The door is always open for anyone to change, to improve themselves, and to become a beneficial part of society. Even people who have committed the worst crimes toward human society, and I am not just talking about murder or theft toward one or a few people, which we hear about on a daily basis, but even those who are considered the wicked of the world will have an awakening moment where they will understand what they have done, and will also desire to change.
Take, for example, the example of Adolf Hitler, who implemented mass murder and genocide within his own country, as well as devastation throughout Europe. Such people have no free choice. The upper providence guides them to perform such atrocities, and they themselves have no idea what they are doing.
In later incarnations, they will have to acknowledge the harm that they brought to humanity. It is said about such people that “the hearts of ministers and kings are in the hands of the Creator.” That is, there is an upper providence guiding human development, and certain times come along whereby humanity needs to experience certain blows, and then the upper providence—which can be called “the Creator,” “nature,” or several other names—acts through a certain person such as Hitler in order to implement a certain amount of suffering that humanity needs to experience in its development.
There are also other people through which good comes to the world, but unfortunately, barely any good comes to our world, so these examples are much rarer.
However, if we discuss ordinary people committing felonies here and there toward society, such people always have the ability to rise above their divisive inclinations and become beneficial contributors to society.
If we take serial killers as an extreme example, these are still very complicated matters to understand because in order to understand them completely, we need to understand how incarnations work. For instance, a person that someone harms in this incarnation could become their child in a future incarnation whom they will need to take care of.
We simply lack the tools of perception in order to understand the complete system we are parts of. In our world, we have no choice but to judge people according to specific actions that they perform at specific times, because we have no other ways of evaluating them. Moreover, we have to sustain a certain amount of balance in human society, and to not let all kinds of forms of evil break out into the open too much.
Yet, in order to perceive the truth in nature, we have to see nature’s beginning and end. And in such matters, there is none as wise as the experienced. There are people who have attained access to such perception of the order of reality and how our future states need to unfold until their very final state. Such people can also see what took place throughout every nook and cranny of human development, understanding the reason and purpose behind every form of suffering that took place, and accordingly, they can justify every event that has taken place throughout history.
Without such perception, then we operate in our narrow perceptions here in this world. It is very difficult to understand and agree with what I am saying here, but to put it as simply as possible, if we gain the full perception and sensation of reality, seeing nature from its beginning until its end, then we will be able to justify literally everything that has taken place.
This is why I teach and spread the wisdom of Kabbalah. It is a wisdom that guides us on how to achieve the complete perception of reality. By doing so, we will know how to operate our lives mistake-free, and free from all kinds of terrible outbursts. We will gain the tools to build a harmonious and peaceful society, where a heightened sense of unification and love will dwell among all people. Also, we will see exactly why certain people are born with certain inclinations.
Nobody is to blame for having certain inclinations. Just as some people aspire to become scientists, and other people aspire to become musicians, and so on and so forth, likewise some people have inclinations that society considers evil, like killing and stealing. If we developed a sensitivity to the precise inclinations different people have, then we would be able to guide them to channel their energy in ways that benefit society. For instance, we could channel such people to catch fish instead of catching people, to work as butchers, to cut people open as surgeons in order to heal them, instead of stabbing people to death, or to steal from our own egos in order to give to others, instead of stealing from others in order to gain selfishly for ourselves. All in all, we are made of desires to enjoy, and the type of enjoyment depends on the values and examples in society that we are raised with.
We have to understand that nature implants our inclinations into us, and we should not be punished or blamed for having certain inclinations. Instead, society has to discern each of us according to our inclinations, and to the extent by which we direct them at society’s benefit, we then undergo certain corrections. We would then gradually come to see how each and every inclination exists in order for us to decipher how to direct it for a positive purpose.
Directing our inclinations for positive purposes depends on the enveloping values and examples that society instills in us. For instance, if a person has an inclination to kill, and that person grows up with examples in society, such as the media and entertainment he consumes, coupled together with cutthroat competitive “every man for himself” values and divisive drives that promote hatred to blossom among people, then such a person is more likely to use his inclination in a negative and destructive way.
If, however, the enveloping social values and examples were enriched with positive examples of people aiming to benefit others and nature over their own benefit, with media and entertainment striving to promote such values, and also if our education systems shifted from raising us to compete with each other materialistically to instead cooperate with each other in order to positively connect above our divisive drives, then the person with an inclination to kill would also seek how to use that inclination in order to best serve the positive social environment that embraces him.
We are all born with different inclinations, and if we each supported each other to rise above them to relate positively to each other, then we enter a new network of connections with nature’s positive force of connection holding us together. We can then find our optimal places in society, and we can then each realize ourselves in a perfect and whole fashion. Then, even our worst inclinations—killing, raping and stealing—would find a positive expression as we would seek how to use these inclinations in order to positively contribute to society.
Based on the show “Ask the Kabbalist, episode 11: How to Correct Evil Inclinations” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Joseph (Asaf) Ohayon. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
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