[Albert – KabU Instructor]

Hi Al,

You’re right that our initial choice of the spiritual environment is not up to us. This follows the saying that: the Creator puts man’s hand on the good fate and says “choose this for yourself”. Meaning He awakened your point in the heart and brought it to a good spiritual environment in which you can nourish it. After that the rest is up to you.

So what needs to happen for me to start actualizing my free will here? After all, the point in the heart is seemingly forcing me to be here. If so, then this desire needs to be taken away from me little by little, and there I begin to reveal more and more the place of my freedom.

This is similar to how we teach a child to ride a bike. First the parent holds the child completely. Then as the child learns to pedal and balance himself, the parent lets go a little, then a little more and a little more, until the child continue to pedal without the parent holding him at all.

So we too need to learn to continue to do this work even when that initial desire for spirituality begins to disappear or when the ego grows and begins to pull us into many different directions. When that happens, we’ll feel a need for mutual work in the group, the spiritual environment. On one hand when I fall into my ego, they need to pull me out, and on the other hand I need to help pull others out when they fall. This is why Kabbalists have always studied in groups (physical or virtual).

We will learn more about this in the more advanced semesters on KabU, where you’ll receive your own Kabbalah group with whom you can practice these things.

Albert @ KabU

[Albert – KabU Instructor]

Hi Debra,

Rav Laitman wrote about it in one of his blog posts:

Question: You said that 1995 was the starting point of the current events. What happened in 1995 that you are referring to?

My Answer: I felt this because suddenly, the students that started coming to study with me were different: They were serious, diligent, and persistent in their pursuit of the goal. Today they still make up the core of the worldwide Bnei Baruch group. Of course, there were also inner changes that are concealed from the average onlooker – a clearer revelation of new spiritual forces in the world.

Albert @ KabU

[Albert – KabU Instructor]

Hi Al,

There is none else besides Him does not mean that we have no free choice. It means that we are in a closed system with absolute forces and laws. We cannot change these laws, but we can consciously work on putting ourselves under their influence in order to speed up our development.

That is our place of freedom. How do we do this? How do we put ourselves under the influence of these forces and laws even stronger? By choosing/building for ourselves a strong spiritual environment.

See my reply 357064 to Leyah below for more details.

Albert @ KabU

[Albert – KabU Instructor]

Hi Sue,

I’m not sure in which context you heard it, but in general, Kabbalah talks about how our desires evolve. First come our basic desires for food, sex, family, etc. After that level develop the desires for money, honor, and knowledge. And at the peak of this pyramid is the desire for spirituality, which we call the point in the heart.

Kabbalah only deals with our desire for spirituality. Regarding the rest of our desires, Kabbalah does not deal with these things. Our corporeal desires don’t have any relation to spirituality, so each person can arrange these desires however is most comfortable for them (of course within the context of the law and without harming others).

In practice, we don’t need to suppress our corporeal desires or live a life of poverty. We only need to work on making the desire for spirituality the most important thing. Then naturally the rest of our desires will fall into place. For example, it’s like with an artist that is so involved in his art, that he fulfills all the rest of his desires out of necessity so he can quickly return to his passion. Same with us, when spirituality is the most important desire, then we will be able to properly relate to all the rest of our corporeal desires in a balanced way.

Albert @ KabU

[Albert – KabU Instructor]

Hi Sheila,

Our spiritual correction is first of all in the mutual work we do with other points in the heart. Meaning that it’s primarily within the Kabbalistic group. With the rest of the world, we should follow the rule that “there is no coercion in spirituality” and not force any spiritual work on others. There we should behave normally, just like everyone else.

Normal meaning that we don’t turn into monks and run away from the world. And we also don’t turn into saints and start sacrificing ourselves for the world. But just be normal: work in the normal way, raise our families and take care of our health, etc, all in the normal way that is customary in this world.

And in the more advanced stages of our development, we will start to see how the problems and situations we undergo in our day to day life are also a part of our spiritual correction. Our day to day life makes it more challenging to stay connected to the Kabbalistic group. And it’s thanks to these challenges that we can develop to higher spiritual levels. Similar to how a bodybuilder needs to keep adding resistance for his muscles to grow bigger.

We’ll learn how to work with all these things more practically in the advanced semesters.

Albert @ KabU

[Albert – KabU Instructor]

Hi George,

1. We learn from the Kabbalists that every single moment comes to us directly from the Creator, this is called “there is none else besides Him”. Furthermore, they also say that He is the “good that does good”. Meaning that every moment He is sending us nothing but goodness. But why then don’t we see this in our world? Why do we see so much suffering and wars in the world?

This is because our world is governed by our egoistic nature. This egoistic nature is opposite to the Creator’s nature. Because of that, it inverts the Creator’s goodness into something bad. It’s just like multiplying numbers: a positive times a negative equals negative.

So as long as we remain within this egoistic nature, we will continue to see and feel more suffering and horrors in the world. But if we correct our nature to be similar to the Creator’s nature, then we will reveal the true reality in which only goodness exists, and our previous egoistic state would appear as nothing more than a dream.

Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2011/06/how-can-we-justify-the-creator/

2. I’m not sure I fully understand the question, but we do have a certain measure of freedom, which is in choosing the environment that will influence us. See my reply 357064 to Leyah below for more details.

Albert @ KabU

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