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Michael Laitman
Founder and president of Bnei Baruch Kabbalah Education & Research Institute

How Can One Justify Being Happy When There Is So Much Suffering in the World?

We should strive to discover and understand the meaning of life, to see that life’s meaning is for life itself to reveal to us: what it is for, and to which destination it leads and pulls us.

Our lives, as we currently know them, from the time of our birth until our death, is actually a period that does not count as life. Why? It is because in such a state, we follow various instinctive instructions of nature. We try to survive, suffer less, and find comfort and pleasure.

In order to feel the meaning of life, we need to exit this animal-like state. Then, as the question stipulates, by doing so, where is our happiness? Happiness comes from understanding the universe and its significance.

We can thus be happy among all the suffering presenting itself to us when we understand life’s meaning, which includes the purpose of all the suffering we experience, and the extent to which every movement on the inanimate, vegetative, animate and human nature eventually leads to the revelation of life’s mysteries.

We can then link the suffering and horrors in life to the chain of this revelation. Then, we discover that the purpose of suffering is to wake us up to question its purpose, to prod us to ultimately seek the meaning of life. Even if we feel the pain on our own flesh, then it is all the more necessary to understand that such states lead us eventually to a sense of inner meaning.

This path leads us to happiness. When we achieve happiness through understanding life’s meaning and the purpose of suffering, the pain then disappears. That is, if we know exactly what suffering is for, and why we become included in it, then there is no suffering and everything becomes meaningful.

The path to discovering life’s meaning is also full of breakdowns. We lose and find the meaning of life, losing and finding it again and again throughout our progress to its final, complete revelation. No matter how we feel while doing so, we become stronger and more advanced the entire time.

We eventually add in our discernments, understanding and feeling of life up to a point where we acquire the full attainment of nature’s laws—how and why nature operates on us and its still, vegetative and animate levels the way that it does. We learn the workings of nature as a single, supreme attitude of love and bestowal that acts to elevate us to our highest level of happiness, wholeness and connection among each other and with itself, in full identification and agreement with its laws.

About the Author
Michael Laitman is a PhD in Philosophy and Kabbalah. MSc in Medical Bio-Cybernetics. Founder and president of Bnei Baruch Kabbalah Education & Research Institute. Author of over 40 books on spiritual, social and global transformation. His new book, The Jewish Choice: Unity or Anti-Semitism, is available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Jewish-Choice-Anti-Semitism-Historical-anti-Semitism/dp/1671872207/
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