In Kabbalah, a person is named according to his or her desire to receive. For instance, if a person wants to attain the Creator, sense Him, bond with Him, he is called “Israel”. This is so even if he just started his path, does not yet see the Creator, and has no idea where he is going to or what he will achieve. However, a person's desire determines everything. Thus, when a person carries out the Creator’s will, he is called a Kabbalist; a Kabbalist who attains a certain spiritual degree is called “He who attains” (Baal Asaga).
Gradually, a person realizes that there is none else beside the Creator. Wife, children, relatives, work, and friends – everything is but the Creator, standing behind all these different forms. The revelation of the Creator to a human being is called 'attainment' (Asaga).
The more a human being comprehends this, the higher his degree of attainment, up to the ultimate revelation that absolutely everything around him is nothing but the Creator. An even more profound revelation is when a human being sees that all of his inner desires, thoughts, sensations, and urges are also the Creator. So where is a human being? When a person comes to the ultimate conclusion that there is none else but the Creator and feels this inside, he is called a human being. This sensation, in particular, is what constitutes a human being. Revelation of this sensation is called 'adhesion with the Creator'.
What is the difference between comprehension and sensation? Man is created as a sentient being: we sense, not think. Our mind develops in a way as to attain and understand what we feel. Take a child, for instance. His desires are small and so is the degree to his mind’s development. The same goes for a person living in the wilderness: he utilizes the mind as much as it is needed in order to obtain the desired.
The more man desires, the smarter he becomes for his mind must resolve how to obtain the desired. Mind is the fruit of our desire's evolvement . To reach the desired, we contrive all sorts of tricks. A strong desire is the key to mind’s development. We shouldn’t concern ourselves with developing mind; rather, we should develop the desires. A Kabbalah student does not have to be clever: it is enough to desire and to sense the desired. One cannot see the spiritual world with his mind; one can only feel it with his soul.
A person has to suffer together with the entire world; he has to be aware of the suffering, get deep into it, so that later he could receive the light that applies to the entire world in his corrected Kelim. When a person finds out about someone else’s suffering, he or she should not worry about this suffering not coming his way, G-d forbid. Rather, he should always regret that these people haven't realized yet that the suffering is the revelation of the Creator, and this is because their Kelim are not corrected yet. People misconceive the Creator’s rule over the creatures.
Do we have to justify the Creator when we feel bad? Kabbalah is called the science of truth. This means that if one studies Kabbalah, his sensation of the truth gradually becomes sharper. He cannot fool himself in front of the Creator. He discovers that the truth is what he feels in his heart.
The very fact that a person feels bad shows that he blames the Creator for this. Feeling good is, in itself, gratitude to the Creator. We communicate with the Creator with our heart; words are useless. That is why, in order to justify the Creator, I have to feel good all the time.
When we hear about the world being inflicted with murder, war, violence, terrorism, we must work on ourselves in order to feel that this is the best possible thing in our world. For these things seem evil only to uncorrected souls. Hence, there is no other choice but to rise spiritually, correct our Kelim so that we perceive all the bad things that we heard about or witnessed as good. We have to concern ourselves with one thing only: correction of our Kelim and ascent to the level that emanates the spiritual pleasure. From there we will see how good this is for us and the entire world in general.
A person who climbs up the ladder of the first spiritual world, the world of Assiya, which, on its own turn, is called ‘complete evil’, still perceives the events as bad. Hence, he is called ‘a transgressor’. Afterwards, entering the world of Yetzira, called ‘half evil and half good’, sometimes he sees the events as good, and sometimes - as evil, as if existing in between them, and not knowing how to evaluate them.
The world of Beria is called ‘almost good’: as a person, correcting his Kelim, rises to the world of Beria, he increasingly feels that the Creator wishes good. He, who exists in the world of Beria, is called ‘not completely righteous’. And when a person rises to the world of Atzilut, which is called ‘completely good’, he sees only good without the slightest hint of evil. That is why a person in the world of Azilut is called ‘righteous’. The system is built in a way so that suffering would compel a person to rise higher and higher.
In any state one’s sensations are one’s attitude toward the Creator. Until a person climbs to the highest degrees, his attitude towards the Creator cannot be completely good; he is incapable of fully justifying the Creator. This happens only in the world of Atzilut.
On the one hand, a person should not remain in a bad state; rather, he should attempt to get out of it. On the other hand, he has to analyze his condition and then try going into a good state. However, the problem is that a person can never evaluate his situation when already in it. Only by going over to the next degree, being certain that he is really in a different state now, can he control and analyze the preceding state.
For example a ten-year old child who got angry at his parents for not buying him a bicycle, cannot evaluate his state correctly. Can he understand anything but his own resentment? But now, being a grown-up, he can evaluate all that happened to him a few years ago correctly. Most important is to try exiting the state in which one blames the Creator and entering into a different, better state.
We already discussed that the Creator created the world in order to delight the creatures. This does not mean that the Creator wants to delight us now because we suffered in the past. The Creator has no calculation and acts this way regardless of the amount of suffering a person endured before. Suffering never draws one closer to good. Only correction of one’s self leads to good. Mankind may suffer for many thousands of years; the amount of suffering only awakens us for correction; suffering itself never leads to correction.
As it is said in the "Preface to the Book of Zohar":
"…And here is where we must place our mind and heart, for it is the ultimate aim of the act of the creation of the world. And we must bear in mind that since the thought of creation is to bestow to His creatures, He had to create in the souls a great amount of desire to receive that which He had thought to give. For the measure of each pleasure and delight, depends on the measure of the will to receive it: the greater the will to receive, the greater the pleasure, and the lesser the will, the lesser the pleasure from reception.
So the thought of creation itself, dictates the creation of an excessive will to receive, to fit the immense pleasure that His Almightiness thought to bestow upon the souls. For the great delight and the great desire must go hand in hand."
If I'm a little hungry, my delight from food will be equally small. But if I'm very hungry, food will bring me an immense pleasure. For this reason, the Creator, longing to give us an ultimate pleasure, created for us in compliance with this delight – an equally strong will to receive it. But on the other hand, we suffer a lot, passionately desiring and having no opportunity to fulfill our needs.
How can we increase our desire for the spiritual? This is a very difficult question. Until we cross the Machsom, we cannot sense the spiritual. Only earthy desires directed to our own delight come to us. This is why when I begin sensing all of this, I realize that this is evil; I feel very bad. What's more, the distance between Him and me grows. I used to think that I'm not that rotten, so does this mean that I was closer to the Creator? And now I feel bad, so is the Creator pushing me away? On the contrary! The Creator is pulling me closer!
Our progress comes from feeling bad. While we are egoists and our Kelim are still uncorrected, seemingly unpleasant things turn us towards the right path faster than something pleasant and good, for such things, as a rule, makes us even more rotten.
To suffer because of egoism means to hate it, realizing that it exists inside of you. Hatred spurns us away from the object of suffering, creating a cheerful mood and aspiration to get closer to the Creator.
A person realizes that he cannot resist the temptation: even knowing about it beforehand, he nevertheless rushes forward to it. Or, seeing that it is coming his way, he does nothing to avoid it, but rather stands still and waits. All of that is ascribed to correction. We are incapable of doing anything by ourselves. We just have to learn from each blunder, each mistake that we make on each phase of our path. Sometimes, it seems to a person that he can cope with some life situation; however, the next instant it becomes clear that he is incapable of lifting even a finger.
Transgression, sin – they do not exist. A person must pass through these states in order to realize his nature set forth by the Creator; in order to feel the need to correct himself. If such is his attitude towards all the events in this way, a person performs an act towards the correction.
Take, for instance, the fall of Adam. The Creator created a soul with an anti-egoistical screen. Later, He filled the soul with pleasure that exceeded the power of the screen. Naturally, the soul was not able to resist the pleasure, took it in, and committed the 'sin', which is the reception for one's own sake.
The soul consists of ten Sefirot, divided into inner and outer ones. The part that is corrected is called 'inner'; the part that is not corrected yet is called 'outer'. The light, filling the inner part of the soul, gives us the sensation of 'self'. The still uncorrected outer part gives us a sensation of the surrounding world: Hence, the illusionary appearance that something exists around us. In reality, whatever is around me is inside of me. The illusionary reality around us is created by our uncorrected Kelim, and a person, who enters the spiritual, starts feeling this instantly.
When do we develop the need for the Creator? We develop the need for the Creator when He Himself sends us all kinds of suffering, showing simultaneously that He is standing behind them all. This is when we turn to the Creator for help. In our state, all the suffering is concentrated in a "point in the heart", where we feel darkness. The contact with the Creator starts precisely at this black point.
Until a person crosses the Machsom, he will always have questions. Of course, although each time the questions will be asked by the same person, he will have new Kelim and new insight. Nothing reverts, everything moves only forward. A person must pass through, experience all these states.