Two questions I received that relate to a soul’s age:

Question: Why do innocent children have cancer, AIDS or other incurable diseases? Is this not injustice from the Creator?

My Answer: The same souls are present in all  people. In addition, the souls have no age.

Question: What is the purpose of a baby dying or having a severe disease? Does the soul gain experience from it and is there any meaning in it?

My Answer: A soul has no age. All souls have been born together in the shattering of one soul. This is why only bodies have different ages, but there is no preference given to a baby over an old man.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Humanity Is One Integral Interconnected Organism
Laitman.com Post: Why Did God Create Death?
Laitman.com Post: About Rabash And The Spiritual Meaning Of Death And Revival
The Kabbalah Experience: “Soul, Body and Reincarnation”
Shamati #1: “There is None Else Beside Him”- Lesson
Video: How To Develop Your Soul – 5 Minutes Of Light (5:43)

Filed under: Suffering - No Comments →

A question I received: How can a person avoid suffering?

My Answer: Ask yourself: who inflicts all the problems and suffering on you? If you felt that they all come from the Creator, you’d already feel better.

It’s similar to a surgeon who operates on you: even though it’s a painful process, you know that what he is doing is good for you. In fact, if you have enough understanding of the gravity of your illness and the efficacy of the treatment, then you won’t feel pain at all. If you understand that the operation will make you get well, you will even ask the surgeon to perform the operation sooner!

Thus, it’s because we do not have this sensation that we feel suffering. The feeling of suffering is not caused by the pain itself, but by the fact that we don’t feel Who inflicts the suffering upon us.

If you could feel that the pain comes from a surgeon rather than a criminal, then you wouldn’t experience it as pain, and you would even be grateful to the one causing it, instead of trying to fight what the criminal is doing to you.

So, what you lack is not a disconnection from the pain or from the act itself, but the revelation of the Creator, who is the one responsible for the act as well as its aim. Only then will you sense pleasure instead of suffering.

It is a psychological problem, really. Even scientific experiments show that the suffering and pleasure felt inside a body stem from the same processes. Pain and pleasure are just surges of sensations in two different directions. For the body, they are the same thing, and it’s only later that our mind discerns them as different. The body, however, feels them as the same thing.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: How To Go Through Life Without The Suffering
Laitman.com Post: Infinite Pleasure Is Right In Front Of You (Advanced)
Baal HaSulam Article: “The Creator’s Concealment and Revelation”
Shamati #50: “Two States”

Filed under: Suffering - 1 Comment →

Suffering is pushing man towards entering a higher dimension and to waking up from this sick, deformed dream where he feels himself as existing in a shattered reality.

He can look back and understand that by causing harm onto others he was only hurting himself. If he only knew then what he knows now!

He looks back and sees that those parts of reality that appeared foreign to him and which he only wanted to exploit, are in actuality, close to him and more importantly, are parts which he considers as himself.

He will see that the part which he sensed as his own “I,” in actuality, isn’t at all important. This is because the force of desire that is revealed in his external parts is many times more potent, and they become most important to him.

He sees that everything was deception and that by hating and exploiting all that surrounded him he was only harming himself. It was all a big mistake.

These revelations help him advance until he reaches full equilibrium with the entire universe being revealed and he begins to identify with it.

In coming to know that he belongs to this vast universe and that the universe belongs to him, he reveals the Upper force which fills everything.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Alienation And Separation Are Nothing But Illusions
Laitman.com Post:By Changing Yourself, You Change The World
Laitman.com Post: Open The Door To The Spiritual World
A Guide to the Hidden Wisdom of Kabbalah: Correction Starts with Me.”A Chain of Souls”
Attitude [03:10] : Play Now|Download

Filed under: Suffering - No Comments →

A question I received: You have said that in our generation, egoism has grown so big that the common soul had to divide into seven billion parts in order to be corrected more easily. Then how is it possible that a war could eliminate a large portion of the population? According to the first point made, one survivor could not handle the egoism of several souls.

My Answer: Because of the suffering they will feel, a small number of souls will be able to make greater efforts. In addition, when people suffer, they are more willing to unite. This is why during periods of suffering, there is no need for a large number of souls, and people die. We, however, confuse the cause with the effect…

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: The Situation Of Ancient Babylon Will Not Repeat
Laitman.com Post: Why Are There So Many People In The World?
Laitman.com Post: Always With Me
Interview with the Future: “A Mature Approach to Pain”

Filed under: Suffering - No Comments →

A question I received from my student: What are you supposed to say to friends who are gathering when one asks “How do you feel?” or “How are you?” while you are feeling half dead with the flu (or any illness)? Is it better to avoid the group when I am feeling weak so as not to bring them down?

Poor health has plagued me for my entire adult life, and there are others like me who really, really need to understand health issues in a little more depth than being told it is a problem caused by “ego,” because most of us have probably been given all sorts of more specific, yet conflicting, advice spiritually, psychologically and medically. I have been with Bnei Baruch for a couple of years now and I think that Bnei Baruch can be marketed to the chronically ill as a target group if we have more articles discussing “remedies” or reasons.

My Answer: There is only one answer – this comes from the difference between us and the Creator. The specific differences become revealed depending on one’s level of correction, because correction includes the sensation of being different from the Creator as well as its subsequent rectification.

You don’t have to parade your differences from the Creator, which manifest as illnesses, in front of the friends. But the friends have to know about them in order to ask the Creator for correction and healing on your behalf.

Why do the differences between a person and the Creator manifest differently in different people? Why does one person experience this externally, in the form of an illness, and another – in the form of personal problems or other manifestations? You will find the answers to all of this as you correct yourself. In short, start working on yourself!

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Can We Eliminate The Illnesses That Afflict Us?
Laitman.com Post: Are We Permitted To Get Angry At The Creator?
Kabbalah Today Article: The All-Purpose Remedy
Rabash Article: Shlavey HaSulam (Steps of the Ladder). “They Helped Every One His Friend”
Shamati #50: “Two Situations” – lesson 6

Filed under: Suffering - 1 Comment →

Nature’s goal is to reach globalization. Along with all humanity, Nature develops toward globalization according to the principle of self-organization, in line with predetermined laws of development. This is also how a fetus develops in a mother’s womb. As the fetus grows and develops, it builds increasingly complex systems, which evolve and reach greater levels of harmony and interconnection with each other.

The law of development necessitates a process where things become increasingly more complex, more integral and more interdependent. Ultimately, the result is that all subsystems are incorporated into one whole. However, these processes are revealed gradually and they become clearer over time.

A person, however, is influenced by his natural egoism, and thus he does not want to take part in this process voluntarily. Yet, under the influence of various factors, such as the global crisis, a person will be forced to participate, until he will reach the realization that instead of being forced, it’s better to do this voluntarily. He will realize this because he will see the inevitability of the law of development.

Thus, the suffering that comes along with the global crisis will cause us to voluntarily realize that our lives are global. At first we will agree to this reluctantly, and later we will understand it and accept that it is the best thing for us.

This is how today, Nature is beginning to show our future state to us. Kabbalah, however, enables us to understand this in advance, and thus to lessen the suffering that’s coming our way. Kabbalah allows us to study and understand the reasons for the blows in a timely manner, before the blows actually reach us.

And that’s all there is to globalization!

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: We Are Hardwired Into The Eternal Circuit Of Nature
Laitman.com Post: When It Comes To The Global Crisis, We Cannot Afford To Procrastinate
Laitman.com Post: Passing Through The Crisis To The Promised Land
Kabbalah Today Article: Globalization 101

Filed under: Suffering - No Comments →

A question I received: I am from Uruguay and I am 17 years old. My question is this: people often talk about the environment as if it is something that exists alongside us. How it is possible to make people understand that the environment isn’t something that exists alongside us, but that we are in it and we need it? Uruguay is a very small country, but even here, we encounter a whole gamut of environmental problems because there are so many factories in the country and even more are being built.

My Answer: There are two things that can cause people to adopt a different attitude to themselves, to others and to nature: 1) suffering or 2) the dissemination of Kabbalah. We’ll keep trying to make it happen through the second path.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: The One Science That Can Change The World
Laitman.com Post: Can Those Who Suffer Save The World?
Laitman.com Post: The Crisis Is A Call For Us To Ascend Above This World
My lecture in Arosa

Filed under: Suffering - No Comments →

A question I received: Let’s say that a blow befell me. I was fired from my job – I feel horrible. Should I still adhere to the Creator?

My Answer: This is precisely what is happening to the world today – the world is receiving blows, and there will be many such blows. All of this is necessary in order for man to reach a state where he will agree to reject his egoism.

By annulling his egoism, a person discovers that he needs to receive only a little bit from the Creator – that which is necessary for life.  This is similar to the cells and other parts of the body which exist for the sake of the whole body and hence feel its general existence. In much the same way, we feel the common eternal and perfect life of the infinite and unbounded Universe.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Let’s Travel Down The Path Of Light Together
Laitman.com Post: Any Excess We Consume Is Harmful
Laitman.com Post: Bruce Lipton, “We Are One Whole”
Shamati #50: “Two States”

Filed under: Suffering - No Comments →

A question I received: One who does not feel emptiness will not be able to reveal anything. The approaching blows will give people this emptiness. Is there another way?

My Answer: Of course, there is. We know that the appetite is stimulated during a meal or by watching others eat.

Why is this? First of all, you are influenced by society’s opinion. Second of all, Kabbalah explains that desire appears from within (from the Reshimot and Aviut from the Kli) or that desire (appetite) is roused in a person from outside (from the environment, the Aviut from the Light).

If we receive the desire from the Light (“the Light that reforms”), we will come to the goal by the most correct path.

Therefore, if we reveal the cause of even the smallest of blows to the world, it is by understanding their cause that we reveal the Light that comes to us from the corrected state. We then see this corrected state and how wonderful and immense it is compared to our current state. This entices us to move ahead toward the goal, and we will no longer need to be pushed ahead through suffering!

There are two paths: the path of Light and the path of suffering. This is why it is necessary to give the world the explanation of the suffering!

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: The Smart Way To Go Through Life
Laitman.com Post: Everything Is Done By The Light
Laitman.com Post: When In Doubt, Just Keep Going! (Advanced)
Attaining the Worlds Beyond: Chapter 34.”Suffering Sent As Absolute Kindness”

Filed under: Suffering - No Comments →

Two questions I received about the purpose of the blows we receive from the Creator:

Question: Why do we need all these blows if it is entirely not obvious that they have to do with the connection between people and love for one’s neighbor?

My Answer: This is not obvious only for those who have not yet discovered the connection between everyone and between all the parts of the world in general. Only 0.1% of the people on the planet are saying that the current economic crisis is meant to reveal the connection between people. Everyone else is still unaware of the fact that people’s relationships in particular influence the economy, the outbreaks of epidemics, and of the  tsunamis, earthquakes, and other calamities of Nature.

However, if the connection between our relationships and our suffering becomes evident, people will have no choice but to reject their egoistic relationships.

Question: So then why doesn’t the Creator deal the finishing blows of suffering on us, so that we could realize His plan?

My Answer: There is no doubt that if the cause of tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes, and the collapse of financial institutions was revealed to us as being clearly dependent on our behavior, we would change out of necessity. Even so, this change would not come willingly, but rather under duress. We would make the necessary changes merely to save ourselves from destruction and not for the purpose of coming to the realization of the greatness of bestowal and love for our neighbor.

It would be an animalistic escape from death, rather than a free choice that is made to rise above one’s nature to become similar to the Creator, even though the Creator could have created us this way right from the start.

In order to fulfill the Creator’s plan for us, we must undergo the gradual development that will bring us to the realization of the greatness of bestowal and love for our neighbor.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Financial Crisis Sets Back Competitiveness Of The US And Other Nations Worldwide
Laitman.com Post: The Crisis Is A Step Toward Eternal Harmony
Baal Hasulam Article: “The Freedom”

Filed under: Suffering - 1 Comment →