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By making some spiritual progress and beginning to experience more than just this corporeal world. This will bring some more understanding of what is going on in my life and the purpose of life. Ideally I’d correct all my 613 desires in one lifetime and actually get back to equivalence of form with the Creator … then I’d really live this life to the fullest! However, any progress is a step in the right direction and the start of the journey home.
Sure, all the time! My wife and I look at a suitcase and she sees it as blue while I see it as green. Forensic detectives know that if eyewitnesses all tell the same story there has been collusion, that the truth of what happened will lie somewhere in amongst the differences that each party sees/recalls. Even the way I recall something changes over time, as my reason gets involved and modifies what I first recall seeing, making it fit some other more acceptable story of what likely happened. Now add in the spiritual reality that I’m not even feeling and the fact that the tiny parts of all the light-wave spectrum, sound-waves spectrum, taste range, etc that I can actually detect in this world … and it’s a wonder I have any confidence at all in asserting the reality of anything!
My illusion of free will comes from the apparent “hiddenness” of the Creator to my corporeal senses and the incorrect impression I have that I’m a separate, independent entity. This means I think I’m constantly exercising free choice, unaware that the Forces of Nature/Bestowal are causing me to react in pre-programmed ways that are entirely unconscious to me. Thus I can never be sure which of my choices are really mine versus predetermined for me. The only place I get to exercise any true freedom of choice is in the environment I gravitate towards, once I become aware that this can accentuate thoughts, words and actions that will lead me in the right way … to become increasingly like the Creator’s character and intentions. It’s like that old saying my Mum repeatedly told me: Show me your friends and I’ll show you who you really are! That’s why Kabbalists encourage us to carefully choose the right books, teachers and friends.
By yearning for connection with the Creator … to see my situation as He perceives it, to really believe that all He sends me is for my good and that He is only waiting for me to have the desire to change my perception (and not to request He changes His perception or the circumstances I’m in so I can return to normal) and receive what He is sending me willingly and to make Him happy. Then He’ll immediately and delightedly respond to my heartfelt desire!
Prayer is a true need in my heart, not an attempted bribe to get the Creator to change my circumstances so I can feel comfortable. And the prayer will involve seeking the Creator to reveal to me what it is that needs to change in me so I can see the good in the events/circumstances that I initially perceive as bad, inconvenient & a source of suffering.
