The Shift from Suffering to Spirituality
Kabbalah teaches us that at the beginning the Creator uses pain, and unfulfilled desires in order to turn the person’s attention towards spirituality. Thus one’s reality is full of pain and suffering until one starts to locate the source, and the meaning of it all.
Reality changes because if we strengthen our contact with the Creator, there will no longer be a need for pain, the very same pains that are initiated from above to bring about that contact.
Thus, the external circumstances will change, since we will no longer require the same pains.
How Life’s Torments Build in You a Desire for Spirituality
People do not understand how changes in the world occur or how. But the torments they suffer make them search subconsciously for an upper power and pray to it because there is no one else on whom to rely. That prayer, that earthy still prayer, works. Using the torments, the Creator puts us in a no-win situation and corners us until we actually start looking for an alternative planet to live on. But that planet cannot be found, except in the Creator.
For example, it is interesting to consider why the Creator brought the Jewish people to the corporeal land of Israel, rather then to the spiritual one. The return to Israel was the result of a prayer that was lying in our subconscious and of the pain and suffering we Jews had endured over many years. We prayed for our own place, and we received that place. But if we had truly understood that our sufferings had happened for a certain purpose, then our prayer, the prayer of the unsatisfied mass, would have been aimed differently, and a new solution would have arisen on a different level, a spiritual one.
How the Law of Equivalence of Form Leads You Toward Spirituality
Killing, disease, and torment are such a substantial part of our lives because of the law that says that everything must return to its root. These obstructions were formed during the detachment of the soul from its root. They are rungs it climbed down on, making it more and more coarse and egoistic. Hence, neutralizing these obstructions, these attributes, can be done by bringing the soul back to its root. And there is only one way to neutralize this egoism: by recognizing death, sickness, and unhappiness as obstructions. Once we achieve this realization, we can begin to draw ourselves toward the center of the world and reconnect with our root.
This is the law of equivalence of form, which we have discussed earlier. Like a piece of metal in a magnetic field, the soul is naturally drawn to its ultimate degree of adhesion with the Creator. Every state of being other than complete cohesion is transitory, leading us in the same direction. Whether we are conscious of it or not, we are being led back to that original state. But when we are aware of the process, and we see things as they really are, the process is sped up.
To Adapt to the Qualities of Spirituality It Is Necessary to Go Above Reason
The way to adopt higher qualities, ones that we still do not possess, is always according to the principle of “above reason,” meaning above the mind. There is no example of this in our world, because we cannot attain the mind of the Creator, the upper mind. All we can do is develop the mind we already have. But in the spiritual world there is a switch: the human mind is replaced with that of the Creator. It is a slow and gradual process. In each degree, a person gets an additional portion of the mind of the Creator to use instead of his or her own. That is why in every stage, a person should work toward erasing his or her own mind and replacing it with the mind of the Creator. To help us, the Creator sends us an image of the world that we cannot understand with our mind; we cannot accept or justify it and see it as a picture that comes from the Creator to benefit us.
In other words, the discrepancy between that image and the current image of the world we see in our minds lets us understand that events unfold according to the mind of the Creator and not our own. Thus, people realize that they have no choice but to change their minds, so that they can agree with the picture of the world that spreads before them.
A person who progresses this way is called “righteous” because his or her means of advancement is to self-correct in such a way that he or she can justify every situation in favor of the Creator. A righteous person is one who thinks that the Creator is right. If an individual is aware of the fact that when feeling dissatisfaction with life, he or she is in fact cursing the Creator, then that dissatisfaction with life is tantamount to dissatisfaction with the origin of life. It hurts this person to curse the Creator, and so he or she asks for one thing only: the power to justify the Creator in every situation.
“How to Shift from a Life of Suffering to a Life of Spiritual Fulfillment” is based on the book, Awakening to Kabbalah: The Guiding Light of Spiritual Fulfillment by Dr. Michael Laitman.
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