Q: What if a person is jealous of someone else because they are regarded as being at a higher spiritual level?
A: There is a good reason for the verse, “When writers vie, wisdom mounts.”
Jealousy is one of the most important means of spiritual development. Baal HaSulam speaks of it in a preface to the book “Panim Meirot UMasbirot.” It is most important to use it correctly, meaning not to desire that others have nothing, but to desire that you will have what others have.
The pleasure is in the self-recognition, in the attainment of the entire universe within you. Even today, the things you discover about your external surroundings are perceived in your current vessels. However, you are, as yet, incapable of feeling the full power and magnitude of our world, and still cannot discover the huge world that is concealed from us: the feelings, the communication between people on a spiritual level, the laws of nature, and the collective force, which we call “Creator.”
If we could feel these things, it would mean that we are at the state of the end of correction (Gmar Tikun). That would mean that we are all prepared spiritually, have corrected our aims for the current situation, and are now ready and willing to discover and comprehend the Light of the Creator. The end of correction means that each and every person has corrected his tools, his sensations; that each has a screen, and that now each person is ready to start living.
As we understand it, this means the end of correction, because there is nothing more to aspire to or to live for. Can we refer to our present situation as life? No. This isn’t life in the true sense of the word. It is only a process of correction, a preparation for the work ahead. The wisdom of Kabbalah unveils true life before our very eyes.