God Wants Our Forgiveness
"The Talmud, the compilation of Jewish oral tradition, suggests that God also wants our forgiveness. How is this possible? I have a very loving dentist, and as he drills away at my tooth, he constantly asks me to forgive him for the pain he is causing me. And although everything he is doing is only for my good, it's possible for me to forget that at times and feel angry. And, so, too, in this sometimes painful and challenging life of becoming perfect, it's important, for our own sakes, to forgive God — even though deep down we intuit that everything that happens is an expression of ultimate goodness. The opportunity to serve God and be a vehicle for His process of becoming perfect is the very gift of life."
— The Secret Life of God
Why There is So Much Evil in the World
"Kabbalah is teaching that the main feature and advantage of this world is the evil in it. This world was not created for what is already good in it. This world was created to be a forum for a new and higher form of goodness — the goodness born out of overcoming evil and choosing to do good. Imagine you walk into a factory and you see them trucking in tons and tons of garbage. You then find out that they actually buy this garbage and that it is their most valued raw material. This all sounds crazy to you until you find out that this factory is actually a recycling plant. They take garbage and turn it into usable products. Welcome to World, Inc.!
"Yes, this world is really a recycling plant. That is why it is filled with so much garbage. All the trash around us and within us is here for us to recycle into usable products-lessons and realizations, growth and accomplishments. Before I learned this lesson from Kabbalah, I always wondered why there was so much evil in the world. However, after this secret was revealed to me, I asked: Why isn't there more evil in this world? The answer, of course, is that there is less evil because we are working so hard and succeeding on our mission to choose good."
— The Secret Life of God
God is a Great Coach
"God is like a great coach who's training you for the Olympics. He sets up a training ground filled with obstacles. That is His gift to you. He is really creating opportunities for you to jump higher. He also knows that the higher you need to jump, the harder you could fall. But that's the price you pay to enter the Olympics. You are bound to make mistakes and fall sometimes. But when you do, don't despair. It's all part of the process."
— The Secret Life of God
God As An Investor
"God is the largest shareholder of the company. He is the major investor in Human Becomings, Inc. God invested a spark of the Divine Self — the soul — in human beings in order to be a participant in this world. Kabbalah teaches that God desires to be in this world. God lives and participates in this word through you and me. We experience and enjoy this honor only if we invite God into our world by accepting our challenging lives as His divine mission.
"Every human being has the potential to be God's rep and agent. Everything we do can be for God's sake. This is the greatest honor and pleasure a person can experience. To live for yourself does not provide ultimate fulfillment and happiness. But when you make yourself into an instrument for God and make choices for God's sake — then you experience heaven on earth.
"I sometimes ask my students at Isralight to imagine how they would reason and act if they were buying a car for God's sake. What would be the main considerations in the choice of models? Typically, they immediately dismiss appearance and the brand name of the car — they don't care if it's red, if it's a Ferrari, if it's got a turbo engine. What matters is safety features, pollution controls, mileage to the gallon, and value for the dollar. In other words, the overriding concerns are for the life of the passengers, for the environment, for conserving precious resources, for making sound economic judgments.
"The next time you're about to make a decision ask yourself, 'If I do this for God, what would be the right choice? If I am His rep on earth, how should I behave?'
"This is the true path of responsibility. In everything we do, we should feel a responsibility to God. Don't worry — the responsibility of being an agent for God doesn't make you neurotic. It gives you great inspiration, clarity and vitality."
— The Secret Life of God
Wonder
"The job of a spiritual teacher is not to be a philosopher, but a gourmet cook. A gourmet cook has the ability to bring the taste out of every ordinary cabbage, every simple bean sprout . . . In addition to being a gourmet cook, a spiritual teacher has to be an optometrist. Most human beings are born with perfect vision, but after a certain number of years, most people commonly develop problems in seeing. So you go to an optometrist, and you sit in a special seat, and the optometrist puts lenses of various strengths in front of you, trying different ones until you can see the chart clearly. All he's trying to do is to help you to see what's there. By giving you the right lenses, the optometrist enables you to see what is. One of the lenses is the lens of wonder... So my job as a spiritual teacher is to put some wonder into your way of seeing."
— Seeing God
