something and it is diverted from the right path, the longer it continues off track, the greater its deflection and the greater the force needed to bring it back to the right track. That pattern will happen with us, too, if we do not change our ways. We don’t have a choice but to start listening to what is happening with us.
It is most urgent to realize that nothing happens without a good reason, and that our behavior influences what comes down to us from the upper worlds. We cannot act like small children, crying and searching for ways to escape the troubles of life. We must become part of a mature humanity: one that knows what it is doing and can assume responsibility for its actions. This change in attitude will begin by keeping in mind that there is always a reason for our condition. That realization will prompt a larger shift in our consciousness, and then we will start to look for the reasons behind everything that happens to us in this world.
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