How Can We Change Our Thoughts to Create Different Results in Life?

First, we need to understand that our thoughts shape our life and what this means. Our attitude toward who and what we are, to what surrounds us, and to our purpose, are all considered “our thoughts.” We would thus be wise to actively seek answers to existential questions that dwell in us, such as why we are here, what is this process we are evolving through in our lives, how will our lives end, and what will we be left with.

Such questions might surface in a purely egoistic manner, i.e., in ways where we are solely concerned with what we envision as our own individual bubble of life that includes mostly us and a few people around us, but in any case, we should seek their answers. Eventually, we need to reach a realization that if we focus solely on satisfying our egoistic desires for self-benefit alone, we will end up eventually finishing the same way.

If I wish to rise to a higher level of existence, above our inborn egoistic modus operandi and into a spiritual form, then we need to start living according to entirely different values: not to merely envision the purpose of life in filling our physical bodies as much as possible, but to fill ourselves with the supreme qualities that exist in nature, those of love, bestowal, and positive connection. The latter is a completely different value system that leads us to a completely different life, one that is eternal and perfect, with a whole inner connection among all of us, as opposed to our transient and incomplete lives here in our current world, where we are internally detached from each other.

At such a juncture, we face a significant challenge. We then start seeing ourselves on a seemingly vast plane that has the egoistic-materialistic values of wealth, respect, and power on one side, i.e., values that the society we were born and raised into sees as worth living for, and a vague and unknown “something” on the other side, where questions regarding our greater meaning and purpose in life prod at us. Accordingly, we start repositioning ourselves in a completely different way in terms of what we value in life, and look into how we can discover a purpose much greater than the egoistic-materialistic goals that we then view as lesser and lesser in value.

This plane is an inner plane of our desires and thoughts. More and more people are encountering this existential questioning today. It is the form of scrutiny that can bring about a true change in our lives. By seeking an optimal environment, i.e., texts, teachers, and friends that do not simply fall into the egoistic-materialistic flows of life that lead to a dead end, but those who regularly direct themselves at much higher values, meaning, and purpose, then we can optimally influence our thoughts to develop ourselves toward life’s greater meaning and purpose. Kabbalist Yehuda Ashlag (Baal HaSulam) describes this principle at length in his article, “The Freedom,” and in my organization, the Bnei Baruch Kabbalah Education & Research Institute, we work on growing this environment for the optimal spiritual development for whoever so desires.