The modern person has all the comforts of this world, but we are still unsatisfied – in fact, more so than before. In the past, if a person had a loaf of bread a day, he could not dream of anything more. Compared to that, look at all the things a modern person needs. Yet, is he satisfied? No! And everyone’s asking: Why?

Satisfaction is not to be found on the regular, human level, and none of the new toys we get will help. We want to dope ourselves with “stuff,” but the emptiness that surfaces in us comes from a completely different place – our lack of similarity to the Creator. That is why we cannot fulfill it with anything other than the sensation of the Creator!

This emptiness gradually forms inside us and accumulates to a specific measure in order to “explode.” That is when a person comes to understand that he can no longer suppress that emptiness. He has to fulfill it since otherwise his life will seem worse than death. It is impossible to find fulfillment for this desire in this world because it is a need to reveal the Upper World, the Creator!

Yet the body’s protective forces compel us to search for ways to confuse ourselves. People take drugs, alcohol, or fill their lives with empty, fashionable things or trips. Thus, like ostriches, we hide our heads in the sand to escape the problems.

That is how the protective force of our ego operates, wishing to prove to itself that it is fulfilled and to conceal the emptiness that never can be filled. Why think about the things we could never attain anyway and spoil our lives?

But this cannot go on for long! For now we still manage to confuse ourselves on the “animate” level in order to avoid feeling the unfulfilled need on the “human” level. But the cover up will unavoidably blow up.

In different periods throughout history similar states brought about revolutions, wars, and dramatic, tragic solutions. Let us hope that in our case the solution will not be so cruel. In our case, we have to rise from the level of our world, the “animate” degree, to the level of the Upper World, the level of Adam or the Creator. This is not in our power and humanity is starting to go crazy from its own futility.

On our egoistic level it was possible to ascend from one degree to the next by way of revolutions, wars, new regimes or religions, and new technologies such as book printing, the steam engine, the Internet, and so on. All of this provided fulfillment for a certain segment of time, but now egoism has exhausted itself and the need to reveal the Creator demands precisely the spiritual fulfillment. We are revealing a new inner desire: to reveal the One who controls us.

From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/2/10, “Introduction to the Book, Panim Meirot uMasbirot”

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A question I received: Many people in the world now suffer from depression; they don’t leave their homes for months, and require psychological help. What can help them?

My Answer: Depression is the most common illness in the world today. Only one remedy can be advised for it: the Light that Reforms. No psychologist can help in this regard for it is due to the Creator being revealed to us in the opposite form that is prompting rampant depression.

Once each of us felt that he or she was one little person around which the world was revealed in different layers of our egoism: 1, 2, 3. As our ego grew bigger and bigger, we developed in accordance with it by creating a new environment: a world of new technology and social relations. This is how we developed over the course of our entire history, stage by stage, 1 – 2 – 3, toward wealth, honor, and knowledge.

However, today we have come to the fourth level, which is a special one. At this level, what is becoming revealed is the Creator, the quality of “bestowal,” and not our developing ego, our property of “receiving.” This is the fundamental difference of our epoch, which is the epoch of revealing the Creator.

Previously, nature (the Creator) forced us to develop, that is, to grow and become smarter, more knowledgeable, understanding, and powerful. But now human beings have completed their development at the level of this world. People are recognizing the pointlessness of new discoveries, and everything gradually fades, the development of science, space research, and so on. We have completely depleted ourselves.

Today, in contrast to this, the Creator – a new nature – is revealed. And here we need to proceed in a different manner. We cannot enter a new stage with our egoism; we will only harm ourselves. We need to realize that a completely new approach has begun, and neither our strength, nor advanced technologies and scientific discoveries can help us.

Suddenly we will discover that all the systems that we built in this world have stopped working. All the former goals (money, power, knowledge, family, education, and culture) have lost their value. Darkness and despair are coming into the world, but this is because the Creator, the Force of bestowal is being revealed in it. We don’t want it, since it cancels out our egoism, our nature, and all our desires!

It is like a child who ran around wanting to play, and suddenly he is told “That’s enough. Now you have to give and to love. Go play with your little sister.” This is contrary to his nature, and hence his life becomes dark; he immediately loses all his energy.

Therefore, we can understand why people are sitting around depressed, unable to leave their homes for months at a time. Antidepressants are the most popular medicine today. However, I can advise that the Surrounding Light is the only medicine.

From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/28/10, Shamati #16

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Two questions I received about the use of drugs:

Question: What are your views on marijuana? In my opinion, it is an herb, not a drug. Is it wrong as a student of Kabbalah to smoke and relax?

My Answer: Anything is good if it’s used as a medicine, even snake venom. However, if something’s used to disconnect from reality and correction, it’s not good.

Besides this, you have to take addiction into account. Overall, if one aspires to the Upper Goal, then he does not need this.

Question: You mentioned several times that as we progress in the study of Kabbalah, our need for addictive substances such as illegal drugs, and the need to abuse prescription drugs just goes away. I personally have experienced this. Is it the Surrounding Light (Ohr Makif) doing the job or is it our friends helping us?

My Answer: It’s the Light and nothing but the Light!

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In the News (from the BBC): “Depression looms as global crisis” – “WHO figures clearly show that the burden because of depression is likely to increase – so much so that in 2030 this will be the single biggest cause for burden out of all health conditions,” comments Dr. Shekhar Saxena of the Department of Mental Health of the World Health Organization. The scientific concept of “burden” is the measure of years lost of life due to early death or severe disability brought on by a certain illness, in this case depression. Dr. Saxena says depression is much more common than some other diseases that are more widely feared such as HIV-Aids or cancer.

My Comment: I wrote about this many years ago, saying that people will discover that their desires are empty, dark and bottomless. Drugs will no longer be able to quench these desires, and suicide won’t bring people freedom either, since the desires will be felt as eternal and imperishable, as something from which you can never free yourself.

Eventually we’ll be left with one choice: to accept Kabbalah as the method of fulfilling that desire. This method enables people to reach fulfillment by the Creator rather than fulfillment by the things in this world.

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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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