What Era Are We In?
We are in a transitional era marked by a shift from a hibernating state to an aspiration for harmony, balance, and peace with the laws of nature, i.e., to the discovery of life’s meaning. The discovery of life’s meaning is also a transitional process that is expressed by our need to rise to our next new state.
That shift begins when we become increasingly bothered by existential questions. We start feeling that no matter how hard we try in life, and we indeed try very hard, we end up seeing no light at the end of the tunnel, that our lives are meaningless and useless. Accordingly, we live in an era where more and more people opt for drug use as a means of experiencing a more direct form of pleasure, the most universal means of calming ourselves down and turning ourselves into plants of sorts. In other words, more and more people feel the need to simply switch off from the increasing suffering they find themselves in.
However, since we exist within nature’s plan, then we will find how escaping from life with the aid of drugs will ultimately be unhelpful. Nevertheless, humanity is still in a process of trying to somehow calm itself with the means at its disposal.
At the same time, we see major transformations in nations relocating, the most prominent example being Europe, which has become filled with refugees. It is not the same migration that happened a thousand years ago when the peoples of Asia starting moving to Europe. Today’s migratory process is a very serious one of intermixing, and it presses us to face the question about the meaning and purpose of life. Moreover, at the level of our current intellect and emotions, we cannot answer that question in a widespread, provable, and definitive manner.
It is precisely for this reason that the most renowned Kabbalist of the 20th century, Yehuda Ashlag (Baal HaSulam), as well as The Book of Zohar, pointed to our present era as the one where Kabbalah would emerge as a much-needed teaching: to explain that the meaning of life is in the transition to attaining the level of a human being. The wisdom of Kabbalah provides a method for such attainment. “Human” in Hebrew, “Adam,” comes from the word for “similar” (“Domeh”), which is from the saying “Domeh le Elyon” (“similar to the most high”). In other words, Kabbalists explain how life’s purpose is in rising from our current degree to the degree in which we attain similarity to the laws of nature — laws of love, bestowal, and connection.
Today, we are on the brink of our next level of evolution, to attain what it truly means to be human. That level must manifest in us, if not in this lifetime, then in the next. We are now in a process of feeling increasing pressure to point our way to this attainment, and the wisdom of Kabbalah lets us do so with more awareness, understanding, and pleasure if we were not to use its methodology.