Q: How do I maintain that awakening and strengthen it?
A: By being aware that the Creator is the one who gives you all the torments, that by putting you in such a state, the Creator asks for your attention. People still can’t see the actual reasons for those painful events; they cannot see that it is the Creator who is behind them. They don’t understand that the Creator desires to bring us back to Him, to make us advance in the right direction toward the goal.
To avoid pain and suffering, we must ask the Creator to direct our thoughts not toward the pain, but toward its source – Him. We have to ask Him never to detach us from that thought, and to maintain continuous spiritual connection with us through that thought. This prayer is the single most important thing we can do. Here lies the beginning of everyone’s way to salvation.
Q: Is there no need for torment in such a case?
A: Pain and suffering are sent to us to awaken our plea for contact with the Creator. We cannot ask for this before we feel our dependency on Him — which emphasizes the significance of that contact. That is precisely why He sends us the pain and suffering.
But it all depends on the amount of pain, its nature, and how we can take that pain and transfer it from the “animate” level to that of human suffering, and use those torments for spiritual progress. Any pain we feel, from the smallest to the greatest, reflects a sensation of the absence of Light, the sensation of the absence of the Creator in the point in the heart, in our souls.
The sensation of the absence of the Creator is torment itself, though we are unaware of it. There is, in fact, nothing but a Light and a vessel, which is the desire for Light.
If I were to turn to Him and beg, “Don’t leave me. Stay close to me, stay in my soul,” in the simplest of words, it is the most effective means to success.
I am now referring to the beginning of the way. After that, we arrive at the degree of Lo Lishma (not for Her name) and Lishma (for Her name), meaning “for me and for Him.” At that point, I become grateful for the pain! But that will happen later on.
I don’t want people to wake up only under the impact of pain and disaster. I want people to awaken through studying and reading books. But they do not bother opening a book until they receive a warning. A person who experiences pain, even the smallest possible pain, can already increase it through the imagination and thus avoid greater pain and suffering in the future.
After finding ourselves in even the smallest of troubles, we should start asking, “What is the meaning of my life, why do I suffer? After all, I was born for pleasure!”
We should help each other advance from that basic question about the meaning of individual pain to a general question about life that would inspire a search to find the answer (the Source of suffering: the Creator).
Everything depends on our efforts, which can help us speed up the process. Our purpose is to speed up the pace, and hasten time.
What, in fact, is pain? If you could see into the spiritual world, you would see that in that place, in those aims (in which you suffer), you lack the desire for the Creator, which is why you feel pain.
Pain is the sensation of the absence of the Upper Light, the Creator. If we fill up that place with the Light of the Creator, we will begin to feel pleasure instead of pain, in those precise places of pain and suffering that degrade us. After the revelation of the Creator, we will feel the greatest pleasure precisely in those situations.
In the meantime, our goal is to regard even the smallest painful event as a major one, intensify its meaning in our eyes and immediately start searching for the actual reason for that suffering. We will begin to search for the reason despite ourselves.
The solution for our problems is in, “Taste and see that the Lord is good.” There is no other solution. The pain itself is not the Creator; it is an expression of His absence from our lives. Pleasure means, “Taste and see that the Lord is good.” That is the eternal, complete and total pleasure that awaits us.
Q: Some people suffer their entire lives, but still can’t feel the point in the heart; it’s just not there… why do they suffer?
A: Everyone suffers all the time. Humanity in general has been suffering throughout its history. People lived, died and never understood the actual reasons for their pain. The pain should accumulate and reach a certain level before we can discover the reasons for it, and Who is responsible for it.
Mankind as a whole has already accumulated that critical mass of pain, and we are here to show people the reason for their suffering.