Chapter 6: The (Narrow) Road to Freedom

It might come as a surprise to you, but you already know quite a bit about Kabbalah. Flip back and let’s review. You know that Kabbalah started about 5,000 years ago in Mesopotamia (today’s Iraq). It was discovered when people were searching for the purpose of their lives. Those people discovered that the reason we are all born is to receive the ultimate pleasure of becoming like the Creator. When they discovered it, they built study groups and began to spread the word...

The darkest time of night is right before the dawn. Similarly, the writers of The Book of Zohar said, almost 2,000 years ago, that humanity’s darkest time will come right before its spiritual awakening. For centuries, beginning with the Ari, author of the Tree of Life, who lived in the 16th century, Kabbalists have been writing that the time The Zohar was referring to was the end of the 20th century. They called it “the last generation”...

In our own eyes, we are unique and independently acting individuals. This is a common trait for all people. Just think of the centuries of battles humanity has been through, only to finally obtain the limited personal freedom we have today. But we are not the only ones who suffer when our freedom is taken. There isn’t a single creature that can be captured without a struggle. It is an inherent, natural trait to object to any form of subjugation. Nevertheless, even if we understand that all creatures deserve to be free, it doesn’t guarantee that we understand what being free really means or if, and how, it is connected to the process of correcting humanity’s egoism...

But if we are nothing more than products of our environment, and if there is no real freedom in what we do, in what we think, and in what we want, can we be held responsible for our actions? And if we are not responsible for them, who is? To answer these questions we must first understand the four factors that comprise us, and how we can work with them to acquire freedom of choice...

Even though we cannot determine the attributes of our bed, we can still affect our lives and our destiny by choosing our social environments. In other words, because the environment affects the attributes of the bed, we can determine our own futures by building our environments in a way that promotes the goals we want to achieve...

Let’s take a moment for another look at the basics of Creation. The only thing that the Creator created is our will to receive, our egoism. This is our essence. If we learn how to “deactivate” our egoism, we will restore our connection with the Creator, because without selfishness, we will regain equivalence of form with Him, as it exists in the spiritual worlds. Deactivating our egoism is the beginning of our climb up the spiritual ladder, the beginning of the correction process...

The first principle in spiritual work is “faith above reason.” So before we talk about implementing free choice, we must explain the Kabbalistic meanings of “faith” and “reason”...

Everything we do in life is determined by the pleasure and pain principle: we run from pain and chase pleasure. And the less we have to work for the pleasure, the better...