• Struggle
• Reconciliation and Peace
• Israel
• Circumcision

Struggle

The struggle is an internal one between the ego, which pulls us toward worldly pleasures such as food, sex, family, money, respect, knowledge, and power, and the purpose of life, which is to discover the upper realm, to which we need to rise, to a complete, eternal life.

Also, we need to do it now, as it is written, “You will see your world in your life” (Masechet Berachot, 17a). Here in our lives is where we discover the eternal life of the soul, which is why we live in two worlds. We need to come to a state where the death of the body does not feel to us as death at all, as if we have lost anything of ourselves. Rather, we remain because we discover that the upper degree of life is several times greater than the sensation of the physical life.

This is the goal we should achieve, and we can only achieve it through a struggle by a group, a society, by studying the right sources. To rise above the physical, corporeal life, we must not slight them, but use them in order to rise.

Reconciliation and Peace

Reconciliation and peace mean that for now, we cannot cope with our evil inclination and turn it into a good inclination, using it in order to bestow, since we have to turn the qualities that existed in us as negative—which we were using only for our own pleasure and against others—into qualities of bestowal upon others.

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1. A Teacher

The study of Kabbalah does not just include work in the books. Physical actions for the benefit of the group, organizing lectures and Kabbalah study groups are more beneficial than the study itself. Serving the teacher is also more beneficial than studying with him. In his “Speech for the Completion of The Zohar,” Rav Yehuda Ashlag quotes the following saying of ancient Kabbalist sages: “Make for yourself a rav and buy yourself a friend.”

In other words, choose a person whom you think is important and make that person your teacher. Then, try to please him or her. Your teacher is very important to you. By pleasing your teacher, you’ll get used to doing for others, and by the force of habit you’ll be able to do the same for the Creator. By being spiritually close to your teacher, you’ll receive the degree by which the teacher appreciates the Creator. That will give you a chance to do at least something for the Creator, and enter the spiritual world this way. At the same time, you will acquire the sensation of the greatness of the Creator and you’ll be able to advance to complete adhesion with Him.

Observing your teacher’s requests with the aim to fulfill them allows you to attain spiritual resemblance with them. You’ll be able to receive their thoughts and knowledge, and above all, attain their love and attraction for the Creator, which would give you the ability to develop and progress spiritually. However, studying with your teacher is always motivated by the desire to attain personal knowledge for yourself. As a result, the study does not bring with it spiritual nearness to the Creator. In other words, by doing things for the teacher, you attain their thoughts and by studying you will attain only their words.

You can only attain their thoughts if the motivation to serve the teacher stems from the desire to please the teacher, and not yourself. In the opposite situation, when our motivation is our desire to serve for self-gratification, studying is the goal and becomes more important than serving the teacher.

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We cannot live without pleasure. After all, our very essence is the will to receive delight and pleasure, and the purpose of creation is the attainment of perfect pleasure.

There’s nothing wrong with the pleasure itself; we must correct its objective, not the desire itself.

So what do I do with my desires? I want a big, beautiful house; though a small one will do just fine. I want a new car, though the old one still runs. As for my job, I’m still interested in one that bears more responsibility. Do I have to clear out these desires in order to make room for more study?

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When we study Kabbalah correctly, the surrounding Light that is awakened works our souls and initiates the next spiritual state. That state will arrive by itself and replace the present state. By making considerable efforts in the study of Kabbalah, a person can accelerate personal changes. That, in fact, is the only freedom of choice we have in this world.

Baal HaSulam writes in the “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot” that the Creator rests one’s hand on good fortune and tells him: “Choose this for yourself.” So where, then, is the choice? The choice is, in fact, that either we are pushed from behind, which we will feel as pain, or we run forward by ourselves, ahead of the pain.

This is our only freedom of choice.

Anything that happens in our world, anything that people do, is all predetermined, because all our characteristics and our environment, both internal and external, are predefined by the Creator. Freedom of choice exists only for those who crave spirituality and only by their personal efforts.

Every student wants to know how to accelerate his or her spiritual progress and in so doing, avoid the agony. You can do this in the following ways:

• Read the books of Baal HaSulam, Rabash, and Dr. Laitman. (Ed. These are all available for free to read in the Kabbalah Library).
• Join a group that aims to discover the objective of creation. Be active and do things for the members of the group and the spiritual leader. (Ed. The most recommended way to find a group is to join the Bnei Baruch Kabbalah Education Center, and go through the courses that take students step-by-step through Kabbalah’s fundamental principles, basic concepts and lead into how to work in a group.)
• Begin to write everything you know about spirituality. That way, you can correct your current spiritual degree more quickly and create a need to attain the next degree.
• Take an active part in sharing the wisdom of the Kabbalah. This is the most effective means of all.

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Once you have recognized that burning question within you that demands you seek answers, you must also have an initial desire for the Creator. If it’s there, you need nothing more!

If you have been endowed with such a desire, the whole process is in your hands from that moment on, because all the forces you need are already in your soul.

All it takes is to develop them, and that’s your work. It is in your power to do so because your unique body was created specifically to allow you to attain the purpose of creation.

Therefore, no one can say that they were incapable, that circumstances prevented them from attaining the goal for which they were born in this world.

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