How Do We Attain Happiness?!

Why is everything so bad?

The study of nature shows us that every part in nature is managed in a purposeful deterministic manner, just like fruit growing on a tree is managed to reach the ultimate sublime goal, to ripen. But the earlier maturation states are opposite from the mature form. What is more, the sweeter the fruit when it is ripe, the more bitter and ugly it is in the intermediate phases.

A beast develops quickly while a baby is born weak and dependent and takes many years to develop. A person who doesn’t know the final outcome of their development may say that the beast is better than man in every way.

Thus, we learn that nature manages the development in a purposeful and deterministic way disregarding the intermediate forms and taking into account only the ultimate outcome. Nature’s positive attitude toward the created being is not felt until the final phase of its development.

Conclusion: The management of every part of nature is purposeful and good, but this fact is revealed only at the end of the development process and only to those who attain the final phase of their development, the Kabbalists, can see the world in its final good form.

There are two ways to develop: by suffering or by efforts.

Nature’s plan is to make us resemble the attribute of the absolute goodness and two ways have been prepared for us to develop in order to attain it.

1. The way of suffering: it is a slow and unconscious process of development under the influence of sufferings until recognizing that the goodness is necessary.
2. The good way: it is a quick, conscious, and pleasant development until resembling nature.

The ultimate goal is essential and predetermined. There is no way we can avoid it. Nature manages us rigidly along the way of suffering or along the good way. Nature reveals the egoism in us, the evil force, which we have to discover. We have to discover the good force and learn how to generate with our desires and actions from nature.

The purpose of the wisdom of Kabbalah is to develop us by the positive force.

By studying the wisdom of Kabbalah a person discovers that it is actually his natural egoism that stands in his way of developing peacefully to the happy state he was meant to reach by nature. The root of all evil is self-love called egoism. This attribute is opposite from the general force of nature, from goodness. Thus the reason for all the sufferings is the gap between all the negative attributes of egoism and the positive attributes of nature.

When a Kabbalist corrects the evil in him, the egoism, so that it will resemble the goodness in nature, in the transition from self love to love of others, he discovers the highest pleasure and a feeling of eternity. Our correction is fulfilled in unity, and so uniting until we reach the love of others is actually a commandment that we have to fulfill as the general law of nature. In the unity we discover the positive force of nature, the Creator.

The difference between the wisdom of Kabbalah and other methods is the goal. Our whole nature is evil and we have to correct it to goodness. Otherwise evil will destroy us. The wisdom of Kabbalah ensures success and happiness to those who use it because a person who attains the love of others is close to the upper force of nature, to the force of goodness, and thus becomes free of the feeling of our world of suffering and feels the wide eternal world of bestowal and the upper force. Thus we see that the wisdom of Kabbalah serves the person who uses it in the best possible way, but doesn’t affect those who don’t use it at all.
[191920]
Writings of Baal HaSulam, “The Essence of the Wisdom of Kabbalah and Its Purpose.”