Love, hate, and everything in between. That is how our world is divided. When we hate or love, similar physiological processes take place in our body—changes in heart rate, blood pressure, muscle tension, acid, and hormone secretion—and only a small point in the brain distinguishes whether what we feel is an attitude of hatred, or an attitude of love. What exactly needs to change within us so that the world will be less terrible and more friendly and loving towards us?
Healing begins with a diagnosis. Our inner manager is a desire to receive pleasure and satisfaction, a desire to enjoy. When I look at someone with enjoyment, it is because I feel love toward that person, and I also rejoice in that person’s joy. If I hate him or her, I feel upset. This is the truth no matter how unpleasant it may sound, and whether or not we are conscious of our attitude. On the other hand, when I see a loved one suffering, I share that grief, while if I hate the one suffering, I’m happy and consider that suffering well deserved for that person.
From this, we can conclude that it is not the situation that takes place in front of us that determines whether we enjoy or suffer, but our attitude to those around us.
If I could penetrate into myself and change the innermost definitions within me so that my attitude toward everyone around me would become a loving attitude, then my entire worldview and experience of reality would change. The people, the world, and everything would seem to be a real paradise to me.
“One judges others according to his own flaws,” the sages say. What I see at any given moment in the world around me is a copy of my inner state, a projection just like in a 3D cinema of what is hidden within me. There is no such thing as a so-called “objectively defined” form of ourselves. The shape of the world is portrayed in front of me according to my inner structure, according to my desires, interests, and intentions. Accordingly, if I could somehow correct the flaws within me—that is, my attitude towards everyone and everything around me—the world would also seem more corrected to me.
There is a quality of bestowal and love in nature that fills everything, but we currently have absolutely no perception of it because we are opposite to it, as we exist in an egoistic state constantly pursuing self-benefit. As soon as we resemble nature by developing its attributes of care and reciprocity, we will begin to perceive its true form and reveal the goodness behind every aspect of life.
The egoistic, natural desire to receive pleasure and enjoyment from the environment, must be replaced with an altruistic, supernatural desire to positively influence everything around me.
Changing my experience of reality is not a matter of convincing myself on a psychological level, a sort of telling myself that there is nothing wrong with the world at all, but of changing the perspective from which my experience of reality is built. The essence of the correction entails an upgrade of that inner manager that activates me from birth called the desire to receive. The egoistic, natural desire to receive pleasure and enjoyment from the environment, must be replaced with an altruistic, supernatural desire to positively influence everything around me. The wisdom of Kabbalah is the method that makes this essential transition possible through group study and practice. Gradually, step by step, with experimentation and control, this transformative correction of my attitude from hatred to love paints in my view a world without evil, a world full of loved ones. And when we realize that everything is in our hands, it turns out that it is an unnecessary shame to wait for others to change for the better.
For the sake of illustration: When I have hatred toward someone, I have to tell myself that it’s not the person in front of me that is the problem, but the supreme power of nature sending me an invitation to connect with it, and through that connection, to resemble its qualities by increasing love above all hatred. When I manage to work on myself and correct my attitude toward every picture of reality that is revealed, I will see that those bad characters who caused so much grief suddenly disappear, and only love and wholeness remain.
