What Does Our Future Depend On?
Our future depends on understanding who we are, where we are, where we are headed, and how we can align ourselves with the laws guiding our development. When we do so, we will find ourselves living in a harmonious and peaceful world.
If we realize our free choice, we will rise to a new nature with a new perception and sensation of life that is eternal and perfect.
Until the 21st century, we evolved according to the egoistic drives that grew within us. Today, the human ego has reached it apex, and accordingly we now have an opening to exercise free choice in our further development.
What is our free choice? It is our ability to rise above our egoistic nature.
Rising above our ego is our only free action because everything else we do, which stems from our egoistic drives, functions according to an involuntary program that constantly makes us move toward self-aimed pleasures. Therefore, when we can rise above self-interest, thinking and acting for the benefit of others, we perform an action that is outside our entire egoistic nature. In this free act, we picture no pleasure in a self-aimed direction, wishing instead for all goodness to redirect to others.
If we realize our free choice, we will rise to a new nature with a new perception and sensation of life that is eternal and perfect.
The laws of nature will unfold whether or not we exercise our free choice. However, without our participation in this transition, we will experience life as increasingly bitter and painful. Our egoistic desires can never be fulfilled. The more they fall short of the pleasures they constantly seek, the more we will find ourselves becoming entangled in a growing web of problems.
Our egoistic desires can never be fulfilled. The more they fall short of the pleasures they constantly seek, the more we will find ourselves becoming entangled in a growing web of problems.
Our ability for free choice is what separates us from animals and all other parts of nature. It is for this reason that Kabbalists say that the whole of reality was created for man: We are nature’s sole intelligent creatures that are capable of rising above our inborn egoistic state and aligning ourselves with nature’s laws — laws of love, giving and connection.
We have an immense transition ahead of us, and an even more amazing goal. Our current state requires us to seek answers to new and greater challenges that we encounter as we head into the future. It is indeed a positive situation that I relate to with much hope, not with anxiety.